The Greatcoat Read Online Free PDF

by the bed, wanting to kiss her, hesitating just too long. He loved to see the curve of Isabel’s body in the bed, but the coat blotted her out. She hadn’t even tried to get up, make a cup of tea, do anything.
    ‘Goodbye,’ he said.
    ‘Will you be late?’
    ‘Probably,’ he said, and regretted it as soon as he was in the car.

Chapter Three
    WHEN ISABEL WENT out into the hall with her shopping bag, the landlady was already there. Her hair was bundled in a scarf and she held a bottle of bleach in her hand, as if she were intending to clean the cloakroom. Isabel faced her.
    ‘I found a coat in one of the cupboards,’ she said.
    ‘What kind of coat would that be?’
    The woman must know perfectly well.
    ‘An RAF greatcoat. If it’s not in use, I’d like to put it on our bed. There aren’t enough blankets.’
    ‘I’ve never had any complaint about the blankets,’ said the landlady automatically. Her eyes were avid on Isabel. The odd thing was that she didn’t seem surprised. She looked satisfied, as if she had eaten something good.
    ‘Of course, if you need it yourself …’ said Isabel.
    ‘I don’t want it,’ said the landlady slowly. ‘You’re welcome to it. I should have thrown it away years ago. It’s nothing but a nuisance to me.’
    How could it be a nuisance, thought Isabel in irritation, stuffed away at the back of a cupboard in a flat where you don’t even live? Mean old bitch.
    ‘Then we’ll use it,’ she said aloud.
    ‘You do that, Mrs Carey.’ It was the first time the landlady had given Isabel her name. How old she looked today; or not old exactly, but drawn, exhausted. She had done everything to obliterate her looks until she was scarcely a woman at all. Even the shoes she wore were brogues that could have belonged to a man. She rose up from them in a stiff grey column. Perhaps she’d been different when Mr Atkinson was alive. I should feel sorry for her, thought Isabel, but there was still that troubling glint of satisfaction in the landlady’s eyes.
    ‘Did you have RAF lodgers here during the war?’
    ‘Why do you ask?’
    ‘Because of the coat.’
    ‘That coat’s got nothing to do with anything. They all lived out at the airfield. I should have thought you’d have known that.’ The landlady’s lips were tight. Why did everything make her so angry?
    ‘It must have been a worry, living so close to the minster during the bombing,’ probed Isabel. The great soaring bulk of the minster would have been a prime target for a Baedeker raid. Isabel had already heard that there’d been raids on the town. An airman had been killed on his bicycle, and then the cinema had caught it, but if they were aiming for the minster they had never succeeded in hitting it.
    ‘All that’s over and done with,’ said the landlady, and Isabel felt herself flush, as if caught out in ignoble curiosity.
    She went to the shops. She liked the market, with its rich heaps of vegetables and the freedom to walk from stall to stall, although the stall-keepers’ accents were so strong that often she could not make out what they were saying. Consequently she bought in a hurry, almost at random, to get the ordeal over. The other women with their shopping bags and baskets intimidated her. They were so sure of themselves, so sharp and sparing with words. When two or three of them had their heads together, Isabel walked past with her own head held high, certain that they were talking about her. She looked all wrong. Too young, too soft, too southern. Once, a big, foursquare, head-scarved woman rose up to defend Isabel when the fishmonger’s assistant picked out for her a particularly limp, dull-eyed pair of herring. ‘Now then, Joe, you don’t want to go giving her those, it’s the new doctor’s wife.’
    Isabel had not known how to thank her, torn as she was between relief and humiliation. Next time, she swore, she would stand up for herself. She nodded, feeling the colour wash over her face, and the