Fallen Skies

  Stephen nodded. “I thought so,” he said. “Is she in pain?”

  The Sister shook her head. “We are giving her morphine to control the pain,” she said. “But of course it makes her rather vague. If her daughter wants to speak to her we could stop the morphine for a little while. I had not thought she was so young.”

  Stephen shook his head decisively. “Mrs. Pears should not suffer pain,” he said firmly. “Lily needs no words of advice. She has friends who will care for her. They both know that. She would not want to see her mother suffer.”

  The Sister nodded. “I’m afraid there’s nothing more we can do,” she said.

  Stephen smiled slightly and touched her arm. “I am sure you have been wonderful,” he said. “I wonder, could you obtain a cup of tea for Miss Pears? It has been a long and worrying day for her.”

  The Sister nodded and sent a junior nurse scurrying. Stephen stayed outside the room in the corridor, watching Lily through the little porthole window in the door. For a long while she stayed with her head close to her mother’s head on the pillow. When the junior nurse came in with the tea she took it without thanking her and drank it almost as if she did not know what she was doing. She stroked her mother’s hair off her face, she smoothed the coarse cotton of the pillow slip. She held her hand. She talked to her constantly. Stephen watched her animated face through the window and knew that she was trying to push death away with the force of her will, to summon her mother back to life. She was trying to build a bridge between life and the drowsy half-coma that held Helen Pears. She sang to her. Stephen saw Lily’s face uplifted and the tears on her cheeks and heard, muffled through the door, her silver longing voice.

  It nearly worked. It very nearly worked. She nearly succeeded. Helen’s grip on her daughter’s hand tightened and her primrose-coloured eyelids flickered open once. She stared at her for one moment with a curious intensity as if she wanted to convey a whole lifetime of wisdom and experience in one look. And then there was a deep gurgling rattle in her throat and she spewed a lungful of yellow slime on to the pillow, and she closed her eyes and died.

  Stephen was in through the door in a moment, drawing Lily away from the bed, shouting for the nurses. They came in and bundled the two of them out of the room while they cleaned her up. Stephen held Lily close while they stood together in the corridor outside. He watched through the porthole window over her head. He was unemotional. Stephen had seen too many deaths to be moved by one more, and that of a civilian and a woman. When they had changed the pillow slip and the dead woman was clean they let them in again. Stephen stepped back and let Lily say goodbye to her mother alone.

  Lily had no idea what she should do. She had seen the rituals of mourning on her street but never been present at a death. She had some vague memory of an Irish family whose child died and they had opened the window to let the soul fly to heaven. Stephen, watching through the door, saw Lily bend over her mother and kiss her cold still lips. Then she went to the window and tried to open it. It was an old sash window, the cords had broken and it had been painted shut with successive layers of thick magnolia gloss. It would never move. Lily tugged and tugged at it, her fingers thrust through the handles at the foot of the window. It would never move. Stephen watched her. Lily banged against the frame, trying to loosen it. Stephen watched her in case she smashed the glass with her bare hands but although she had the intensity of an anxious child she was not hysterical.

  Lily turned from the window. He could see she was not crying though her face was very pale. She went back to her mother, lying so still and cold in the bed, and he saw her nod and say something to the dead woman. Then, still whispering, she came towards the door.

  She opened the door and held it open, in an odd gesture as if she were calling someone to follow her. She went past Stephen without a glance at him. “Come on,” he heard her say. “Come with me. Come with me. I’ll set you free.”

  She went swiftly past him to the head of the stairs, her high heels clattering lightly down the stone steps and he could hear her still saying, “Come on, come with me. Come on,” as she ran down to the entrance hall.

  He quickly went after her, watched her as she held the swinging entrance door open with that odd gesture again, as if waiting for someone to follow behind her. “Come on,” she said to the empty air and the deserted hall. “Come on.”

  Outside at the head of the hospital steps she paused. Stephen stood in the doorway, waiting to see what she would do next.

  “There,” she said and her voice was as desolate as a bereaved child’s. “There. You can see it now. You can see the sky. You can go straight up to heaven now. And I’m letting you go, Ma, I’m letting you go. Good luck. God bless. Goodbye.”

  She was shaking now as if the words were being forced from her when really she wanted to hold her mother beside her for ever. She even raised her hand in a little helpless wave like a child when a parent leaves for the first time. “Goodbye,” Lily whispered.

  Stephen, watching her, thought of the other dead he had seen. The thousand thousand thousands of them, dead in dug-outs, buried in shellholes, blown into fragments, cut by bullets, gassed, smashed, spitted on bayonets. He turned and nodded to Coventry and the waiting car. Another death made little difference. Lily would get over it, he thought.

  She got into the car without realizing where she was. Coventry raised an eyebrow at Stephen and Stephen shook his head in that old familiar gesture which meant that someone, a friend, a colleague, a beloved comrade had bought it. Dead. Coventry shrugged, which meant acceptance of the news. The two men, and all the other survivors, had learned a code for death which was now so familiar as to be unconscious. Of course, they would never grieve for any loss ever again.

  Coventry drove to the front door of Stephen’s home and held the passenger door open for Lily. She stepped out of the car and took Stephen’s arm without looking around her. On the Canoe Lake behind them a swan chased a seagull and the bird squawked and flew off. Lily did not turn her head. She did not hear it.

  The tweeny had been waiting for them, the door swung open. Muriel Winters came out of the drawing room, her face stiff with anger. Stephen guided Lily past her into the handsome room and thrust her into an armchair. “Sit here. I’ll get you some tea, and then you must have a lie down,” he said. “We’ve got a room ready for you here. Don’t worry about a thing.”

  He took his mother firmly by the arm and drew her from the room across the hall into the dining room opposite.

  “Stephen, I simply cannot . . .”

  “Lily’s mother has just died. She has nowhere to go. She is to stay here until she has decided what she wants to do.”

  “She must have family or friends of her own.”

  “She has no-one.”

  Muriel looked at her son in open disbelief. “She must have someone. A neighbour who would take her in.”

  “She has no family and no close friends, and anyway, I want her to stay here.”

  “It’s most unsuitable,” Muriel said. “For how long is she to stay here? And what am I to say about her? I am sure that I’m very sorry about her bereavement, Stephen; but surely you see that she cannot possibly stay here.”

  “She will stay here. And you may tell everyone that we are engaged to be married. That makes it all right, doesn’t it? I will post a notice in the Telegraph tomorrow. That makes it quite all right, doesn’t it, Mother?”

  Muriel fell backwards and then steadied herself with a hand on a dark wooden table. “Oh no, Stephen. Not marriage. Not to a singer. Not to a chorus girl!”

  “Yes, marriage. And she is not a chorus girl any more. She will retire from the stage of course. She will become my wife and she will never sing in public again. You can tell your friends that she is a local girl whose parents had a small retail business. I suppose that is suitable?”

  Muriel could feel her whole face trembling. “Stephen, I beg you to reconsider.” Her voice shook with her distress. “This is because of
the war, I know. You think that none of the girls of your sort can understand how you feel. But they can, my dear, we all suffered. We all put a brave face on it. You don’t have to pick up some little nobody because you think you can teach her to suit you. There are so many girls, nice girls. Of course Miss Pears can stay while she makes other arrangements. She can stay as long as she wishes. But let’s not be hasty, Stephen. Don’t announce an engagement. Let’s not say anything to anyone.”

  Stephen gave a harsh laugh. “I’ve made up my mind, Mother. Nothing you can say will change it. But you are right, you’re damnably right, I give you credit for seeing that. It is to do with the war. It is because you and the nice girls packed me and every one of those p . . . p . . . poor devils into a place that none of you could ever imagine. You sent me like a child to p . . . p . . . play on a tram track. You, and all the nice girls, sent me with a handful of white feathers and then posted me a parcel of c . . . c . . . cake and a pair of mittens. I don’t think I’ll ever forgive you! Any of you! Not just you, but all the p . . . p . . . pretty harpies. You and all the nice girls marching under b . . . banners and singing p . . . patriotic songs. All of you women who b . . . believe in war, and send others to do the fighting.”

  Muriel was trembling, her face was pale. “I knew you felt like this, Stephen.” Her hand was at her throat, gripping her pearls. “I knew you were angry with me and your father for making you go. But don’t punish me by marrying an unsuitable girl. If you marry a girl who is no good, a girl from the stage, then you’ll have misery ahead of you. The war’s over and thank God you came through safely. I want you to have a good life now, Stephen, not some dreadful struggle with a bad wife.”

  Stephen turned on her a face with so ghastly a gleam that Muriel recoiled, fell back until she was against the heavily polished sideboard. The rattle of expensive china stopped her.

  “I came through safely, did I?” Stephen repeated. His smile was like the wide grin of a naked skull. “Safely, is it, Mother! Safely with the dreams I have, and the sudden panics. A chauffeur who can’t speak and a life that is unbearable to me? Filled with hatred for the old m . . . men. F . . . filled with hatred for the young women. Hating the men who survived like me, wondering who they b . . . betrayed, where they skulked to miss the killing shells. Hating the ones who d . . . d . . . died because they are the saints and now I will always live in their shadow. And this is safety?”

  Muriel gave a little cry and put her hand up to her mouth to stifle the sound.

  “I tell you Lily is my saviour! She is free of the smell of it, free of the sound of it, free of the knowledge of it. How it happened I don’t know but it hasn’t touched her or spoiled her or corrupted her. When she’s beside me I feel clean again. I can’t tell you how or why. But if I don’t marry her and have her for ever, for ever, Mother, then I will go m . . . m . . . m . . .” He snatched a deep breath to say the word. “Mad.”

  There was a short terrible silence.

  Stephen went on very quietly. “I know it. I know it. I feel half mad already at times. I dream—I dream—but you don’t want to know my dreams.

  “You kept your distance from the reality and you don’t want to know the taste of it as it comes back to me. I wake vomiting sometimes, Mother. I dream of something I found in my mess tin. We were shelled while eating dinner, and a new officer, a young lad, was sitting beside me one moment, and the next, he was gone . . . but in my mess tin, and on my spoon halfway to my mouth, and on my face, on my lips so that I tasted it, was his blood and his bits of flesh, against my lips, in my mouth . . .” Stephen gagged on his words and turned away. Muriel held on to the sideboard with both hands. Her knees were trembling, she would have fallen if she had let go. Stephen pulled out a chair from the table and flung himself down with his head in his hands, breathing deeply until the sweat on his neck cooled and his stomach stopped churning.

  “I b . . . beg your pardon, Mother,” he said with careful politeness. “I c . . . c . . . can’t think what I was saying. I have had too little sleep over the past few days. Please forgive me.”

  Muriel rubbed her slack mouth. “My dear,” she started. “I knew you felt . . .”

  “You really must excuse me,” Stephen said icily. “I don’t know what I was thinking of, dragging all that old weary stuff up. I p . . . p . . . p . . . prefer not to talk of it.”

  Muriel stared at him hopelessly as he got to his feet and turned a cold shut face towards her. “But I hope you will be glad for me,” he insisted tonelessly. “I hope you will be happy for me, Mother, and that you will learn to love Lily in time.”

  Muriel looked up at him imploringly. “Of course,” she said quietly. “If that is what you truly wish.”

  “I’ll go to her now,” Stephen said. “She’s had the devil of a day. She should go to bed, I think. Did you have the blue room made ready for her?”

  Muriel nodded and stood aside as Stephen went towards the door. “Stephen . . .” she started. Her eyes were filled with impotent tears, she stretched her hand towards him.

  He turned to her his dead cold face. “Yes?”

  “Nothing, my dear. Nothing, my dear. My dear . . . nothing.”

  12

  LILY WENT THROUGH the days of the following week blank-faced and blank-eyed. Muriel Winters, facing her over the lunch table, could not think what Stephen had seen in this dull silent girl unless it was the very appeal of her emptiness—a plain page on which he could prescribe his ideal. She had thought that the girl might have been grieving, and she was prepared to be sympathetic and supportive. But when she had said, laying a hand on Lily’s cold fingers: “You must try not to grieve too much for your mother. I am sure she would not have wanted that,” Lily had looked at her with her dull blue eyes and said only: “I am not grieving too much.”

  The girl was useful, Muriel had to allow her that. As it happened, the nurse who usually cared for Mr. Winters during the day had given her notice. An agency nurse came and dressed him in the morning, changed him during the day and undressed him at night, but there was no-one to sit with him or to keep him company. On the second day of her visit Lily was taken by Stephen to see his father, and after he had left for the office she had crept upstairs and sat at the old man’s bedside for most of the morning. It was Muriel’s Women’s Empire League meeting so she knew nothing of it until Lily came down for lunch and said that she had been sitting with Mr. Winters.

  “With Rory? Whatever for?” Muriel said unguardedly.

  “I thought he might be lonely. All alone, in such a big house.”

  Muriel hesitated. “We don’t know he even hears us. We don’t know he even knows we’re there. He’s like someone who is dead really.”

  Lily shook her fair bobbed head very definitely. “No he isn’t. Someone dead is gone. Gone for ever.”

  Muriel nodded at the parlourmaid to clear the plates; she was embarrassed. “Well, if you like to sit with him I am sure I appreciate it very much. If you like to do it.”

  When Stephen came home in the evening he was not pleased. “Whatever did you let her go in there for? I took her in for common courtesy, just so she knew her way around the house. It’s not right that she should sit with him. She’s not here to nurse him, for God’s sake. It’s unhealthy for her. It’s positively m . . . morbid.”

  “I can hardly stop her. You introduced them. If she wants to sit with him rather than sitting in her bedroom or in the drawing room then I suppose she must be allowed to do as she wishes. She’s clearly not used to life in a large house. She creeps around the drawing room as if she were afraid of being told not to touch. If she feels comfortable with Rory then I can hardly forbid her to be with him.”

  “It’s unhealthy,” Stephen persisted. He hardly knew what he meant by the words. He had a certainty that it was too close to death for Lily. He wanted her in the sunshine, even in the limelight. He did not want her in the darkened shadows of the sickroom. He did not want her with a tang of antiseptic in her hair or the
smell of decay and death on her hands.

  Muriel shrugged. “Then you must tell her,” she said.

  She was biding her time. The threatened announcement of the engagement had not gone in the Telegraph. Lily wore no ring. Stephen’s attitude to her was proprietary, protective. But Lily seemed deaf to his tone and blind to the lingering touch of his hand on her sleeve. She moved from one strange room to another in this strange house like the little automated dolls that had come from Germany before the war. Her legs took her from bedroom to dining room to drawing room and up the stairs to bed again, and her little fair head moved from side to side. But there was nothing inside her but little clockwork workings—and a most terrible emptiness.

  Muriel thought that Stephen would weary of Lily. She no longer had the bright glamour of being a stage girl. She was no longer a challenge to convention. She was a shabbily dressed quiet little doll who walked—tick-tock—from room to room as she was bid. Her face was an even greyish pallor, her home-made summer dresses were pastel prints which seemed to fade daily. Her hair seemed to be losing its brightness and becoming pale and limp. Even Stephen, with his longing for peace and stillness, could not desire this little drab, Muriel thought. She was as quiet and as humble as a housemaid without a character. Stephen might pity her, but surely he could not continue to be in love with her. She was not a girl who could inspire any emotion but pity.

  After dinner they took coffee in the drawing room. The long curtains were pulled around the sections of the octagonal tower windows but even so they could hear the sea. A foghorn out in the Solent blew dismally at irregular intervals and they could hear the wind blowing the waves uneasily against the shingle of the beach.

  “High tide,” Stephen said. “I shouldn’t like to be out at sea tonight.”