She looked down at his hand holding her wrist, at his big, impregnable military watch, at his wedding ring. She said, ‘Isabel’s waiting for me—’
Dan let go of her wrist and pushed a glass towards her. ‘Then go and see her on Thursday. Just go.’ He smiled at her a little warily. ‘I’ll be here when you get back. Promise.’
Jack Dearlove’s flat in Chiswick had a view of the river if you went on to the narrow balcony and hung out over the rail as far as you dared. Jack had bought it as somewhere to sleep and keep his stuff, the same year that he had started his business – contract cleaning of both offices and residential properties – intending to trade up as soon as he could, either to a house or to a better flat actually on the river. His business had prospered, with contracts now stretching down the M4 corridor, but he had somehow never quite found the time or enthusiasm to look for a better flat. There had been a lot of opportunities, since the business was a useful grapevine for property movement, but Jack had never quite got round to exchanging what would do for the time being for something he might actually take pride in.
If he was frank with himself, he knew that he was hoping Eka might return to him. She had never asked for a divorce and was in the habit – between racy and unprincipled lovers who purportedly owned topaz mines in Brazil or motor-racing circuits in Italy – of ringing Jack in tears and saying she was, yet again, out of cash and out of hope, and could he help her. He had learned, painfully, to prevaricate long enough for Eka to be invited on someone else’s plane to someone else’s island, whereupon the whole merry-go-round would start again. But he was unable, somehow, to be strong-minded enough to give up the fantasy that one day he would be begged by Eka to buy a place in which they could both pursue a life of contentment fuelled by her heart having changed and his having never wavered. It was an idiotic dream, he knew, and he probably wouldn’t care for it if it ceased to be a dream and became an improbable reality, but all the same, it gave his life a deeply romantic, unrequited edge, and was the reason for little leaps of excited hope when the telephone rang at odd hours of the night.
He wasn’t in bed when it rang on this occasion. He was half asleep on the American reclining chair that occupied the centre of his unremarkable sitting room, eight feet from an enormous television balanced on a couple of removals boxes. He glanced drowsily at the screen on his phone before he answered. It did not say, as expected, ‘Eka’.
‘Lex?’ he said. ‘What are you doing ringing at this hour? Are you OK?’
‘I wondered if you’d even speak to me.’
‘Of course I’ll speak to you. I was just off the whole world that day. It’s after two in the morning. Where are you?’
Alexa said, ‘In the kitchen.’
‘Why aren’t you in bed with the hero?’
‘I was.’
Jack struggled to tilt the chair into a more upright position. ‘Have you had a row?’
‘Only very politely. I wanted him to do something with me. For Isabel. And he – won’t. Can’t.’
Jack rubbed his hands through his hair. ‘What thing?’
‘She’s – stolen something. At school. She says she doesn’t know why she did it, and she doesn’t want the thing. But she won’t say sorry. It’s all part of the homesickness, I’m sure, and Dan coming back, and the twins being here while she has to be away. But the Head has said she can see us on Thursday, and Dan has other things to do on Thursday. Please don’t tell me that his priorities are entirely valid and that I should have thought of all that seven years ago.’
Jack stood up slowly, displacing cushions and crumpled newspapers. He said, ignoring her tone, ‘You think Dan is putting his men in a PT session before you and Isabel?’
‘It’s a homecoming thing, a family day. They always have them and usually I like them, but this time I’m too miserable about Isabel to do my Army-wife stuff. And – it’s not just that. It’s more that whatever happens to us, it can’t ever be the priority. There’s always an Army thing that has to come first. I just know that it’s always something.’
Jack looked down at his recliner. Lying alone on it half-dreaming of Eka was not really so very different from sitting at a Wiltshire kitchen table in your dressing-gown, longing for Dan’s attention. Both of us, he thought, craving an intimacy that eludes us. Both of us wanting to be the priority to people whose essential charm for us probably lies in the fact that their focus is often – usually – elsewhere.
He said, disgustedly surveying the debris round the recliner, ‘I can see four beer cans and a pizza box on the floor.’
‘I’m drinking fennel tea,’ Alexa said. ‘Which is far more depressing.’
‘Not for fat boys,’ Jack said. ‘It sounds like the unattainable heights of virtue and eleven stone. What can I do for you?’
‘I wondered—’
‘Yes?’
‘Jack, I don’t want to go to the school alone. I don’t want to get things wrong, say the wrong thing, overreact because I’m wound up about Isabel and make it worse for her. I just don’t feel quite steady about it all. It’s so maddening, because there I was, coping so well all the time Dan was away, but now he’s back I suddenly don’t seem able to think straight. I don’t seem able to—’
‘Of course I’ll come,’ Jack said. ‘I’m her godfather, after all. Or something. I’ve known her since before her first breath. Are you crying?’
‘Not really,’ Alexa said. ‘But thank you. Thank you.’
Jack bent and picked up the pizza box. It was huge. And quite empty. Pepperoni with extra pepperoni. The box was smeared with blotches of orange-coloured oil. Disgusting. He spun it into a corner, like a boomerang. ‘My pleasure, Mrs Riley. Now back to bed with you and no sulks with the Major.’
Alexa was laughing. ‘You’ve lightened my heart—’
‘I don’t want anything to do with your heart,’ Jack said. ‘Take it upstairs where it belongs. Nighty-night.’
While she was brushing her teeth the next morning, Dan came up behind her, already dressed in his combats, and put his arms round her.
‘Wait,’ she said, mumbling, spitting toothpaste.
He pulled her upright against him so that they could both see their reflections in the mirror above the basin, Alexa with toothpaste on her chin and her hair unbrushed, Dan ready for work and impeccable, even down to his side hat.
He leaned forward to put his cheek against hers. ‘Can I ask you something?’
Alexa remembered her resolve of the night before. ‘Of course.’
‘I’m nervous of that tone of voice.’
‘And I,’ said Alexa, putting her toothbrush down and rubbing at the smear of white below her bottom lip, ‘am nervous of what you’re going to ask me.’
He looked straight at her reflected eyes. ‘I want to ask Julian and Claire to supper.’
Alexa’s eyes widened. ‘The Brigadier!’
‘He’s OK. You know he is. But he’ll miss playing with his train sets more than anyone, now we’re back. And you like Claire.’
Alexa stiffened a little in Dan’s embrace. ‘I do like Claire. But does that mean dining room and silver candlesticks, because the dining room is the twins’ playroom and we don’t own any silver except my earrings.’
‘You know it doesn’t. Kitchen’s fine. Kitchen supper’s what they’d like. And the CO. Can we add him and Mary, too?’
Alexa stepped sideways, so that Dan had to drop his arms. ‘Mary has a cleaner and a gardener—’
‘Well you do, if you’re in command. But you’re a great cook. We’ll do it our way.’
Alexa picked a damp towel off a nearby stool and rubbed her face. ‘Do you have an agenda,’ she said, ‘wanting Julian and Mack for supper?’
Dan grinned at her. ‘A bit,’ he said. Then, ‘Please.’
Alexa dropped the towel. ‘Of course,’ she said.
He took her back into his arms. He said, against her hair, ‘Thank you. Really, thank you. And I am truly sorry about last
night, and Isabel and everything.’
There was a brief pause, then Alexa said into his shoulder, ‘I’m fine. And I’m sorry, too. Sorry about the family day. Really I am.’
‘You’re fantastic. You really are. I’ll be on message in a week or so, honest.’
‘Jack’s coming with me,’ Alexa said.
Dan’s embrace stiffened. Then he took his arms away. ‘Jack?’
‘Yes.’
‘What’s he got to do with Isabel?’
Alexa didn’t look at him. ‘He’s known her longer than you have,’ she said. ‘And he’s prepared to make time to come with me,’ and then she walked out of the bathroom.
CHAPTER SIX
‘Ah,’ Mrs Cairns said, holding her hand out to Jack, ‘Isabel’s stepfather.’
Jack was wearing a tweed jacket checked as loudly as a horse blanket, and a scarlet muffler. He looked, Alexa thought, like a round and cheerful bird. He smiled at Mrs Cairns and took her hand. ‘Actually not,’ he said. ‘Godfather. Stepfather is still defending the nation.’
Mrs Cairns glanced at Alexa. Then she said, ‘I am so glad somebody’s doing it,’ and motioned them towards the armchairs where Isabel had sat four days previously.
Alexa said, ‘I had hoped to see Isabel first …’
‘She’s in class, Mrs Riley. French for year seven will finish at twelve forty-five.’
‘She does nothing but cry on the phone.’
‘I have the impression,’ Mrs Cairns said, pulling up a third chair and seating herself in it, her red spectacles as dominating as a gash of scarlet lipstick would have been, ‘that she is absolutely aware that she has done wrong. She has even said she stole and she knows how wrong stealing is. But nothing will make her apologize. She seems very distressed at having upset Libby Guthrie, but she won’t say sorry to her. She isn’t particularly stubborn or angry. She’s just determined.’
Jack leaned back in his chair. He appeared to be taking in every detail of Mrs Cairns’ appearance, and considering his reactions. He said slowly, ‘Her father has been home for ten days. Just ten days.’
‘But she saw him.’
‘She was there the day he came home,’ Alexa said.
‘And she was pleased to see him?’
‘Thrilled,’ Alexa said, and then, glancing at Jack, ‘apparently—’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because this isn’t like her. Because this whole episode is so completely out of character. She’s never drawn attention to herself, she’s never done anything underhand.’
‘She has two younger sisters?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who are at home?’
‘Of course,’ Alexa said, more crossly than she intended. ‘They are three.’
Jack leaned forward. He had unwound his muffler and it lay, loosely coiled, on his lap, part vanishing under the pressure of his bulk as he bent over it.
‘Can’t you just forget it?’ he said to Mrs Cairns. ‘Forget the whole thing?’
She turned her red spectacles towards him. ‘Of course not.’
‘Come on,’ Jack said. ‘A good child like Isabel, a good, hardworking, conscientious child, flips a bit under temporary family pressure. That’s all it is, isn’t it? I mean, she didn’t try and pass the thing off as hers, she didn’t try to sell it, she just took it so that you’d all notice she’s a bit wound up right now and maybe you’d do something to make her feel better. Why don’t you just drop it, and let us take Isabel home for a while?’
There was a pause. Mrs Cairns turned her spectacles on Alexa. ‘Is this a view you share?’
‘More or less, yes.’
‘But you must see that it’s impossible.’
Alexa sat up a little straighter. ‘Why?’
‘There is no value to the moral code of a school like this without consistency. The whole school knows what Isabel did and, I imagine, that she won’t apologize. There are consequent factions. Girls like factions, so this is a golden opportunity for them. At its most basic, simply setting this whole episode aside encourages more bending and breaking of rules. I can’t do it.’
Jack spread his hands. ‘This whole school is full of Army kids. You must have crises all the time.’
‘We do,’ Mrs Cairns said. ‘Serious crises. Wounded fathers. Fathers who will not come home ever again.’
Alexa cried out suddenly, ‘Don’t try and put me in my place, Mrs Cairns!’
‘I am doing the reverse, Mrs Riley. I am trying to make you see the seriousness of Isabel’s case. I can’t dismiss it and I don’t want to be disproportionately heavy-handed. But she must have privileges withdrawn and she can’t go home with you.’
‘Can’t—’
Mrs Cairns stood up. ‘No. She isn’t ill, she does not need home rest. It won’t help her or anyone else if she is not required to face what she has done.’
Alexa got unsteadily to her feet. ‘But she’s so homesick.’
‘I’m afraid quite a lot of them are. And I’m also afraid that it can’t be an excuse, even if it’s often a reason.’
Jack rose too, dropping his scarf. Bending to pick it up, he said, ‘So where exactly has this interview got us?’
Mrs Cairns looked at him. Her glance was not particularly friendly. ‘Closer, I hope,’ she said, ‘to understanding what is best for Isabel.’
‘And for your school?’
Mrs Cairns didn’t flinch. ‘And the school,’ she said, and walked towards the door.
‘I just felt – rebuked,’ Alexa said.
She was sitting at a table in a little café attached to a garage where they had stopped for petrol. Jack had brought her tea in a paper cup and was sitting opposite her, nursing a can of Coke Zero. He said, ‘I wasn’t much help.’
Alexa reached out to pat his hand briefly. ‘She out-gunned us. She knew what she wanted before we even got there. Pathetic smother mother put in her over-emotional place. These are Army children and they have to learn to bear things, don’t they?’
‘I’m OK,’ Isabel had said, over and over, during the brief time she was allowed to see them before lunch. ‘I’m OK.’ She was pale and weary looking, but she didn’t cling to Alexa and she didn’t cry.
‘Has Mrs Cairns been talking to you?’
‘No.’
‘And is Libby avoiding you?’
Isabel looked sideways. ‘Not really.’
‘Are people whispering and being horrible?’
Isabel shrugged. ‘A bit.’
‘Darling—’
‘I’m OK,’ Isabel said. ‘I’m OK.’
‘Why won’t you say sorry?’
Isabel sighed. ‘Because I’m not.’
‘You’re not sorry? But you took something that didn’t belong to you.’
Isabel let a beat fall and then she said, ‘I didn’t want it.’
‘What did you want?’
Isabel said nothing.
Alexa moved to try and put her arms round her and Isabel, without drama, stepped sideways. ‘Izzy. Please. What did you want? What do you want?’
Isabel cleared her throat. ‘I can’t have it. I tried, but I can’t. So I’ll get used to not having it. I’m OK.’
‘Darling, please tell me—’
Isabel hopped backwards. ‘I’ve got to go to lunch now.’
‘I can’t bear you to be unhappy.’
‘I’m OK,’ Isabel said. ‘I’m OK.’
‘I can’t believe she didn’t cry,’ Alexa said now. ‘I’ve cried enough for both of us, God knows. What a ghastly morning.’
‘I’m good in meetings,’ Jack said. ‘I don’t know what happened to me. It was those specs. And being in a headmistress’s study. I went to pieces.’
‘No, you didn’t.’
‘I was a chocolate teapot, Lex. And I can’t comfort myself by saying bloody woman, because she wasn’t.’
‘And I,’ Alexa said, ‘can’t comfort myself by saying I know what’s right for my own daughter, because she ma
de me feel I don’t.’
Jack nudged his Coke can. ‘We should be drinking something much stronger than this.’
‘That would be fatal.’
‘What’ll you tell Dan?’
Alexa looked straight at him. ‘That I was outclassed by a true professional.’
‘We were.’
‘Not your responsibility.’
‘I came to support you.’
‘Jack,’ Alexa said, ‘think of the state I’d be in if I’d been through that alone.’
‘Does he think you were alone?’
‘No.’
‘Did he know I was coming?’
‘Yes.’
‘And?’
‘Not – not pleased.’
Jack gave a groan. ‘Lex, don’t do this.’
‘Don’t do what?’
‘Don’t play him off like this. Don’t challenge him all the time.’
‘Challenge him?’ Alexa said, her voice rising.
‘I agreed to come to support you. I didn’t agree to come to annoy him.’
‘His annoyance is his affair.’
‘Oh my God,’ Jack said. ‘Oh, Alexa.’
He stood up. She was staring down at the cooling tea in the paper cup.
‘I’ll drive you home.’
‘Look,’ Alexa said, her eyes still on the tea. ‘Look. I have to fight Isabel’s corner. I have to fight my own corner. I want to be loyal, I have no trouble being loving, but I can’t always put myself aside for some more demanding requirement, I can’t abase myself, obliterate myself because of what Dan has to do. And wants to do. Don’t forget that. He loves the Army. Loves it. He is fulfilled by it. I love to see him fulfilled, I promise I do. But I can’t live purely on his fulfilment. I’m a person too, with a brain as well as a heart, and all the ambitions and hungers and curiosities that brains have. I also can’t live on the emotional crumbs that fall from Dan’s table after his men have finished eating the main meal. I know he loves me. He probably loves me more than he’s ever loved anyone. But he’s got me now, so he’s free to love all this other stuff, this soldier stuff, and that has all the urgency and thrill of the chase that I can’t possibly have now that I’m his wife and the mother of his children. He’s back, but he’s not back, not in any sense that’s any use to me or his family. And if one more person tells me just to give him time, or that I knew what I was taking on, or that I’m so lucky to have the security, I will just … just kill them.’
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