The Soldier's Wife (21 page)

‘She can stay here till Alexa gets back. She's welcome to. Andy's chuffed to bits to have a daughter on loan. Someone else to show off to, since I'm not exactly a good audience any more, bless his heart.'

Dan switched his gaze to her face. ‘Franny?'

‘What?'

‘How – how did Isabel have the money to get home?'

Franny looked at him calmly. ‘Rupert sent it to her.'

‘Rupert!'

‘Yes,' Franny said. ‘I asked her the same question and she told me. Then I rang him, and he confirmed it. As he said to me, it seemed the best thing to do.' She paused for a second and then she said, ‘Hadn't you better rescue that dog of yours?'

The twins were crying. They had been weeping, on and off, since they woke up and realized that they were going home. Alexa had expected that they would be as they had always been, as she had supposed small children always were, thrilled to be going home to see Daddy, and Beetle, and even
Isabel, who could invariably be produced as a trump card when a reward or an inducement was in order. But instead they had wailed and whined and become like floppy rag dolls when Alexa tried to dress them, and sat looking glumly at their untouched breakfast – pronounced their favourite cereal on all preceding mornings – with their thumbs in. When her father – even her father! – sat down between them and attempted to coax in a mouthful or two, they had merely leaned against him, one either side, and indicated, round their thumbs, that they could not possibly be persuaded and, furthermore, they didn't mind how long it took to make that very, very plain.

In the end, Elaine had relented and put bananas and cereal bars in a plastic bag for the journey. She looked tired, Alexa thought, as tired as someone might well look on the fourth day of having five people in a flat designed for a formal two, and the ceaseless involvement in nurture required by two three-year-olds. Alexa's friend Prue, who had four children under eight to look after, said that she often felt like a tree entirely covered in woodpeckers. Elaine, still attired for the Marylebone Road but with slightly ruffled hair and a distinct air of discomposure, looked as if she might have been such a tree.

‘Sorry, Mum,' Alexa said, wedged against the dishwasher in the tiny kitchen.

‘I've loved it.'

‘You've been fantastic. Really. But we're a lot to cope with. I know we are.'

Elaine took out the two bowls Alexa had just loaded into the dishwasher and put them back again at a slightly different angle. ‘Daddy and I have loved having you.'

‘Please, Mum. Please. Don't pretend we're easier than we are. Especially at the moment. It's – it's been a real break for me.'

Elaine straightened up and regarded her. ‘You don't look as if you've had much of a break.'

‘I will do. Promise. I just need to sort a few things.'

Elaine made a distracted, despairing gesture. ‘All this business with Isabel.'

‘I know.'

‘You really can't—'

‘Mum. Please.'

‘I knew that would happen,' Elaine said. ‘I knew it. The moment you told us that you'd met Dan and that he was a soldier. I said to Daddy—'

‘
No
, Mum.'

‘D'you remember, in Jakarta—'

Alexa put her hands over her ears. ‘Of course I do!'

‘Well, then.'

‘Well nothing. Mum, I don't want to fight. Really I don't. Especially when you and Dad have been so generous. Really it's been a – wonderful stay.'

Elaine said sadly, ‘I thought seeing Jack would do you good.'

‘It did.'

‘I – we rather hoped you'd marry Jack, you know.'

Alexa sighed. From the sitting room she could hear a steady whimpering setting in again. Was it Flora, or Tassy? She said, ‘Mum, I didn't love Jack. I don't. Not that way. He's lovely, loveable, but not … not …'

‘Not what?'

‘Not like you love someone you agree to marry.'

Elaine looked away. She appeared to be considering, with discomfort, the nature of the love you might ideally feel for someone you agree to marry. Then she said, as a statement rather than a question, ‘And Dan was.'

‘Yes.'

‘And is?'

There was a fractional pause and then Alexa said, not wholly with conviction, ‘That too.'

In Morgan's car, the twins fell asleep, their heads lolling forwards on the fragile stalks of their necks. Morgan drove with deliberate casualness, his right arm on the ledge of the window, just resting his fingertips on the steering wheel as if they had all day to meander pleasurably and relaxedly down to Wiltshire. Beside him, Alexa sat and tried not to make a checklist of all the things that needed confronting and dealing with at Larkford, or to think how these few days in London had demonstrated to her that it was no good being politely and even enthusiastically reactive any more, and that if she wanted even one of the things she had realized she could no longer live without – Isabel's happiness being paramount – she was going to have to take action.

‘Omelettes and eggs,' Jack had said to her several times, increasingly irritatingly. ‘If you want the omelette—'

‘I know – I
know
.'

‘Knowing isn't enough. You have to—'

‘I know that too.'

She felt unfairly exasperated with him. He'd been amazing, smoothing her path back to her father-in-law – she hadn't yet had the courage to ring Eric, too – but she was worn out with being grateful to him, worn out with her own inability to handle herself at all times in a way she could be proud of, worn out at the prospect of walking back into the familiar patterns of irresolvable unhappiness at Larkford. Gazing out of the passenger window of her father's car, she wondered, with a kind of despair, if the green shoots of an idea that had popped up suddenly and miraculously in her mind in Mel Cooper's office, only to be overtaken immediately in favour of yet more anxiety and telephoning about Isabel, would prove to be merely another brief, hopeless illusion.

‘It won't,' Morgan said, raising his voice very slightly above Radio Three, ‘be as bad as you are thinking when you get there.'

She didn't turn her head. ‘Want to bet?'

Her father put his left hand out briefly to touch her arm. ‘Trust me,' he said, and then transferred his hand to the radio to turn up the volume. ‘Now,' he said, ‘which Beethoven symphony is this?'

Gus had been impossible to rouse for three days. Dan had left messages on his mobile, sent texts, and even been round to his house on two occasions, to find the curtains drawn back, the dog missing from the outside kennel, no car in the drive and the door locked. Perhaps, Dan thought, he'd gone away. Perhaps he'd done something characteristically, energetically Gus-like, such as taking himself off to some outward-bound place in North Wales or the Lake District and blanking out what was going on in his head with outrageous physical challenges. And anyway, what with the Isabel crisis and Alexa coming back, thoughts of what had happened to Gus had to be pushed aside, not least because they were, if Alexa was to be believed, symptoms of the problem, if not partly the cause of it as well.

He had made an effort for Alexa's return. He had tidied the house, and ironed the pile of clothes in the specified basket, and fixed the dripping shower. He had spoken, pleasantly and without drama or asking questions, to Isabel, who had indicated that she would probably, but not definitely, come home when Alexa and the twins arrived. Then it struck him that there was no food. Well, there was the odd discouraging scrap of this and that in the fridge, but there wasn't new food, and certainly not the kind of small, bright, appetizing food that the twins would consent to eat.

He made a list, with decisiveness. Then he rounded up a
number of responsibly reusable bags and got in the car and drove to the garrison village supermarket, and went round it, list in hand, methodically checking items off with a pencil as he added them to his trolley. He was amazed at how much there was. He was astonished at the size of the bill. As he was loading it all into the boot of the car, Mo came by, pushing her own trolley, and said cheerfully that she was glad to see him doing his bit and would he like to have a word with Baz some time, who thought a three-for-two offer was something to do with the porn industry.

Dan knew what was expected of him. He said, ‘I don't know how you girls do it, week after week.'

‘And it never gets to be anybody's idea of fun.'

‘I can believe that.'

Mo glanced over her shoulder, as if to check that no one else was listening. ‘I'll tell you something else you'll hardly believe.'

‘What?'

‘Gus and Kate.'

‘Sadly, Mo, I do know about that.'

‘No. I've just seen them,' Mo said. ‘Together. She's back.'

Dan slammed down the car's tailgate. ‘I don't think so.'

‘I saw them, Dan. With my own eyes. Couple of hours ago I was driving out past the guardroom after delivering something for Baz – why do I do it? Why do I keep saying yes when he asks me to do something he could perfectly well do himself? – and they were coming in, in the same car. They looked – well, they looked OK to me.'

‘Good,' Dan said shortly.

Mo let a beat fall and then she said, ‘Alexa back today?'

Dan indicated the full boot of the car. ‘That's what all that's for.'

‘It'll earn you a few brownie points.'

‘I need them.'

‘You all do,' Mo said. ‘Just by existing you do. Tell Alexa I'll call her. Tell her about Kate.'

Dan sketched a mock salute. ‘Will do.'

Mo bent over her trolley and began to wheel it rapidly up the line of cars. Dan got in behind the wheel and put the key in the ignition. He fired the engine. He was not going to think about Gus. He was not going to think about Gus and Kate and whatever her return meant or didn't mean. He was only going to think about making it as easy for Alexa to come back as it could be, which would start, he had decided, with a full fridge and a full apology. And then he would see what she had decided to do. About everything.

In the driveway of number seven, the Quadrant was a car, already parked. Curses, Dan thought, they're here before me, before I've got the food in, before I've laid the table and found something to stick these flowers in. And then he thought, that's not Morgan's car, Morgan drives a Mercedes and that's a Volvo, a Volvo estate, the same colour as Gus's Volvo estate – actually, it
is
Gus's Volvo estate and there is Gus, getting out of it, looking like he'd rather be anywhere but here, and Kate, oh God, Kate, wearing an expression like thunder. Both the Melvilles. Give me
strength
.

He pulled the car in behind Gus's and yanked on the brake. Gus looked at Dan as he got out of the car. He didn't smile.

‘Hi, there,' Dan said.

‘Hi!' Kate called, climbing out of the passenger seat.

Gus said nothing. Kate came across the drive, past Gus, to greet Dan. He thought for a moment that she was going to kiss his cheek, and he couldn't stop her, but she halted two feet from him. She looked different, somehow, not exactly younger, but not so old as before either, despite her expression.

‘Hello,' Kate said.

Dan nodded. His glance flicked to Gus.

‘I'm sorry to surprise you,' Kate said. ‘I'm sorry we're unannounced. Is Alexa back?'

‘Any minute,' Dan said tersely.

‘Good,' Kate said. She turned and waved an arm at Gus, as if indicating that he should come and stand beside her.

‘This won't take long,' Kate said, ‘but it's best you know before Alexa gets back.'

‘Know what?'

‘Gus,' Kate said. ‘Gus. Come here. Come and talk to Dan.' She turned back to Dan and said, raising her voice a little, ‘Dan, Gus has something to tell you.'

‘O
f course I can see you,' Mack said. ‘You rang just in time. Mary and I are off to Scotland with the boy on Wednesday, so tomorrow's ideal. Come for a dram.'

‘No, I'd rather come in the morning, if you—'

‘Coffee, then. Come for coffee. Mary'll be thrilled. Bring your girls. All of them.'

‘No, I'd rather just see you alone, if that's OK.'

‘Of course it is,' Mack said. He sounded incapable of being put out by anything. ‘Of course. See you at ten thirty, at Ranpur.'

So here he was, in barrack-room dress, in the drive of Ranpur House, at ten twenty-nine. The house reared up above him, solidly, uncompromisingly Edwardian, red brick with cream stone trimmings, the drive darkly shaded by a funereal stand of larch trees. On the sill of the bay window of the sitting room, he could see a jade tree in an oriental pot and two soapstone elephants tramping towards it, one on either side. Mack liked things symmetrical. It was probably one reason for choosing Mary as his wife. She was very pretty in as tidy a way as their sitting-room ornaments.

She opened the door to him with a wide smile. She was wearing pressed jeans and a tight pink cardigan over a pink
striped vest. She had pearls in her ears and her long, glossy curls were held off her face with a navy-blue velvet band.

‘Dan! Lovely! Come in.'

She leaned forward to kiss him, exuding a breath of lily of the valley.

He said, ‘Sorry to do this, when you're packing to leave.'

‘Nonsense,' Mary said. ‘It takes no time, packing for Scotland. It just means every sweater and waterproof in the house and praise be, no midge repellent needed in December.' She smiled again, her teeth almost luminous in the dark hall. ‘How's Alexa?'

Dan tried to smile back. ‘Round at Franny's.'

‘No change there, then!'

‘Absolutely,' Dan said, grateful for the formula.

Mary Mackenzie led the way into her sitting room. A gas fire was glowing with artificial flames and a coffee tray, complete with a plate of biscuits, was on a low table beside one of the twin sofas, stoutly upholstered in patterned chintz.

‘Mack won't be a moment.'

‘He's here,' Mack said.

Dan stood, immediately and involuntarily, to attention. ‘Morning, Colonel.'

Mack indicated a chair. ‘Morning, Dan. Sit yourself down.'

He put a hand on his wife's shoulder. ‘Thank you, darling.'

‘No trouble.'

‘We won't be long.'

Mary turned another smile on Dan. ‘I'm off to count gumboots.'

Mack leaned to kiss her cheek. ‘Half an hour, sweetheart.'

He turned and bent over the coffee tray. The cafetière, Dan noticed, irrelevantly and idiotically, had a flowered porcelain lid which almost matched the sofas.

‘Right, Dan,' Mack said, pouring, his back to Dan. ‘What can I do you for?'

Franny had put Isabel to sleep in Rupert's room. This was exhilarating and slightly daunting in equal measure and Isabel wasn't sure if she should tell him by text that she was sleeping under his Arsenal duvet, below, among other things, a Dire Straits poster – pretty old, it looked – for
Brothers in Arms
. The poster intrigued Isabel, not for itself, really, but because Rupert had written out something in his own handwriting and taped it to the bottom edge.

Isabel knelt up on the bed to see what he had written, and saw that he had copied out some of the lyrics from the song, about the supreme brotherhood of bearing arms together, and then he'd signed his initials, RGW, as if he'd thought of the words himself, and dated them.

It made Isabel feel a bit odd, looking at it, the way she felt when Dan was in uniform and thinking about soldiering rather than his family. It was so weird, really it was, to be under Rupert's duvet, and being looked after by his parents, but at the same time realizing that what went on in Rupert's head could take him far, far away to a place where no one, except other boys who felt as he did, could ever reach him. It was weird, but it wasn't frightening. It was quite exciting, really, even if she couldn't work out quite why. It was as exciting as putting her bare feet on the carpet where he walked, in his bare feet, when he was at home.

And then she got a text.

‘Now u can tell Mum I need a new bed!' he wrote. ‘It's crap isn't it.'

He knew! He was cool with it. It was empowering to have Rupert casually acknowledge her sleeping in his bed, just as being in this house with Franny and Andy was empowering.

‘Will do,' she texted back laconically, and waited.

‘Stay there,' he wrote commandingly, ‘till I get back. x'.

She could hear feet on the gravel now below Rupert's
bedroom window, and a familiar, lovely cheeping, indicating that the twins had arrived, and so had Mum. Isabel swallowed.

‘You can stay,' Franny had said, ‘as long as you want to. All you must be sure of is that if you do stay, you're not doing it to get back at your mother.'

Isabel shut her eyes, briefly. She was longing to see her mother. And the twins. Longing. And Beetle. It was just that in the past, giving in to that longing had meant a repetition of nobody listening, nobody making any changes. But this time, there were a few changes already, and Dan, at least, was trying to listen. He had not, for example, urged her to come home before Alexa and the twins returned.

She heard the doorbell ring and Franny's steps in the hall, and then the sound of the door opening and all the greetings and the twins squeaking and then Alexa saying, ‘Isabel? Where's Isabel?'

‘Upstairs,' Franny said.

‘No,' Alexa said, in a different, more commanding tone. ‘No. Stay with me—'

She was trying to restrain the twins. Isabel could hear them protesting, hear Tassy working herself up to one of her big screams.

‘
Wait
,' Alexa said.

Her voice didn't sound very good, very steady. Tassy was making that noise like a siren now. She'd set Flora off, if she went on.

‘Stop it,' Alexa shouted. ‘Stop it!'

Isabel stood up. She glanced at the text again and then pushed the phone into her jeans pocket. Then she walked out of Rupert's room and along the landing until she could look down over the banisters to the hall. It was chaos down there, familiar chaos.

‘Here I am!' Isabel called. And waited.

Mack watched Dan reverse competently out of the drive of Ranpur House, waved once to him in a single, economical gesture, and closed the front door. Then he moved briskly down the dark hall to the small room at the back of the house which he was using as a study, calling as he went, ‘Just got a few work calls to make, sweetheart!' to deter Mary from immediately coming to ask him what Dan had wanted, and shut the door behind him with even more emphasis than he had closed the front one. Mary, who had been so delighted when he got command – ‘Oh darling, can you believe it! A cleaner and a gardener!' – was elaborately respectful of his closed study door, and he did not discourage her. When his own senior officer, Julian Bailey, had once said drily to him that as the Army didn't deliberately infantilize women it was a pity to do it oneself, he had simply pretended he saw no personal relevance in the remark. Mary's girlishness was not only abidingly charming to him, it was also useful. She would not, now, come into his study without knocking and calling out to ask if she might. And in return, he would, in the course of the day, find a small way in which to indulge her. It wasn't the kind of marriage that would suit the Baileys, he was sure, but it suited the current occupants of Ranpur House very well indeed, thank you.

Mack's study was a small shrine to the regiment. The lower halves of the walls held bookcases full of military and sporting books, and the upper halves were neatly and thickly covered with photographs and insignia. Some of the photographs were of Mack's military career, some of them featured his father and paternal grandfather, both Highland gunners, both staring out at him with the same inflexible directness. Against one wall was his orderly desk, with its computer, and in the centre of another, the half-glazed door to the dark back drive of Ranpur House, above which Mack
had instructed Robbo, the PT instructor, to install a pull-up bar.

Mack sat down at his desk and pulled the landline telephone towards him. It was his intention to ring Julian Bailey immediately and report on the most disquieting half-hour he had just had with Dan Riley, as well as asking Julian's advice as to what, if anything, should be done next. But then, with his hand on the handset, he hesitated. It came to him, suddenly and uncomfortably, that he might – in the heat of the moment, as it were – have said too much himself. He withdrew his hand. He must think. He put his elbows on his desk and his chin in his hands. He must re-run the interview in his mind, and think.

Dan had not so much come straight to the point as rushed at it. He had said – almost blurting it out – that he didn't think he could go on.

‘Go on?'

‘Soldiering,' Dan said. ‘I just don't think I can. I just don't think I can ask—'

Mack had motioned him to silence. He had leaned forward, coffee mug in both hands, and said, in a very calm, steady and deliberate way, that they were all feeling the effects of returning from a particularly gruelling tour, and that it was desperately hard to change gear and desperately hard for the families to do likewise in their own way, and it had only been a few weeks, and although it was more than understandable to feel as Dan did, it was crucially important not to give way to impulse or the difficulties of the moment.

Dan listened in silence. Then he said, not very coherently, that he couldn't go on asking everyone to make all these sacrifices because of him, and he could not be responsible for Isabel and Alexa's unhappiness any longer. And then he stopped again, drank some coffee and said suddenly, ‘Anyway, I've lost faith.'

Mack put his coffee down. He said, incredulously, ‘In – soldiering?'

‘No,' Dan said. ‘I adore it. It's my life.'

‘Then …?'

‘I can't tell you.'

‘What?'

‘I'm sorry,' Dan said. ‘You'll have to take my word for it. I've lost faith.'

‘In yourself?'

‘No.'

‘In – in comradeship?'

There was another silence. Then Dan shook his head, like a dog getting water out of its ears. He said, mumbling, ‘I just can't go
on
, putting them all through it.'

Mack got up. He walked to the window and surveyed the jade tree and the soapstone elephants. ‘Is Alexa home?'

‘Yes.'

‘Does she know you are here?'

‘No.'

‘Does she know why you might be here?'

‘No.'

Mack turned round. ‘What would she say if she knew you were here?'

Dan said unhappily, ‘She'd probably tell me not to be such a bloody idiot.'

‘Then why wouldn't you listen to her?'

‘Because,' Dan said, ‘she's had enough. So has Izzy. And I've had enough of letting them down like this. I can't go on with it. It breaks my heart, but I can't.'

Mack came back to the sofa. He sat down and leaned forward again, his elbows on his knees. He said, ‘Are you ambitious?'

‘As a soldier?' Dan gave a little bark of laughter. ‘I was. Boy, I was.'

Mack said, ‘You had a good tour of duty.'

‘Yup.'

‘Your third tour of duty.'

Dan nodded.

Mack linked his hands and stared at the hearthrug. He said, ‘You're coming into zone for promotion. As you know. We'd be looking at your past battle planning as well as your achievements. You know as well as I do that you did a fantastic job with your sub unit. You hit all the bases. You are not a guy, Dan, who walks between the raindrops. You've had your opportunities to shine and you've taken them. You even – dare I say – have your patrons. Afghanistan is the ultimate test – and you have not failed it.'

Dan muttered something.

‘What?'

‘I just said, I'm afraid it's too late.'

‘Is it?' Mack said with sudden energy. ‘Is it?' He looked up from the rug, and gazed hard at Dan. ‘Are you telling me, really telling me, that you want to throw in the towel just as you come into the zone?'

Dan stared at him. ‘I don't have a choice.'

Mack jabbed a forefinger at him. ‘I may be speaking out of turn. I may well be. But I can't stand to see you giving up, I can't stand it.' He leaned closer until his face was six inches from Dan's and said in a hoarse, urgent whisper, ‘You're on target, mate. On target. To be pinked. Don't bloody give up at the
moment
. You hit the bull's eye!'

He shifted his position slightly now and put his hands over his face. Should he have said that? Should he? It was early December. The pink list wouldn't be out for two months plus. On that fateful Thursday in February, Julian would ring him and say something like, ‘I'm aware that Dan and Gus both wanted and hoped, but only Dan got it,' and then Mack would have to confront Gus and a whole tribe of other triple-alpha,
confident people who believed they could do anything and tell them that only Dan—But maybe it wouldn't, in the end,
be
Dan. Maybe, however great he'd been and might be, he wouldn't finally get promotion. And then
what
would Mack have done that morning, setting that hare running, raising those hopes? He balled his hands into fists and beat them lightly against his forehead. Why hadn't he kept his mouth shut? Why hadn't he heard Dan out and then rung Julian before he said another word?

There was a tap at the door.

‘Only me!' Mary called, from the far side.

Mack got up from his desk and took a deep breath. He rearranged his features and his voice. ‘On my way, sweetheart,' he said.