The Soldier's Wife Read Online Free PDF

other people’s houses.’
    â€˜On principle?’ Elaine Longworth said archly.
    Eric, ramrod straight in his suit, looked at her and smiled. ‘If I’m going to make a bloody fool of myself, ma’am, I’d rather do it in my own home.’
    After they’d gone – Alexa declining to reveal where Dan was taking her and Isabel – Morgan Longworth gave his wife enough time to plump up all her handsome cushions and then he said, ‘Well?’
    Elaine straightened. She put her hands on her hips. She said, not looking at Morgan, ‘Not sure what I was expecting …’
    â€˜But?’
    â€˜I don’t think I’ve ever had three such good-looking men all together in my drawing room before.’
    Morgan waited. He picked up Eric’s teacup and George’s whisky tumbler.
    â€˜Of course—’ Elaine began and stopped.
    â€˜I know.’
    â€˜Richard was … well, better educated. More … more sophisticated.’
    â€˜Certainly,’ Morgan said.
    He took the cup and the glass out to the sleek little galley kitchen. When he came back, Elaine had picked up one of the cushions and was holding it against her, as if for comfort. She said, ‘I couldn’t help liking them.’
    â€˜Especially the old man. Didn’t he remind you of Bombardier Prout?’
    â€˜In Hong Kong? Yes, exactly. Do – do you think she’ll be safe with him?’
    â€˜With Dan? As houses.’
    â€˜But this Army thing. We saw so much of it, didn’t we? Yearning for a settled home, not knowing whether to be with the husband or the children—’
    Morgan adjusted the glass coffee table one inch. ‘Just like us, then.’
    â€˜We weren’t—’
    â€˜We were. I remember you were in a frightful state when Lex had to board.’
    Elaine put the cushion back at a precise angle to its pair. ‘You didn’t like it either.’
    â€˜I hated it,’ Morgan said. ‘Poor little girl. First an only child and then sent off to boarding school in a wretched climate.’
    â€˜She was an only child,’ Elaine said on a dangerously rising note, ‘because I was forty when we married and forty-two when she arrived. She was something of a
miracle
.’
    Morgan threaded his way between the sofa and the coffee table so that he could put an arm round his wife’s shoulders. ‘My observation was not meant as an accusation. You know that. She was a miracle indeed. And,’ he said, increasing thepressure of his arm, ‘you were loyally following me all over the place.’
    There was a small silence, in which both of them did a little diverse remembering. Morgan recalled – as he often did, pleasedly, privately – the one time he had achieved deputy head of mission, in Jakarta, and the very brief period, in Paris – Paris! – when he had stood in as a minister at the Embassy, during someone else’s illness. Elaine, in the circle of her husband’s arm, remembered the unspoken reason, all those long travelling diplomatic years, for persistently accepting posts overseas. If Morgan was overseas, he was graded as an A2 – he loved that – which would not have been the case had he remained at a desk job in the Foreign Office in London. She also remembered, after a brief battle with self-control that always accompanied the recollection, that except for two briefly glorious temporary appointments in Jakarta and Paris, Morgan had, more often than not, been a counsellor. Three years here, three years there – Athens, Hong Kong, Reykjavik, Buenos Aires, all over the place. She swallowed. Morgan was seventy-eight, now, and she was seventy-six, and there was absolutely no point in wishing that their lives had been either different or more candid.
    She moved, very slightly, to elude Morgan’s arm, and said, ‘Dan’s done very well. In the Army.’
    â€˜And weren’t they