Rain fell in torrents out of a gunmetal sky while the squad stood braced at attention, the fifty-pound packs on their backs growing heavier by the second. The Sergeant Major, a stocky bantam rooster with an acne-scarred face and a penchant for smoking stinking cigars, paced back and forth in front of them, screaming out expletives in a gravelly tenor, the cords on his neck standing out like white stalks against the dark brown of his leathery skin. His beady black eyes glittered with a kind of mad glee that made Thorley wonder if the man wasn’t shy a marble or two. Certainly, the prospect of a five-mile double-time march through the woods—the second that day—was not the product of a balanced mind.
“...And I bloody swear to God in his bloody infinite wisdom, that I have never seen such a bunch of lazy tarts in all me life. For two fucking weeks we’ve made this goddamned march, and you’re still fagging out like a bunch of fucking infants before we’ve even gone halfway. Good bloody Christ, my own mother could make this march faster than you girlies! Well, let me tell you this, you worthless strings of piss, you will do this march twice a day until you make it, or so help me, I will rip off your bleeding heads and crap down your necks! Is that clear?”
“YES, SERGEANT MAJOR,” they all screamed in unison, their voices already showing the strains of having shouted this many times.
Thorley felt a wave of dizziness wash over him, and he fought to maintain his rigid stance as the rain beat a steady tattoo on his helmet.
He was so bloody tired.
It seemed that, aside from the routine workouts, part of the conditioning involved sleep deprivation. Up at the crack of dawn, they were kept running from one activity to another until they fell into their bunks at 9:00 p.m., exhausted.
There was the two hours of calisthenics every morning, followed by two hours of rifle practice. Thorley didn’t mind the weapons training so much; in fact, he rather liked the idea of trying to better his score every day. And after four weeks of intensive daily training, his skills had become considerable: he was one of the few in the squad who’d made Marksman.
But what he couldn’t stand was the constant verbal assault. He couldn’t see how this made a man tougher. All it did was wear him down, day after day after day. Then again, it made perfect sense. The army didn’t want someone with spirit and initiative, they wanted an automaton that followed orders.
Thorley pushed those thoughts from his mind when he realized the Sergeant Major had asked a question. Then he realized those tiny obsidian eyes were burning holes through him.
“So glad you could join us, you bloody git, sir!”
There it was, the “sir” spliced in before or after every choice piece of invective. Because Thorley was an officer, the Sergeant Major could not just spew his venom without paying obeisance to his rank. Somehow, the addition of that simple appellation made the rest all right in the eyes of the military. It was just one more bit of craziness in a maelstrom of insanity.
“See, Ladies,” the Sergeant Major continued, “we’ve got ourselves a dreamer, here. Fancies himself quite the soldier, he does.” The Sergeant Major stalked over to Thorley, placing his battered nose mere inches from his own, the pores of his skin looking like lunar craters.
“Sir, you are a lazy, good for nothing turd, who spends far too much of his time using his tiny brain to dream about pulling his pud instead of learning how to save his worthless life and the lives of his fellow turds! Am I getting through to you, sir?”
“Yes, Sergeant Major Bell!” Thorley shouted.
“Good! Then get down and give me thirty pushups, you scumsucking shit—sir!”
Without a second thought, Thorley threw himself down into the mud and began doing pushups, counting them off one by one. The pack on his back, now soaked with the rain, felt twice as heavy, making each pushup excruciating.
It was hard to believe he’d been at Sandhurst for almost a month. Somehow it seemed longer, as if he’d spent half his life there. He let his mind drift back to his goodbyes with Lillian at Victoria Station. He’d told her that he loved her, and when she began to sob even harder, that of course he would return. And that was why he didn’t protest when Sir Basil had told him that he’d be going to Sandhurst for a foreshortened course in basic training. He wanted to prove to himself that he could do it. He also wanted to learn as much as he possibly could about being a soldier. The Sergeant Major was wrong about him in that one respect. He didn’t dream, he watched...and learned.
In another week, he would leave for Egypt for a stint at Abbassia Barracks in Cairo, where he would learn desert survival techniques at the Officer Cadet Training Unit. From there, it was on to his assignment as Chief Translator attached to the Long Range Desert Group, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Guy Prendergast. The prospect both excited and frightened him, for no matter how much he professed to want it, he still wasn’t at all sure that he would pass muster.
Completing his last pushup, he sprang to his feet and resumed his position in line. The Sergeant Major gave him a curt nod. “Very good, Major Thorley, now perhaps you’ll lead this march. ALL RIGHT, you gits! Squad...right turn...by the left...Quick march!”
The march lasted for two hours, and Thorley was gasping and wheezing by the time he reached the finish line among the first group to finish. Too winded to care that he’d finally come in first instead of last, he flopped onto the ground and tried to keep from passing out. All he wanted was to lie there and let the rain wash the last vestiges of mud and sweat off his face. But the Sergeant Major had other ideas.
“Get off your bloody arses, you tarts! Do you want to puke your guts out, too? On your feet, NOW!”
Everyone groaned and rose to their feet.
Brady, a rangy Irishman with a shock of carroty hair and a crooked grin, turned to Thorley and whispered, “To know him is to love him, eh what?”
Thorley smiled. In school, Corwin Brady would have been known as the class clown, always offering the witty remark or the pithy observation that had escaped everyone’s notice.
But Thorley had to admit he admired Brady, because the man had no fear. He’d done something Thorley would never have done: come right up to Thorley on the train to Sandhurst and introduced himself.
At first, Thorley felt put off. All he’d wanted was to keep to himself. But later, after he’d listened to a few of Brady’s raunchy pub stories, he realized that the only reason he’d wanted to be alone was because he was scared of what lay ahead. Brady made him laugh that fear right out of his head. Later, once they’d settled into the routine at Sandhurst, Brady proved to be a good friend and a staunch ally against Sergeant Major Bell’s never-ending tirade.
“And I think you should be the one to tell him, Brady, maybe with a bouquet of petunias.”
“Now there’s a pretty thought,” he replied with a characteristic chuckle.
After the last stragglers stumbled to the finish line, Sergeant Major Bell ordered them all to the showers and then to mess. For the third night in a row it was bangers and mash, along with limp cabbage and tea with milk. Sugar, regrettably, had been an early casualty of the war. Thorley longed for Lillian’s deft hand in the kitchen, though Brady seemed in his element.
“Cabbage is in our blood,” he said. “It’s the Irish national flower.”
“I thought it was the Shamrock.”
Brady scowled. “That’s just for the tourists. It’s the bloody cabbage.”
“You’re round the bend, Brady,” Thorley laughed. “You’ve had too much of the national drink.”
“There is that.” Brady winked and took another mouthful of cabbage. “I’ve been meanin’ to ask you something, if I may. And you can tell me to go to hell if you like, but why’s a man like you, a major no less, sweatin’ along with us subs and lieutenants? I would’ve thought you’d have done this a long while ago. Did you tell the wrong general to piss off, now?”
Thorley felt a glimmer of panic. It was one of the reasons he’d wanted to remain aloof from the others in his squad. He decided to tell as much of the truth as he could, knowing that this would be easier to recall than an outright fabrication.
“I got tired of working behind a desk, so I volunteered.”
“Spoken like a true patriot. But you can’t fool me, Thorley, you volunteered because of them, didn’t you?”
His expression must have said it all, because Brady leaned forward, his manner becoming conspiratorial. “You know what I mean. Them.... The ones who give you the looks as if to say, ‘How dare you stay here where it’s safe. Why aren’t you in uniform?’ Sound familiar?”
This was hitting far too close to home for comfort. Thorley stared into the remains of his food.
“I thought as much,” Brady said. “Well, it was familiar to me, too, boyo. Believe me, you, I know exactly what it feels like.”
Thorley looked up, intrigued. “What were you doing before this?”
“Me? I own a pub in Dublin, called the Golden Shamrock. Where do you think I got all those stories? Surely you don’t think I spent all my time there just for pleasure, do you? Business was boomin’. But more and more as the times got rougher, fewer and fewer of me regulars were comin’ in, and soon those that were began to ask me: ‘Corwin, me boy, when are you going to fight for the Green?’ They never would have said Britain, you see. That would have been too hard on an Irishman’s pride. But with so many of us spyin’ for the Jerries, the rest of us got our dander up. It’s all right for us to piss on you Brits, but that’s ‘cause your ours. It ain’t right to have the Jerries hang you out to dry, ‘cause as sure as there’s blarney in Ireland, we’d be next. So, I decided to come over and join up. And the only reason I’m here is because I went to the University of Dublin. They must have figured if I’m that smart I must be lieutenant material. What rubbish!”
Thorley grinned through a mouthful of sausage. “I never asked you what unit you’re being assigned to.”
“The Long Range Desert Group, sir!” he said snapping off a mock salute. “Holy Mother of God, it’ll be nothing but snotty Oxonians and Scotsmen!”
“And me.”
Brady’s face split into a grin. “Well, now, that’s the first sensible thing I’ve seen the army do.”
The final week of Thorley’s training was spent in the classroom and on the field, square bashing for their final parade. At week’s end, after a small ceremony where the others in the squad received their commissions, Thorley and Brady packed up their gear and reported to the train station in town. There they waited for over two hours for the train to arrive.
“Some of the lines are up after last night’s raid,” the stationmaster had stated when asked.
Unconcerned, they spent the time playing cards and talking about their life outside the army. Once again, Thorley avoided saying much about his job at the Foreign Office, making it sound as tedious as possible, prompting Brady to comment. “It’s no wonder you volunteered, me boy. Sounds like you were about to go crackers.”
When the train chugged into the station, they found the only seats left were in the last car. Filled with smoke and the laughter of other servicemen, Thorley suddenly felt out of place. He remembered Lillian’s words of admonishment: You could have refused.
His eyes scanned the crowd of uniforms and the flush of excitement on their young faces, and he realized there were tears in his eyes. Some of these boys, a lot of them, would never see Christmas this year.
“You okay, Mikey?”
Thorley turned and saw Brady had somehow managed to come up with a bottle of scotch whisky and two reasonably clean glasses.
Thorley nodded, blinking back the tears. “Too much smoke in here,” he said.
“After a couple of these, you’ll be as right as rain. It’s not from the old sod, but it’ll still put hair on your chest.” He laughed and handed Thorley one of the glasses, pouring in a generous amount of the amber liquor.
The train ride was spent in a delightful fog with Brady regaling the carload of soldiers with more of his inexhaustible anecdotes. They arrived at Victoria by nightfall. Their orders told them to report to their ship for transport by 0700 the next morning. That left almost twelve hours of liberty. Thorley wanted to go home to Lillian, but Brady cautioned him against it. “She’s already said her goodbyes, Mikey. You’d only be throwin’ fat onto the fire by showin’ up for one night out of the blue like that.”
While his words held a certain logic, Thorley’s heart rebelled. He wanted to hold her in his arms one last time, he told Brady. For what if it were exactly that—the last time?
“Then you’ll never know,” Brady replied. “And your wife will always have her memories. Now, come on, you old sod. We’re young and alive, and it’s time we showed the world what’s what!”
Still feeling guilty, Thorley allowed himself to be taken on a tour of Soho dives straight out of a bad B-movie. He drank more than he wanted to and as the night wore on, he regretted his decision not to see Lillian. He left Brady occupied with a couple of painted-up tarts and took a taxi straight to Brixton. It deposited him on his doorstep at precisely 2:15 a.m. The Morgan was parked out front, and house was dark, which of course came as no surprise. But he did notice that none of the blackout shades had been pulled. That was strange.
Using his key, he let himself in, closing the door behind him with a soft click of the latch. He knew something was wrong immediately. It was too bloody quiet.
Resisting the urge to call out, he crept up the stairs, grateful that they’d never thought to have a gun in the house. But when he reached the top of the stairs, his unease increased. The bedroom door was ajar. One of Lillian’s little quirks was to always close the door upon their retiring. The first couple of times she’d done it he’d laughed, claiming, rightfully so, that they were all alone in the house and that no one was about to walk in on their intimate moments. And while she had never been a prude, she put it down to childhood fears that had never released their hold on her. She simply slept better with it closed.
Seeing it yawning open now brought a chill to Thorley’s heart, and abandoning caution, he ran into their bedroom, expecting to see the worst: her body on the floor twisted into some horrific pose of death. Somehow, what he found was worse: an undisturbed bed, everything in its place, like some sterile tableau in the home of a famous person long dead, preserved to convey the impression that they’d only just left the room.
Feeling woozy from the scotch he’d consumed with Brady, Thorley sat on the bed and tried to sort out the clutter of thoughts flooding his mind. Lillian was an orphan with no living relatives, so she could not be visiting any family. The only friends they had were university friends, faculty members they’d socialized with as a matter of decorum. On more than one occasion Lillian had remarked as to how stuffy and venal they all were, especially the wives.
I must be really drunk, he thought. She’s in the bloody air raid shelter.
Thorley retraced his steps downstairs, went through the kitchen, and out into the backyard. The “Anderson Shelter,” a structure of corrugated steel, nine feet long by five wide, lay half-buried in one corner of the yard. He opened the door and peered inside. Typical of Lillian, the emergency beds were neatly made, showing no signs of having been slept in.
That left only one other possibility: that she’d somehow been in an accident in London. Perhaps one of the 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 to gather her strength. “Because I love him, too.”
Michael stood, throwing up his hands. “That’s just too bloody rich. You love two men. Is that what you’re asking me to believe?”
“It’s true!” she said, her voice filling the room.
“Oh, I’m sure it is,” he said, rubbing the place above his right eye. “After all I’ve been through, why should this surprise me.”
Lillian bit her lip. “I’ll give you a divorce.”
“NO!” Michael shouted, making Lillian flinch. “No divorce. I just want to know one thing. The baby. Is it mine?”
She stared at him, her expression becoming resolute for the first time. “Yes.”
“I want to believe you, but how do you know?”
“Because Paul—”
“Please,” he said, cutting her off with another wave of his hand. “I don’t want to know anything about him, do you hear me? His name, where he comes from—nothing.”
“I—I’m sorry. You asked me how I know. I can’t tell you in concrete terms. It’s just something a woman knows. If that doesn’t satisfy you, then you’re free to go. I won’t stand in your way.” She began to cry once more. “I’ve always thought you were too good for me.”
She began to sob in earnest then, burying her face in her hands. Thorley could stand it no longer, for the stunning truth of it all was that he still adored her, even after the knowledge of her infidelity stood revealed in the ugly light of dawn. He reached for her and took her in his arms. She melted against him, her arms wrapping around him with viselike intensity, the tears coming all the harder.
After five minutes she calmed down, and without releasing her hold on him asked, “What do you want to do, Michael?”
He could tell from the tentative sound of her voice, the quaver in it, that she was afraid of what he would say, or perhaps of what he wouldn’t. He pushed her back, holding her by the shoulders, her face only inches from his own. He could smell her perfume and the faint scent of something else. Was it his cologne?
“What I wanted is for our lives to return to the moment before I saw you get out of that car,” he said, his voice a gentle whisper. “But I know now that it was all a sham.”
“Michael, I—”
He silenced her with a finger to her lips. “Please, hear me out. What I want, now, is for us to remain together, and for us to raise our child in a home that is filled with love...and trust. You said you still loved me. Do you really mean that?”
“More than ever....”
Michael nodded. “All right, then, whoever he is, you will give him up, tell him you’ll never see him again. If we are going to make this work, I have to know that you’re willing to do this, otherwise when I walk out that door, it’s forever. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I’ll tell him,” she said, nodding. “Today.”
For the first time since he’d come home that morning, Michael smiled. He kissed her then. And rather than feeling mounting passion as he normally would, he felt something different and even more profound: a sense that a corner had been turned in their lives, that their love would survive and be stronger for it. It was more feeling than thought and it suffused his body with a warmth that was unmistakable.
The room brightened considerably when the sun peaked over the horizon. Breaking the kiss, he glanced at the clock on the wall. “Christ, it’s after six! I’m going to miss the bloody boat!”
“What time does it sail?”
“Seven. From the Prince Albert Docks.”
She grabbed for her wrap and headed for the stairs. “We’ll take the Morgan. At this hour I’ll have you there with time to spare.”
Luckily, Lillian had recently filled the tank with their month’s ration of petrol. The traffic was sparse all the way to the docks with only a few heavily-laden lorries getting in the way. And while she rarely drove, Lillian handled the little three-wheeled touring car with aplomb, taking turns at speeds most drivers would have avoided. And true to her word, by taking the Blackwall Tunnel, they arrived at the dock gate at 6:45. The gangway to the ship was still in place and Thorley could see a line of soldiers still waiting to be checked in.
“Where’re your things?” Lillian asked, noticing for the first time that he had no luggage with him.
“Already on board, though it won’t matter very much. None of it’s tropical issue.”
“I hate these goodbyes.”
“So do I,” he replied, a lump forming in his throat. “Part of me doesn’t want to go.”
She reached for his arm and gave it a firm, assuring squeeze. “You don’t have to worry, Michael, it’s over. I swear it.”
“I know.”
“And why only a part of you?” A tiny smile had formed on her lovely mouth.
It took him a moment to realize what she meant. “Oh.... I guess there’s a part of me that’s excited. Silly, isn’t it.”
“Not at all,” she said, kissing him on the nose. “Did I tell you how handsome you are in that uniform?”
Thorley smiled. “No, you didn’t.”
“Well, you are, just the same. And I’m going to miss you so very much.” She clasped him to her, tears coursing down her face once again. “Bloody hell, I promised myself I wasn’t going to do this.”
“I’ll get word to you where to write me. I want to know how you and the baby are doing every day, and I’d like you to move out of London and go down to the cottage.”
Lillian nodded, wiping her eyes on the back of her hand, as Thorley climbed out of the Morgan.
“I’ll be back before you know it,” he said.
Turning so she wouldn’t see his own tears, he walked through the gate toward the gangway. It was only when he heard the Morgan’s engine revving up that he allowed himself a look in time to see the tiny car disappear around the corner.
“I love you, Lillian,” he said, not caring if anyone heard him or not. Then he turned and made his way onto the ship.