‘With Izzy,’ Dan said.
‘Jeez.’
‘All under control,’ Dan said. ‘She’s a sensible kid.’
Gus leaned against the kitchen table. Upstairs Alexa was settling the twins, aided by Isabel, who had promised to read three – no, four, Tassy had shouted, four, five! – Charlie and Lola books.
Gus said, ‘It’s not just that.’
‘Not just what?’
‘It’s not just being in the way …’
‘Which you’re not.’
‘It’s watching all this.’
Dan grunted. Gus took a swallow of his beer. He said, ‘All this family stuff.’
‘So you’d be better brooding on your own?’
‘Got to face it sometime.’
‘Right now? Right after she goes?’
‘I should have seen it coming,’ Gus said. ‘I should have. I knew how she felt. I knew how hard she found it. I remember, when I was a subbie, my old CO describing the wives as ‘excess baggage’ in front of her. He was sort of joking, trying to be jolly. But she hated it. You could see from her face, even if she didn’t say anything then. It was later, when she’d had a bit to drink, that she dared him to tell her to know her place. He said to me afterwards that she’d never make an Army wife.’
‘Stop it, Gussie.’
‘She’s got all the qualities Mack has, or Julian has. She could run a brigade, no trouble. You can’t tell a woman like that what to do.’
‘But you didn’t—’
‘No,’ Gus said. He took another swallow. ‘But the Army did.’ He gave a sort of snicker. ‘You’re bloody lucky.’
‘Yup.’
‘She’s a great wife for a soldier, your Alexa.’
Dan let a brief pause fall and then he said, ‘She isn’t happy.’
‘Go on!’
‘Izzy isn’t happy at school and Alexa isn’t happy at home. Or with me.’
Gus put his beer bottle down on the table. He said loudly, ‘Bloody nonsense.’
‘It’s not.’
‘Don’t do this to me,’ Gus said. ‘Don’t do it. I can’t lean against the only fucking tree left in the forest and have it fall over.’
‘I’m not falling over.’
‘But you said—’
‘I said,’ Dan almost whispered, glancing at the ceiling, ‘that I have problems. I might not look as if I do, but I do. But I’m going to solve them.’
‘Are you?’
‘I am. I’m taking Isabel back to school, and then I’m taking Alexa and the twins away somewhere. Disneyland Paris, maybe. Legoland. Haven’t thought it through. But that’s what I’m planning.’
‘Well, that’s a relief. Can’t have my bezzie mate falling to pieces just when my world goes to buggery.’
‘I know,’ Dan said. He indicated the beer bottle on the table. ‘Drink up.’
Gus looked at the bottle. He said, ‘Remember Mark Troy?’
‘I do. Poor sod.’
‘He’s out of jail. On some rehab course. He just lost it on discharge, sleeping rough, bottle of vodka, bottle of sherry, umpteen Special Brew every night, arson, fights, you name it. I don’t want to go that way.’
‘Bloody hell, Gus,’ Dan said. ‘What’s got into you? Course you won’t. Troy had no family, or at least, none who were any use to him.’ He picked up the beer bottle and held it out. ‘You’ve got family, a job, friends. You’ll be a new man in three months.’
Gus took the bottle. ‘Maybe.’
‘And in the meantime, you’re staying here. You can look after old Beetle while we’re away.’ He came round the table and clinked his beer against Gus’s. ‘You, mate, are going nowhere.’
Through the wall, Isabel could hear them arguing. They weren’t shouting or anything, and Mum wasn’t crying, but she could tell from the way their voices were going on and on, often side by side as if they weren’t listening to each other, that they were having a barney. And even if she couldn’t hear their actual words, she knew that they were arguing about her going back to school.
In a funny way, Isabel had known she’d have to go back, even while she was walking down the drive with her phone and her bus money in her pocket and the thrilling, energizing panic of waiting to hear footsteps running after her – but she had made herself walk normally, at a brisk but not terrorized pace, and had planned, had she been caught, to return, and then try again, and again, and again, if necessary, until she made it back to Larkford.
‘Are you really OK?’ Franny had said to her. ‘You seem so OK, it’s almost unreal.’
‘I’m fine,’ Isabel said. ‘I couldn’t stand it and I got sick of saying so. That’s all.’
She knew Mum got it. She knew Mum might not have all the details but she had the general picture. But she was stuck. Isabel saw that. Mum was stuck in a way that she hadn’t been before she met Dan, a way that Isabel didn’t want to dwell on too much because blaming Dan for everything wouldn’t work. Dan was nice. It was a pain that he liked being a soldier so much, but that didn’t stop him being someone Isabel couldn’t picture being without. Any more than she could picture being without the twins. The twins and Dan and Mum and Beetle were, Isabel pictured, in her castle, her private castle. The problem was her being, because of school, shut out of her own castle. And this problem, she had decided, had to be solved by her, because nobody else, it was perfectly evident, either could or would come up with a solution.
So when Dan had announced that he was going to be the one who took her back to school, she had been perfectly fine with that. It had been horrible seeing Mum so upset and wanting to come too, and Dan saying no, and Gus offering to look after the twins, and Tassy completely losing it at the very idea and roaring that she didn’t want Gus, ever, ever, ever, but it hadn’t made Isabel want to cry. She wondered if she had cried so much at school that she’d almost built up an immunity, like having a vaccination against rubella, and the steady, resolved mood she’d been in recently had come to save her from going completely round the bend with the despair of no one doing anything about her situation. It had only dawned on her quite gradually that, in the complete absence of adult help, she was going to have to help herself. She was going, she had decided, to keep leaving school – she refused to think of it as running away – until they all got it into their thick heads that she was not, simply not, going to stay. They could take her back as often as they liked. Mrs Cairns could talk to her and devise her pet ‘community service’ punishments till she was blue in the face. Libby Guthrie and her gang could be complete cows as much as they wanted. It wouldn’t matter. She wasn’t, wasn’t, going to stay. And tomorrow, when she was alone in the car with Dan, she would tell him so. It was only fair, she considered, and he was, after all, a man who set great store by fairness.
The voices through the wall were fainter now. There was, in fact, the odd bump and thump instead. Oh my God, thought Isabel, not that, not that, I shall be sick, la-la-la, fingers in ears, turn on iPod, volume up, up further, drown it all out—Her phone beeped, in the dark, on the little table where Gus had had his radio. She put a hand out from under the duvet and pulled the phone into the bed with her.
There was a text on the bright small square of the screen.
‘Hi,’ it read, ‘Rupert here. They can’t make you. OK?’ And then, amazingly, two Xs. Rupert. Franny’s Rupert.
She held the phone hard against her cheek, her eyes closed.
‘They can’t make you.’ No, she thought, dizzy with a sudden astonishing happiness. No, they can’t. And they won’t, either.
‘I should leave,’ Gus said, this time to Alexa.
He was tidying up the kitchen with her. The twins were in front of the television, with their thumbs in, and Dan was driving Isabel back to school. Alexa had managed not to cry when Isabel got into the car, and, astonishingly, Isabel had looked as if not crying was hardly costing her any effort.
‘See you soon,’ she’d said to Alexa when she kissed her.
&n
bsp; ‘Nearly the end of term, darling, not long, not long.’
Isabel had settled herself beside Dan, buckling her seat belt. She was clutching her phone but she looked fine, almost serene. Dan looked masterful, in charge again, putting the car smoothly into gear and reversing fast and accurately, his arm along the back of the passenger seat.
‘You’ve got to stand back a bit when they come home,’ Mo had said to Alexa, the day before Dan got back. ‘It’s a complete pain, but you have to. They have to be able to resume control again. Or, at least, to think they have.’
When the car had gone, Alexa had taken the twins into the sitting room and promised them half an hour of CBeebies to compensate for the extravagant grief of Isabel’s departure, and then she and Gus had cleared up lunch together, and Gus had put the kettle on to make coffee, and said that he thought he ought to go home now.
Unlike Dan, Alexa didn’t say, don’t even think of it. Instead, she said, ‘Are you ready?’
Gus tossed the tea towel he was shining up the glasses with over his shoulder and said jauntily, ‘I’ll never know till I try, will I?’
Alexa put two mugs on the table. She said, not very forcefully, ‘It’s OK, you being here. Honest.’
‘You’ve been so great.’
‘No.’
‘You have,’ Gus said. ‘You both have. Fantastic. And it’s not easy for you especially. I know that.’
Alexa thought of Dan and Isabel in the car together, and what he might have to tell her – candidly, at last – when he got back. She said, ‘Maybe not.’
‘Not easy at all,’ Gus said, hurrying on. ‘What with being close to Kate and all that. It’s hell having divided loyalties. And, of course, I share your feelings, I really do.’
‘Do you?’
‘That’s the complete shit of it, really. I think Kate is wonderful. I always have. I mean, I couldn’t believe that a girl like Kate would agree to marry someone like me. That’s what’s killing me, if you want to know. I’ve never thought I was good enough, and now I’ve had the proof.’ He paused and looked at Alexa. ‘You two have been an absolute lifesaver.’
Alexa spooned coffee into the cafetière. ‘I’m glad.’
‘I’m sorry I’ve monopolized old Dan so much. Really sorry.’
‘That’s OK.’
‘And I’ll do anything I can to help while you’re away.’
‘Away?’
‘Yes,’ Gus said. He came and stood next to her. ‘Probably shouldn’t have said. Dan’s planning to whisk you off somewhere.’
‘But the twins—’
‘Them too. All of you. Lovely family jolly. I’ll keep an eye on the house and Beetle. Be glad to, in fact.’
Alexa turned away to pick up the kettle. She said despairingly, ‘That’s not …’
‘That’s not what?’
‘That – going away – won’t solve anything.’
‘Oh, come on.’
‘It won’t,’ Alexa cried. ‘It won’t, it’s just another diversion, another way of not facing me, not talking, not listening. Oh damn, damn, damn, I’m going to cry.’
She stood by the kettle, shoulders hunched, battling. Gus came over and put a tentative arm round her shoulders.
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Hey.’
She turned towards him to say something further, and as she did so, his face moved suddenly closer and his mouth skidded clumsily across hers. She leaped away, as if she’d been scalded. Then she turned, her fists clenched, and hissed at him.
‘Don’t,’ Alexa said.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Driving back to Larkford, Dan rehearsed what he would say to Alexa. He was practised at this sort of rehearsal, having decided years ago – as he suspected most of the men of his regiment had decided – that it was unfair to the point of cruelty to describe some aspects of being on operations to loved ones on return, merely because it provided a brief personal relief to unburden. All that was achieved in the long run by telling too much was to leave the person you loved – wife, girlfriend, family member – with a series of ghastly images of, say, torn body parts scattered across the desert grit after an IED had blown up, and a subsequent inability not to link those images with the fear of you being more than likely to suffer the same fate. Editing reality was now pretty well automatic.
Anyway, however fascinated – and horrified – your family and friends were to hear about it, they could never, any of them, really get it. No one else could, unless they’d done it. A squaddie who’d actually served in Helmand, even if he could barely string two words together, was a more satisfactory audience, when home again, than the most adored or articulate companion who had stayed behind. One of the things Dan had immediately fallen for in Alexa was that she didn’t ask him stuff, she wasn’t demanding, she wasn’t, as so many of his Army friends’ girlfriends were, high maintenance. It was, he’d recognized early on, a huge plus.
To have a gorgeous girlfriend – and soldiers were amazingly candid about wanting and feeling entitled to gorgeous girlfriends – who didn’t pester or sulk or whine was completely wonderful. Alexa had even said, once, when he got back from exercise, filthy and happy and exhausted, with streaks of egg from the final egg banjo decorating the front of his battledress, ‘Before you start telling me what you’ve been up to, can I say that I only want a severely edited version, thank you very much!’
That, of course, was a long time ago now. That was before the twins, before the twins were even thought of, when he was newly a major, and she was making yet another dismal married quarter charming, and teaching Isabel to read, and entrancing him unexpectedly, sometimes with stockings and high heels under a trench coat or a dressing-gown or, once, his own battledress. Better not to remember that, right now. Better to focus on the driving, and that conversation with Isabel, and exactly how much, and in what way, he was going to report of the last few hours to an Alexa who had recently – or was it longer, if he’d been really paying attention? – begun not just to ask but to indicate quite forcefully that he was failing her in some profound and important way, letting her down, neglecting something so crucial that it amounted to a dereliction of duty.
He had asked Isabel as they approached the school if she was OK. She said undramatically that she felt a bit sick, but that was all right, she probably wouldn’t be sick, and anyway, it wasn’t for long. Dan said, slightly too heartily, no, not long at all, only a month till the end of term, and Isabel, looking away from him out of the passenger window, said that it would be sooner than that.
‘Will it? Is there another home weekend?’
Isabel hadn’t turned back towards him. She said to the hedges speeding past outside the window, ‘I’m not staying, you see.’
‘Not staying?’
‘No,’ Isabel said. ‘When I’ve planned the next time, I’ll do it again.’
Dan struggled to take this in. ‘You’ll—’
‘Yes,’ Isabel said, ‘I’m not staying. I suppose they could lock me in a room or something, but they couldn’t really do that because of child protection and everything, could they? So I’ll just make another plan.’
There was a farm gateway coming up beside the road. Dan indicated left and swerved into it. He stopped the car and put the handbrake on.
‘You – you are already planning to run away again?’
‘I didn’t run,’ Isabel said patiently. ‘I walked. You know why. And I’ll keep doing it till you all realize that I mean it.’
‘Ye gods,’ Dan said. He sat for a while, staring ahead of him. Then he said, ‘I’ll have to tell Mrs Cairns.’
Isabel turned her head at last and looked at him. Then she said levelly, ‘You don’t have to.’
And he hadn’t. He could not believe, now, driving back to Larkford, that throughout his fifteen minutes in Mrs Cairns’ study – she had been very charming, in the manner of someone hugely relieved to see a sane intervention, at last, in a tiresomely hysterical situation – he had said nothing of Isabel’s intenti
on. He had mentioned the homesickness, he had emphasized his distaste for the bullying and an atmosphere that permitted it, and he had – standing now, looming over Mrs Cairns – made it very plain that he wouldn’t care to see any retribution meted out to his stepdaughter as a result of her impulsive attempt to improve her increasingly painful situation.
‘You should be grateful,’ he’d said, ‘that Isabel’s courage has revealed the flaws in your system to you. Punishment would not be in any way appropriate.’
He had sounded as he sounded when he was reprimanding his gunners for something. They usually looked straight past him while he was talking, rigidly to attention, terrified to catch his eye. Mrs Cairns, on the other hand, seemed to want him to look at her, so that she could, without admitting any wrongdoing on the school’s part, assure him that every effort would be made to give Isabel a fresh and encouraging new try at settling in. She had smiled when she held out her hand to say goodbye. Dan had taken her hand, but he hadn’t smiled back. The complicity of adults, he wanted to say, won’t work here. Isabel’s the one with guts.
He swung off the main road and turned for Larkford. A faint unease was settling on him, an apprehension compounded of Alexa’s current mood – or moods, really – poor old Gus’s broken heart, and his own decidedly mixed feelings about those weeks stretching ahead without the comforting dictatorship of duties. He had only ever seen his mother once, since she went to Australia, and it had been a wretched occasion, in a steakhouse near Charing Cross station, culminating in his – he was sixteen then – walking out, leaving his meal half-eaten, after she had said scornfully of Dan’s father, ‘I couldn’t live with a man who couldn’t cope with normal life. I couldn’t. And he’ll never manage it, never, he’s too used to doing what he’s told.’
Dan turned his car into the Quadrant. There was an unquestioned luxury in obedience, rather than in having to initiate. The weeks of leave were not going to be easy because this time so much emotional repair work seemed to be urgently crying out to be done. Maybe time away would help that, but also, maybe Alexa would refuse to go.
Whatever she chose, whatever happened, Dan found that he was at least sure of one thing. He slid the car to a halt in the driveway – Gus’s car wasn’t there, what could he have gone off to do? – and pulled on the handbrake. He would not tell Alexa of Isabel’s intentions, and he would not tell her that he had revealed nothing of them to Mrs Cairns, either. He opened the car door and waited for Beetle to be released to greet him. Thank the Lord for the simplicity of dogs.
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