The Soldier's Wife

by Joanna Trollope

  Walter Cummings picked up his rollerball pen and looked at it intently.

  ‘Sorry,’ Alexa said. ‘It’s just that as far as self-fulfilment goes, it’s close to impossible. And our children. It’s so unfairly hard on all our children. This boarding-school thing—’

  He cleared his throat. He looked like someone who was being asked to solve an intractable problem that they had never signed up for in the first place.

  Alexa took sudden pity on him. ‘Sorry,’ she said again. ‘Sorry, sorry. I’m not helping. I’m all over the place, none of that was connected—’

  Walter sighed.

  Alexa read his sigh. She said, ‘And you’ve heard it all before?’

  He nodded. ‘Doesn’t mean I don’t feel for you.’

  ‘But?’

  Walter sighed again. He picked up his pen and put it down again. Then he said, ‘There are changes coming.’

  ‘Changes?’

  ‘You know about the Army Families Federation?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well,’ Walter said, ‘they are fighting what they see as a government attack on conditions of service. They say the forces are a special case because of the willingness of forces personnel to lay down their lives, and therefore their conditions of service should be special, too.’

  He glanced up at her. She was sitting very still.

  ‘The last government presided, shall we say, over the dismantling of regiments and all the subsequent humanitarian fallout that that entailed. Charities can’t possibly pick it all up, and they aren’t. There are fashionable, discretionary fights right now, and charities like Help the Heroes do a great job for them. But what about the wars of the past? Trouble is, the military covenant has never been written down, and now there aren’t enough funds.’

  Alexa leaned forward slightly. ‘I don’t quite see—’

  ‘I’m coming to it,’ Walter said. ‘I’m coming to something that might affect you and, in its way, help by limiting your choices. There’s been a recent doubling of operational allowance, as you know, and a huge improvement in services for mental health. But we’re all having to look right across the demands. At present, you get the continuity-of-education allowance, don’t you? Something above five grand a term.’ He raised a hand as if to pre-empt being interrupted. ‘You may hate boarding school for your daughter, but a lot of money goes towards keeping her there. In all, the Army spends £1.8 billion keeping its kids educated. So something like the Harriers, which cost £1.2 billion, have to be deleted. D’you see what I’m driving at?’

  Alexa nodded. A grey wave was rising in her with terrible familiarity, a sense of having made an inappropriate fuss at an inappropriate time.

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ Walter Cummings said, ‘if anyone feels betrayed. I really regret we can’t satisfy everyone. The continuity-of-education allowance is under review right now. You may have your answer to one problem in your life made for you. And I’m sorry, as I say, that I can’t do anything for you. I haven’t got any solution, especially at the moment. There isn’t one.’ He grimaced. ‘To be frank with you, Mrs Riley, if you weren’t an officer’s wife, I’d probably be saying to you, in as nice a way as I could think of putting it, that your husband will do as he’s told and you’ll have to accommodate yourself to that. Finish. I could offer you a 15 per cent discount on Relate sessions, I suppose, but I don’t somehow think you’d take me up on that, would you?’

  She had let a little silence fall when he finished speaking and then she had stood up, just as there was a knock at the door and Miriam came in with two white cups on a tray. Then she said, with as little vehemence as she could manage, ‘I never thought there was anything you could do. Not your fault. Not mine. Just – just the system.’

  They had drunk their tea and coffee still standing, talking gently and unthreateningly about how the Army was going to reconcile its needs for better equipment and housing with the cuts being imposed on and by the Ministry of Defence. Walter had taken her cup from her and put it back on the tray, and had held the door open for her, indicating that he was going to accompany her out of the building. His whole physical bearing was solicitous, as if she were very frail or very old, his hand hovering at her elbow at every step or unevenness in the surface on the way back to the car park.

  She’d held out her hand to him. ‘Thank you.’

  He’d grimaced. ‘Rocks and hard places come to mind.’

  ‘I know,’ she’d said, as if it was for her to comfort him, and then she’d driven home and found Dan in front of the computer with a twin on each knee, watching a website that showed you the daily round of life in the penguin enclosure at Edinburgh Zoo. All three were laughing.

  And now it was the evening and there had not been a moment alone with Dan. She looked sideways across the bed at the clock. It had been almost half an hour since she made her resolution. She sat up and ran her fingers through her hair. Was it unfair, was it unproductive? … Oh, come on, she thought in almost the same breath, come on, go downstairs and just do it.

  She got off the bed and straightened her sweater. Then she went out on to the landing, strode purposefully down the stairs and across the hall, and pushed open the sitting-room door. On the sofa sat Gus, still watching the television, and by his side Dan was sprawled, head back, among the cushions, mouth slightly open and deeply asleep.

  Gus switched his gaze from the television to Alexa in an instant. Then he grimaced, pointed at Dan and spread his hands out in a gesture of hopelessness.

  ‘Sorry,’ he mouthed at her.

  When the alarm clock rang the next morning, it took some seconds for Alexa to disentangle her mind from a disconcerting dream involving her father, Mrs Cairns from Isabel’s school and her own long-ago bedroom overlooking an immense, fan-shaped palm tree in Jakarta. She opened her eyes slowly to the expanse of remarkably unblemished tawny skin across Dan’s naked shoulders. He had not been in bed with her when she finally fell asleep. And she had not woken when he slid in beside her. She pulled his hand from its sleeping position across his chest and held it in hers. ‘Dan?’

  He grunted.

  ‘How – how did it go?’

  There was a pause, and then Dan said, ‘How did what go?’

  ‘Talking to Jim Rigby.’

  Dan rolled slowly on to his back. ‘That was days ago.’

  ‘I know. I forgot to ask.’

  Dan yawned. He freed his hand to rub his eyes. He said from behind both hands, ‘I got nowhere. Nor will he, now.’

  ‘He wouldn’t admit to anything?’

  ‘Nothing. Stuck to his denial. They both got hauled out of parade and dismissed. End of.’

  ‘So what will happen to them?’

  Dan sat up slowly. He said, dully, not looking at her, ‘God knows. The usual. They’ll be on a high for a week, then they’ll sink, then they’ll fall to pieces. You know the story.’

  Alexa said, ‘Can’t the Army help them?’

  Dan began to get out of bed. He said, ‘We can help anyone who wants to be helped. But not those who refuse it point blank. You can’t sacrifice those poor bloody guys at Headley Court for a few losers who can’t see a priority when it stands up and hits them on the nose. All the time and money and effort that went into training Rigby and Wharton! Think of that. Back from Afghanistan without a scratch on them. Think of that, too. Think of that, and then think of Gary McCormack, who thought he’d only lose a foot, but he’s got an infection and it now looks like his leg will have to go, to the knee. Makes me livid. Livid.’

  Alexa slid out of bed and stood up. Reaching to put on the dressing-gown Eric had given her, she said, ‘I can understand that. Of course I can,’ and then, after a beat, ‘Dan?’

  He was standing naked by the window, absently scratching. She thought briefly, irrelevantly, of his telling her about the dogs’ flea collars they’d worn in Helmand round their ankles.

  ‘What?’

  ‘My turn,’ she said, ‘for you to ask me a ques
tion.’

  He blinked at her. Then he smiled. He came round the bed and ruffled her hair and kissed her, sleep mouthed and stubbly. ‘About what?’ he said.

  Blimey, George Riley thought, looking about him. This is the kind of place, if you were very rich, you’d come to die. All this carpet, and those dinky little pictures hung on painted panelling and that squeaky clean chandelier up there, glittering enough to take your eye out. He’d pressed a bell outside, a bell in a long, highly polished brass panel of bells, next to a little printed card behind glass that read ‘Longworth’, and Mrs L, who sounded as surprised to hear him as if he’d been a rhino from the zoo from over the road, had said come in, come in, take the lift to the seventh floor, and a buzzer had sounded, and here he was, standing in this bloody great hallway as if he’d landed in another world.

  He’d been here once before, of course, years ago. When Dan had first met Alexa. But he’d been in a bit of a moither then, frankly, worried that Dad would say something out of turn and that they would both look right eejits in their suits, and he hadn’t really taken in what the place was like. But he was now. Beige this, beige that, heat pumping out of radiators behind fancy grilles, quiet as a church or a library. Bloody suffocating. He moved cautiously down the thickly carpeted hallway and pressed the button for the lift. The lift doors were also polished. He could see himself reflected as clearly as in a looking glass. Well, he thought, you mightn’t be able to breathe in here, but you can’t fault them for looking after this place.

  There was a discreet series of muffled clanks as the lift arrived and the doors slid politely open. The interior was panelled, with a single small mirror let into the far wall – so that, George supposed, stepping in and instinctively running the palm of his hand over his hair, you’d got time to pick the spinach out of your teeth before you confronted the lady wife. Rum do, the whole thing. Reeking of money, of course, but why would you use that money to buy yourself a padded cell?

  Elaine Longworth was waiting on the seventh-floor landing, the front door of the flat open behind her. She held her hand out. ‘George!’

  He grasped it, smiling. She said, ‘We weren’t expecting you. Why didn’t you ring?’

  He said, still smiling, ‘I never ring. Can’t abide the phone.’

  ‘We might have been out.’

  ‘I’d have waited,’ George said. ‘I wouldn’t have minded. Time’s the one thing I’ve got plenty of.’

  She led the way into the flat and closed the door. The sitting room was as George remembered it, full of furniture and flowers, which gave it, weirdly, the air of a bedroom, not a living room. It was, to George’s mind, a lady’s room, but there, in an armchair by the window, reading the Daily Telegraph, was Morgan Longworth, who looked, in his collar and tie and immaculate V-necked sweater, perfectly at home. He rose as George came in and held out his hand. ‘My dear fellow—’

  George said, ‘Sorry not to give you warning. I’m not much of a one for telephones.’

  Morgan motioned to the nearest sofa. ‘No inconvenience. On Thursdays we have neither bridge classes nor hair appointments. What can we get you?’

  ‘Just ten minutes.’

  ‘Tea?’ Elaine said. ‘Coffee?’

  She looked, George thought, as if she could do with a brew herself, and a good heart-to-heart to go with it. Pity, in a way, that Morgan was at home. He smiled down at her. Nice woman. Nice-looking woman, well kept. He said warmly, ‘Well, if you’re making a brew …’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Of course.’

  George sat down where indicated on the sofa and hitched up his trouser knees. Then he leaned back and crossed his legs. He saw Morgan glancing at his toe caps. They were as shiny as if they’d been varnished. He grinned at Morgan. ‘Dad’s work,’ he said. ‘Didn’t trust me to come and see you without shining my shoes.’

  Morgan leaned forward and took off his reading glasses. ‘I imagine,’ he said, half smiling, ‘that we can guess why you’ve come.’

  George nodded.

  Morgan said, his voice slightly lowered, ‘Have you plans to see them?’

  ‘No,’ George said.

  ‘Have you spoken to them?’

  ‘Hardly,’ George said. ‘Dad insists I don’t. I’d even face the telephone for that. In fact, I did. I rang and I went down. Just for a night. But Dad always says, leave them, you’ve said your piece, now leave them be.’

  ‘Your piece?’

  ‘I just wanted our lad to talk to her. Talk to her. I went down one day and came back the next.’

  ‘We,’ Morgan said with emphasis, ‘have not seen anything of them since Dan came home. We haven’t actually even spoken to Dan.’ He glanced towards the kitchen. ‘It puts a great strain on Elaine.’

  ‘That’s why I’ve come,’ George said. He cleared his throat. He wasn’t used to the constriction of wearing a tie. He looked at Morgan. ‘We think it’s gone on long enough. Dan’s been home weeks now. We may be sick with pride in the boy, but it’s not all about him now. He’s got to wake up and think about other people. If they won’t come to you, you should just go down to them. Just go. Put her in the car and go.’

  Morgan hesitated. He said, ‘I’ve been telling her not to ring.’

  ‘Dad’s the same. Or, at least, he was. But he’s changed his mind. Wouldn’t have shined my shoes otherwise.’

  ‘I’m a bit of a protocol man,’ Morgan said doubtfully.

  ‘Tell me about it! But it’s time for action.’

  Elaine was coming out of the kitchen, bearing a tray of tea. ‘Action?’ she said.

  George sprang up to take the tray from her, fractionally ahead of Morgan. ‘Yes,’ he said, setting the tray down on a glass coffee table next to an orchid and a pristine hardback book. ‘Time to rescue that girl.’ He saw alarm spring at once to Elaine’s eyes. If Morgan hadn’t been there, he’d have put a hand on her arm, or even maybe an arm round her shoulders. He said confidingly, ‘Nothing blinkers a man like soldiering. Nothing.’ He paused and then he said, ‘I should know.’

  ‘I’m emailing you,’ Kate Melville wrote to Alexa, ‘because I can’t quite face ringing you. I think you might put the phone down on me, and I can’t risk that happening. Of course, you might delete this without reading it, but I won’t know that, will I? It won’t be as painful just to get no reply as to hear the phone go down.’

  The house was very quiet. The twins were at nursery school and Dan and Gus had driven off in Gus’s car to Gus’s boys’ school, where, both men had indicated to Alexa with apparently staggering insensitivity, the headmaster was displaying exemplary concern and accommodation. She was alone in the kitchen with Beetle, her laptop on the table, a mug of coffee cooling beside her. It had amazed her, momentarily taken her breath away to see Kate Melville’s name in her inbox, but it had not crossed her mind, even for a nanosecond, to delete the message unread.

  It was a long message. It filled the screen almost to the bottom, without paragraphs. Alexa had discussed with Franny and Mo what their reaction would, should, could be, when – if – Kate got in touch, and when Mo had said, without particular heat but firmly, that she was sorry but that was it, if only because Kate’s timing was completely unforgivable, just as Gus got back, Alexa had glanced at Franny and seen the irresolution on her face that she felt was written plainly on her own.

  ‘You can’t just write her off …’

  ‘I’m afraid I can.’

  ‘But she won’t have no reason—’

  ‘We all have a reason, for God’s sake!’

  ‘But Mo—’

  ‘He’s a bloody soldier! What did she think she was marrying? If she wanted a nine-to-five bank manager, she should have married one.’

  ‘You don’t really know what it’s like,’ Alexa said, ‘till you’re in it. You don’t really know what they’re like, how they’ll be—’

  Mo had set her jaw. ‘In three months’ time,’ she said, ‘I’ll have the lot, won’t I? I’ll have horses, dogs,
children and a husband in Afghanistan. When he comes back, in nine months’ time, I’ll have a frigging lunatic for a bit, too, like Alexa’s got now. But I won’t be pushing off to London, saying it’s all too much. I promise you that. It’s not what I signed up for, especially after Baz warned me. He warned me when he proposed. He told me. Just as Andy told you and Dan told you and I bet, I bet, Gus told Kate.’

  When she had gone, Franny and Alexa had sat in silence for a while, and then Franny said softly, ‘She’s frightened.’

  ‘Frightened? Mo?’

  ‘Of course she is. We all are. Something like this rattles our cages.’

  Alexa said, ‘Will you speak to her?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Will you speak to Kate? If she rings?’

  Franny thought a moment, twisting her wedding ring round and round. ‘I – don’t think so. Not for a bit, anyway. It’s not about her, really. It’s about Gus. And all of us still here.’ She looked up at Alexa. ‘Will you?’

  Alexa had picked up her mug and taken a gulp of coffee. ‘Yes,’ she said, and put the mug down again. ‘Yes, I will.’

  And now here was the email. ‘Dear Alexa,’ it started like a letter, ‘I’m emailing you because I can’t quite face ringing you.’

  Oh, Alexa thought, I can guess how you’re feeling. I can imagine having transgressed, or wanting to transgress, having such an irresistibly powerful urge to break the rules, defy the conventions, upset the traditional, time-honoured apple cart, that transgression becomes the only option. And then, when you’ve struck out and done it, having to turn and face not so much the music as the baying of outrage, the ferocity of people who believe that your defiance has cost them the security of their own unthinking acquiescence. She looked back at the screen. She remembered Kate standing in that kitchen, cradling her flowers – a picture, she now realized, of conflicted guilt and determination.

  ‘I don’t want to justify myself,’ Kate wrote, ‘but one day, if you’ll let me, I’d like to explain. Or try to. I know my timing was atrocious but, believe me, I didn’t intend that, I didn’t mean to go the moment Gus got back. But I just couldn’t stand it. I suddenly couldn’t bear it another second, his being so remote and so needy all at once, and I snapped. I shouldn’t have, and I did. I know I risked far more than just leaving Gus when I went, I know none of you will ever forgive me. And I’m not asking that. Already, away from it all, I feel better and stronger. I don’t say I wouldn’t like understanding or forgiveness, because that would be both untrue and arrogant, but I don’t need it. I don’t need approval from an institution I can’t respect any more. But – and it’s a big but – I’m really, really sorry about what I said to you the other day. I wish I hadn’t sounded like such a bitch. I didn’t mean what I said. I may not respect the Army any more, but I do respect you. I do. And I respect you for sticking with it. Please don’t throw me over. Please come and see me in London. I’m staying with Mel, Freddie Stanford’s lovely girlfriend. You should meet her. Please think about it. And whatever you think of me, remember what I think of you. Love from Kate.’