D-Notice by Bill Walker (big ebook reader txt) 📗

recent air raids had collapsed a tube tunnel while she’d been on her way home. He cursed himself for listening to Brady and not coming home at the first opportunity. But he knew no amount of self-recriminations would bring her back if she were—he forced himself to form the word in his mind—dead. Still, she might only be hurt, might be lying in one of the hospitals.

He picked up the phone and dialed the operator.

“Yes, hello. Would you connect me with St. Thomas Hospital, please?”

The operator took a long, agonizing moment to make the connection, which was filled with static.

“Hello? I can’t hear you? Is anyone there?” a woman asked.

The voice had a light brogue, reminding Thorley of Brady. “Um, yes,” he said, dreading the question he was about to ask. “Has a Lillian Thorley been admitted?”

“Oh, dear,” she said, making Thorley’s heart seize for a split second. “Let me see...no, there’s no one by that name on the list. Of course, we’ve had a lot of people come in from last night’s raid, you see. We haven’t had too much time to identify the dead. Did your wife carry any identification?”

“Yes, she always carries something with her name and address on it, especially now.”

“Well, you can’t be too careful, nowadays, dearie. If you call back after seven this morning, the admissions list will have been updated. If she’s here, she’ll be on it by then.”

Frustrated, Thorley broke the connection. This time he called King’s College, Dulwich, Westminster, and University College Hospitals. None had a record of admission for a Lillian Thorley. With the greatest of difficulty, he’d then asked about the casualties, the ones lying in cold storage. Again, he was told they had no record of Lillian being among the dead. As relieved as he was to hear this, it made his mood even more frantic. Where the bloody hell was she?

He reached up and rubbed the spot above his right brow where a tiny throbbing had begun. A glance at his watch with its glowing radium dial told him that it was now approaching half past three. He’d been home slightly more than an hour and he still knew nothing more than when he’d arrived. He would wait. The ship sailed at 7:00, and if he left no later than six, he would make it. Just barely.

Yawning, he went into the kitchen and put the kettle on for a pot of tea, then made himself a slice of bread with marmalade. When it was ready, he took it into the sitting room and sipped it, his eye on the front door.

He must have dozed, for the sound of a car door slamming awakened him. He saw that the light in the room was gray, rather than black. What time was it? His watch read 5:15. He sprang to his feet, went to the window and saw a large black Daimler just pulling away, a diplomatic “C.D.” plate on its rear. It pulled out of sight too fast to see more. But it was the sight of his wife dressed to the hilt in an evening dress that made his heart pound and his body break out in a cold sweat.

When she approached the front door, he faded back into the sitting room, suddenly feeling an irrational urge to hide. He fought it, standing his ground and listening for the scrape of her key in the lock. He watched the doorknob turn and the door swing inward, her silhouetted form a dark gray against the haze of dawn flooding through the open doorway. His hands trembled, and his mouth tasted of ashes.

“Hello, Lillian.”

The look of terror and guilt on her face spoke more eloquently than the contents of a thousand volumes.

“M—Michael, my God, you startled me!”

She ran to him, then embracing him. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming home? I—I thought you were in Egypt.” He stood there, stiff, as if at attention, watching her silently.

“Where have you been, Lillian? I thought something had happened to you, I called the hospitals, I was bloody frantic.”

She disengaged and stood back from him, the look of guilt coming back on her face. She started to speak, and Thorley held up a hand. “No, don’t even try. I saw the car. Whose is it?”

Her lips began to tremble, and she rushed past him and up the stairs. The room had brightened even more since she’d arrived, telling him that his time was short. But he wasn’t about to leave without having it out. Let them court-martial me, he thought.

He took the stairs two at a time and entered the bedroom to find her seated on the bed facing the windows. The sky was reddening, making the room resemble some hellish scene from out of a Bosch painting. She spoke without turning around.

“I never meant to hurt you, Michael.... I suppose you’ll want a divorce.”

He rounded the bed and knelt down in front of her. Tears had smudged her makeup, making her look like a little girl who’d raided her mother’s vanity case. “How long has it been going on?”

She met his eyes for a brief moment, then looked back down at her hands, unable to bear the look she saw in them.

“Five years.”

This rocked him. “You’ve been sleeping with this man since before we met?”

She nodded quickly, a sob escaping her throat.

“Then why on God’s earth did you marry me?” he asked, a part of him not really wanting to know.

“Because I loved you, Michael. I still do.”

“Then why, for Christ’s sake?”

She forced herself to look at him, her eyes like that of a frightened doe. “Because I—” she halted, closing her eyes