Driving past several long abandoned second- world-war airfields in East Anglia last year I was struck by how spooky they seemed, just like the decommissioned army base that used to exist near me. Places where people have not only lived and worked but which form the background of wartime drama, and from which men went to their deaths, are bound to be haunted, and in Helen Dunmore’s short novel, it is an airfield that once saw Lancaster Bombers fly out into the night that forms a ghostly scene.
Isabel is newly married to a doctor, Philip, and the two have moved to Yorkshire where he is now a GP. It is the early 1950s, the country is still redolent of wartime hardships, ration books, nasty linoleum in rented flats and nosey landladies. It is the landlady who walks up and down the flat above theirs who causes the first intrusion into what should be a blissful early married life. Why does she walk like that? Ghosts pace up and down, but when she is cross-questioning Isabel, or repeating the petty house rules to her, this woman is all too real and substantial.
The place is cold, coke is strictly rationed, and the bed, especially when Philip goes off on night calls, is icy. Then Isabel, hunting for extra blankets, finds an old greatcoat hidden at the back of the wardrobe and puts it on the bed. At once, she is warm and comfortable and sleeps deeply. But the greatcoat was once worn by a young airman, who comes to the window and taps on it when Isabel is alone. Soon, he is taking her out to the airfield on his motorbike.
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