by Rafe Posey
“Not as yet.”
Alec chews on this a moment. “All right. What else might it be?”
She pauses. “Some kind of tumor, perhaps.”
Alec blanches. He shakes his head as if he’s trying to shed the idea. She can’t blame him, but as much as she fears a tumor lodged deep in her brain, she resents even more the notion that something could invade her mind like that.
“Or,” she says, very carefully, wrapping her fingers more tightly around his, “it might be a leftover of sorts from a brain injury.”
Alec’s head tilts. “But . . . What kind of brain injury? You’ve never had anything like that.”
“Alec . . .” She pauses, collecting herself. “It might be best if you sat down. There’s such a lot I need to tell you.” As he settles on the edge of the hard chair beside the bed, she searches her mind for the most minimal ways to convey her history.
“What is it, darling?”
“During the war,” she says. She hovers there, trying to find the words. “There was a plane crash . . .”
His brow furrows. “You were in a plane crash during the war?”
“Well. Not exactly.”
“No, of course. I would have known.” He hesitates. “What, then?” He looks so confused, and she hates it. She doesn’t want to unravel their life. She doesn’t want to hurt him. But she has no choice now.
“Oh, Alec,” she says helplessly. “Things weren’t quite as you imagined, I’m afraid. You see, I wasn’t in London the entire time.” She pauses, wishing for a way out, but there is none. “The Foreign Office sent me overseas.”
“Overseas?” Bewilderment rises in his face. “Overseas where?”
She takes a breath, then exhales. “Oh, Alec,” she whispers.
He watches her, his expression purely mystified. “June? Where?”
She struggles to meet his eyes. “Ceylon.”
Alec blinks. It’s an agony to watch him try to understand these impossible words, to say nothing of how it feels to be responsible for this betrayal, and all the pain yet to come.
“But you were in London,” he says slowly. He lets go of her hands and pulls away. “You can’t possibly have been injured in Ceylon, June.”
“I know how confusing this must be to hear,” she says.
“I’m sorry,” he says, “but I don’t understand.”
Her hand begins its tremor again, and that brittle gray feeling is coming back behind her eyes. “It was while you were in Germany.”
“While I was in Germany?” Before she can answer, he continues. “You were Corbett’s secretary, at his office in London. Safe.”
“At the beginning, yes,” she says. “But I was attached to the Admiralty through the Foreign Office, and they sent me to Ceylon. There was a Japanese attack.”
His brow furrows again, and he says with more conviction, “But you would have told me if you’d been wounded.”
“I couldn’t,” she says.
“But whyever not? Surely the Foreign Office doesn’t just send people halfway around the world and not tell anyone.”
“I’m sorry,” she says imploringly. “Oh, how I wish I could have told you.”
Alec’s expression shifts to something she can’t quite parse, and he leans closer. “Perhaps you’re mistaken,” he says with an effort. “Isn’t that possible, with brain concerns? That you’re somehow imagining all this?”
“Oh,” she says, her heart aching for him. “No. I’m sorry.”
He shakes his head, thinking it through, bafflement creasing his face. June braces herself for the next question.
“Christ,” he says after a while. “Ceylon?”
June nods. She’s mired in the ghastly space of wanting to get this over with as quickly as possible and wanting to stop before it all gets worse. “There was a Zero attack, and there was shrapnel . . .” She goes on quickly, although she had hoped to soften the blow. “The explosion knocked me out for a bit.”
He blinks at her, as mystified as if she were speaking another language. “You were unconscious in bloody Ceylon and you didn’t tell me?”
“I’m so sorry,” she says. “I couldn’t.”
“Was Corbett there as well?” He shifts in his chair. “I mean, if you were actually working for him?”
She flinches at the doubt and suspicion in his voice. Her own presence in Ceylon is only just barely information she can share with Alec; Floss’s few visits to HMS Anderson are presumably still off-limits.
“I was always attached to his office,” she says, trying to navigate this delicate space, “even when I was with the Admiralty.”
“But why were you in Ceylon in the first place? I don’t understand.”
She wants to find a way to make this easier for him, but there’s nothing. “I can’t tell you that.”
“I don’t understand what that means.” He shakes his head wordlessly. “Ceylon? I don’t . . . For how long?”
She tries to meet his eyes, but she can’t. “Three years.”
Alec looks away and back again, his eyes dark and narrowed. “You were in Ceylon for three years? And you never told me?”
“I couldn’t,” she says.
He doesn’t say anything else for a moment, just stares at his hands as if they contain the answers. “But Corbett knew?”
June shrugs helplessly. “I worked for him.”
“And of course he knows you’re here.” The distance in his voice creeps along June’s shoulders like ice. He gestures toward the waiting room. “I heard them put his call through while I was waiting. Before I knew anything.” He stares at her, holding her gaze. “You spoke with him before anyone had spoken with me. And now . . . Ceylon, June? You could have been killed! I could have lost you, and you never said a word? In all these years?”
She can’t bear the look on his face, the abject puzzlement and hurt.
A knock comes at the door, and Captain Grayson comes in. Alec stands, and the men shake hands.
“Mr. Oswin,” Grayson says, “good to meet you.”
“Can you tell us what’s wrong?” Alec steps closer to the doctor.
“We’ll need Mrs. Oswin to stay tonight for another set of scans, and so we can keep an eye on her.” The doctor glances down at June’s chart, then at Alec. “Unfortunately I’m only at liberty to share anything more with Mrs. Oswin or her senior officer.”
“Officer?” Alec crosses his arms over his chest. “She wasn’t military.” Something passes over his face, and he tilts his head at June.
“No,” she says. She can hardly look at him through the searing guilt that’s settling over her.
“And yet we’re in the military pavilion of the hospital,” he says. “Curious.”
“Mr. Oswin,” the doctor says, “you were a military man, I’m sure you understand we have protocols. Some of what I need to speak with Mrs. Oswin about is of a sensitive nature, and I’m afraid I must ask you to give us the room for a moment.”
“Sensitive?” Alec says, his voice rising. “She’s my wife!”
June says, “Alec, please.”
He stares at her, then relents, his voice sagging. “I’ll be outside.”
When he’s closed the door behind him, June turns back to the doctor, who regards her sorrowfully.
“Very difficult situation,” he says.
“It is,” June says.
He takes her hand and lays his fingers against the too-fast pulse in her wrist, then adds a note to her chart. “There are scans we will perform, see what we can find. But it does seem as though this may be connected to what happened to you in Ceylon. We’re finding that some types of brain trauma linger for years longer than previously thought, and everything you’re describing about both the event itself and your symptoms now suggests that may well be what’s happening.”
“Is there a cure?”
He grimaces. “We’ve had some patients who were able to manage their symptoms effectively through a combination of medication and occupational therapy. We’ll talk about that after the scans, though, yes?”
“Very well,” June says wearily.
“Now then,” he says, “my nurse will be in shortly to show you to your room and make sure you’re squared away for the evening, all right?”
“Yes,” June says. “Thank you.” Grayson shakes her hand and leaves, and a moment later Alec comes back in.
“You were home when I came back,” he says without preamble. “You were in Fenbourne.”
“I was,” she says, trying to predict where his thoughts are leading him.
“But you were in Ceylon before that,” he says. It’s a statement, not a question. “Three years, you said?”
“Yes.” She wants to reach for his hand, but the idea that he might refuse her is too awful, so she folds her fingers tightly together. Instead of her hand she offers more information. “I came back not long after VJ Day.”
“I was in Odessa by then,” he says tightly. “I thought you were safe, here. You wrote me letters. In the camps.”
“I did,” she says, glad to be able to confirm something he already knows even as she tries to quash the memory of how hard it had been to write, sometimes, given both the secrets and their very different experiences.
He shakes his head. “So you wrote me letters from a place I had no idea you’d gone to. Was any of it real?”
“All of it was real,” she says. “There was so much I couldn’t—can’t—say, but how I felt, how I missed you, all of that was true.”
Alec glances around the room, his face grim. “How did you get there? To Ceylon?”
“By ship,” she says, wretched.
Another long pause. “Did you . . .” He stops, swallows hard. “By way of India?”
She can’t bring herself to say it.
“Answer me, June,” his voice soft but sharp.
“Bombay,” she says, almost whispering now, “and then a train to Madras.”
“Christ,” he says, bringing his hand to his forehead. His resentment and confusion are palpable, running around the room like a frightened animal. “Nothing you’ve said tonight makes any sense to me at all.”
“I know. I understand that. But you can’t imagine how badly I’ve always wanted to share this with you,” she says, her tone entreating.
He regards her wearily. “I wish you could tell me the truth. That you had told me the truth all along.” He sits and slumps forward, his head in his hands. “You’re in hospital because of a war injury you never told me about, in a place I had no idea you’d ever seen, and I don’t understand any of this.”
“I know,” she says. “I’ve felt unspeakably dreadful about it all this time—more than you know.”
“I suppose I don’t know the half of it.” He gets to his feet.
“Alec,” June says, alarmed.
“I should get home and make sure Penny’s all right,” he says coldly, not meeting June’s eyes.
She isn’t ready for him to go—not like this—but of course he’s right. Penny needs him. And a bit of time may help him process some of this. “Of course,” she says.
He shakes his head ruefully. “Ah, Christ. What will I say to her?”
“You can’t tell her about Ceylon. Not now, in any event,” June says, although the idea of building a new layer of secrets, with Alec implicated in them, makes her feel ill. “Alec—you can’t say anything to anyone, about any of this. We’ll need to sort that out later. But for the moment you might tell Penny they just want to make certain I’m all right, and that there’s nothing serious, okay? And they’ll let me come home tomorrow.”
“Nothing serious,” Alec repeats. “June . . . Would you ever have told me any of this, if this hadn’t happened?” He gestures at her hand. “You could have died and you never said a thing. And Ceylon . . .” His face is awash in hurt. “You’ve seen India?”
“I’m sorry. I wish . . .” But she doesn’t know what she wishes. She can’t wish she hadn’t done the work, saved those lives, served her king and country. But she wishes it hadn’t hurt Alec. She wishes she could do anything at all to quiet the storm of hurt that keeps clouding across his face. She wishes she could fix it, and she can’t.
He takes another look around the room, and grimaces. “Try to rest, June.” He hesitates as if to figure out whether to come closer, but instead he says, “Right. I’ll see you in the morning, then.”
He ducks his head in a nod and leaves the room. The door snicks shut behind him, and June is left alone in the dim antiseptic quiet to wait for Grayson’s nurse.
* * *
• • •
Sleep comes only in moments. The scans and the fluorescein dye Grayson employed to examine her brain have left June exhausted and dizzy, nausea coming in steeply cresting waves, and in the confused half-light of the ward she’s trussed as well to the unkind noise of machines and the crinkle of ill-fitting sheets, which whisper like Banquo’s ghost whenever she closes her eyes. But even without all that, rest would have evaded her. All she can see is Alec’s face and the way it had closed against her. Inevitable, really, that her choices would have led her here. And yet . . . and yet she had kept hoping that perhaps this moment would never come.
By morning, neither the nausea nor the guilt has subsided, and she sits back in the rigid hospital bed listening to the ward wake up. It’s a private room, although the blessing of privacy is measured dubiously against the lack of distraction it provides, but the sounds still trickle in—the rattle of carts and the soft shuffle of nurses’ shoes on the linoleum, an orderly’s tuneless whistling growing louder as he passes her door, a woman crying.
Unbidden, her mind loops out a memory of a hot Saturday afternoon when she was a child, itchy in a too-heavy dress, crossing the summer-burned fields with her mother to pay a visit to a Plymouth Brethren family in their home outside the village. There was a new baby in the cottage, and the mother’s quiet refusal of Mrs. Attwell’s offer. What she’d offered June no longer knows, if she ever had. But she remembers the woman’s husband blustering red-faced into the small front room, shouting at June’s mother that the village had sowed the wind and now would reap the whirlwind. June hadn’t known what he meant, although her father had preached the next day from the Book of Hosea and the phrase had hung in the air. It comes back to her now—for that’s what she’s done, isn’t it? She sowed the wind of deceit as well as service, and now the whirlwind has come to collect.
The dawn light is pale on the dewy thick grass of the hospital’s grounds. Last night June had looked out the window at the deepening twilight, watching the silhouettes of unknown animals skitter across the low horizon; now she wonders where they go when the light comes out, when the sun reveals their sly shapes for what they are. At Anderson she had wondered where Box slept too, and thinking of Box leads her to the guilt again, and Alec. She closes her eyes—what had her father told the congregation that morning at St. Anne’s? His dry, reassuring tone comes back to her: The whirlwind will always come, but it will never last, he’d said, and the righteous shall find their path lit with forgiveness.
Is she righteous? She can hope so; the omissions were for a reason, after all, not the capricious whim of a duplicitous soul. But even so, who knows when the whirlwind will end.
* * *
• • •
The morning fills with tests, more hemming and hawing from Captain Grayson, more nothing. When visiting hours start, every set of footsteps in the corridor sends her heart into her throat, but it’s always someone else, never that amble of Alec’s. It had driven her mad when they were children, the way he was always stopping to look at something or sketch something in his book. Now, though, when the footsteps stop just outsi
de her room, the silence left behind filled by a nervous cough she’s heard a thousand times before, she’s just relieved he’s come.
“Good morning,” he says as he comes in. “How are you today?”
He looks so tired, his eyes shadowed and bleary, and she’s not sure what to say. Platitudes seem misplaced at best, but telling him how exhausted she is would be little more than whingeing. “I’m all right,” she says. “How’s Penny?”
“Worried,” he says shortly.
“Captain Grayson has cleared me to go home today,” she says, venturing a smile. “So that’s quite a relief.”
“Brilliant,” he says, nodding. “Did he have any new information for you?” He pauses, and his face closes. “If you’re able to share, I mean?”
June’s heart sinks, but she presses on. “He’s run a lot of tests, but we haven’t the results back on most of them yet. The film they took last night has almost certainly ruled out a brain tumor, though.”
Relief washes over his face for an instant, and then it’s gone, replaced by that terrible new wall he’s put up between them. “I am very glad to hear that,” he says quietly. “Penny will be awfully relieved to have you back at the house.” He glances back at her. “She wanted to come along this morning, but . . . I persuaded her to work on a project for you with Lucky instead.”
June smiles, grateful for the way Alec has focused Penny’s attention away from this surreal situation. It will be good to get home and see her daughter again and try to move forward through all of this as a family.
“So,” Alec says, turning back to her, his face worried again, “what does he want you to do about whatever this is?”
For an alarming moment, June thinks he’s talking about Floss, and it floods her with relief when she realizes he means Captain Grayson. “Oh,” she says, “well, mainly he wants me to rest, and he’s given me some pills for the headaches. If it’s a brain injury issue . . .” She pauses, watching the way Alec’s face changes when she reminds him. “When I spoke with him this morning he suggested that resting the brain can work much as resting an injured bone or muscle can.”
