Fallen Skies

  With my love as I promised,

  Charlie Smith.

  Lily read and re-read Charlie’s letter. Then she put her face deep into her pillow so that her sobs would not be heard in that quiet empty house, and she cried and cried and cried.

  That afternoon she walked down to the post office and asked for a telegram form. She addressed it to Charlie Smith at the digs, copying the address carefully off Madge’s letter. She wrote: “I AM MARRYING STEPHEN WINTERS ON SATURDAY UNLESS I HEAR FROM YOU STOP.”

  She paid with the last pound note in her purse and then she walked back to the silent red-brick house with the white windows overlooking the Canoe Lake.

  • • •

  Charlie’s reply came the next day while Muriel and Lily were finishing their breakfast. Stephen’s broken eggshells and empty cup were still at the head of the table. Lily was moving her hand in the sunlight, watching her ring sparkle with its deep blue colour.

  “A telegram!” Muriel exclaimed as she saw the boy’s peaked cap pass the dining room window to the front door steps. Her colour drained from her face, her hand was up at her pearls, pressing them against her throat. “A telegram!”

  “It’s all right,” Lily said quickly. “It’s probably from Plymouth. I wrote to my friends that I was getting married. It’s all right, Mrs. Winters.”

  The colour began to return to Muriel’s cheeks. “How silly of me.” She was still trembling. “It was just that during the war everyone dreaded the telegram boy. I remember watching him biking down the road and praying that he wasn’t coming here. And then one day it was for us.”

  Lily went to the door to take the telegram from Sally.

  “Silver tray,” Muriel said sharply. “All letters, even telegrams, must be put on the silver tray before you bring them in. I will not tolerate this kind of post-war sloppiness.”

  “Sorry, M’m,” Sally whispered. She snatched the telegram back and disappeared into the hall. Lily had to wait until she brought it back on the silver tray.

  As Muriel watched, Lily took it and opened it. It was from the Midsummer Madness company. “HEARTIEST CONGRATS STOP WILL THINK OF YOU SAT STOP MUCH FUTURE HAPPINESS STOP WHAT A BREAK STOP. MIDSUMMER MADNESS, PLYMOUTH.”

  “Bad news?” Muriel asked, looking at Lily’s shocked face.

  Lily turned with a thin little smile. “No. It is congratulations for Saturday. I telegraphed them yesterday that I was marrying Stephen.”

  She held out the telegram to Muriel. Muriel flinched a little when she came to the bright vulgarity of “WHAT A BREAK STOP.”

  Lily took the telegram back.

  “What a shame none of them will be in Portsmouth for your wedding. Will your friends from Highland Road come to the register office?”

  “No. Stephen and I want to be very quiet.”

  “And have you chosen your dress? Did you see anything when you were out buying your ring?”

  Lily shook her head. “Could we go shopping today or tomorrow?”

  “Of course. What d’you have in mind? A little dress and jacket? Or a coat dress outfit?”

  Lily tried to smile but her whole face was trembling. “I don’t know. Let’s see what there is. I don’t know really.”

  “Are you all right, Lily?”

  “Yes! Oh yes!” Lily crumpled the telegram into a ball and tossed it into the waste paper basket. “Quite all right,” she said.

  14

  LILY’S JULY WEDDING WAS SUNNY. Her dress was yellow linen—low-waisted with a pleated skirt, and matching coat. Her hat was a little panama straw cloche trimmed with a matching yellow ribbon. Muriel thought she did them all credit, under the circumstances. Stephen wore a plain light grey summer suit. He refused to wear his medals. The witnesses were Muriel and John Pascoe from Stephen’s office. The only hitch in the smooth and unemotional proceedings came when Lily’s Aunt Mary and Betty appeared without warning and threw rice and kissed Lily, loud smacking sentimental kisses outside the register office and in full view of anyone who might be passing. Lily flushed rosy red and threw her arms around them and kissed them back. Muriel scowled at Coventry, who was holding open the car door and grinning, and then shot an angry look at Stephen.

  “Would you ladies like to join us? We have booked a table for luncheon at the Dolphin Hotel before we leave for London.”

  Betty and Aunt Mary recoiled at once from Stephen’s icy politeness.

  “Not at all!”

  “So sorry, we can’t.”

  Lily giggled. For a moment in her new yellow dress and little hat, she looked like a pretty girl, a bride.

  “Oh, go away, you two!” she exclaimed. “Coming up to town and making a lot of fuss! I told you it was going to be a quiet wedding!”

  Betty hugged her again. “You look a picture. A picture!”

  She turned to Muriel. “I’m glad to meet you, Mrs. Winters, you couldn’t have a better daughter-in-law than our Lil.”

  Muriel frigidly proffered a white gloved hand. “Thank you, Mrs. . . . er . . .”

  “Betty Hoskins. And this is Lil’s Aunt Mary.”

  Aunt Mary leaned forward. “She’s not had it easy, little Lil,” she confided. “But she’s not one of those flighty types and for all she was on the stage she knows where to draw the line. Her ma—God rest her soul—kept her in line. You can ask anybody.”

  Muriel prompted Stephen with another speaking glance.

  “Lily, we must go,” he said.

  Lily hugged Betty and Aunt Mary again. “You’re a pair of ducks to come!” she said. “An absolute pair of ducks. But I’ve got to go now. I’ll come and see you when we get back.”

  Aunt Mary held her close. “She’d have been glad to see you settled, Lil,” she whispered. “She wanted the stage for you but it was only to see you make your own living. She wanted you to be set up for life. She’d be pleased to see you settled and with a man with a steady income.”

  Lily blinked rapidly. “I know.”

  “Lily . . .” Stephen said, a hint of irritation in his tone.

  Lily stepped back and got into the Argyll. Muriel got in beside her and Stephen and John Pascoe took the little fold-down seats facing the ladies. Lily leaned forward to wave. Betty threw handfuls of rice as they drew away. More by luck than judgement it pattered against the half-open window and spilled over the floor. Stephen tutted at the mess. “My hat, Lily, what an awful pair!”

  Lily looked at him, unsmiling. “What d’you mean?” she asked.

  Stephen shook his head and put his hand to his moustache to hide his smile. “Nothing, my dear. Nothing at all.”

  Lunch was a restrained affair. They had a private dining room and they ate roast beef, Yorkshire puddings, roast potatoes, carrots and overcooked sprouts. John Pascoe ordered a bottle of warm champagne and drank a toast to the happy couple. Lily ate very little and hardly tasted the champagne.

  “Sugar lump!” Stephen said. He reached over to Lily’s glass and dropped a lump of sugar in it. He smiled at John Pascoe and his mother. “We had a young lad in our battalion. Never drunk wine or beer in his life. Methodist family; I think he signed the pledge when he was a child. We had him taste some champagne—we got hold of a case—and he hated it. We put a sugar lump in it and told him it was lemonade and he couldn’t get enough of it. Taste it, Lily!”

  Lily took a cautious sip and then smiled and drank. “I like it better sweet,” she said.

  “How on earth did you have a case of champagne in the trenches?” Muriel asked.

  Stephen winked at John. “Spoils of war. Spoils of war.”

  “And what happened to the teetotaller?”

  Stephen laughed a cracked laugh. “That was funny. He got the most dreadful taste for it and we couldn’t stop him drinking. He’d drink as soon as he got up in the morning and he’d try and buy the men’s tots of rum off them. Every time we went behind the lines he’d be dead drunk!”

  Lily was shocked. She had lived in a class where a drinking husband was a death
sentence for a family. “That’s dreadful. What happened to him?”

  Stephen shrugged. “It didn’t matter so much, really. He d . . . d . . . died a few weeks later.”

  “Because he was drunk?” Lily pursued.

  “B . . . b . . . b . . . because he was there,” Stephen snapped.

  “What time is your train?” Muriel asked, filling the silence.

  Stephen checked his watch. “Not long. I’ll pay the bill and we’ll go. You’ll see us off, won’t you, John?”

  “Of course! It’s not every day I get a chance to celebrate a wedding between two such delightful young people.”

  Lily grinned at him and for a moment even Muriel could see Lily’s unconscious easy charm.

  The two women went to the cloakroom and straightened their hats.

  Muriel put her hand out on Lily’s arm to delay their return to the men. She was blushing furiously. “Lily, did your mother tell you about men, about men as husbands, I mean?”

  Lily turned her wide blue eyes on Muriel. “No,” she said. “She didn’t think I’d be getting married for years.”

  Muriel took her hat off again and turned towards the mirror, pushed her waved hair into place, and replaced her hat. “Then you should know, my dear, that a man has to take his pleasure with his wife. And that the wife has to consent. But I expect you knew that?”

  Lily nodded slowly.

  “It hurts a little the first time, but it is not ‘done’ to complain,” Muriel said rapidly. She took off her hat again. Lily watched her, saying nothing.

  “You may bleed a little.” Muriel’s voice was scarcely more than a whisper. “There is no need for alarm. You may feel some pain. Just ignore it.”

  Lily had a sudden vivid thought of Charlie’s warm bed and the smell of his skin and the soft stubbly scratch of his growing beard as he kissed her. She thought of his lean body against hers and how she had felt herself swirling and spinning as he held her.

  “Isn’t it nice? Isn’t it nice at all?”

  Muriel suddenly lost her embarrassment and became disapproving. “Certainly not,” she said. “Not for a lady. A lady always behaves with restraint.”

  Lily looked at her uncertainly. What Muriel was telling her was confirmed by her own mother’s reluctant acceptance of her husband’s drunken kisses and the belief among the Highland Road women that men demanded their rights and that women avoided them where possible. But it made no sense with the memory of Charlie’s warm kisses.

  “But men enjoy it,” Lily suggested.

  “A lady is not like a man,” Muriel said stiffly. “A man gets pleasure from it, and the lady’s pleasure is in giving in to him. It is how children are conceived and those are true joys of marriage. Stephen is a gentleman, of course. You have nothing to fear, Lily. I just thought I should make sure you knew that something will happen.”

  “But when girls go wrong . . . they must do it because they like it?”

  Muriel jammed her hat on her head and scowled in the mirror at Lily. “Those are bad girls,” she said fiercely. “A lady does not enjoy it. A well-brought-up girl does not enjoy it. Bad girls are the same as prostitutes. They are like men. We do not think about them. We do not mention them. Stephen would not want a bride like that.”

  “I’m not like that!” Lily said, stung.

  Muriel turned from the mirror and gave her a hard look. “I trust not, my dear. No girl who felt those kind of feelings would have any business marrying into a family such as ours. I trust indeed that you have the feelings of a lady. Leave it all to Stephen, he’ll know what to do. He wants nothing from you but your innocence.”

  Lily faced her mother-in-law for a few cold moments and then she nodded. The two women left the cloakroom and joined the men. The bill had been paid, the car was waiting. Coventry had swept out the back seat but Lily could still see little grains of rice trapped in the corners.

  Stephen had reserved seats for them on the train and their first-class compartment was empty. Stephen and Lily waited on the platform as Coventry stowed the bags, then got into the train and smiled from the window at Muriel and John waiting for them to leave.

  Lily suddenly thought of the fuss and the noise on the platform when Midsummer Madness was on tour, the girls screaming instructions about their cases and Charlie smiling across the carriage at her. It was a painful contrast between the carefree scramble on tour and this stiff solemn ritual which was her honeymoon.

  “Are you all right, Lily? You’re pale.”

  Lily shook her head at Muriel. “I’m fine.”

  The guard blew a whistle, unfurled a green flag. “Bye!” Stephen called. He was looking beyond his mother and his business partner to where Coventry stood at the ticket gate at the end of the platform. Coventry raised a hand in a gesture like a half-salute, or even a blessing, a benediction. Lily waved at Muriel and John and the train jolted forward, throwing her against Stephen. He caught her, and so the last Muriel saw of them was Lily in Stephen’s arms and both of them laughing as the train drew away.

  “They looked happy,” she said doubtfully to John as they turned and walked slowly to the car.

  He threw her a sideways look. “If anyone knows how bad these post-war marriages can be it would be Stephen,” he said. “Day in and day out he is doing divorce work. He knows his own mind. Don’t fret. And she is a lovely, lovely girl.”

  “I don’t understand him any more,” Muriel said. “Ever since the war . . .”

  “Oh, the war,” John sighed. Coventry held the door of the car and Muriel got in, John beside her. “Nothing is the same now. Nothing ever will be the same again. Who would have thought that just four years could have changed so much?”

  • • •

  Stephen had booked them into the Russell Hotel in Russell Square. When the cab dropped them at the imposing red-brick doorway he had been pleased to see Lily look up and up at the high building and then jump nervously when the doorman stepped forward and opened the door for them.

  Stephen registered their names at the reception desk while Lily gazed around the imposing lobby. There was a bright crystal chandelier hanging from the high painted ceiling, and a massive flight of shallow stairs edged with what looked like a marble balustrade. There was a cocktail bar to the right of the entrance and they could hear laughter and the chink of glasses. To the left was another bar and the dining rooms.

  “Room twenty-four, Mr. Winters,” the clerk said, handing him a key. He struck the bell on the counter top and two porters came forward to carry the suitcases. Lily and Stephen followed them up the stairs. Stephen liked how Lily looked all around her and how her ring, now matched with the new broad gold band, sparkled as her hand trailed up the bannister.

  Their room was large, dominated by a double bed, furnished with heavy gilt furniture upholstered in green velvet. The carpet was green and the curtains at the tall windows were green, swagged back with heavy tie-backs of green and gold lace. There was even a bathroom attached to the room. Stephen had spared no expense. He tipped the porters sixpence each, and they left, shutting the door behind them.

  “I bet you’ve never been anywhere like this in your life before!” Stephen crowed.

  Lily’s little face was quite aghast. “Stephen, it must have cost a fortune. Can you afford it?”

  He laughed confidently. “I think we can run to a little luxury just this once. Now, what would you like to do first? The British Museum? The shops? A drive around the park? The Tower of London?”

  “I want to unpack.”

  Stephen chuckled indulgently. “Ring for a maid, she can do it for you.”

  Lily laid hold of the lid of her suitcase. “No! No! I want to do it!”

  “Funny girl. Go on then, I’ll wait for you. No hurry.”

  He went to the telephone by the bed and rang down for a whisky and soda. He did not offer a drink to Lily. He did not think of it. When the waiter came with the drink Stephen settled himself into an armchair by the window, lit a cigarette, a
nd watched Lily moving quietly around their bedroom unpacking her few dresses, and putting her toothbrush and her flannel and her little piece of soap in the bathroom which he would share.

  “Lily,” he said softly. He was aroused by this quiet domestic preparation.

  Lily looked towards him, warned by his tone.

  “Come here.”

  She glanced at her empty suitcase and towards the bathroom door. There was no reason to refuse him. She stepped slowly, awkwardly, the three or four steps across the room. She stood before him.

  Stephen made no move to touch her. He eyed her over the top of his whisky glass, his cigarette in his other hand. “Have a taste,” he said, holding out the glass to her. Lily took a quick instinctive step backwards, whipping her hands behind her back. “No!” she said.

  “Why, you’re like a little girl, a little girl, Lily.” He was smiling. He got to his feet, bringing the glass with him. “Try a little whisky. You might like it. You tried lobsters. D’you remember when we were out at dinner in Southsea? And oysters? I should make you eat lots of oysters, Lily, even though you hate them. D’you know why?”

  Lily stepped back again and then felt the double bed against the back of her legs. She did not know why she felt this rising fear. This was not like Stephen, not courteous gentlemanly Stephen. This was like some kind of stranger, the sort of man who once stopped her on the street and offered her sweeties. Lily, with a shopful of sweets at home, had been instantly suspicious and ran away. But she remembered the mixture of fascination and fear. What did Stephen want of her that he spoke so softly and yet why was his voice also so menacing?

  He brought the glass up to her face. Lily, trapped by the bed behind her, stood still and bent her lips to the glass. He tipped it and she took a good mouthful. She gulped it down and coughed, her eyes watering. “It’s horrible!” she exclaimed. “Ugh! It burns! It’s really nasty!”

  Stephen put down the glass and put a gentle hand under her chin to turn her face up to him. “I don’t like to see a girl drink spirits,” he said. “I’m glad you don’t like it, Lily.”

  He bent his head closer. Lily remembered the time he had kissed her on the beach and her sense of suffocation and fear. She moved slightly backwards, and again felt the edge of the mattress against the back of her knees. She could not move away from him now. She could not demand to be taken to the theatre now. She could not refuse to see him again. She had married him.