Through the thunder of engines she heard him knocking. This time she knew at once who it was. Her eyes flew open and she grasped the coat to her. He would be at the window in the other room, just as before. This time she wouldn’t be a coward. She would go and see what it was he wanted. He must have been drinking in the town, she thought, and lost his way. He needed directions.
In the dark she slid back the curtain again, and there he was. The street lamp lit him and he raised his hand to the window again, but this time he didn’t tap on it. He spread out his hand flat on the glass, all the while looking at Isabel. She clutched the coat to her. Her brain was still fogged with the noise of engines. She shook her head, but the sound would not shake out. He was looking at her intently, waiting for something. All at once she understood what it was, and lifted her own left hand, to match his right, and laid it on the glass. They did not quite match, because his hand was broader and longer than hers and so she could still see its outline, seeming to hold her own hand within it. There was nothing between them now but the thinnest possible layer of glass. It felt cold, and then warmer, as if her own body heat were penetrating it. She stood there entranced, and then she saw that his lips were moving. They were forming the shape of her name.
‘Is-a-bel. Is-a-bel,’ he was saying, though whether aloud or not she couldn’t tell. He was on the other side of the glass.
Glass can break, she thought, and fear leaped in her and then died down. She could see that he was not the kind of man to put his fist through a window. Their hands held still on the glass, and she thought she could feel his heat. At that moment his hand fell. He sketched a brief, humorous salute, turned, climbed easily over the railings and was away down the street. There was another street light on the corner, and as he passed under it his outline showed as clear and sharp as broken glass, before he turned left and disappeared into the shadows.
Isabel let the curtain drop, and pulled it into place. She hadn’t realised until now how fast her heart was beating, and she was warm inside the coat, warm as she had never been before in the cold flat.
Now she thought for the first time: How did he know my name? It had seemed quite natural that he should know it, when they were face to face. He could easily have heard Philip calling her, from one room to another. It wasn’t hard to find out a person’s name.
It was clear to her now that he wasn’t a stranger. He was familiar with the area. He must be stationed nearby. He’d come into Kirby Minster for the night and lost his way … But surely that couldn’t happen twice? It was queer to knock twice at the same window, when you knew no one within the house. And the way he had mouthed her name …
The thoughts pattered through her head, logical, sensible, but deep inside her something thrilled like a string under tension. She should be afraid of him, she thought. But how could she be afraid? I won’t think about it now, she decided. I’ll leave it until tomorrow.
She knew now that she would say nothing to Philip. If she did, he would be furious. He would make enquiries, and call the man a peeping Tom. The RAF officer would not come again. Isabel spread the greatcoat carefully over her side of the bed and crept under it. Everything was quiet now. She huddled down tightly, arms crossed over her breasts, knees drawn up, but not because she was cold. She held herself like someone hiding a secret.
‘Who’s that? What are you doing? Phil?’
‘Hush, Is, I’m bringing in the logs.’
‘What?’
The light was on in the living room and through the open door she saw Philip drag a sack to the fireplace. He looked like a hunter bringing home the trussed body of an antelope.
‘I’ve got the logs!’ he called softly, triumphant.
‘But it’s the middle of the night.’
‘It’s almost seven.’
‘And you haven’t even been to bed.’
‘Don’t worry about me. I kipped down for a couple of hours at the Walkers’ after I’d got old man Walker comfortable. The oxygen cylinder valve was faulty, that was the problem, but luckily I had another cylinder in the car. He needed ephedrine too – I’ll have to have a word with the district nurse – Anyway, young Walker filled up the boot while I was asleep.’
Isabel got out of bed, wrapped her dressing gown around her and went into the kitchen.
‘I don’t care if you’ve had two hours’ sleep or not, I’m going to cook you some breakfast and then you’re going to bed. You can’t live like this.’
But she knew already that he wouldn’t listen, lit up as he was with fatigue and success. Those dour, wordless farmers had thanked him. He was part of their lives.
She broke eggs into the frying pan and beat them with a wooden spoon while his toast browned under the grill. She would feed him at least, if he wouldn’t sleep. Behind her, the logs were already flaring. He’d used firelighters, which usually he wouldn’t countenance.
‘Look at this! They’re apple wood, and it’s seasoned,’ he said. ‘They cleared out the old orchard last year.’
His face was eager as a boy’s. He was happy with his life, she thought. They wouldn’t have had this fire, but for him. Old man Walker would still be gasping for breath if Philip hadn’t known what to do for him. It was typical of Philip to carry a spare oxygen cylinder in the car. No, she thought, ‘happy’ wasn’t exactly the word. It was more that Philip belonged in his own life … Well, she’d known that before. It had struck her because she so often seemed to be on the outside of her life, looking in, not sure whether she wanted to enter it or not.
‘Come and get warm, Is,’ he called.
‘I’m not cold,’ she said, and was surprised to discover that this was true.
‘You’re always cold.’
She buttered his toast, slid the eggs onto it and carried his plate through to the living room. She saw that he was reluctant to leave his fire, but he went to the table and as soon as he sat down began to wolf the eggs and toast, as if he had just discovered how hungry he was. His eyes were on the textbook which she’d pushed to the side of the table. He always kept a book there so he could absorb information at odd moments. She knew he wanted to pick it up now and make use of the time, but was holding back for her sake. She went over to the fire and spread her hands to the blaze. The smoky sweetness of the wood made her eyes sting.
Philip was already getting up from the table. He would have a strip-wash in the cold cloakroom, a clean shirt, and then he would be on his way to morning surgery.
‘I’ve made your sandwiches. They’re in the meat-safe,’ she said, rising from the fireside.
‘Thanks. What are you up to today, Is?’
‘I’m going for coffee with Janet Ingoldby,’ she said quickly, to shield her empty day from him, and then wished she hadn’t. He might mention it to Dr Ingoldby. ‘At least I think I am. But you know how hopeless I am with dates.’
‘That’s nice.’
‘And I’m going to make a steak-and-kidney pudding for tonight. You will be home in time, won’t you?’
‘Ought to be. Where’s my shaving soap, Is?’
‘On the chest of drawers. And there’s hot water in the kettle.’
When he was gone she would pile the fire high. It wouldn’t matter for once. She would make herself busy all day; it would probably take most of it for her to achieve the steak-and-kidney pudding. After that she would measure the chairs and work out how much fabric it would take to re-cover them. She would read a chapter of Lettres de mon moulin, to keep her hand in.
By midday, Isabel was deep in flour. She’d rolled out the suet pastry, but it wouldn’t make a smooth sheet as it did in the book; it kept crumbling. Perhaps she hadn’t used enough suet. Her hair slipped forward and she pushed it back behind her ears.
The doorbell rang. Isabel moved quickly, to forestall the landlady. Mrs Atkinson always tried to answer the flat’s doorbell as well as her own. But this time there was no one on the stairs or in the hall. She must be out. Isabel wiped her hands on her apron, unlocked th
e door and opened it, thinking of the milkman come with his bill, or the grocer’s boy with a forgotten item—
But it was him. Of course. She looked at him: his uniform, the shape of him. He was neither smiling nor serious. He looked at ease, as if expected. Yes, she thought, and her hands dropped to her sides. She was open, defenceless. It was him. Who else could it have been?
Chapter Five
HE WAS A tall, fair man, strongly built. He had the Viking look of men from the far north-east. He was not quite smiling at her.
‘Aren’t you going to let me in?’ he asked, and looked beyond her, into the hall. ‘There’s no one here, is there?’ He said ‘no one’ as if it were a code word for a name they both knew but would not speak. Isabel shook her head. It was true: the house behind her was empty. She was sure the landlady had gone out. Why does he speak to me like that, as if he knows me, she asked herself, not sure if she should feel offence, or fear. But she knew she was neither offended nor afraid.
‘I’m all over flour,’ she said, in place of the other things that crowded in her head.
She looked down at herself deprecatingly, although she could tell from his intentness that it was her he saw, not the flour.
‘Baking day?’ he asked, with a comical lift of his eyebrows, as if she couldn’t possibly have any such thing.
‘I’m making a steak-and-kidney pudding, but it’s the first time, and the pastry’s gone wrong.’
‘Better not stand around on the doorstep,’ he said, glancing behind him.
Of course he shouldn’t, she realised. Anyone might see him. She stepped back into the hall, and moved to one side so that he could pass her. Easily, familiarly, he crossed to the door of the flat. She had left it open. It was too late to stop him now, even if she wanted to. He entered, turned to his right, went straight through the living room to the bedroom and sat down on the bed, heavily, hands on knees, head forward, like a man who had run a race. She said nothing. After a moment, he got up again, took off his cap and unbuttoned his greatcoat.
‘Fog’s worse than this out at the airfield,’ he said.
‘Oh!’ she said. Her thoughts moved strangely, down paths that were foreign and yet entirely familiar. They were paths that had revealed themselves quite suddenly, as if a light had been shone inside her. She was Isabel Carey, and yet these were thoughts that Isabel Carey had never had. She knew what he meant, and she ought not to know it.
‘Fog,’ she repeated. ‘That’s good, isn’t it? You can get some sleep tonight.’
He shrugged. ‘The men want to get on with it. We did an air test first thing to check the starboard inner. Nearly pancaked poor old bloody Katie in a cabbage field, and then ops were scrubbed and we were stood down.’ A muscle in his cheek twitched, but he turned it into a smile.
‘I’m sure it was a perfect landing,’ she said, ‘but you do look a bit ropey. Would you like a cup of tea?’
Another smile. ‘Haven’t you got anything stronger?’
‘Wait a minute.’ She ran to the sideboard. There was half a bottle of gin left. She poured him a glass and looked at it doubtfully. It was huge.
‘Aren’t you having a drink?’ he asked her, taking his.
‘Oh – I don’t know. I don’t really like gin.’
Again, that comical quirk of his brows. ‘Don’t you? You could have fooled me.’
She poured a second, smaller measure for herself. He raised his glass to her and threw back the gin. Instantly, he looked better. Isabel took a swallow from her own glass. It was slightly warm: the sideboard was too close to the fire. And oily – greasy, almost. Phil’s father had given it to them. His mother had tutted; she didn’t believe in spirits, she said. Although how you could fail to believe in something that was real, Isabel didn’t know.
‘Have another,’ she said, proffering the bottle. She felt so much at ease. Maybe it was the effect of the gin, but it seemed perfectly natural to have a man in RAF uniform drinking with her in the middle of the day. The question of where he was stationed and what he was doing here could be sorted out later.
‘Aren’t you going to take off that apron?’
‘I’ve got to finish the pudding.’ There was flour on the rim of their glasses, where she’d touched them. She wiped her hands on the apron, and poured out his second drink. ‘Let me take your coat,’ she said, as if he had just arrived, an invited guest.
His coat, when he handed it to her, was warm. She folded its bulk and laid it on the bedroom chair. He was taking off his boots. With a sudden movement he threw himself down on the bed, full-length, staring up at the ceiling.
‘You don’t know how good this feels,’ he said, and then he was silent, lost in thought. ‘To be indoors, in a proper house, not those bloody huts. When I was a kid I used to wish they’d let me sleep outside.’
‘In a tent, you mean?’
‘I wanted them to pull my bed out under the stars. I’d have my sheets and blankets and Mum’s eiderdown, and a hot water bottle if it was snowing – and I’d let the snow fall on my face. You know when you look up into a snowstorm it’s like looking into a tunnel and the flakes go round and round inside it?’
‘Did it ever happen?’
‘Not likely. Now I shouldn’t care if I never went outside in my life. Come over here and lie down.’
‘I told you, I’m covered in flour.’
‘It’s only your apron.’
‘And my hands.’
‘I don’t care. They’re your hands.’ Already his eyes were half shut. She saw how deadbeat he was. Marked, weary skin. He smelled of cigarettes, sweat, metal, the soap he’d scrubbed himself with before he came to her.
‘Filthy night,’ he murmured.
‘Did you get much sleep?’
He shook his head from side to side, slowly, luxuriously. ‘Three hours. This pillow smells of you.’
She was at the top of an endless slide, clinging to the rail, looking down at the fall. He was a stranger, but she knew him. Every word he spoke and every shadow of his expression fitted patterns she had never seen before but which had always been there, beneath the skin of her life.
‘Who are you?’ she breathed. Instantly, his eyes flew open and he gave her a brief, brilliant smile, as if they shared a joke. Philip is much more handsome, she thought. But this man was looking into her face, her eyes, as if they knew each other so well they didn’t have anything to explain. They could be silent if they chose. He was utterly exhausted. In the fog of her mind a name was forming: his name. Soon it would be close enough to pull it to her, like a handle to open a door.
She stepped backwards. Her heart thudded in her throat. He had flung his right arm up and his face was perfectly still, as if sleep had caught him in the middle of a breath. She kept backing away, through the door, into the kitchen where her suet pastry still lay on the table. She lifted the saucepan off the gas and peered inside. The meat had cooked too long, and the gravy was as sticky as toffee. Isabel turned off the gas, untied her apron and brushed the flour off it, over the sink. She had placed a tiny mirror there and her face stared back at her, pale and startled, with bright eyes. She bit her lip, hard, until it hurt and the skin went white. It was real, then. She was this person, Isabel Carey. On the wall the little clock, which Philip had rescued from his dad’s Jowett before it was scrapped, said ten to eleven. Isabel watched the clock for a full minute, to be sure that time was moving, and then she left the kitchen.
He was still there. Fast asleep, deadbeat. No wonder, she thought, and then checked herself. Why was it no wonder? But she knew. Everywhere she looked, more of his life appeared from the shadows. Charlie used to let her watch while he developed film in his improvised darkroom under the stairs. First there was nothing and then the detail swam into view as he lifted the negative in triumph from its bath of fluid and hung it up to dry. All she had to do was look.
Isabel kicked off her shoes and lay down on the bed beside the man, on top of the covers. He gave out heat steadily, like a
n engine, while his weight pressed the mattress down. He was heavier than Philip. At the thought of Philip a pulse of alarm went through her, and then vanished. He was out for the day at least. He’d be miles away. She thought of Philip’s profile, as she’d often turned to watch it while he was driving. She could study every inch of him because he so rarely felt her gaze and turned to her.
The man’s greatcoat lay folded on the chair, but her greatcoat, the greatcoat, was no longer there. A thin counterpane covered the blankets, as it had done when Isabel and Philip first moved into the flat. Isabel was lying on top of the bedclothes but she wasn’t cold. There he was, on Philip’s side of the bed, next to her, on his back. She put out her hand and touched his shoulder. The fine wool of his uniform was pleasant against her skin. She felt as if she’d known its touch for a long time. Here they were, the two of them. He’d been outside for a long time, but now he was here in her bed. She thought of the tapping at the window that had broken into her dreams. Maybe, on other nights, he had tapped and she hadn’t heard. He had been waiting for far too long. I shouldn’t care if I never went outside in my life, he’d said. Philip was different. He grumbled sometimes when the telephone rang and he was called out, but he liked it too. He would whistle under his breath as he fastened his collar, because the world needed him.
It was as quiet as those days when snow begins with a few desultory flakes and then thickens, thickens until the sky is full of it, muffling streets, cars, houses, footsteps. Isabel had moved a little closer to the man in uniform. Her body seemed to know how to curve itself to his heat. She was quite safe: she knew he wouldn’t wake. She would let him have his sleep.
Time went by. Intently and silently, time fed on the peace of the bedroom. Isabel was asleep.
She woke at three. It was already dusk outside the window. No, it was fog, wrapping itself around the lilac that grew in the backyard, close to the window. Branches pressed up to the glass, dripping wet.
The Greatcoat Page 5