Fallen Skies

  “I shared the driving with my man,” Stephen said. “I’ll trouble your landlady for some bread and cheese to take with us and we’ll be off as soon as Miss Pears is ready.”

  Charlie nodded. “Please, both of you, come in. Mrs. Harris will make you some tea and some breakfast. Lil had better have something to eat before she goes as well.”

  He waved Stephen into the dining room and retreated to his bedroom, pulled on a pair of trousers and a shirt. He felt better once he was dressed. He went next door to the bathroom and splashed water on his face. His deep-set dark eyes looked at him from the mirror. His face was grim.

  Downstairs two of the chorus girls were fluttering around the dining room in their dressing-gowns. Mrs. Harris brought in tea and chunky bacon sandwiches thick with butter and dripping with fat. Stephen sat quietly in the midst of all the confusion and excitement and ate hungrily. Coventry ate standing up beside the sideboard. Lily came into the room with her handbag and vanity case. Charlie went up to her bedroom to fetch her suitcase and put it by the front door.

  In the dining room the girls were pressing Lily to eat, but all she would have was a slice of bread and butter and a cup of tea.

  “Telephone from Portsmouth as soon as you know what’s happening,” Madge instructed. “Let us know how she is.”

  Lily nodded, chewing bread without being able to swallow. She sipped tea. Charlie felt his heart wrenched for her white-faced fear.

  “D’you want me to come with you?” he said suddenly, offering the impossible.

  Lily looked at him while Stephen covertly watched them both.

  “No,” she said gently. “I know you can’t. It’s all right. I’m a grownup now.”

  He smiled at her, the tender intimate smile of lovers who have spent the night in each other’s arms. “You are indeed,” he said. “Be brave, Lil.”

  She nodded and ate the last of the slice.

  “Time to go,” Stephen said. He pressed his napkin to his moustache and threw it down. Mrs. Harris had given him the best linen, Charlie noticed. He drained his tea cup and went towards the door. Coventry loaded the suitcase into the boot of the Argyll and opened the door for Lily. Mrs. Harris bustled up from the basement kitchen with a bag of sandwiches and a couple of bottles of ginger beer. Stephen took them with a word of thanks and got into the back seat beside Lily. Coventry slammed his door and started the engine. The girls screamed good wishes to Lily, who leaned forward and waved. Charlie met her eyes. She mouthed “I love you” to him and he nodded and raised a hand in acknowledgement, as the big car drew away from the curb.

  “Isn’t he the dreamiest man in the world?” Madge demanded as they went back into the house. “Isn’t he just the best?”

  “Oh yes,” Charlie agreed. “Smug bastard.”

  11

  STEPHEN DID NOT SPEAK MUCH to Lily during the first part of the drive. After he had told her all he knew of her mother’s health they sat in silence, watching the countryside roll by as Coventry drove as quickly as the curving country roads allowed. Stephen’s nose prickled. He could smell scent on Lily. He had never smelled perfume on her before. She smelled cheap, like a chorus girl, like a tart. The clarity of his decision, when he had told his mother that he loved Lily, faded away at the girl’s real presence, at her smell. She had been warm and rumpled when she had run downstairs. There had been something domestic and repellent about her cheap pyjamas and her ruffled hair and her sleepy face. Stephen wanted Lily as she was when she was on stage as a choir boy, flawless as a china doll. When she had come down the stairs to the front door she had been a warm sleepy sensuous female. It was not just the smell of cheap perfume he disliked, it was the smell of warm skin.

  Stephen shook his head. He had not liked the digs, he had not liked Mrs. Harris. And most of all he had disliked how Charlie Smith had been at once a part of that world—he had the same dreamy tranced expression as Lily, he too was still warm from a comfortable bed—and at the same time he had been commanding. Stephen had envisaged himself ordering Lily. But she turned at once to Charlie to ask him what she should do. And Charlie somehow had taken control of the whole situation.

  Charlie had looked like an enlisted man, a common man, barefoot, unshaven and scruffy, but even so he had told Lily to pack and sent Stephen and Coventry in for breakfast. Stephen scanned his memory of the man and saw him coming in to the dining room, hastily washed, and saw the long level look exchanged between him and Lily.

  He glanced across the back seat at her. Lily was asleep, her head thrown back, her little hat askew. There were dark blue shadows in the delicate skin under her closed eyes. Her face was white, a sprinkling of freckles over her nose showing brown against her pallor. Stephen stared at her, torn between longing and anger. He loved her, he desired her, he wanted to hold her and protect her. He wanted to serve her and keep her. Especially he wanted to keep her well away from that huggermugger intimate domesticity that he sensed when she and Charlie had looked at each other and Charlie had decided what she should do.

  Stephen shuddered, shook his head. He slid back the glass panel between the rear seats and the driver. “We’ll go back the same way,” he said. He wanted to hear the normality of his voice giving orders. He did not want to think of Lily and Charlie. He could not believe that she would allow such a man, a common man, to be intimate with her. He did not want to see Charlie’s pale dark-jawed face or Lily looking up the stairs, up to him. “It was a good road,” he said to Coventry. “We made good time.”

  Coventry nodded his alert attentive nod. Coventry always listened, never changed. He had been allocated to Stephen as his batman when Stephen had arrived at the Front and had stayed with him ever since. He had spoken very little, even in those days. But his smile was as reassuring as an older brother. Whenever there had been an attack and they had been pinned down in the trenches, sometimes for hours, Coventry always managed to make a brew and bring Stephen a mug of hot tea and a slice of bread and cheese. When they had to advance, Coventry was always at Stephen’s side. Stephen knew that if he was hit, then Coventry would stop and drag him to safety. All the others would go on, obeying orders and ignoring the wounded even if they screamed for help. But Coventry would stop for Stephen, and while he had morphine in his pack Stephen would never be left, screaming with pain, waiting for the stretcher bearers to reach him, knowing they might never come at all.

  Once Stephen had taken an order on the field telephone to advance and the fool at the other end would not listen when Stephen told him that the wire ahead of them had not been cut. He tried and tried to tell him that they could not advance for against them was a sprawl of ragged razor-sharp barbed wire and behind that were the Huns with six machine gun emplacements, and behind the Hun soldiers was their artillery which had the range of the British trenches and would see them as they stumbled across the waste ground. They would snipe at Stephen and his men, with their trained deadly accuracy, and they would mow them down with the easy spray of machine gun fire. Shelling them with big heavy artillery shells would be as easy as range practice for them. Stephen had been screaming, trying to tell that bland voice that it could not be done, when Coventry had leaned over Stephen’s shoulder and snatched the telephone wire from its connecting point, so the phone went suddenly dead. “Bad connection,” he had said. “Sorry, sir. Rotten connection. I doubt you could hear him, could you?”

  Later that day, while Coventry was leisurely repairing the telephone, a runner arrived to tell them that the attack was cancelled because the weather was too bright and there had been some muddle and there were no reserve forces in place. They would never have cancelled it just because some junior officer at the front line had said that he would die, and all his men would die, if they obeyed.

  Stephen had often protested in those days, his early days at the Front in 1917. In those days Stephen had felt anger at his entrapment in the killing grounds of the Flanders plain, had felt an urgent longing to live. In those days Coventry could speak.

>   Stephen glanced at Lily; her face was turned away, her eyes were shut. He reached through the panel and put his hand on Coventry’s shoulder. He felt the comfort of the good wool material of Coventry’s grey uniform jacket. He felt the reassuring meatiness of Coventry’s muscled shoulder.

  “Four hours,” he said. “I’ll take over driving in four hours,” and fell asleep.

  Lily’s eyes were shut but she was not asleep. She felt trapped in a nightmare of her worst fear. The moment Stephen had told her of her mother’s illness she had felt as if she had stepped into a cold shady morass. Even now, in the comfort of the car with the warm morning sun gilding the upholstery and the veneered wood, Lily could feel herself chilled inside. She could hardly imagine her mother ill in bed. Helen had been remorselessly fit for all of Lily’s life. She was a powerful woman, she could shift crates of lemonade bottles, stack boxes of dried goods. She had risen at six every morning of her life and worked until nine or ten every night. Lily could not imagine her mother with that core of physical strength drained from her. She could hardly imagine her tired—it was impossible to imagine her sick.

  Lily turned her face into the sunlight as it flickered through the windscreen. Coventry was driving into the sun, his eyes screwed up against the glare, his hat pulled down so that the peak of the cap shaded his eyes. On the windscreen the splattered bodies of insects glowed like little specks of gold. “Please, Jesus, no,” Lily whispered. “Please make her well. Please make her well.”

  At midday Coventry pulled over to an open gateway to a field. Stephen awoke as soon as the car stopped.

  “My shift?” he asked. “Where are we?”

  In answer Coventry opened the driver’s door and spread the road map on the warm bonnet of the Argyll. Stephen got out of the back seat and stretched. The midday sun was hot on the back of his neck, his dark business suit was crumpled, the shirt dirty at the collar. “By God, I’d be a lot more comfortable in uniform. I never thought I’d say that.”

  Coventry smiled grimly and pulled a packet of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, lit two in his mouth and passed one to Stephen. They looked at the map, their heads close together.

  In the back seat Lily stirred and opened her eyes. Through the windscreen the two men looked as if they were embracing like brothers.

  “We’re making good time,” Stephen said, pleased. “We’ll take a pee-break and I’ll drive.”

  He went to the rear door of the car and then suddenly hesitated. He did not know how to tell Lily that she could urinate in the field. Lily looked up at him and got out of the car. She stretched.

  “I slept well,” she lied. “Are we stopping for lunch?”

  “We’ll eat as we drive,” Stephen said. “I’ll drive now. If you want a . . .” He broke off. All the euphemisms his mother used at tea parties were hopelessly inappropriate in this thick hayfield. How could he ask Lily if she wanted to powder her nose or wash her hands? Stephen flushed a deep mortified red. He did not know the common forms of speech between men and women. He could not deal with ordinary life with Lily. She was a lady to him, and thus a whole world of experience was taboo, unmentionable.

  “Coventry and I are going to stretch our legs for a moment,” he said awkwardly. “We’ll be five minutes.”

  Lily turned her puzzled face to him and Stephen backed away from her, and touched Coventry’s arm. “Pee in the next field,” he said in a low voice. “Come on.”

  Coventry followed him. Lily, still not understanding, watched the two men go. They climbed over a five-barred gate and then Lily saw the top of Stephen’s brown head and Coventry’s cap line up side by side and stand still. She gave a quick embarrassed giggle. “Bloody fool,” she said. She stepped a little way from the Argyll so that the hedge hid her from the road and squatted to relieve herself. She watched the clear trickle of urine soak into the ground and smelled the damp sweet smell of wet earth and the musky aroused smell of her own body with innocent animal relish. Then she straightened up and pulled down her tailored summer skirt. “Damn fool,” she said again.

  Stephen and Coventry stood in the other field staring into the distance until Stephen checked his watch to ensure that he had given Lily the full five minutes, and then they clambered awkwardly over the gate. Stephen was still blushing.

  “Ready to go on?” he asked Lily.

  “Yes.”

  Stephen got behind the wheel with Coventry sitting beside him, leaving Lily alone in the back seat.

  “You eat all you want from the picnic basket,” Stephen said as he started the engine. “Then Coventry will take it from you and we’ll have the rest. We had a good breakfast, so make sure you have all that you want.”

  Lily unbuckled the leather straps on the hamper and opened the lid. She was too unhappy to be hungry. She took a slice of bread and a piece of cheese and an apple and one of the bottles of ginger beer. “That’s all I want.”

  Coventry kneeled up on the front passenger seat and leaned into the back to take the picnic hamper from Lily. Then he sat back into his seat with the hamper on his lap. “Cheese sandwich and a piece of that ham in with it too,” Stephen said, glancing over.

  Coventry deftly sliced bread, cheese and ham with his pocket knife and passed a bulky sandwich over to Stephen. He ate nothing himself until Stephen had finished, and he held the ginger beer bottle while Stephen drank. Only when Stephen said, “I’m done now,” did Coventry choose his own food and eat. Lily, watching the two men in their monosyllabic communion, sensed long days and nights of working and keeping watch and resting together when there had been nothing to say except a brief order or an assent.

  She dozed, lulled by the swaying of the car, and when she awoke it was mid-afternoon and the sun was behind them instead of ahead.

  “Where are we?”

  “Just outside Southampton,” Stephen said, glancing over his shoulder. “Not long now. We’ll go straight to the Royal Infirmary.”

  Lily nodded. She watched the wide green fields of Hampshire without seeing them. She still could not believe that her mother was ill. She still could not believe that the little shop which had opened every week day for ten years was shut today and would not open tomorrow.

  Stephen drove swiftly and well. A hay cart pulled out in front of him, towed by an old slow tractor. He waited until the road straightened and then pulled out to the right and swept past it. The driver waved amiably, Coventry raised a hand in reply. Lily watched for the familiar landmarks of Portsmouth, the ugly suburbs of Hilsea and Portsdown. Stephen turned right off the coast road and headed south down the Fratton Road to the hospital. The Argyll swept through the gateway and up to the entrance. Lily was out of the car and running through the hospital door before Stephen had brought the car to a complete halt.

  “Damn! I wanted to go in with her,” he said. He opened his door. “Drive home at once and tell Mother that I am back and that she must make up the spare bedroom for Lily. We’ll come home when we’re finished here. Come back here and wait for me. Quick as you can.”

  There was no sign of Lily in the shadowy entrance hall. She must have found her way to the right ward at once. Stephen said “Damn” again and ran up the stone steps to the women’s medical ward on the first floor. A nurse was in the corridor. Stephen nodded at her in his authoritative way. “Helen Pears?” he asked.

  “She’s in there,” the nurse said. “I’ll tell Sister you’re here.”

  She threw a quick flirtatious look at Stephen from under her eyelashes but he was already turning away and going into the side room.

  Lily was leaning over her mother’s bed, her face wrenched with pain. She had her mother’s hand held to her heart. Helen Pears was barely conscious. Her face was waxy and white, the skin of her eyelids and her lips pale yellow. Every breath came unwillingly in a deep rattling sigh. When she opened her eyes they were misty as if they were filming over already. Stephen nodded. He had seen enough men die to know the signs.

  “Ma? Can you hear me? Ma?”
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  The hand Lily was pressing to her heart tightened slightly.

  “Lily,” the dying woman said softly.

  As her mother said her name Lily gave a little gasp and the tears tumbled down her face. “Oh, Ma! You’re all right, aren’t you? You’re going to be well?”

  The door behind Stephen opened and the Ward Sister came into the room. “Are you the daughter?” she asked. Lily nodded without taking her eyes from her mother’s face. “I should like to have a word with you,” the Sister said. “Would you step outside, Miss Pears?”

  Lily glanced up at her with sudden impatience. “Not now.”

  She pulled up a chair to her mother’s bedside and sat leaning towards her so her head was nearly on her mother’s pillow. “I’ve missed you so much,” she whispered. “I’ve had a wonderful time but I’ve missed you so much, Ma. I thought of you every day. And I so wished you could have come too.”

  A small weary smile went across the pale face.

  “But after this season I might get work in town,” Lily said encouragingly. “Charlie may be MD at the Kings! Think of that, Ma! And he has worked on an audition piece for me and wants me to try for an act there! You get well and you’ll be able to see me up on that lovely stage!”

  “Miss Pears,” the Sister interrupted again. “I have other patients to attend to. Please come outside for a moment.”

  Lily glanced up at the woman and Stephen realized that although she had heard the harshness of the tone and the irritation in the voice she had not taken in the words at all. Her whole awareness was focused on her mother. She had forgotten that Stephen or the Sister were even there.

  He took the Sister’s arm. “I’m a friend of the family,” he said. “I’ve just fetched Lily from Sidmouth to see her mother. Please tell me the news. I’ll tell Lily later.”

  He drew her from the room. “She should prepare herself for the end,” the Sister said bluntly. “Mrs. Pears has an acute form of Spanish influenza and she has not responded to any treatment. It has developed into pneumonia. We don’t think she will last the night.”