‘Not good. I – we – are going to have to move her. She’s home again.’
‘Home!’ Claire said.
‘Yes.’
‘You sound doubtful.’
‘Well,’ Alexa said, ‘it’s complicated.’
Julian said, ‘Would you like to tell us about it?’
Alexa looked at him. ‘No.’
‘No?’
She said, as if explaining something to someone hard of hearing, ‘Emotion and unhappiness are so suppressed round here. I’m out of the habit of talking about anything much. I really am. It all has to be kept so quiet, no boat must be rocked, there’s no admitting that anyone’s at the end of their rope, no confessing to an inability to manage whatever’s thrown at you.’
Julian leaned forward a little. He said gently, ‘My dear—’
‘Please don’t tell me—’
‘I wasn’t going to tell you anything. I promise.’ He glanced up at Claire. ‘Is that coffee coming along? Alexa, I think the time has come, really, for you to tell me. Don’t you?’
Claire came forward and put three striped mugs on the table. ‘Tell him,’ she said.
Alexa glanced up at her. ‘Tell him?’
‘Tell him how it is. Tell him what you feel.’
‘But—’
‘Tell him,’ Claire said, ‘about going to see Walter. In Welfare.’
Alexa laughed.
‘That’s better,’ Julian said, relieved.
‘It was useless,’ Alexa said frankly.
‘Useless?’
‘He’s so nice. So kind. But he had nothing to say, nothing to offer me. Of course he hadn’t! And he hates the job. They all hate the job, when they have to do it.’
Julian said, a little stiffly, ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘You know it,’ Claire said to him crisply. ‘You all know it. No soldier wants to do Welfare. It’s seen as pansy. That’s why they don’t do it for very long. That’s why there’s no continuity.’
Julian looked down briefly at the table. ‘Ah,’ he said.
There was a small awkward silence, and then Claire put a coffee pot and a small jug of milk on the table, and Alexa said, with an abrupt rush of energy, ‘Actually—’
They both looked at her.
‘Actually, what?’
‘Actually,’ Alexa said, her voice gathering conviction, ‘I do have something to tell you. I do.’
She lifted her chin and looked past Julian’s well-brushed head to a poster on the wall of Van Gogh’s sunflowers, framed in black. ‘I went to London – and I – I was offered a house.’
‘A house!’
‘In London?’
‘Yes.’
‘Will you take it?’ Julian said.
Alexa transferred her gaze to his face. ‘I might,’ she said. She smiled. ‘I might do a lot of things.’
Claire eased herself very quietly into a chair at the end of the table.
‘And Dan?’ Julian said.
Claire nodded. She put her hands round her coffee mug. She didn’t speak, but there was something about her demeanour that Alexa felt was far from antagonistic.
Alexa smiled slightly at Julian. ‘You’d better ask him yourself,’ she said. ‘It’s no good asking me.’
When Alexa had gone, Julian Bailey followed his wife into her teaching room. She settled herself in front of her computer and he perched behind her, in a small red inflatable armchair intended for the children she was helping. They sat in silence for a while, Claire tapping on her keyboard, and then Julian said to her back, ‘Do you think she’s going to leave him?’
‘I have no idea. Why didn’t you ask her?’
‘God,’ Julian said, with sudden force. ‘I don’t know. Two of my best rising stars and their private lives are round their ankles! Gus and Kate. Now Dan and Alexa. I don’t want to sound like the judge who didn’t know who the Beatles were, but what the hell is going on?’
Claire stopped typing. She turned round and regarded Julian gravely. ‘What do you think? I mean, consider how the picture – the whole picture – has changed since your father and my father were army cadets. You know what’s going on, Jules.’
He sighed. He shifted himself tentatively in the inflatable chair. He said miserably, ‘I do. I do. For my old dad, in the Cold War, military duty was simple and honourable, but these discretionary fights aren’t the same. We choose them, they’re morally complicated, and we’re responsible for them. I know I have a unique duty of care as a result. I know it. I want it. I’m on duty for the brigade at all times, and yet here’s this girl telling me that my families welfare officer is useless—’
‘For her,’ Claire said.
‘She—’
‘She only said for her.’
‘What are you trying to tell me?’
Claire swivelled her desk chair round until she was facing him. It crossed her mind, briefly, that it might cheer some of Julian’s junior officers to see him so disadvantaged, crouching there in a red balloon chair meant for an eight-year-old. She put the thought firmly to one side and said, ‘I’m trying to tell you what Mrs Major Riley was trying to tell you. You can’t treat the men as if they didn’t have families. You can’t pour all this thought and all these resources into the soldiers if you don’t deal with their human landscapes too. You’ve got to open it all up. You’ve got—’
‘I’m running a brigade, Claire, not a therapy session.’
‘Soldiers are people. Their partners and children are people. Dan’s habit of diplomatically not telling his wife alarming things is infectious and she’s holding back from him now, too. There’s no encouragement to talk, everyone feels they’re letting themselves down if they do.’
Julian leaned out of the chair, causing it to squeak in protest. ‘You’ve never said this sort of thing before.’
Claire examined the nails of one hand. ‘Maybe I’ve never seen things the way I’ve seen them recently, before.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like these marriages. Like these wives who want careers, too, not just part-time jobs. Like – like what it’s like, frankly, living in a situation whose vocabulary simply does not include the word compromise.’
Julian put out a hand and grasped one of his wife’s. She gave his hand a quick squeeze and dropped it. He said, ‘Claire, where should I begin?’
She swung her chair back to her computer, and then she said to the screen, ‘I should start by going to see Alexa Riley again and asking for her help. It won’t do any harm to ask instead of telling, for a change.’
It was years since Jack Dearlove had been inside Elaine and Morgan’s flat. The last time, not long after Richard died, had admittedly been a bit of a strain, because Jack knew how much the Longworths were hoping he’d marry Alexa, and he knew even more certainly that she would never agree to it. He supposed he might, given a free rein, have married her if he’d been given the chance, and he supposed – quite often, actually, since then – that if they’d married, they’d have made quite a companionable go of it. But he thought, on balance, it was probably best that she, at least, had known her own mind. It was odd, now, to enter that luxurious, old-fashioned lift, in that luxurious, old-fashioned building, and recall that earlier Jack who’d last been there, full of an eager – it now seemed to him naïve – certainty that he could make a difference. To all of them.
Elaine Longworth looked exactly the same to him, careful and conventional, greeting him with just enough warmth to be more than polite, but without the enthusiasm that might take her into the badlands of being effusive. Morgan, wearing the kind of tweed jacket that made men of Jack’s shape look like comic characters out of P. G. Wodehouse, shook Jack warmly by the hand and led him to a cream sofa beside a glowing electric fire full of artificial coals, in front of a glass coffee table bearing an orchid in a porcelain pot and a precise stack of expensive books. Nothing had changed in the nine years. Nothing.
He looked round. ‘Nice to see some things can
be relied on!’
Elaine sat down opposite him. ‘We had Alexa and the twins here, mind you.’
‘I know.’
‘It was amazing how the flat coped with them.’
‘And amazing,’ Morgan said jovially, ‘how we did.’
Elaine looked at him frostily. ‘We loved it.’
‘Of course we did!’
‘It made the flat come alive, having them. They were so sweet. And funny. They looked adorable in bed.’
Morgan made a tipping gesture with one hand towards Jack. ‘Drink?’
Jack shook his head. ‘I’ve sworn off it for the moment.’
‘Good God,’ Morgan said. ‘What’s brought this on?’
Jack considered. He had promised himself that he would not mention Maia. He knew that if he mentioned her once, he was very likely to go on mentioning her, and in the course of all those mentions he would give away the fact that he was trying, desperately, to lose weight, in order – in order to be worthy of her.
He looked at Morgan, gave a rueful smile and patted his belly briefly.
‘Nonsense,’ Morgan said heartily.
‘Leave him alone,’ Elaine said.
Morgan tried again. ‘A very weak—’
‘No, thank you,’ Jack said. ‘Nothing.’ He touched the pocket of his leather jacket that contained his calorie counter, as if for reassurance.
Morgan said teasingly, ‘Glass of tonic?’
‘Leave it,’ Elaine said sharply. She turned to Jack and said, in quite a different tone of voice, ‘Thank you for coming, Jack.’
He ducked his head in acknowledgement.
‘It’s – it’s just that we’ve been so worried. Ever since Dan got back. Of course, we don’t want to interfere, but we’d like to help, if we can, if they’d like it too. We’d like—’ She stopped and glanced at Morgan, and then she said, ‘And we’ve had old Eric Riley on the phone.’
Jack sat up straighter. ‘Have you?’
‘He was so upset,’ Elaine said. ‘I couldn’t understand him at first, I couldn’t think what he was trying to say, he was half shouting, as he does, and it all came out backwards, but it was something to do with Alexa going to see them, taking my umbrella and forgetting it because they offered her money for a house or something, and all she did was burst into tears and rush off and there was my umbrella, still in Eric’s bathroom. Do – do you know anything about any of that?’
Jack sighed. He looked at the orchid. How much happier it would be if it were still in Thailand. ‘Yes,’ he said.
Elaine leaned forward. ‘So, it’s true.’
‘More or less.’
‘But the house,’ Morgan said. ‘This house …’
Jack said cautiously, ‘The Rileys were just trying to inject a bit of stability—’
‘Have they bought something?’
‘Oh no. No. They’ve just got some money put by, and George has done a bit of research.’
He smiled at Elaine. He didn’t want to tell her about meeting George, about their visit to the terraced house with its bay windows and seventy-foot garden, which George walked round with all the exclamatory optimism of an estate agent, pointing out the light and the ceiling heights and the proximity to Wimbledon Common. Jack had looked at the sad little kitchen and the antediluvian bathroom and sucked his teeth, and George had exclaimed over and over, ‘Nothing that can’t be fixed! Nothing can’t be fixed!’
He said now, ‘Like you, they couldn’t bear to do nothing.’
Elaine looked down at her hands. ‘It’s so hard …’
‘Yes,’ Jack said.
Morgan took his reading glasses out of his top pocket and jabbed them towards Jack. ‘And what, I wonder, have you said to her?’
Jack shifted a little. He said as vaguely as he could, ‘I just told her to get on with it.’
‘With what?’ Morgan said.
‘With deciding.’
Elaine glanced at Morgan. Then she said, ‘That’s what we’re afraid of.’
‘What is?’
‘That she will decide.’
‘Decide?’
Elaine looked at Morgan. He said, almost through clenched teeth, ‘She’ll decide to leave him.’
‘Leave him!’ Jack said. ‘Leave Dan?’
‘Yes.’
‘Never,’ Jack said. He felt his face grow hot. ‘That’s the whole bloody problem, excuse my French. She’ll never leave him. She adores him. It’s taken me a while to realize it, but that’s what it is.’ He looked at them both, turning his face from one to the other. ‘That is why – that is why she’s so stuck.’
When Julian Bailey had rung, Alexa had supposed that he was ringing to speak to Dan, so it had taken some minutes for him to get through to her that it was her he wished to see, her he wanted to speak to. When she at last understood him, she immediately felt apprehensive.
‘Can you tell me what it’s about?’
‘I would much rather be in your presence before I say anything further.’
Alexa had taken the call in her bedroom. She had gone upstairs to make the bed after the twins had had a prolonged post-breakfast jumping session on it. It looked as if the bedding had been stirred up by a giant spoon. She put a hand to her forehead. ‘I can’t quite think.’
‘I’d be so grateful if you could see me before Christmas. I’m sure you have plans for Christmas.’
‘I haven’t even thought about it,’ Alexa said, subsiding on to the edge of the bed. ‘I don’t even know where we’ll be.’
Julian let a small silence elapse and then he said, ‘I’d so appreciate just an hour …’
Alexa reached out and pulled a small green sock out of the tangle of bedclothes. ‘Perhaps tomorrow – tomorrow afternoon?’
‘I’ll be there,’ Julian said.
And now here he was. In the sitting room, leaning against Dan’s Union Jack cushion, refusing tea or coffee or even water, and waiting for Alexa to stop fidgeting about around him and focus on the reason for his coming. She had moved from the arm of the sofa to the seat, and then to a chair wedged against the television. The children were out, at Franny’s, to be part of a welcome-home celebration for Rupert and his brother. Dan had taken George behind the wire to see the new regimental gym. He hadn’t asked her why Julian was coming. He wouldn’t. She could see it in his face. He wouldn’t.
‘Settle,’ Julian said now. ‘Please.’
‘I feel,’ Alexa said, ‘that you’ve come to tick me off.’
Julian spread his hands. ‘That’s the last thing I’ve come to do. Please sit somewhere comfortable. That doesn’t look at all comfortable.’
‘It isn’t.’
‘Then move. Please.’
Alexa stood up. ‘Could we go into the kitchen?’
Julian rose too. ‘I’d be glad to.’
Alexa walked in front of him into the kitchen. Even as she moved, she felt better. Being in the kitchen gave her a kind of small authority and took the formality out of the meeting. She turned. ‘Now, will you have coffee?’
He shook his head. He said, ‘I want your attention.’
‘Why? What are you going to say to me?’
He said soberly, ‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘No. I’m here to ask you. I’m here to ask you what you want.’
‘You don’t mean it.’
‘I do,’ he said. ‘I do. What do you want?’
She turned away from him and looked out of the window. He was still standing behind her. She said, not entirely steadily, ‘You know about the negatives.’
‘I think I do.’
‘Do you want me to recite them again?’
‘Only,’ he said, surprisingly gently, ‘if you do.’
She turned back to look at him. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t. I’m exhausted by them. I’m worn out with battling against things I can’t change.’
He said nothing. He was plainly just waiting. It occurred to her suddenly that he might be a
very senior officer, he might – it was his job, after all – demand unquestioning obedience from his men, but he was a man, too; in a way he was just a man, standing there in his navy-blue cord trousers and rust-coloured sweater with his hands in the pockets of his waxed jacket, which she had omitted to ask him to take off and which he seemed to have forgotten he was still wearing. Clever, weathered, healthy face. Thinning hair. A man. A husband and father. Just a middle-aged man, in her kitchen.
‘I had a few days in London,’ Alexa said.
‘Ah.’
‘It didn’t change anything, not there and then. But since I got back …’
‘Yes?’
She said, not looking at him, ‘I’ve had an idea.’
He waited.
‘For – well, to help myself, but to help other people too. Army people. Army wives. And families.’
He leaned forward and rested his hands on the back of the nearest kitchen chair. He was looking at her now with a disconcerting focus. ‘Yes?’ he said again.
‘It isn’t enough, any more, just to follow the drum …’
‘I know that.’
‘And we can’t go on being marginalized by what our men do.’
‘I know that, too.’
Alexa made herself look straight at him. ‘I’d like to train to be what Walter Cummings and his ilk don’t want to be.’
Julian snapped upright. ‘Good heavens. You mean—’
‘I’d like to be the first female non-serving welfare officer in the British Army. The first of many, I hope.’
He spread his hands. ‘My dear girl—’
‘I need your help. Civilian women helping Army women.’
He regarded her. He said, ‘But Dan—’
‘It’s my kind of compromise,’ she said quickly. ‘And if you think I’m a radical kind of Army wife, women like Freddie Stanford’s girlfriend will make us lot look like dinosaurs.’ She paused and then she said, ‘Those bright girls your bright boys want to marry just won’t put up with things as they are.’
He said slowly, ‘And nor will you?’
‘No. Not if I want to stay married. And I do.’
‘Good,’ he said emphatically.
‘But I can’t live any longer with no settled home and Isabel so miserable and—’
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