The Greatcoat Read Online Free PDF Page A

dressing gown off the floor, pulled it on and tied the cord tightly.
    All this while, Philip slept. She went to the door that led through into the bedroom. Light fell on the bed, but he did not stir. She felt her heart tighten, as if he were a child, sleeping there in his innocence, oblivious to the light, to the noise of the coat falling, to Isabel herself. She crept closer to the bedside. His face looked carved in stillness. She could barely hear him breathe. He had flung up one arm behind his head and he lay on his back, occupying the bed as if Isabel had no place in it, or in his dreams. The telephone squatted beside him blackly, like a toad. If it rang, she knew his eyes would snap open and he would begin to speak sensibly, professionally, asking questions, listening intently, almost before he could have begun to think. It was a miracle to her how Philip could come back to himself, shrugging away the place of sleep that too often held Isabel like a hostage, even in the middle of the day.
    She stood watching him for a long time, half fearing that her gaze would wake him, half afraid that it would not. At last she spread the coat on her side of the bed, laying claim to it. As if he felt its touch, Philip stirred and rolled away from her and from the greatcoat. He was on his side, still sleeping, with an armful of blanket heaved over his shoulder.
    The lino was icy. She shouldn’t have left her slippers in the other room. Shuddering, Isabel eased her cold self between the sheets. The greatcoat came down over her, moulding itself to her, pressing her into the mattress.
    She woke with light in her eyes like splinters. Philip had pulled the curtains back and was standing by the window, fixing his cufflinks.
    ‘You brute,’ grumbled Isabel.
    ‘It’s ten to eight. I’m off in a minute. What is that thing on the bed?’
    ‘I found it in the cupboard. I was freezing.’
    He came close and peered at it. ‘Good lord. Where on earth has that come from?’
    Isabel recognised the echo of Dr Ingoldby’s voice and phrasing. Philip was going up in the world, she thought to herself, and then quenched the thought for its disloyalty.
    ‘Mrs Atkinson’s cupboard. Do you think she’d mind?’
    ‘I shouldn’t think so. If she cared about it, she’d have kept it with her, upstairs.’
    ‘So do you think it’s all right to put it on the bed? She won’t go mad with rage when she next sneaks in here to have a poke around when I’m out?’
    ‘For heaven’s sake, Is, it weighs a ton and it must be full of dust.’
    ‘I like it. It’s cosy.’
    ‘Besides, what do you mean about Mrs A. poking about?’
    ‘I’m sure she does. Everything looks wrong sometimes, when I come back. As if someone’s moved things, and been very careful to put them back in the right places, but not quite careful enough. No, that’s not quite right – it’s as if someone’s moved them where
they
think things should be, not where we put them. She’s bound to have a key.’
    ‘I’ll have a word with her.’
    ‘No! No, Phil, you’re not to! You don’t have to live with her all the time. You don’t know what she’s like.’
    ‘I think you’re getting all this a bit out of proportion, Is.’
    ‘Do you?’
    She peered at him over the sheet, her eyes brilliant. How odd the coat looked from this angle, he thought. But it was just a trick of the light.
    ‘I’m keeping it,’ Isabel announced. ‘She can lump it. If she’s too mean to provide enough blankets in this morgue, what does she expect?’
    The word struck Philip in the stomach. But she doesn’t know, he thought, it’s just a word to her. She has never entered a morgue.
This is our home
, he wanted to protest, but instead he said, ‘We’re getting those logs at the weekend.’
    ‘I know.’
    Her eyes followed him as he put on his jacket and collected his case and coat. She couldn’t have looked at him more proudly if he were her well-brushed child, ready to go to school. He stood