The Language of the Dead (29 page)

“What do you mean?” Wallace asked. “Don't you want me here?”

She didn't answer; she looked past him, then opened the door wider. A single lamp burned in the parlor, on the small cupboard in which Delilah kept her whiskey. He stepped into the foyer. She stood before him, naked beneath her flimsy cotton sleeping gown. He could see the swell of her breasts and the dark color of her nipples beneath it. Still, he felt no specific desire for her—not with her face that way. He couldn't. He feared he might break her. He gently touched her chin; she raised his face toward him. “Let me see,” he said.

She complied.

“Who did this to you?”

She looked away. “I told you; I fell.”

“Why are you lying to me, Delilah? Who are you afraid of?”

“Please, David. Let's not talk about it.”

“Why won't you tell me who did this?”

“Why must you know? Why can't you just let me live with it? Why can't it just be my problem?” She went into the sitting room.

“I can't pretend it's nothing.”

She went to the cabinet where she kept the whiskey and withdrew from it a half-empty bottle and two glasses. “Let's just have a drink,” she said.

Wallace understood that she was trying to put him off. Perhaps she hoped he'd become drunk and stop asking questions. But he wanted a drink.

He went to the cupboard. She handed him a drink, which he downed quickly. Almost immediately, he felt a change come over him. Delilah's erect nipples poked at the flimsy fabric of her sleeping gown. She took a drink of the whiskey and licked her lips. She poured him another, which he also drank quickly. She looked at him and smiled. He couldn't believe what he was feeling. She was keeping secrets from him, playing her game.

She put her finger over the mouth of the bottle and tipped the bottle so that some of the whiskey poured onto her finger and her
hand. She moved close to him, lifted her chin, and drew her moist finger down both sides of her neck and then across her lips. Then she put her finger in her mouth and sucked on it; she pulled her finger slowly from her mouth and then made a kind of purring sound. The whole thing struck Wallace as ridiculous, given her swollen face, and yet he could not help himself. And Delilah knew it.

He yanked up her sleeping gown, exposing her to the neck. She raised her arms and he pulled the gown off her, causing her hair to fall over her face. He took the bottle from the top of the cupboard and doused her breasts and the front of her body with whiskey. He moved his mouth to her breasts and began to suck at them. She arched her back, thrusting herself into him. He pressed his right hand against the small of her back and began to lower her to the floor.
Damn the whole bloody fucking mess
, he thought. He was beyond caring, exhausted from keeping himself in line.

He lowered her to the floor; she lay before him naked, voluptuous, fervent, her face a terrible mask. She grabbed at his shirt as he struggled to unbuckle his belt. She pulled him down onto her and their mouths came together. She tasted of whiskey. He moved his mouth down her throat and across her breasts and onto her stomach.

An air-raid siren sounded.

Wallace thought at first that he must have heard wrong. But there was no mistaking the sound. It was close. Thus far, the Germans had spared Winchester. It contained nothing valuable, no ports or armaments factories.

Wallace lifted himself to his knees, still hard. He and Delilah were silent for a few seconds as they listened to the insistent wailing. Wallace looked at her. The siren had cooled their fire. “We've got to get you dressed,” he said.

He rose and buckled his belt and tucked in his shirt. He offered Delilah his hand and helped her to her feet. They moved into Delilah's bedroom, where she slipped on her clothes as quickly as she could manage. “Have you a house key?” he asked.

“Yes.” They went into the sitting room, where they found her purse on the sofa. Wallace turned out the small lamp on the cupboard. The floor was slick from the spilled whiskey.

When they reached the door, Delilah asked “Can we go apart, David?”

“What do you mean?”

“Can we go apart to the shelter?”

“It's black as coal out there.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Why do you keep saying that?”

“Please, David.”

“No, Delilah; I don't know what you mean. Of course we can't go apart.” He put his hands on her shoulders and tried to turn her back round toward the door. She twisted out of his grip and faced him. “We must go apart. Please, David.”

“What in bloody hell are you talking about?” He turned her roughly toward the door and opened it. Several small groups of people were in the street, heading for the nearest shelter, which was three blocks away. He tried to push her out the door but she resisted. “Stop it, damn you!” Wallace said.

Delilah spun around and heaved herself back into the foyer. Wallace turned to face her.

“I'm married!”
she said.

Wallace felt as if he'd been shot—as if the bullet had entered him suddenly, though he had no idea from where the shot had come and whether it had wounded him mortally.

“I'm sorry,” she said. She ran past him into the street.

Wallace watched her move into the swelling group heading for the safety of the shelters. “Go,” he heard himself say. He looked around, unsure of how to respond. He closed the door and followed.

He stayed apart from her but tried to keep her in sight. Around him, strangers hurried in the same direction; men led women by the arms and women led children by the hands. Most of them carried gas masks and he realized that Delilah had forgotten hers. His was on the other side of Winchester, in his flat. A baby cried. He heard a man yell “Come now, make it snappy!” Just ahead he saw the beams of torches directing people to the shelter entrance.

He cursed himself for having been so damned stupid. The signs had been there—her coming to The Fallen Diva alone, the house, her secrecy—but he'd ignored them, chalked them up to a game. He understood now who'd beaten her—some member of her husband's family or one of his mates who'd discovered that she been fooling around while her husband was at war. He should have seen it. Perhaps he had.

The sirens continued to wail. Wallace found himself moving down a narrow side street that was utterly dark, save the bobbing torch beam of an air-raid warden at the other end. There, he lost sight of Delilah. He glanced at the sky to find searchlights crisscrossing it. He moved out of the narrow lane and made for the shelter, which was a block away. He followed the throng into the shelter and took his place on the benches with the rest of them. He looked for Delilah but did not see her. He hoped to God they wouldn't emerge from the shelter to find her little house blown to bits.

They waited with their hands in their laps. A young woman read from
Peter Rabbit
to three small children who huddled against her; an old man sat with the back of his head against the tiled wall, his eyes closed and mouth open. Besides the young mother, hardly anyone spoke, and those who did whispered; everyone was listening for the sound of airplanes.

They sat that way for nearly an hour, the silence broken only by an occasional cough and the soft, low voice of the young woman reading. But the sounds of the airplanes—and of bombs—never came. The all-clear sounded; the Germans had gone elsewhere. The room filled with a palpable sense of relief and a sudden buzz of conversation that reminded Wallace of the sound of bees swarming. The man next to him grabbed his arm, shook it and said “I say!” and then turned and did the same to the woman sitting on the other side of him.

The senior air-raid warden set to the process of emptying the shelter. The young mother closed her book and shepherded her children toward the door. The old man who had been sitting with his head against the wall got up slowly and patiently waited for the crowd to clear. The man next to Wallace also stood and began to pat random people on the back.

Wallace emerged from the shelter onto the darkened street. He stood near the entrance to the shelter scanning the faces of the people who emerged from it, but did not see Delilah.

He walked up the street and turned back into the dark, narrow lane. He could scarcely see his way and this time saw no bobbing torch beams at the other end. He slowed so as not to stumble. He was nearly to the place where the lane gave onto Delilah's street when three people entered the lane coming the opposite way. They were no more than dark shapes, though he could tell by the way in which they moved that they were men. His adrenaline spiked; he moved to the left to allow them to pass. The figures moved toward him shoulder-to-shoulder.

“Hello,” Wallace said into the darkness in case the men had not seen him. For good measure, he added “Ship ahoy.”

None of the three answered. They were just about to pass when, suddenly, they rushed him; Wallace had just begun to instinctively raise his arms in defense when he felt something hard hit his left shoulder. The blow staggered him. He fell against the wall, his shoulder throbbing. He turned back toward the figures, hoping to find someone to strike. But before he could get his bearings, one of the men slugged him in the right eye, sending him reeling against the wall. He put his hands to his face, then caught two more sharp blows, one to his chest and another to his stomach. He doubled over, clutching his gut, breathless and in pain, helpless. He caught a glimpse of the three figures closing in, cutting off his routes of escape. Before he could raise his hands again, he took two more sudden blows to the face, almost simultaneously—one from the right and one from the left—which rattled his skull and forced him to his knees, his nose spouting blood.

“That'll teach you to fuck another man's wife,” a voice above him hissed. Something cracked down hard on the back of his neck and he slumped to the ground, unconscious.

A minute later, he came to with his mouth full of the sharp taste of blood.

Darkness surrounded him. His right eye was swollen, his left cheek bleeding. His right arm and head ached. With effort, he pulled himself
up so that he sat, slumped, with his back against the stone wall. The men seemed to be gone. He spit some of the blood from his mouth. Then he heard a woman speak his name.

“David.”

He felt the presence of someone to his right and turned in that direction, expecting another blow. “David,” the voice said again. “Oh God. I'm so sorry, David.”

Delilah knelt next to him and brushed his hair back from his blackened eye.

Wallace looked at her. “Delilah.”

“Don't talk.”

He pressed his right hand against the ground in an effort to push himself up. He winced and drew in a sharp breath. “Bloody hell,” he said.

Delilah slipped her right arm around his back. “Let me help you.” With her help, he stood. She held his arm.

Wallace took a couple of tentative steps. “I'm all right,” he said.

“I'm so sorry, David. I've been such a damned fool.”

“Who did this, Delilah?”

“We should try to get you to a doctor.”

“No—no doctor. I'm all right. The doctors have better things to do.”

“Let's get out of here,” she said and led him down the dark lane toward her house.

She settled him on the sofa and helped him to remove his jacket and shoes. “Lie down here,” she said. “I'm going to get you some ice.”

Wallace rubbed the back of his neck, then lay back on the sofa. He wanted a drink; he wondered what he would tell Lamb and Harding. His face would be a mess for days, as Delilah's was. He decided that he would say that three men had jumped him on his way back from the shelter and stolen his cash.

Delilah returned with a handful of ice cubes wrapped in a tea towel and a glass of water. “Put this on your eye,” she said. She disappeared again for several minutes and returned with a warm, soapy cloth. She sat on the sofa. “Your cheek is cut,” she said. “I'm going to wash it.”

Wallace lay on the sofa like an obedient child as Delilah washed his barked cheek. It stung; he winced. She patted the wound dry and put a gauze bandage on it.

“I need a drink,” Wallace said.

“Water first.” He sat up and she brought the glass to his lips. He took several tentative sips, which only partially washed his mouth clean of the taint of blood.

“Now can I have a proper drink?” He managed a smile.

She went to the cabinet and poured two fingers of whiskey into a glass. Wallace downed it in a single gulp. “Another, please.”

Delilah poured him another shot, which he drank in two sips. “All right,” he said, speaking more to himself than to Delilah. “That's it.”

Delilah put her hand gently on his damaged face. “You should sleep,” she said.

He put his hand over hers. “Not until you tell me what happened.”

She looked away.

“Who was it? His mates?”

“I don't want them punished.” She looked at him. “They are only sticking up for Bill.”

“Is that his name—Bill?”

She glanced away. “Yes.”

“Which branch?”

“The Army; he was called up.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“The Mediterranean.” She looked down and shook her head. “I don't know where, exactly,” she added in a whisper, almost as if speaking to herself.

Wallace sat up on his elbow. “Do you love him?”

“I don't know. I suppose I must.”

“You don't have to stand for it, Delilah.”

“You don't understand, David.”

He put down the ice pack and took Delilah's hand. “What don't I understand?”

She looked away. Wallace touched her cheek. “What don't I understand?” he repeated.

When she turned back to face him, she was crying. “I deserve it.”

“That's ridiculous. Did
he
beat you, too?”