Eric Riley stood by his brother’s grave in the Gap Road Cemetery in Wimbledon. He’d left a row of poppies there, before Remembrance Day – he’d so hoped Dan would come to London for that, but there you go, shouldn’t lay yourself open to disappointment, hoping things like that – and now he was collecting them to take them home and add to the drawerful he had already. He didn’t like it when poppies and poppy wreaths were left out in the wind and rain after Remembrance Day; it seemed disrespectful to the dead to leave them to get battered and faded. They should be there, on graves and memorials, for one week only, bright as blood, and then they should be removed before they were diminished by the elements. He’d put six in a row by Ray’s grave, pushing their green plastic stems into the earth. Now he pulled them up briskly, one by one, and put them in his pocket.
It was a gloomy day. The Council workers who looked after the cemetery repaired the buildings and machines in winter, so the whole place kind of gave up, come November, and acquired a dreary, faintly neglected air, all natural colour leached out of the grass, the trees rapidly shedding their last leaves, the only bright spots the bunches of plastic flowers that people left here and there and that Eric so despised. He stood, as he always stood, facing Ray’s headstone, his shoes polished, his overcoat buttoned. It was heavy, his overcoat, an old British Warm, too heavy for November, but it was appropriate for visiting Ray so had to be endured. It would probably outlast him, Eric thought, and George, too. If George would ever wear it. Bloody boy liked those anorak things. With a hood. I ask you.
He leaned forward and rested his hands on Ray’s white headstone. Ray had died in the mud. Cold and wet, and probably lusting for a fag. Sometimes, in the heat of Aden, Eric had thought about Ray in the trenches of Northern France. He’d wondered if he’d got dehydrated, despite all the rain and mud. It was a real problem in Aden, the dehydration; you could smell it in a man’s pee if he wasn’t drinking enough. They didn’t know much about it, even then. Looking back, Eric wondered at how little they did know, how different things were, how they’d changed. Take ammo, for example, him being a gunner. They’d had some good stuff, but nothing like a modern high-velocity round. Now that was amazing. Amazing. It came so fast that you’d need an 800-yard start on it; a quarter-second to realize it was coming, a quarter-second for your brain to tell you what to do, and half a second to fling yourself flat. Wham. Bloody miraculous. Bloody impossible. Human beings weren’t meant to deal with anything coming at them at two thousand miles an hour. In his day, the worst offence on a gun team was a bad ram. If the shell wasn’t far enough up, the gun wouldn’t fire. A bad ram, that was. Eric looked at his hands, resting on Ray’s headstone. He could picture them now, shoving the shell case up, far enough for the copper-banded edge to be just below the rifling. He’d prided himself on never failing to get it right. Rammer Riley. Sarnt Riley. Yes, suh.
He gave Ray’s headstone a brief pat and straightened. He felt faintly uneasy most of the time at the moment, as he knew George did. When George got back from Larkford he said that you couldn’t quite put your finger on what was wrong, there wasn’t anything dramatic going on; everyone was well, the daily round was turning on its usual wheels, but there was something the matter.
‘What?’ Eric had asked. ‘What – sulks, raised voices, avoiding each other? Explain yourself, lad!’
And George, fetching their second beers, had said, sadly, ‘They’re just not getting through to each other. It’s like they’re both on the telephone, but not on the same line. And I’m afraid—’
‘Yes? Yes?’
‘I’m afraid it’s Dan, Dad. I think she’d talk if she could get him to focus. His head’s still in Helmand and—’
‘And what, for bugger’s sake?’
‘And I don’t think he’s doing much to bring it back.’
Eric dusted his hands off against one another. If anyone had ever asked him, he’d have said that the best years of his life had been spent in Aden, never mind the heat and the dirt and the danger and losing some of the best buddies he’d ever known. They were good years because he knew what he was doing and he knew what he was there for. He’d had a purpose, and not only had he fulfilled it, he’d known it was of use to his fellow men, both those serving with him and those going about their business back in Blighty. That’s what George had probably felt down there in the South Atlantic – although you’d think, sometimes, he’d never been there, the amount he ever talked about it – and it was what Dan was missing so violently now. You could recite every cliché going about the public good and the common weal and productiveness until the bloody cows came home, but nothing took away the fact that those clichés were true, that nothing satisfied a man as much as the sense that he was of real value and visible use.
Eric turned away and began to walk towards the nearest gate. Poor Dan. Poor bloody Dan. Thankful to be back and at the same time intensely homesick for Helmand. And that girl, trying to deal with a man in that state, never mind mother her children and keep up all the age-old appearances of the patch. Of course the rules had relaxed a bit since his day – he remembered the strictures about no PDAs (public displays of affection), no girl soldiers to be seen drinking out of pint glasses – but he’d bet a pound to a penny that the snobberies of rank and demeanour were as rife as they’d ever been, whatever lip service was paid to their passing. That poor bloody girl. If she wasn’t getting through to Dan because he simply wasn’t on message, who could she possibly turn to?
He emerged into Gap Road and turned for Wimbledon Village. No point going home, he thought, and sitting there going round in bloody circles. Better head for Elys and a pot of tea and a teacake, and see if, in more convivial surroundings, he couldn’t cudgel his old wits into thinking of something he might do for them, some way he could help.
‘Gone?’ Dan said.
Alexa was ironing. From the playroom came the peaceable twittering of the twins, absorbed in some curious game of their own devising, which he’d seen as he passed the window on his way in, involving several cardboard boxes and a herd of soft toys. Apart from that, there was just the mild thump of the iron – on his shirts, he noticed – and the radio whispering away in the background, voices rising and falling with the faint artificiality of words spoken in drama rather than in real life.
‘When did he go?’
‘About an hour ago,’ Alexa said.
‘But why?’
She paused and put the iron down on the metal rack at the end of the ironing board. She said, folding in sleeves, ‘I think he felt he’d just got to stop licking his wounds here, and get on with facing how life looks as if it’s going to be.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Nothing much, really. Just that.’
Dan came over and stood behind her, looking down at his shirt, now a neat rectangle, collar buttoned. He said softly, ‘What did you say?’
She picked up the shirt and turned to add it to the pile on the table behind her. She said, ‘No big deal, Dan. Just – well, he was thanking me and I was saying that’s fine, which I meant, it was, and then he—’ She paused and looked at Dan. ‘He said that he’d be going anyway soon, because you were planning to take the twins and me off somewhere for a while. Are you?’
Dan shuffled a little. ‘I was thinking of it, yes.’
‘Thinking?’
‘Yes. I thought we needed to get out of here, all of us. We need to – have a change of scene. See and do something different. It’s so hard for you, having me come back into a life and a routine you’ve devised in order to cope with me not being here. I can see that. I just thought we could both do with being out of this context for a bit, even a few days, until we get our bearings again. That’s all.’
Alexa turned back to the ironing board and spread out a pinafore dress of Flora’s. ‘Dan.’
‘Yes?’
‘Dan, I don’t want to rain on your parade, but, think.’
‘I have thought.’
‘No.’
Alexa banged the iron down. ‘No!’
Dan glanced towards the playroom. ‘Shh.’
‘No!’ Alexa said again, more vehemently. ‘You haven’t thought, have you? You haven’t thought that you haven’t seen your grandfather or my parents since you got back. You haven’t seen your father properly, either. And you haven’t thought, have you, that I can’t go off on any jolly hols, leaving Isabel in this state. And how was Isabel? How was she? You walk in here, and the first thing you do is not tell me about her but ask where Gus is. The first thing!’
Dan moved a step away. ‘She’s fine.’
‘I don’t believe you. She can’t be.’
‘Sweetheart, she’s fine. She was great in the car. She was very calm when we got there. I said my piece to Mrs Whatsit and she took it in. Isabel had made her point, and she’s fine.’
‘Making her point is only half the story!’
‘It’s in hand,’ Dan said. ‘Honestly it is. It’ll be different now. They’ll keep an eye on her.’
Alexa folded her arms. ‘God, Dan. Keeping an eye on her might help with the bullying but it won’t help with the homesickness, will it?’
In his basket, Beetle stirred uneasily and sat up. Tassy appeared in the doorway. ‘I need,’ she said commandingly, ‘lots of spoons.’
‘In a minute, darling.’
‘Lots,’ Tassy said. ‘For their supper.’
Dan crossed the kitchen and picked his daughter up. ‘Hey there, bombshell.’
Tassy ignored him. ‘Spoons!’
‘I can’t go anywhere,’ Alexa said, ‘till I’ve got some peace of mind. And I can’t begin to have that until I can believe Isabel has some solution ahead and you are even halfway back to Planet Normal.’
‘Spoons,’ Tassy said, less strenuously.
Alexa turned round so that she was facing Dan and Tassy.
‘It’s hard here,’ she said. ‘Very hard. It was hard all the time you were away, and it’s been no better since you got back. While you were away, there were all kinds of problems, which I dealt with because there was only me and I had to. But now you’re back, the problems haven’t gone away. In fact, they’re worse. They’re worse because I can’t take unilateral decisions any more. I can’t because you’re here and you are a problem in yourself. If it was down to me, I’d have Isabel out of that school and me in a job of some kind somewhere and living in a proper community and not this – this weird bubble. But it isn’t down to me because you’re back now, and what you do dictates what we do.’
She folded her arms. ‘What exactly did Isabel say to you? Did she say something you’re not telling me? Am I going to discover that on top of all else you actually have the nerve to differentiate between our daughters?’
There was a short silence, then Dan said, as if she hadn’t spoken, ‘What did you say to Gus?’
Alexa started across the kitchen. As she passed Dan and Tassy, she put her hand to her face, as if she was crying or she didn’t want to see them.
‘He wanted to go, and I didn’t stop him,’ she said. ‘He said he found our happy family life hard to bear. Hah! The spoons are in the drawer. Where they always are.’
And then she crossed the hallway at a run, and they heard her race up the stairs and along the landing, followed by the slam of a door.
Tassy looked at her father. ‘Spoons?’ she said hopefully.
Gus said he was OK. Fine, promise. Not exactly never better, but managing. And he’d got to. Manage, that is. He’d just been talking to one of his gunners – well, ex-gunner really, who’d decided to leave the Army because his wife couldn’t hack it any longer, and he’d said it was strange, leaving with almost nothing. ‘Just a couple of day sacks and me Bergen,’ he’d said to Gus, and a bed in his mother-in-law’s second bedroom. No room to swing a cat. ‘It made me thankful for what I’ve got,’ Gus said, not quite steadily. ‘I’ll be OK, promise I will.’
‘See you tomorrow?’ Dan said.
‘Maybe, mate. Maybe. Got to sort my head a bit. You too.’
‘My head’s getting there.’
There’d been a pause, and then Gus said guardedly, ‘I … I’m not sure we can actually say that. Can we?’
Then Dan had gone into the playroom and surveyed the cardboard-box train the twins had made, in which the toys were propped up and being given supper with teaspoons. He lowered himself to the floor and the twins immediately stopped their game and clambered on top of him, demanding that he play with them, read to them, listen to them, sing to them.
‘Where’s Mummy?’ Flora said. Her spectacles were askew again. Dan peered at the skin of her face, at the texture of her hair, and marvelled at their complete purity and perfection.
‘Sleeping.’
‘But it’s not the night time!’
Dan lay down, holding a twin in each arm. ‘Sometimes people get tired in the daytime.’
‘I don’t.’
‘But you’re not a mummy.’
‘Nor are you,’ Tassy said.
‘No,’ Dan said. He gazed at them both, turning his head from side to side. ‘No, I’m not. What am I?’
Flora smiled at him. She adjusted her glasses. She said reverently, adoringly, ‘You are the daddy.’
Alexa woke from a brief, deep, bothered sleep. She had yanked the curtains across when she had come upstairs and flung herself on the bed in order to rage impotently, face-down in the pillows, and now found herself, quite unintentionally, waking an hour later with a stiff neck and a dry mouth and a sense of dread at coming to, to face an unchanged everything.
She rolled over. Her mouth tasted disgusting and her eyes felt gluey. The house seemed very quiet, unnaturally so. Maybe Dan had taken the twins somewhere. Maybe he had taken them round to see Gus. No. Better not think that. If she thought that she’d be clutched by rage and revulsion again, rage at Gus’s ineptitude and revulsion at his – his whimpering, appalled apologies. Don’t think about Gus. Don’t think about Isabel. Don’t think about Dan’s crass suggestion of a holiday. Lie here and count for a while, count to a hundred, and then get up and brush your hair, brush your teeth, and go downstairs and make supper for the twins without further recrimination or accusation. Enough.
Someone was coming up the stairs. It was a slow, careful tread, as if the person was uncertain, or maybe carrying something. Alexa lifted her head from the pillow and held her breath. The steps reached the top of the stairs and then came slowly along the landing. Then the bedroom door opened carefully and a slice of yellow light fell in from the ugly overhead bulb on the landing outside, revealing Dan, carrying a teacup and saucer.
He whispered, ‘You awake?’
She sat up a little. ‘Yes. Just.’
He came round the bed and put the teacup down on the pile of books on the small chest beside her. ‘I’ve brought you some tea.’
‘Thank you. Where are the twins?’
‘Downstairs.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Eating toast and jam,’ Dan said.
‘Eating—’
‘Yes,’ Dan said. ‘They’re very jolly. Sticky, but jolly. Come down when you’ve come to.’
‘Yes, I’ll—’
‘Soon as you can,’ Dan said, his voice a little louder. ‘When you’ve drunk your tea. Your father’s here.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Franny’s Rupert had texted to ask Isabel if she was on Facebook. There had been no kisses after the text, Isabel noticed, but she had to balance their absence against the fact that he had texted at all, and that he had virtually asked her to be a friend on Facebook. She had thought about her response for a long time – at least three hours – before ingeniously replying ‘Not yet. Not allowed,’ which did not precisely give away the fact that she was not yet thirteen. She was pleased with the reply. It strengthened the impression she did not i
n the least mind him having, that she was pretty well a complete prisoner of unreasonable adult prohibitions. When she sent the text, she was careful to conclude without kisses, also.
Mobile phones were not permitted during school hours. The rule was that they were to be left in the cubbyhole by your bed in the morning, and only switched on in the evening to retrieve messages, after prep and supper and before lights out. Like most people, Isabel kept her phone on vibrate mode illicitly in her uniform skirt pocket, and the risk of getting caught lent the school day a pleasurable frisson of danger, not unlike the sensation Isabel had had while walking down the school drive. In the middle of double maths, Isabel’s phone trembled in her pocket. She counted to twenty and put her hand up. Mrs Twining, who found maths so exciting that she talked about it as if she’d just won The X-Factor, asked what she wanted, with impatience. Libby Guthrie and her gang turned to glance and grimace.
‘Please,’ Isabel said, ‘may I be excused?’
In the lavatory cubicle, having already flushed the toilet to create a comforting wall of noise, Isabel read her screen.
‘Can u talk?’ Rupert had texted.
‘Not allowed,’ she wrote back.
‘!!!’ he said. ‘Later?’
‘Yes,’ she said, stopping herself before she wrote, ‘Please.’
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Got an idea.’
She stared, smiling, at the screen. ‘4 me?’
‘Yes, thicko!’ he wrote, but then he added ‘x’.
Someone came into the cloakroom and banged a cubicle door shut. Isabel reached behind her to pull the flush again. ‘Thank you.’
‘X,’ he said.
She stood up, the phone glowing in her hand. She wanted to say ‘x’ back. But she mustn’t.
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