The Soldier's Wife Read Online Free PDF Page A

typical bloody soldier, she might have thought. Why would I need one of them when I’ve got my nice civvy husband already?
    But then the poor bugger had died, hadn’t he? And horribly, from this tumour on the brain. And there was Alexa, trying to look after her little girl, trying to hold down her teaching job, trying not to ask her parents for help, and she goes to this party, not in a good mood, and there’s our Dan, standing by the wall, drink in his hand, eyeing up the talent, and he spots her as soon as she comes in, and he thinks, that one’s got my name on, and he waits and watches and waits and watches, and blow me if she doesn’t bloody well come right up to him and ask him if there’s something he wants. Wants?
Wants?
When what he wants is standing there right in front of him? Bloody marvellous.
    There’d been much debate as to where Dan should bringAlexa to meet his father and grandfather. George’s austere little flat had been dismissed as having all the domestic charm of a hospital waiting room, and the café in Elys, which Eric so favoured, would indicate that they didn’t have a home to take her to. So it was a teatime occasion, in the end, in Eric’s flat, with Eric’s teacups, and a plate of cakes from the French patisserie at the top of the High Street, all a bit uncomfortable, a bit awkward, until Alexa produced a bottle of whisky from her bag and set it down without comment next to Eric’s teapot.
    George thought he’d probably fallen in love with her at that moment. He knew his father had. And Dan was so deep in already he was almost drowning. George had looked at the four of them, sitting round the whisky and grinning, and felt suddenly, recklessly, that all the pains of the past, all the loneliness and anxiety and disappointment, had been swept away by the presence of this young woman and her – her sheer
style
. When he looked at Dan, the lad seemed to have a glow round him. A captain already, and soon – no doubt about it – to be beiged for a major. And now this girl, pouring whisky into Eric’s late wife’s sherry glasses and licking cake crumbs off her fingers. Her father was something in the Foreign Office, her mother – well, she was one of those ladies who knew how to arrange flowers and talk comfortably to strangers about nothing, from the sound of her. Meeting them might not be something any of the Rileys exactly looked forward to, but, hell, what did that matter? And if they could produce a girl like this, he could forgive them anything. He’d raised his whisky glass and looked at Alexa over it. ‘Here’s to you, ma’am,’ he’d said, and meant it.
    As it turned out, the meeting between the Rileys and Alexa’s parents was quite successful. Dan refused to get worked up about it, saying that his future parents-in-law were justlike the Army great and good who came to the regimental drinks parties the garrison held at Christmas – ‘You know the type, Dad.’ Eric wanted to wear his suit, so George wore his, too, in case his father looked out of place; but when they got there, to this very classy flat in a vast building on the Marylebone Road – small but formal, with little sofas and a lot of lilies – Alexa’s father was in a jacket and tie and her mother was in pearls, so the suits looked appropriate. Alexa, bless her heart, was in jeans and a velvet jacket, and her little Isabel was in gumboots which she refused to take off. Her grandmother said things like ‘Not on the sofa, darling’ quite often, but neither Alexa nor Isabel seemed to take any notice, and when Morgan Longworth offered George a drink, Alexa said, ‘Don’t do your global cocktail act on George, Pa. He drinks beer or whisky,’ and Morgan, smoothly, not batting an eyelash, said, ‘Sensible man.’
    Eric had asked for tea.
    Dan said easily, ‘Granddad doesn’t drink in