The Greatcoat (10 page)

It was strange to think of Philip but find him still so distant, as if he lived in another world. Or as if he were lost in a fog. Yes, that was it. One of those fogs that rolled in from the east, with the smell of the sea in it, in spite of the distance. Such a fog would quickly cover everything.

Alec was sharp, and close. He was standing by the leafless hedge, lighting a cigarette. She watched the smoke and drew in the scent of tobacco. Around his mouth there were grooved lines, too deep for so young a man. In the bottom of the hedge, a thrush rustled and then was still. She saw the bead of its eye, watching them.

‘What can you see?’ she asked, talking to the bird. She couldn’t deceive herself any more. Perhaps the bird saw a woman on her own, on a winter’s afternoon, talking to herself. Perhaps it saw nothing. Alec hadn’t noticed that Isabel had spoken. He was unlatching the gate.

‘Come on,’ he said urgently. He pushed open the gate for her and they went through it, picking off thorns from last year’s brambles. She stepped carefully over the ridges of the plough, following Alec. A track, very faint, like a long abandoned footpath, ran to the next corner, where there was a broken-down stile. Alec climbed onto it, and held out his hand to pull her up. He seemed not to see that the wood was rotten. It held under her weight, and he caught her hands as she jumped down.

She saw now where he was heading. There was a hut in the corner of the next field. Maybe it had been a shelter once, but now the door hung open and the corrugated iron roof was eaten away by rust. He was
leading
her towards it. Even in winter, the hut was hidden from the road by the hedge and steep bank. From here you could not even imagine the airfield. There could be nothing for miles but fields in their winter slumber, their ploughed earth hardened by last night’s frost. It was very still.

‘Here,’ he said, and stood aside as if holding open the door for her, even though it hung off its hinges. She ducked and went into the hut.

The air seemed warmer inside. There was something soft underfoot. Alec came inside too and there was light from the doorway. The floor here was also rotten, and the old carpet that had once covered it had sunk into the pulp of the wood, so that it seemed to be woven into it. The carpet had been red.

It was dry enough inside, and smelled of earth. There’d be spiders and beetles, but there was no reason for rats to settle here.

‘Here we are,’ said Alec. She saw that he was smiling. There was so little space inside the hut that they stood together awkwardly. A shadow passed over his face. He glanced around quickly. Suddenly, naked fear seemed to possess him. Isabel backed towards the door, but he put out his hand and held her.

‘Don’t go,’ he murmured rapidly, ‘Don’t go, Issy. It’s quite safe. I’ve got plenty of time.’

‘But what’s the matter?’

‘I couldn’t see the mattress. I thought someone must have moved it.’ She knew at once that he had seen what she saw: the carpet rotted into the rotting wood, rust and decay. But he was strong. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, pointing down, ‘there it is. Mattress, Alec and Issy, for the use of. Must have been a trick of the light. My God, the things you see, when you’ve been staring into the dark for hours … When they send up a scarecrow you think it’s some other poor bastard’s kite …’

‘It’s all right, Alec,’ she said. There was no mattress.

‘I’ll spread out my greatcoat. You’ll be as warm as toast.’

‘But you haven’t got your greatcoat …’

She looked, and saw that he had it, over his arm. He spread it out carefully over the floor, and then he folded up his long legs, sat down and smiled up at her. She had never looked down on him before. He seemed so much younger. His fair hair sprang thickly from the crown of his head. She put out her hand to touch it, and again he caught hold of her.

‘Come here. Come on, Issy, we haven’t got much time.’

Of course they hadn’t. She understood it as well as he did: no, not understood but knew. There were no miles of empty, fertile fields beyond the hut. There was a bare half-mile before the airfield began. As she
sat
down beside him, he was already taking off his jacket.

For a moment Philip moved in her mind like a ghost. He was walking away to the car, case in hand. A miniature Isabel trotted at his side. Now they were driving together, two small creatures on their way to a destination Isabel no longer remembered.

It was too cold to take off their clothes and even Alec couldn’t see any blankets. They clutched each other through wool and cotton, pushing aside fabric until they touched skin. She put her lips on his bare neck and pressed into the warmth of him. He tasted of salt and cotton, Lifebuoy soap, cigarettes and engine oil. She nuzzled him with teeth and tongue, taking him in.

It was soft underneath her, as if they were lying on a mattress. She felt the prickle of the greatcoat as he pulled away her clothes to touch her. He smiled and touched her cheek as if there was all the time in the world but then they were caught up and shaking together, all lips and mouths, spit and wet hair trailing across her face, and then she was opening herself to him wider than she had ever known, and he was in her, part of her, so deep she forgot everything.

THERE WAS A
place for his head between her chin and her breast. They lay for a long time like that, slowly returning to themselves. Perhaps they’d been asleep for a while. His hair was dark at the roots with sweat and his face was huddled against her. He must have got engine oil from the bike onto his hands and then run them through his hair, for she could smell the oil, and something else, like cordite after a firework explosion. He had twisted a length of her hair through the fingers of his left hand. When she stirred, it tugged like an anchor.

I must go home, she thought, I’ll be late.

Home … But where was home? Her mind struggled in a darkness that was new to it. It was as if Alec had entered her mind as well as her body, taken her and left himself there. He had possessed her.
Possession
,
she thought, and her mind shivered for an instant in terror. But no, he was warm and breathing, as warm as she was. She would not think of anything different. They belonged together. Time had cracked, and given them to each other.

She shifted position, moving carefully so as not to disturb him. There was nothing in the world she wanted more than for him to stay there, where he was, against her. Her thighs were sticky. He’d come inside her and she’d held him tight, not wanting him to withdraw even though she knew they should be careful.

Home … But instead of the drab rooms of the flat, a grey stone farmhouse filled her mind. Its image developed. There was a line of washing blowing on the green, to one side of the house. The back door was half open and she found that she knew what lay inside. She knew the kitchen with the range that had to be black-leaded until it shone. Her fingers had learned the exact pressure to put on the cloth as she buffed up the surface. There was the Dutch airer that came down from the ceiling on thin twisted red-and-cream ropes. She knew how it swung, and how she had to loop the rope around the hook while she was hanging up the clothes, so that the rope would not pay out suddenly and dump the rack full of clean washing on the floor. In winter, the clean clothes
smelled
of her cooking. She didn’t mind baking smells, but she didn’t like it when her blouses reeked of roast meat.

As Isabel watched, the kitchen stopped being empty. Shadowy figures were starting to form, drifting like smoke at first and then spinning themselves into solidity. She snatched her mind away. They would dissolve if she didn’t look at them. Above all she didn’t want to see their faces. A sense of terrible urgency seized her and she shook Alec awake.

‘Alec! Alec! I must go home. Look at the time.’

He rolled over, away from her, and lay on his back bewildered, collecting his thoughts.

‘What’s the matter, Issy?’

‘I can’t be late. He’ll get worried.’
Worried
was code. It meant suspicious.

‘I thought you said he was going to York with his brother?’

‘No,’ said Isabel. Alec’s words moved in her head, making no sense. ‘I never said that. He hasn’t got—’

‘Stay a bit longer,’ he said, reaching out for her. His eyes were as open to her as the sky. ‘Don’t go yet, sweetheart.’ Again his endearment moved her, melted her, but she scrambled to her knees, fastened her clothes and brushed them down with her hands. There was a strong, musky smell of sex. She smoothed her hair, knotted it at the nape of her neck
and
reached into her pocket for her handkerchief. She spat on the cotton and wiped around her eyes and mouth. Alec was dressing swiftly. He stopped, and said to her, ‘Do my face too.’

‘You’re fine. It doesn’t need it.’

‘Go on.’

She spat on the handkerchief again and wiped around his mouth, and then wiped his forehead. He was right: his face wasn’t clean. There was a film of grime on the cotton now, as if engine oil had sweated from the pores of his skin. But his skin was so fair and close-textured – so sweet to her touch …

‘Your handkerchief smells nice,’ he said.

‘I keep lavender in my handkerchief drawer,’ she said, and saw herself in a garden she didn’t know, snipping flowers off hoary lavender bushes, to dry them. Tentatively, she followed the memory further. There she was, coming indoors with a basket full of lavender. As she reached the green paint of the back door she saw that the sun had blistered it, and it was beginning to crack. But there was nothing to be done about that. It was impossible to get paint these days. She pulled the door open with her foot and then pushed it wider with her hip, because she hadn’t a free hand.

Now she remembered back to her first meeting with Alec. It was all coming clear, as the flat and
Philip
grew cloudier and more distant. These were that other one’s memories, and now they were hers, too. The farmhouse; her life there; the woman she’d been. Geoff had met Alec in the pub, got talking about cricket, and asked him over for high tea on Sunday. There was a cottage loaf, their own honey and an apple cake. Geoff had told her Alec was from Newcastle, and he’d been been over in Canada on the Air Training Plan. Canada! she’d thought. The furthest she’d ever been was York.

She’d always loved a Geordie voice. There was no more than a trace of it in Alec, but it was there. He was an educated man, an officer. He’d liked the baby. He had put his hand down into the basket where he slept, and stroked the baby’s cheek, awkwardly, as if he wasn’t used to babies. A pang went through her. He looked up, smiled, and she saw how his eyes were dark blue, almost navy. He was a big man, bigger than Geoff, but his touch on the baby’s cheek was so light that William didn’t stir. She had to drop her eyes.

She put the heavy teapot on the table, and began to slice the loaf. She could sense him watching her. She poured the tea.

‘I suppose you’ll go home, when you get leave,’ she said, for she wasn’t going to ask him if he was married. Most of them weren’t, she knew; they were too young.
How
old would he be – twenty-two, twenty-three? But they always looked older than they were.

‘That’s reet, canny lass,’ he’d answered softly, teasing her. She’d given a little gasp, as if she had a stitch. Geoff was supping his tea noisily, and didn’t hear.

Isabel caught her breath. What she was remembering did not belong to her. I am Isabel Carey, she told herself. I live in Kirby Minster. My husband is a doctor and his name is Philip Carey. She muttered the words to herself like a spell, and Alec, the Alec of now, heard her. He glanced at her, she shook her head, deprecating herself, and he turned back to doing up his bootlaces. Now he was whistling under his breath. It caught at her, how content he looked, and she found she was smiling too. He looked up.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘You were smiling.’

‘I like watching you when you’re doing something like tying your laces. You know how you can be quite close to someone – and yet there are expressions of his that you’ll never see? When he’s working, or on his own in a train compartment.’ She was thinking of Philip. He was sharp in her mind again. She saw him
tracking
across the countryside, uncovering it lane by lane, on his own and not even thinking of her.

‘Only quite close?’ Alec asked teasingly, but she had Philip in her mind and she stared without understanding. ‘I’d have said we were closer than that.’ He looked into her eyes boldly. Philip would never do that. For him, what they did in bed was a world apart from their daytime selves.

‘
Very
close,’ she said, with a swagger to match Alec’s, letting her naked self appear in her face. Why had she let herself think of Philip now? She must push him away. It wasn’t safe to have the two of them together in her mind: Philip and Alec.

Suddenly Alec’s smile disappeared. His attention switched from her. He was frowning, preoccupied. ‘It can’t be late,’ he said, as if to convince himself.

‘It might be. It’s ridiculous, neither of us wearing a watch.’

She could hardly believe he’d been so careless. He had to have his watch with him. It had to be accurate to the minute. He was the Skipper. A minute – a second, even – might be a life. He’d told her that they all synchronised their watches at the end of the briefing.

Alec was looking at his wrist, where the watch should be. There was a paler strip of skin where the strap usually covered it. She looked at the beauty of
his
wrist, the way it turned, the springing hairs that were darker than the fair hair on his head. She felt as if the blood were leaving her face, a backwards tide taking her life with it. She had got to touch him, have him—

‘Can’t think what happened to it,’ he said. ‘Must be in the hut.’

He meant the long Nissen hut where they slept, with one iron stove to heat it. He had his slip of a single room, because he was an officer. He had his iron bed, his locker, his table, the muddy walk to ablutions. It was one hell of a way. You’d spend half the day walking if you didn’t have a pushbike. These hostilities-only bomber stations were all the same. Nothing but mud, barbed wire, concrete and corrugated iron. Temporary cities thrown up in the middle of cabbage fields.