The Greatcoat by Helen Dunmore Page A

afternoon.
    ‘Better get a move on. I can take you back on the bike, Issy.’
    She fastened Syd’s jacket and put on the helmet as they crossed the fields to the lane. Now she felt bolder. She was Alec’s girl, who rode pillion on his bike . But as they came out of the hut, Isabel heard the sound that had haunted her childhood: a Lanc’s engines – Merlin engines. An engine caught, then roared into life. And then the next, and then the next, and then the next. Port outer, port inner, starboard inner, starboard outer. The engines roared at full throttle, then the sound eased and died back.
    ‘That’ll be N-Nora,’ said Alec.
    ‘You can’t know that!’
    ‘She’s had repairs to the port outer. They’re testing,’ he explained, as if to a child, but she saw that he was already more than half over the border into his own country beyond the wire, in the engine noise, knowing what every reverberation meant. The intensity of his listening seemed to pull the sound towards them.
    ‘You’ve got to go,’ she said, before he could say it.
    ‘Yes.’
    But he stood irresolute, his eyes on her. She realised that he was waiting for something, and then she knew what it was; nothing high-flown, just the jacket he’d borrowed for her from one of his crew. ‘You’ll need this,’ she said, stripping off Syd’s jacket. ‘Here.’ She was already pulling off the leather helmet.
    ‘You won’t be cold?’
    There was something graceless in the way he asked the question, as if it didn’t much matter whether she was cold or not. She was suddenly not quite real to him . Isabel shivered with the sudden lifting-off of the warm sheepskin lining, and with the sense of her own self suddenly ghost-like. Alec’s mind must be elsewhere; surely he wouldn’t leave her like this otherwise, in the middle of nowhere, without a coat. ‘Feel how thick my jumper is,’ she said, wanting to make something better of it than the reality. ‘I’ll be warm as toast. I’ll go back across the fields.’
    Alec folded the jacket, tucked the helmet inside and strapped it to the carrying rack. ‘You sure?’
    ‘Sure.’
    He swung himself onto his motorbike and kicked down on the starter. He was leaving. She reached out, and touched the leather of his jacket, as if for luck, but he didn’t notice. As the bike moved forward he gave her a thumbs-up, and then the wheels spun in the dry mud and he was gone.
    The roar of his bike vanished instantly, as if cut off. Wintry quiet enveloped her. Dry leaves rustled where they had drifted at the foot of the hedge, and the same thrush hopped through the undergrowth. She’d need to get going. She had to walk back to town, and by the time she got there it would be dusk.
    But Isabel did not turn in the direction of the town. Instead, she walked the other way, towards the airfield. She had to see it again.
    There was no sound of aircraft. No vehicles passed her. The lane was narrow and overgrown. She walked steadily, keeping her eyes down until she had rounded the lane’s curve and knew that if she looked up she would be able to see the broken wire and the huge emptiness of the airfield.
    She heard an engine behind her. Almost as soon as she heard it, the lorry was on her. It swept past with its canvas-covered load, so close that it grazed her sleeve. The driver didn’t even sound his horn. She jumped back, and as she did so a second lorry passed, and then a third. She waited, pressed against the hedge, while the convoy passed. There must have been ten lorries. She saw their drivers’ faces, tired and indifferent, pushing on. The smell of exhaust gripped her throat. She was trembling. The lorries had ploughed past as if she were nothing. The men didn’t glance at her.
    But still she was drawn onwards, towards the perimeter fence. Suddenly the air filled with sound, as if someone had turned up the volume switch on a radio which had been playing, muted, all the while. She heard engines, and, above the noise of