The Soldier's Wife (24 page)

Kate had looked quite subdued, standing on her doorstep
in a waterproof jacket and no make-up. She explained that Gus had gone to collect the boys at the end of their school term, and that she just wanted to come and explain what was going on.

‘Of course,' Alexa had said. She hoped she'd sounded as neutral as she'd felt. She led the way into the kitchen, where the twins were already settled at the table.

‘Tea?' she said.

Kate nodded gratefully. She sat down opposite the twins and smiled at them. They, pleased to have a diversion from the tedious business of having to stay on their chairs at the table while eating, smiled back at her. Tassy knelt up in her chair and leaned down across the Marmite toast so that several squares of it got stuck to her jersey.

‘Do
you
have snot?' Tassy said conversationally.

Alexa came across the kitchen, pulled Tassy upright and detached the squares of toast. ‘I said enough. Now finish your tea.'

‘
We
have,' Tassy began, looking at her sister for support.

‘One more word,' Alexa said, ‘and you will—'

‘I don't mind,' Kate said, interrupting. ‘It's a relief, actually. There's been so much big stuff to sweat that I'm really rather grateful for a bit of snot.'

Tassy and Flora began to giggle.

Kate said wistfully, ‘I always wished I'd had a daughter.'

Alexa pushed a piece of toast into Tassy's mouth while it was open to giggle. ‘Well, perhaps you now can.'

‘Hey!' Kate said, startled.

‘Fresh start, new baby …'

‘But,' Kate said, ‘I shall be the only breadwinner. For the time being anyway. Until Gus disentangles himself and finds something else to do.'

‘Snot!' Tassy said, spraying toast out of her mouth.

‘Stop it!'

Flora stood on her chair and began a little dance. Tassy watched her, cackling.

‘It must be so lovely for them,' Kate said, ‘having Isabel home.'

‘It's lovely for
all
of us.'

Kate regarded her. ‘You look different.'

‘Better or worse?'

‘Better. Definitely. It's such a relief, deciding things, isn't it? Even when the decisions are fraught with their own difficulties. I mean, what am I going to do with a Gus without his mates and his regiment?'

Alexa picked each twin up in turn and plonked them down on to their chairs again. Then she produced a damp cloth, wiped it briskly across both their faces and realigned their plastic plates in front of them. ‘
Eat
,' she said. She did not sound friendly.

Docilely, they picked up a remaining piece of toast each and put it into their mouths.

‘Gosh,' Kate said admiringly. ‘You
do
feel better. Impressive.'

‘I wish you luck,' Alexa said, ‘I really do. It's very brave of both of you.'

‘I don't know about that. I don't actually know what's courage and what's guilt. For either of us. But we'll cobble something together, I'm sure we will.' She gave a sad little attempt at laughter. ‘What's really pathetic is how disappointed the boys will be not to have Daddy as a soldier any more. No more the hero, just a common or garden grumpy old dad like anyone else's. They'll be so envious of you and Dan.'

‘Don't wind me up, Kate.'

‘I didn't mean to, I just—'

‘What?'

‘I just was wondering what's happened to you to make you look so different?'

Alexa was still watching the twins. She shrugged. ‘I've taken some decisions, like you. That's all.'

Kate waited a second or two, and then she said lightly, ‘What decisions might those be?'

Alexa retrieved her gaze from the children and rested it briefly on Kate's face. Then she said, without smiling, ‘Why do you think I would tell you before I even mention them to Dan?'

Dan had thought his grandfather intended to give him a hard time. He had expected ten minutes of bellowed exhortations to be a man, be a soldier, show some mettle, get a bloody grip. But Eric didn't seem interested in hectoring him about anything, didn't even seem particularly bothered about his and George's offer of money and the profoundly unsatisfactory reception their generosity had had. In fact, after only a few mildly contemptuous remarks about George's uselessness as an envoy if you wanted any mission accomplished that was more challenging than putting the kettle on, Eric switched into quite another mode, one that Dan had never encountered before and which made him sit there, in his parked car, his phone clamped to his ear, with his eyes shut, the better to concentrate.

The thing was, Eric said, that soldiering was a damn fine bloody thing for a man to do. It gave a man a purpose and an aim, and skills and comrades, and, above all, a sense of belonging, and a sense of value. You could take the most good-for-nothing bloody boy and turn out a loyal, serviceable, brave soldier in not much more than a year – even a modern boy with too much blubber on him from sitting around in front of all this PlayStation nonsense. He should know. His soldiering years, looking back, were his golden years. He wouldn't trade in one bloody second of those years, especially the ones in Aden.

But – and this was what he was getting at, ringing Dan like this – these days you had to think ahead. Far ahead. When he was a nipper, men copped it in their seventies, but now Dan could be looking at ninety even,
ninety
, thirty-five whole bloody years after he'd have had to retire from the Army, and he, Eric, wanted Dan to think about that. Never mind thirty-five years, think twenty-five. Twenty-five whole years after soldiering. ‘You've got to picture it, lad, you've got to,' Eric said. ‘D'you want to be like your own dad, maundering on in that miserable little flat with nobody to talk to but your senile old father and the lady in the launderette? D'you want to be like me, living like an old fossil, stuck in the past and going off to have conversations with the headstone put up to commemorate a brother I never bloody knew? D'you want that? Do you?'

He'd paused then. Dan waited in silence. Then Eric said, ‘Because, you see, I was an only child, to all intents and purposes. Your dad was. You were. Alexa was. It's all very well when you're a nipper, but it's draughty when time goes on. And if you leave the Army, or you retire from the Army, you bloody well feel the draught. You can't keep those friends the way you can when you're all in the firing line and the man either side of you is all the world to you. You're brothers in arms then, but lay down your arms and it's another story, another story altogether.' His voice grew louder.

‘But you're a lucky sod, Daniel. You're a lucky bloody sod. You've got four women in your life, four girls, and three of those girls'll grow up and have children, and you'll have people round you all your old age who don't love you because you're in bloody mortal danger together, they love you because you're you. And when you've been dealt a hand like that, lad, you don't want to go and bloody
risk
it. You don't want to cut off your stupid nose to spite your whole stupid, bloody
face
.'

When he stopped, there was a sudden and complete silence. Dan couldn't even hear him breathing. He waited a full minute, and then he said, unsteadily, ‘Granddad?'

‘I've got nothing more to say,' Eric said with finality.

‘No. Yes. Granddad—'

‘What?'

‘Are … are you telling me I … I should
quit
?'

Eric sighed gustily from Wimbledon. ‘Don't be so bloody ridiculous.'

‘But I thought you were saying—'

‘I was saying, take care,' Eric said, his voice rising again. ‘I was saying, don't risk your future. Don't decide a single bloody thing without deciding it together. That girl, Daniel, will be here when the Army's
over
for you. Or she will if you treat her right. And in the end, where would you bloody be, soldiering or not, without her?'

He'd rung off then, quite abruptly. He'd simply said, all of a sudden, that he'd said his piece and he'd had enough jawing on and he was going to make a brew, and Dan found himself holding a silent phone against his ear. Dan took a deep breath. The car smelled of dog, and he was cold, with the engine off and the heater with it. He flipped down the sun visor in front of him and inspected his face in the mirror on the back of it. He looked like someone he had never seen before.

He leaned forward and switched on the ignition. At once the heater and the radio came on, pumping warmth and sound into the car. He wanted to ring Eric and say thank you, but Eric would only shout at him and in any case he wasn't sure what he'd be thanking him for. Just – just for being there, for starters. For being there, and staying there, and not reproaching Dan for not yet going to see him, not being able to accept a gift, not being able, for far too long, to see the man for staring at the soldier.

He drove home slowly and parked the car in the drive. Then he got out and went round to lift the tailgate and assist Beetle, stiffened by lying still after his walk, down on to the ground. Passing the kitchen window on the way to the front door, he saw that the twins were sitting meekly at the table and opposite them was Kate Melville, drinking tea. He definitely did not want to see Kate Melville. In fact, he did not want to see anyone right then but his wife and his daughters.

He opened the front door and ushered Beetle inside. He shouted, ‘Home!'

There was an instant clamour from the twins, and above their noise he could hear Alexa's voice saying, ‘Don't move from your chairs, don't
move
—'

And then he went down the hall and into the kitchen, Beetle at his heels, and Kate Melville half rose, almost nervously, as he entered.

‘Dan,' she said.

He gave her a brief nod as he went past her, and then he went round the table to drop a kiss on the twins' swivelling excited heads, and then he halted in front of Alexa.

‘Hello,' he said to her, directly.

She regarded him. He was looking down at her with absolute focus.

‘I'm back,' Dan said.

‘Yes.'

He put his hands on her shoulders and held her hard. He said again, ‘I'm
back
.'

The twins scrambled to their feet and began to jump on their chairs, squealing.

Kate got decisively to her feet and moved towards the door. ‘I'll go, I think.'

Dan didn't take his eyes off Alexa's face. ‘Please,' he said to her, ignoring Kate.

‘Daddy's back! Daddy's back!' the twins shouted.

The door of the kitchen closed quietly behind Kate. Nobody looked at it.

‘And I'm listening,' Dan said. ‘I really am. I'm back.
Talk
to me.'

I
n her bedroom, Isabel was listening to her iPod. She was listening to the Eurythmics, ‘Here Comes The Rain Again', bootleg mix, which Rupert had added to her iPod for her because he said that the string playing was just so cool. He'd also downloaded Tensnake's ‘Coma Cat' – ‘Awesome,' he said reverently – and told Isabel, with the air of one sharing a considerable confidence, that his cousin Brett, who was Franny's sister's eighteen-year-old son, had come back from his first trip to Ibiza the previous summer and said that these two songs were on every club playlist, man, almost every one.

Isabel was listening to the music mostly out of manners, because it had been nice of Rupert to take the trouble for her, but she wasn't sure how much she liked music meant primarily for dancing to. And if she decided that she really didn't like it, she wouldn't pretend that she did, just to please Rupert. There was no need, any more, for that kind of reaction, not since she'd repaid him the ten pounds he'd sent to her at school, and spent enough time in his bedroom to get a much clearer idea of him as more than a myth.

She did like him, she was quite sure of that, and sometimes she liked him a lot. But he seemed to have lost the sheen of
glamour he'd had when she didn't know him so well and just saw his name pop up on her phone screen. Maybe, she thought, lying back on her bed so that the beat of the music in her head was more comfortable, that was just as well. Maybe, you could be better friends with people, whether it was boys or girls, without the fairy dust of exciting strangeness making everything sparkle only as long as you kept it at a distance. Anyway, the idea of Rupert turning into the kind of friend that Jack Dearlove seemed to be for Mum was rather attractive, especially as she didn't have a brother. It also looked like a distinct possibility. He had texted her two jokes that morning already. She liked that.

The house was quite quiet. Isabel knew that Mum and the twins were in the kitchen, because Mum had said to Isabel that she deserved some time off from Tassy and Flora, and that she, Mum, would keep them downstairs and let them do one of their favourite things, which was cutting up with grown-up scissors instead of the blunt-ended children's ones which never cut anything properly. When Isabel went downstairs, she knew the kitchen would look like a gerbil's nest, a sea of random shreds of paper and cloth, and the twins would be red in the face from excitement and effort.

But she wouldn't go down just yet. It was oddly luxurious to be lying on her bed with the thump of music in her ears. Granddad had left a bar of milk chocolate for her, hidden under the pillow with the ten-pound note which had been so useful for repaying Rupert. He'd gone back to London that morning, with Dan driving him, and Dan was going to stay with him for a few nights and see Great-Granddad Eric, and Granny and Grandpa Morgan, which was something, he'd said, standing rather awkwardly in the doorway to Isabel's bedroom, that he should have done weeks ago. Weeks. He'd then asked her – quite shyly, she thought – if she'd like to go to London with him.

Isabel had been fidgeting with all the infinite number of tiny china and plastic objects on the top of her chest of drawers when he spoke. She had managed to say, not at all fluently, that although it was really kind of him, and usually she loved the thought of going to London, she didn't think she would, right now, this time. But thank you.

Dan grinned. He said, slightly teasingly, ‘I see.'

‘It … it isn't Rupert.'

‘Oh?'

‘No,' Isabel said. Her face was getting hot, which was really annoying. ‘No. It's – something I can't explain.'

‘It doesn't matter,' Dan said. He sounded kind, but still amused. ‘It really doesn't.'

Isabel had just nodded. Let him think it was Rupert, if he wanted. Better he should think it was Rupert than that she should have to admit that, having scored such a victory over school and been allowed to stay at home, she didn't want to let the spoils of that victory – Mum and the twins – out of her sight just yet.

It was Franny who had pointed out to her that she had won. They were folding sheets together, ready for ironing, and Franny had said quite casually, without catching Isabel's eye, ‘I think you've punished your mother enough now, don't you? I think she gets it. I think she respects what you feel. It's never a brilliant idea to keep forcing someone to see what they can completely see already.'

Isabel went on searching for the corners of a duvet cover, to shake it out into a neat rectangle. She felt such a sudden flood of relief at being given permission to go home again that she had been afraid that she might cry. So she had just nodded emphatically, and swallowed hard, and focussed on the duvet cover, and Franny had eventually said in quite a different voice, ‘You're a complete barometer for your mamma, aren't you? Wish my boys were, for me!'

And Isabel could laugh, and even if she only partly got what Franny meant, it was plainly a compliment, as it was when Franny came up to see her in bed, her last night there, and sat on the edge of the bed, and said she'd miss her.

‘Who am I going to do the girl stuff with? It's been so great, having you.'

‘I love it here,' Isabel said truthfully.

Franny smiled at her, and put a hand out and squeezed her nearest leg, under the covers.

‘You should be at home, now, though. It's where you belong.'

‘I know.'

‘It'll be good to be back. You'll see. And it'll be different. They've made a lot of plans and a lot of them are very good, and you'll like them. It won't be perfect, mind, because nothing ever is perfect, and Dan really wants to go on being a soldier, like Andy does, and I think you know a bit about that kind of wanting yourself now, don't you?'

Isabel had simply said ‘Yes' in not much more than a whisper. She imagined Franny was talking about the sort of wanting that amounted, really, to a need. The sort that made you who you were, the sort you
had
to satisfy, even if it sometimes elbowed other people's wantings out of the way.

‘You see,' Franny said, gazing up at the Dire Straits poster on the wall above Isabel's head, ‘your mum has had to find a way round that wanting. She's decided that she'd rather go round Dan than walk away from him, and even if it's wonderful for everybody, especially Dan, that she's chosen that way, it isn't going to be easy for her.'

Then Franny had stopped speaking, quite abruptly, and transferred her gaze from the poster to Isabel's face, and, after a pause, said in the upbeat tone Isabel was used to her using, ‘Bend, not break. That's what you have to do. Bend,
not break, if you're sure you've got the cake you really want to eat.'

The twins had been ecstatic to have her home – so ecstatic, in fact, that they had been quite sobered by her return, as if overdoing their reaction might cause Isabel to evaporate in front of their eyes, like a witches' punishment in a fairy tale. Even Tassy had been quite quiet and biddable, instinctively responding to the new atmosphere in the house of changes slowly heaving themselves up into all their lives, like some great monster of the deep turning over by degrees and causing huge waves on the surface, and making them all soberly aware that nothing was ever going to be the same again. One very different thing was being invited last night, while Granddad was watching television and the twins were asleep, to sit at the kitchen table with Mum and Dan, and being told that they had had a long conversation with Mrs Cairns and with someone from the Ministry of Defence about the Continuation of Education allowance, neither of which meant much to Isabel, and then, wonderfully, that she would not be going back to boarding school.

She looked at them both intently, one after the other. ‘Not – ever?'

‘No. Not unless you want to – you
ask
to.'

‘I won't,' Isabel said fervently.

‘Then it won't happen,' Dan said.

Isabel suddenly felt extremely shy. She whispered, ‘Thank you.'

‘Don't, Izzy. No thanks, no recriminations. No looking back.'

She said, picking at a grain of wood in the table top, ‘So where will I go?'

‘Well,' Dan said, glancing at Alexa, ‘we can't be sure. Not just yet. We can't be sure of quite a lot of things …'

Isabel inspected the nail she had run along the table top. ‘Like what?'

‘Like exactly where we'll live. Or how much we can all be together, sometimes. But for now, there's schools in Andover and a good one in Gillingham. Just while we decide.'

Despite everything Franny had said, Isabel had a little clutch of fear. ‘Are you—' she said, and stopped.

‘Are we what?'

She leaned back in her chair, looked at the ceiling and said, very fast, ‘Are you getting divorced?'

‘No,' Dan said.

Out of the lower rim of her eyes, Isabel saw him take her mother's hand.

‘No,' Alexa said.

Isabel slowly lowered her chin.

‘Then what d'you mean about not all being—'

‘I'm going to train, in London,' Alexa said. ‘I'm going to train for something a bit like teaching but not teaching. That's what I want to do. That's what I want to happen. So we might be going to London to live, you and me and the twins.'

Isabel thought about this. ‘And Dan?'

He was still holding Alexa's hand. He said, ‘I'll come when I can. Whenever I can. As much as I can. We … might buy a house.'

Isabel was startled. ‘A
house
!'

They both laughed.

‘You make it sound an outrageous idea,' said Dan.

Isabel looked at him. ‘Will you still be a soldier?'

‘Yes,' Alexa said, for him. ‘For now, anyway. For the moment.'

‘But where will you live? Will you live here, by yourself?'

‘No,' he said. Isabel could see from the whitened skin across his knuckles that he was gripping Alexa tightly. ‘No,
I won't live here. This house'll be for another family. When I need to be here, I'll stay in the mess. But I might be on a course at Shrivenham, or on exercise, or, heaven forbid, behind a desk in London. And I'll be with you four whenever I possibly can.'

Isabel pulled a hank of hair over her shoulder and inspected it, as if for split ends. ‘OK,' she said.

‘Is it?' Alexa said. ‘Do we really have your permission to go ahead?'

Isabel took no notice. It was a good sign that they wanted to tease her, but she had no wish to encourage them.

She said firmly, ‘A house.'

‘Yes,' Alexa said, casting a glance round the kitchen. ‘Our own house.'

‘In London?'

‘Maybe. Probably.'

Isabel brushed the tuft of hair in her hand against her cheek. ‘What about Franny? And Mo? And Prue and Claire and everyone?'

Alexa gave a little sigh. ‘They'll be all moving on, Izzy. Some time soon. Nobody stays anywhere for long, in the Army. You know that.'

‘I like Franny.'

‘We know you do.'

Isabel dropped her hair and said crossly, ‘Franny, I said. Not Rupert.
Franny
.' She was willing them not to laugh.

Alexa said, ‘Then you'll be pleased that we're spending Christmas with them. Two families together. And carol singing at Claire's.'

Dan lifted Alexa's hand to his mouth, and kissed it. He said to Isabel, looking at Alexa, ‘Julian is very keen indeed on your mother.'

Isabel looked away. She thought of saying ‘Yuck' loudly, but decided to let her expression do the talking instead.

Dan said, laughing, ‘Have you had enough?'

She nodded, pushed her chair back and stood up.

Alexa was looking up at her. ‘Are you pleased?'

She nodded again.

‘It might mean two changes of school.'

‘That's OK.'

‘And friends, too.'

Isabel thought of Rupert's invitation to go bowling, in Andover, with a group of them. She was good at bowling. He'd be surprised at how good she was.

She said, rather loftily, ‘I'll get new ones.'

‘D'you know,' Dan said to Alexa, his voice admiring, ‘I rather think she will.'

Isabel drifted away from the kitchen and went slowly through to the sitting room. Granddad was on the sofa with a newspaper on his knees and the television on, and his eyes shut. She watched him for a second or two.

‘I'm not asleep,' George said.

She came further into the room. George opened his eyes and looked at her. ‘They've told you, have they?'

‘Yes.'

‘You OK with it all?'

Isabel perched on the arm of the sofa. She swung a foot. ‘I am.'

‘Even though it's all so vague?'

‘I'd rather that it was vague than horrible.'

‘No more boarding school.'

‘No!'

‘Home every night to your sisters.'

Isabel slid off the arm of the sofa so that she was sitting next to George. ‘Granddad?'

‘Yes, pet.'

‘Are you staying for Christmas?'

George chuckled. ‘It would have been grand, but not
this time. Another year, we'll see.' He leaned sideways and rapped Isabel's arm lightly with his reading glasses. ‘D'you know what me and Great-Granddad Eric are doing? Do you? We've been asked over to your other grandparents, us four old fogeys in paper hats together pulling crackers. Your granny wants to cook a goose. I've never eaten goose in my life. It'll be something, don't you think?'

Isabel considered him. Of all her family, he got the gold star for being no trouble to anyone. She thought of the flat in the Marylebone Road and the silk lampshades.

‘D'you want to go?'

He winked at her. ‘D'you know, I don't mind.'

‘Really?'

‘Really. It'll educate me. Granddad Eric'll be shining up his shoes already. Maybe we'll have a sing-song. I might even' – he winked at Isabel again – ‘get round to teasing your granny. When we've had a couple.'