Fallen Skies

  Stephen looked around in satisfaction. “Very nice indeed, Mother,” he said. “You have been busy!”

  “I had it well planned! The cushions and carpets were ordered as soon as you said you were marrying. I had to rush the decorators through, but I knew exactly what I wanted and I wouldn’t take any excuse. I counted on having at least three more days . . .” Muriel broke off. There was a little silence. No-one wanted to acknowledge that Stephen and Lily had come home from their honeymoon early.

  “It looks finished,” Stephen offered.

  “There’s a dressing table with a little stool to come,” Muriel said. “And the carpet fitters are due tomorrow. I’ve ordered a blue carpet, I think it’ll match.”

  “Lovely!” Lily said. “It’s a lovely room. Thank you.”

  Muriel went towards the door. “I’ll leave you to get settled,” she said. “Shall I send Sally to unpack for you?”

  “I can manage,” Lily said.

  “Dinner at seven then.”

  She shut the door behind her. Stephen and Lily were alone.

  “Jolly nice of her to go to all this trouble.”

  Lily nodded.

  “You like the colours and everything?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “And I know you like looking out at the sea. Just like a little mermaid.”

  “Yes.”

  There was a silence between them.

  “It’s good to be home.”

  Lily nodded.

  “I tell you what, we’ll take a run out in the car tomorrow. Drive over and have lunch at Chichester or somewhere. I don’t have to be back at the office until next week—we could have a couple of jaunts out and about.”

  “That would be nice.”

  “I’ll leave you to unpack,” Stephen said. “Or get the girl to do it.”

  “I like to do it,” Lily said. “I like to deal with my own things. I want to look at them again.”

  Stephen chuckled. “I’ll go down and sit with Father for a bit, meet this new nurse.”

  He put a hand on Lily’s shoulder as he went towards the door. It was the first time they had touched in daylight since he had collapsed outside the British Museum. Lily stayed very still and looked steadily at him, her face showing nothing. She was a little basilisk. Stephen’s confident smile never flickered. He bent and kissed her lips. Lily felt the brush of his moustache and the touch of his full lips on her mouth and forced herself not to pull away. She stood quite still, her lips cold and uninviting.

  Stephen sighed with pleasure. “What about trying out the bed, Mrs. Winters?” he asked gently. “Trying out the new bed? We’ll be sharing it for a good few years!”

  Lily moved away from him and sat in the window seat, looking out towards the sea, the beach, the calling gulls and the holidaymakers packing up and going back to their hotels and boarding houses.

  “Stephen, really!” she said. Her voice was balanced precisely between reproof and mild shock.

  Stephen flinched at her tone. “I’m sorry, Lily,” he said. He looked at her apologetically. Lily sat like a little yellow statue of indifference with the blue sky behind her. “You’re so damned lovely. I keep wanting to . . .”

  Lily looked at him coldly and his words dried in his mouth. He smiled awkwardly. “I’ll go and visit Father,” he said.

  Lily nodded. She sat without moving until the door had closed behind him and only then did she exhale deeply, as if she had been holding her breath with fear.

  When she heard the door of his father’s room close, Lily slipped from their bedroom and stepped quietly down the stairs. They were carpeted with a faded red and blue runner held in place with brass stair rods and rings. By stepping on the edge of the carpet where it was thickest, Lily could get downstairs unheard.

  Madge’s letter was at the front of the post rack. There was one other letter for Lily with a typewritten envelope and a Southsea postmark. Lily took them both and slipped upstairs again.

  She sat on the window seat to look at them. She opened Madge’s letter first.

  Darling Lil,

  How does it feel to be a maried woman then? I bet your not so keen now you know all about it! Make sure you don’t get into trouble—you know what I mean. When I see you again I’ll tell you a few things you should know. I doubt any one else has put you wise!

  Your the luckiest girl that ever was catching your Captain. Hes a real peach and absolutely rolling in it. Charlie was telling me about the family the other night. So you’ll be living in that lovely house unless you get your own I suppose? I’d hold out for my own place actualy. What about a nice little flat overlooking the seafront? Or London? Cant you get him to move?

  Were working our way home again. Im writing this from Sidmouth again on the return trip and we’ll be home in four weeks. Its going well. No news really. Ill phone you when we get into Southsea and you can invite me round for tea, duches! Posh!

  As you can guess, I didn’t really want to write. Charlie made me write to you and he’s going to inclose a page. By the by Sylvia de Charmante made a huge pass at him and he turned her down flat. She was sick. It was divine. Charlies leaving the show to take up his new post at the Kings almost at once. We’ve got some drery replasement starting tomorrow.

  See you when we get home,

  Love

  Madge.

  Lily read through Madge’s letter quickly and then turned to Charlie’s.

  Dear Lily,

  Congratulations on your marriage. I hope you will be very happy. It’s obvious that Captain Winters was very much in love with you from the start. I am sure you have made the right decision in marrying him.

  I am writing to tell you that they will be auditioning for the Kings from the middle of July and if you wish I can put your name forward. There is also the pantomime which might suit you in the winter season, especially as it would not take you from your new home.

  Yours sincerely,

  Charlie Smith.

  There was a postscript, as if Charlie knew that his letter to Lily must be something that her husband could read, and yet at the moment of putting it into the envelope he had heard the coldness of his tone, and remembered her despairing telegram the day before her marriage which he had left unanswered.

  I should like to see you if Captain Winters permits.

  Your friend, as ever,

  Charlie.

  Lily read and re-read the letter. Then she folded it up and put it carefully in a pocket in her new handbag. She sat for a moment looking towards the sea where the families playing on the beach had been replaced by people dressed in their evening clothes, strolling along the sea wall. Somewhere in the distance there was a brass band playing waltzes. Lily remembered the night in Charlie’s room and the irresistible longing, as powerful as pain, that she had felt for his touch. She could not relate the arid painful struggles with Stephen to her easy melting desire for Charlie. The night with Charlie seemed like a dream now, one of the strange romantic dreams of her girlhood. Charlie’s scarred wounded body was like a girl’s dream: sensual, warm, unthreatening. The reality was a nightmare. Lily could not think of Stephen’s aggressive maleness as part of the same species.

  She remembered her second letter and opened it. She gave a little gasp of delight. It was work. It was from the manager of the Kings Theatre offering her a date for an audition to be held at the theatre under the supervision of their new musical director, Charlie Smith, on 21 July. Lily leaped to her feet and walked around the room, too excited to sit still. On the bare floorboards her shoes echoed loudly. Lily did not care, she had the offer of work as a professional singer in her hand.

  The sound of Rory’s bedroom door opening and Stephen’s step on the stairs startled Lily. She thrust the letter in the pocket of her jacket and threw open the lid of her suitcase.

  “Not unpacked?” Stephen said, coming into the room.

  Lily stared. He had not knocked. She realized that he would never have to knock. He had an absolute right to
walk into her bedroom any time of day or night. She would never again have a room that was exclusively her own.

  “I was daydreaming,” Lily excused herself. “And watching people walk by the sea.”

  “I must dress for dinner,” Stephen said.

  “I want a bath,” she said. “I’ll go now. Will there be hot water?”

  Stephen smiled. “We always have enough hot water. It’s something I insist on.”

  Lily took her sponge bag and her dressing-gown, and then, on second thoughts, took her evening dress and stockings and underwear from her open suitcase. Stephen did not notice. She slipped from the bedroom with her evening clothes bundled in her hands. She did not want to dress in front of him.

  They met for sherry in the drawing room before dinner. Muriel admired Lily’s dress and noticed how much brighter the girl looked. She must have been just tired, Muriel thought. Tired and perhaps a little shocked by the honeymoon. But now she is home she is blooming. She must be happy with Stephen. She would not look so well if she were not happy with Stephen.

  With more confidence than she had felt earlier, Muriel asked them how they had liked London. Stephen told her it was much changed from the days of his wartime leaves. Changed for the worse.

  “The war . . .” Muriel shrugged. “You won’t believe the rates I have to pay for the new nurse. None of them want to nurse a civilian. They all want a glamorous wounded officer who will marry them!”

  “Ghastly thought,” Stephen said lightly. “I told you, didn’t I, of the chap who came in to see me having married his nurse and found himself lumbered with the hospital cleaning woman?”

  Lily gurgled with laughter. “No! But surely he couldn’t divorce her just for that?”

  Stephen tapped the side of his nose with his finger. “You be warned, Mrs. Winters, a clever lawyer can get you in or out of a marriage in a moment. There is no telling how fast an undesirable wife can be shot out the door. Women’s movement or no!”

  “You’re an old tyrant,” Muriel said good-humouredly. “In my day you married for life, and that was that.”

  Stephen reached out and touched Lily’s hand as it lay on the table. She did not move away, she let his hand rest heavily on hers and smiled steadily at him. “That’s the way it is for us,” Stephen said confidently. “Married for life, eh, Lily?”

  It is all right then, Muriel thought to herself, seeing Lily’s beautiful clear smile. He does love her and she will learn to love him. It couldn’t have been a worse-looking marriage but if Stephen loves her and she has the sense to respond, then they will settle together. And when there are children they will be tied together by that strongest of all bonds. Who could ever have left a home where Christopher was growing up?

  When Stephen prompted her later in the evening, Lily agreed that she was tired from the journey. She went up the stairs to their bedroom with him. She undressed while he was in the bathroom and was in bed with her eyes shut and her bedside light off by the time he came into the bedroom.

  He said “Lily” softly and she did not stir at all.

  He got into bed beside her and turned off his bedside light.

  The room was very dark. Lily, still and quiet in the darkness, could hear the sea.

  Stephen’s heavy hand came out of the darkness on to her shoulder.

  “Lily,” he said.

  Lily stayed silent for a few more moments.

  His hand moved down to her breast, gripping her flesh through the thin silk of her nightgown.

  Lily stirred as if she had just woken. “Stephen,” she said softly. “You must excuse me. After the journey I feel so tired. I really must sleep.”

  Stephen said nothing. Lily froze, wondering if he would insist, if she could get away with a refusal, wondering what the rules were.

  He sighed. “Of course, my dear.”

  The sea sounded loud in the darkness. Lily could feel Stephen wakeful and threatening in the bed beside her. She forced herself to breathe slowly and noisily. She knew that any movement, any sound that betrayed she was awake would serve as an excuse for him to touch her, to insist on his rights, this first night in his home.

  They lay side by side in silence for long minutes.

  “I’m just popping downstairs,” Stephen said quietly. “You go to sleep. I’ll be a little while. I think I’ll have a brew.”

  The bed rocked as he got out and Lily heard the whisper of his silk dressing-gown as he put it on, heard him fumble with his bare feet for his slippers. Then the door opened and closed behind him and he was gone.

  Coventry was in the kitchen, the kettle boiled and keeping hot on the stove. He was smoking a cigarette. An earlier cigarette butt smouldered in the grate. He looked up when Stephen came down the kitchen stairs.

  Stephen made a grimace at him. “Tired,” he said as if in explanation. “Tired from the journey! Sitting in a train for what—little more than an hour? Remember the march from the railhead to the bivouac at St. Omer? Travelling all day and all night and then a ten-mile march to a barn?”

  Coventry smiled noncommittally and spooned more tea into the dregs in the pot.

  Stephen pulled up a chair and helped himself to one of Coventry’s cigarettes. “This is good,” he said. “London was bloody awful. Might as well have been Paris. Packed out with Yanks and foreigners. Noisy as hell. Cars everywhere. Rotten service. Everything overpriced.”

  Coventry poured the tea. Stephen took his mug and breathed in the reassuring acrid smell of strong stewed tea.

  “Nobody knew me from Adam,” Stephen complained. “I didn’t even want to go to my club. Who’s going to be there, after all? Old men, just old men!”

  Coventry nodded and opened a tin of biscuits. Stephen took one and dipped it in his tea and sucked the tea from it. Bits of biscuit crumbled wetly and sweetly in his mouth, some dropped into the mug.

  “I don’t know anyone who lives in London any more,” Stephen said. “Charles Hollingbury did—remember Major Hollingbury? But he got the shakes with the noise and bought a farm in Wiltshire somewhere.”

  Coventry nodded.

  “I’d like a farm,” Stephen said. “A farm like that little place in Belgium. A farm where Lily and I could be together. Charles had the right idea.”

  Stephen fell silent at last and the two men sat together, saying nothing, watching the red embers glow in the little grate.

  “I had a bit of a turn,” Stephen said quietly. “Lily made a fuss about it—she can’t understand. There was a bang, from a car, and I . . .” He broke off. “I h . . . h . . . I h . . . h . . .” he panted, trying to manage the “h” sound. “I had a bit of a turn.”

  Coventry said nothing. Stephen tightened his grip on his mug and dipped his head and drank deeply of the sour sweet hot tea. “I didn’t say anything. N . . . n . . . nothing to fear.”

  Coventry reached to the stove and took the teapot. He topped up Stephen’s mug and then his own.

  Stephen’s whole face quivered. “J . . . j . . . just a little turn,” he said. “D’you know—I can hardly remember a damn thing about it? J . . . just the bang, and then Lily in the hotel room and she was r . . . r . . . really mad.”

  “Mad,” he repeated. “M . . . mad.”

  There was a long silence. “She can’t say anything,” Stephen said harshly. “Sh . . . she was all but h . . . h . . . hysterical.”

  Coventry, not looking at him, reached out a hand, put an arm along Stephen’s shoulders.

  “I didn’t tell,” Stephen said. “I w . . . wouldn’t trust her.”

  Coventry’s grip tightened. “But—oh God! I dreamed again!” Stephen said in sudden pain. “I started the dream again. Arriving, and the train journey, and the march . . . what if I dream every day of it? What if I dream of the farmhouse?”

  Coventry’s grip on his shoulder was painfully hard. Stephen froze for a moment. Then with a harsh sob he turned to Coventry and thrust his twisted face into Coventry’s neck. Coventry held him very tightly. In the steady
mild light from the fire the two men clung to each other as if they were still in the mortal danger of the long rolling plains of Flanders.

  • • •

  The sun woke Lily in the morning. Stephen was already gone. The octagonal tower window faced south but curved from west to east. The sun pouring in the east windows made the yellow curtains glow. Lily woke smiling and stretched wide in the freedom of the big bed on her own. “Divine! Too, too divine!”

  She gazed upwards at the newly painted ceiling for a little while, too contented to stir, then with a sudden movement she threw back the covers and pattered over to the window. She drew back the curtains and the sun streamed into the room. Motes of dust danced in the bright light, the unpolished pale wood floorboards gleamed pale. Lily, like a classical nymph on a vase, spread her flimsy nightgown and danced in the sunlight.

  A knock at the door sent her flying into bed, the covers snatched up to her chin. “Come in!”

  It was Sally with a large tray with teapot and tea cup, two boiled eggs, toast and a butter pat stamped with a little thistle flower. There was a single rose in a silver vase. Sally was grinning broadly. “Captain Winters said you should have breakfast in bed, Miss Pears—I mean, Mrs. Winters. He went for a walk by the sea but he said if you would be ready at eleven then you could go out for the day.”

  Lily sat up in bed and received the tray on her knees. “Thank you,” she said with careful nonchalance.

  Sally scanned the tray. “Is there anything else you’d like, Ma’am?”

  Lily took up the rose and inhaled the perfume as well as the “Ma’am” as incense to her new class position. She had gone to school with girls like Sally. The parents of girls like Sally had patronized the little shop and talked down to Lily’s ma and patted Lily on the head and given her a ha’penny for sweets on wages day. Now Sally put a tray carefully on Lily’s bed and tucked the curtains back behind the swags, and waited for orders.