The Soldier's Wife (5 page)

They moved to a cheaper, smaller flat at the top of a North London building whose redeeming feature was a pair of immense old plane trees outside, which grew to the height of the roof. Alexa found a day nursery for Isabel and spent her evenings either marking or sifting through the chaos of invoices and legal letters and trying to work out how she was to settle the debts Richard Maybrick had accumulated in his short life, and of which she had known absolutely nothing. He had left no will – it had not crossed either of their young minds to consider needing anything so elderly or depressing – but he had left three credit cards, maxed to their limit, and not a single useful asset beyond his personal possessions in the shared flat. He had also, Alexa discovered, been in the process of negotiating an unsecured and outrageously expensive loan to finance his time on the Isle of Cumbrae.

The only person who knew of her situation was Jack Dearlove. She was insistent that no parents should be told, nor the school where she worked. It was agreed between them that if Jack lent her the money to settle, and cancel, the credit cards, she would repay him within a year. No hurry, he said,
please
, two years, three years, don't cane yourself. ‘A year,' said Alexa. ‘A
year
. I have to be free of it.'

‘Don't – don't think badly of him,' Jack said. ‘I'm sure—' He stopped.

She'd looked down at Isabel, sitting placidly on her knee picking studs of chocolate out of a brioche, and said furiously, ‘Oh, don't worry. I don't think badly of
him
. It's myself I'm angry with. For believing him, in the first place.' She paused and then she said, half smiling, ‘And I'm proud of myself for digging us out of the pit he left us in. I've – I've
worked
myself free.'

And sixteen months later, the debt triumphantly repaid and a party invitation reluctantly, recklessly accepted, there was Dan. A
coup de foudre
, of course, but then there were so many subsequent reasons for not just dismissing it as no more than that. Dan's life, his personality, his father, his grandfather, his dog – all a seduction. There was everything to like about Dan, there was everything to yield to in the certainty of his work and his situation, never mind the unbelievable luck that such a personable man had got to the age of almost thirty without acquiring a wife and children.

Alexa swung the car into the narrow road in front of the twins' nursery school, with its bright fence of stylized wooden flowers and the banner in the window which read ‘Happy Days!'. She pulled over to the kerb and switched off the engine. She remembered, briefly and with a pang at her own naivety, being deeply stirred, during her early encounters with some of Dan's friends, with a beguiling senior officer, by a sense of the
rightness
of Army life. She took the key out of the ignition. She'd heard Claire, the Brigadier's wife, say in an interview once, ‘As the wife of a soldier, you just adapt your skills and career ambitions to the Army,' as if doing so was no harder than making supper out of whatever you could find in the fridge. It was wonderful, while it lasted, to believe that, heady and inspiring. And agony to feel the
conviction slipping away as the other real urgencies of life raised their voices, ever louder, especially one voice which seemed to ask her, over and over, ‘Why, after Richard, did you think acquiescing to another man's life would be, in the end, any different?'

She opened the car door. The children would be lined up inside the classroom, pent up like puppies, waiting for the hysterical moment of collection. Those twins, her and Dan's children, whose needs were as valid as their father's. Or hers. She got out of the car and locked it.

‘Hiya!' someone called.

She turned. A girl in a pink faux sheepskin jacket was waving from the entrance to the school front garden. She was familiar, the wife of someone in Dan's battery – Ros? Rosie? – someone presumably going through exactly what Alexa was going through right now. She smiled back, filled with a sudden rush of fellow feeling. Ros or Rosie shouted with forced cheeriness, ‘Nothing stops for the school run, does it?'

Alexa put her car keys in her pocket and straightened her shoulders.

‘Nor should it,' she said, and laughed.

D
an was stopped halfway up the battery offices stairs – deep-blue vinyl treads, paler blue walls – by the regimental adjutant, a spare and eager young man who gave the impression of being permanently poised to sprint somewhere.

‘Part one orders are through, sir,' he said breathlessly. ‘You'll find them on your email. Leave starts in ten days, after regimental PT. A Friday, that is. Sir.'

‘Thank you, Nick.'

‘And the CO says we can sleep some of the boys and girls of 40th regiment tonight. He says why not? More bar profits.'

‘Thank you, Nick.'

‘And your BK is waiting to speak to you in your office, sir.'

‘I know that, Nick, thank you. That's why I'm on my way up there.'

‘Of course. Sir.'

Dan nodded to show that the exchange was over, and proceeded up the stairs to the battery command floor. It was soothing up there, an area of rigid protocols and hierarchies, where every man knew his duty and his place, and the walls were comfortably lined with photographs of every battery
commander the regiment had had since 1845, as well as those of more recent glories. Outside Dan's own office hung a colour photograph of the latest regimental recipient of the Military Cross, complete with its blue-and-white ribbon: a modest young gunner of extraordinary bravery who was unable to articulate anything very much except that he wished to be left to get on with life as one of the lads and in no way to be made a fuss of. He could not, Dan reckoned, have stood more than five foot four in his stockinged feet, and was two months short of his twenty-second birthday. He had a mother in Parkhead in Glasgow and a brother in a young offenders' institution, and no idea where his father was. The lieutenant in charge of the troop reported that the father hadn't been seen in twenty years and that the mother regularly saw too much of the bottle.

In Dan's office, Paul Swain, his battery captain, was on the telephone. He was a thickset man in his forties, once a regimental sergeant major and now a late-entry captain whose own photograph, displayed modestly behind the door, bore the little silver oak leaf awarded for being Mentioned in Dispatches. He stiffened slightly in acknowledgement as Dan came in, said to his phone, ‘Yes. Yes, fully agreed. Sorted,' and put the phone down. He said, ‘Gunner McCormack's going to lose that foot.'

‘Shit,' Dan said.

‘He'll get less than nine grand a year for that as compensation.'

‘Double shit. Poor bugger.'

‘Sounds chirpy enough, though. Says he's always got another foot.'

Dan bent to move the cursor on his screen to access his emails. He said, ‘Let's hope his attitude carries him through the next stage, poor blighter. I've just been in the gun park. They live, breathe and eat that hardware, don't they? Every
bolt gleaming. You'd never think those guns had spent the last six months in the dusty arse end of nowhere.'

There was a brief pause, and then Paul Swain said lightly, ‘Missing it?'

Dan looked steadily at his screen. He said, ‘Here they are. Part one orders. And it's not going to be eight weeks' leave in one slug. Look. A month, then back here, then another month.'

Paul Swain came to look over Dan's shoulder. He grunted.

Dan said, ‘Probably wise. The lads'll only blow all their money and then get into trouble.'

Paul grunted again. He said, ‘I've got a farm to see to. I want to take the kids shooting rabbits.'

Dan turned to grin at him. ‘More jam to make?'

‘Chutney this time of year, Major. I make a first-class chutney, I'll have you know.'

Dan looked back at the screen. ‘It's a rum old cycle to handle, this, isn't it? Three or four years of being on ops, then relax, then start training, then hard training, then ops again—'

‘That's what you joined for.'

‘I did. But—'

Paul Swain waited a moment and then said, ‘Change of gear. Never easy, but never dull.'

Dan stood up. He said, too forcefully, ‘I just don't want the unit to lose cohesion. They fight so much better in small groups. I don't want them all getting scattered on leave.'

‘I see, Major.'

‘I do miss the smell of cordite, though. I love it. I'd wear it as aftershave if I could.' He moved to the window and looked out. The boys in the gun park had been silently at work with their oil and wadding, and on closer inspection had been clammily pasty with hangovers.

‘Had a good time, Denny?' Dan had said to one of them.

The boy paused for a moment. He stood straight. ‘Honking, thank you, suh.'

Dan smiled at him. He felt an enormous affection welling up and out of him like the warmth from a brazier. ‘Celebrating, were you?'

The boy risked a smirk. He caught the eye of his mate working on the other side of the gun trails. ‘Completely spangled, suh.'

Dan smiled again now, just thinking of them. They loved being in a band of brothers; they loved doing what they had been trained to do. It was so important, at all times, not to fail in front of them, not to give them cause to doubt, even for a second, that their very best endeavours would be both noticed and rewarded.

He had given Gunner Denny a brief nod. ‘Take note of what the sarnt says to you about celebrating. He won't be wrong. Letting off steam and getting into trouble is the good and bad of getting home.'

Denny didn't flinch. ‘Suh.'

‘Dan?'

Dan turned round. Paul Swain was still standing by Dan's computer.

‘You wanted to discuss the homecoming parade?'

‘I did, Paul. I do. The CO says medals to be awarded on the polo field. We must get McCormack back for that. And a family day. We must think about that. Family. All that fanfare. OK?'

Paul Swain smiled. ‘OK.'

‘A few pink jobs in with the blue ones—'

‘I hear you.'

‘Happy?'

Paul Swain gave a sketchy, slightly mocking salute. ‘Homecoming parade, Major. Medals. Particular attention to the wounded. Family day. Action.'

‘Can you stop the car a moment?' Dan said.

Gus pulled the car into a muddy space beside the road, under a scrawny belt of larch trees. ‘You OK?'

‘Yes,' Dan said. ‘Just – not quite ready to go home.'

There was a short pause. Gus switched off the engine. ‘Me neither.'

Dan glanced at him. ‘Anyone there? At home?'

‘Nope.'

Dan waited.

‘Kids are at school,' Gus said. ‘Kate is in London. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Kate's in London.'

Dan said quickly, ‘Come and have supper at ours. Alexa'd love it.'

‘Thanks,' Gus said, ‘but I'll grab a bite in the mess. I'll go back there when I've dropped you.' He grinned briefly. ‘I might catch a sight of the new girl subbie they've appointed to target information. She has a habit, apparently, of coming down into the mess at night in her pyjamas and coolly picking up a plated meal to take back to her bedroom.'

‘A looker?'

‘Blonde,' Gus said shortly.

Dan said, ‘I'm not going to have a drink tonight.'

‘Oh?'

‘I – I can't concentrate. I'm still too amped to concentrate. Drinking makes it worse.'

‘Or bearable.'

‘Maybe.'

‘What Kate doesn't get,' Gus said, staring straight through the windscreen, ‘is that I don't drink to blot out the bad stuff I've seen and been a part of. I drink because – because I miss the good stuff.'

‘We haven't been back a week yet.'

‘I know.'

‘The trouble is,' Dan said, ‘that on ops, everything is important.
Everything
. Nothing is taken for granted. You can trust the next man with your
life
, for God's sake.'

‘I expect,' Gus said, a little sadly, ‘that you could trust Alexa with yours.'

‘When I was out there,' Dan said, ‘when I wasn't thinking about the battery, I was thinking about her. And the girls.'

Gus grunted.

Dan said, ‘It was a bit crackpot, I suppose, but I sort of told myself I was protecting them.'

Gus turned to look at him. ‘You bloody
what
?'

Dan stared straight ahead too now. ‘Didn't you feel that? Didn't you think that even if you couldn't justify killing for its own sake, you could always make a case for killing to protect people you love?'

Gus shook his head. ‘Mental …'

‘It's not,' Dan said. ‘It's just understanding that if you are protecting something precious, you can get your head to a place where anything seems justified.'

Gus sighed, as if arguing with Dan would be a complete waste of breath and effort. He said, ‘Would you say that to Alexa?'

‘Nope,' Dan said.

‘Why not?'

‘More protectiveness. I don't want her to know what we saw and did. Especially the close shaves. I most
definitely
do not intend for her to know that. If I tell her something, even something with a happy ending, like the medic who told me to grind my knee into Flasher's thigh, between his wound and his heart, to stop the blood flow, and it worked, I'd still leave her with the image, wouldn't I, and then she'd be wondering what I hadn't told her, what happened that
didn't
have a happy ending. She'd be picturing the blood and the piss and the—'

‘Stop it, Dan,' Gus said. ‘You're fucking sweating.'

‘I don't want to sweat in front of Alexa.'

‘At least,' Gus said, ‘she's
there
.'

‘Fuck
me
,' Dan said. ‘
Fuck
me. So
sorry
—'

‘Maybe it's for the best, Kate sticking to her routine. I don't want to be a nuisance round her. I'll have adjusted a bit more by Friday.'

Dan bent forward and put one forearm across his eyes. Gus put a hand on his shoulder. ‘You OK?' he said again.

Muffled, Dan said, ‘I should be asking you that.'

‘I'm no more OK than you, mate. Brave face, fighting talk. That's what we do.'

Dan raised his head. He said, ‘You long for home, don't you? You fight for it. But what you forget when you're away is that ordinary life won't kill you, except by accident, so of course everything looks pretty small here by comparison. And pretty dull.'

‘There are some advantages, though.'

‘Name them.'

‘Booze,' Gus said.

‘OK,' Dan said. ‘Sex.'

‘Beds. Pillows.'

‘Food on a plate.'

‘Girls out of uniform.'

‘No fleas,' Dan said.

‘Showers.'

‘Not,' Dan said, ‘lying for hours in some fucking desert waiting for action and having to roll on your side to pee.'

Gus nudged him. ‘Families?'

Dan looked at him. They grinned at each other. ‘OK, altar boy,' Dan said. ‘Families.'

‘Look at the guys who haven't got them. Look at someone like Denny in your battery. The regiment's the first family he's ever had.'

‘Your kids,' Dan said.

‘I'll see mine on Sunday. You've still got your little bombshells at home.'

‘Isabel isn't.'

‘Isabel—'

‘She's a great kid,' Dan said. ‘I'm relieved she's away at school. She needed the stability.'

Gus leaned forward to turn on the ignition. ‘What if you're pinked? If you're promoted?'

Dan looked at him sharply. ‘Why d'you say that?'

Gus shrugged. ‘I know you're thinking of it. We both are. We're the age to start thinking about promotion, aren't we?'

Dan said, ‘I don't want it to come between us—'

‘It won't.'

‘It might. They'll be writing up the command reports already and we can't all be on target.'

Gus put the car in gear and peered into his side mirror. ‘We're young yet. We've got eight years or so.'

Dan said, ‘I've done about seven already. As a major.'

The car swung into the road.

Gus said, ‘I never thought about it while we were away. All those tensions just vanish. Now we're back and eyeing each other up already.'

Dan said firmly, ‘Nothing'll happen before February.'

Gus swore briefly at an unsteady cyclist. When he was past her, he said, ‘Just as well. There's plenty to cope with right now, don't you think?'

Dan walked across the grass in front of his house in the dusk, treading softly out of the sightline of the kitchen windows. He moved until he was against the wall of the house and could see in, hoping that Beetle's acute and unerring instinct for his presence would not betray him. But Beetle was by the kitchen table, his back to the window. He was sitting on his
haunches but his every nerve was strained to focus on what was going on just above him, where the twins, unimpeded by over-large plastic aprons tied over their clothes, were earnestly pressing cookie cutters into an irregular rectangle of brownish dough. Their hair was gathered up with plastic bobbins on top of their heads in absurd little tufts, and Flora had smudges of chocolate on her spectacles as well as on her face. Tassy simply had a broad smear of it across her mouth, like badly applied lipstick. Opposite them, and visibly restraining herself from assisting them, stood Alexa, in jeans and a tight cardigan, with a blue muffler looped round her neck like a cowl. She looked about eighteen.

There was a sudden flurry and Beetle leaped briefly into the air, snapping at a fragment of dough that had skidded over the edge of the table. The twins shrieked. Beetle, appalled at himself, dropped flat on the floor and quivered.

‘Smack him!' Tassy demanded.

‘Certainly not,' Alexa said.

‘He took my cookie!'

‘You pushed it.'

‘It slipped!' Tassy screamed. ‘It did
that
, and he
took
it!'