Fallen Skies

  She blinked quickly and two tears fell on to the baby’s blanket. Lily blotted them with a finger. “But I don’t miss her like I used to,” she said softly. “Now my baby is born I feel like I’m starting a new life, a new life all over again. And to think I didn’t want him at first! To think I should have got that so wrong!”

  The baby’s blue eyes opened and he looked up at Lily with the strange attentive stare of the newborn, as if he were as surprised and delighted with the world as Lily was with him. Charlie swallowed and rubbed his face on his sleeve.

  “Are you tired, Lil?” he asked gruffly.

  “A little,” she said slowly, still not taking her gaze from her baby. “I’ll sleep when I get home. You’ll come in, won’t you, Charlie?”

  “I won’t be able to stay,” Charlie said softly. “Not the done thing, Lil. Mrs. Winters was unhappy enough about me taking you to hospital, she’d be upset if I hung round too much. I don’t want to rock the boat for you, for the two of you.”

  Lily nodded. “Come this afternoon to see me then,” she said. “You always come for tea.”

  Charlie’s grip around her shoulder tightened as the cab drew up outside number two, The Parade. “Yes. I always come for tea,” he repeated bleakly. For a moment he thought of the rest of his life: coming to Lily’s for tea and watching her child grow, and knowing that she should have been his wife and the child should have been his boy. He felt one of the quick stabbing pains in his groin which he had learned to curse and ignore, and the longer unstoppable pain beneath his ribs which was heartache and could neither be cursed nor ignored.

  He paid the driver and his hand was steady. He opened the door for Lily and held her firmly by the elbow. Then he opened the garden gate and led her up the little path.

  The front door swung open and the tweeny stood in the doorway in her working apron. “Oh Mum!” she said. “They said you was at the hospital. You ought to still be there, oughtn’t you?”

  Lily beamed at her. “No, Sally,” she said brightly. “I decided to bring my baby home. He’s quite well enough to be at home, and I hate hospitals. I hate the smell of them.”

  Sally fell back before them and Lily went confidently into the drawing room. “I should like some tea,” she said. “And turn my bed down so that I can rest. I’ll have the baby’s cot in my room for now, so make sure the fire’s lit, Sally. We’ll need to keep the room warm. I’ll want a fire lit in my bedroom all day.”

  “Yes’m,” Sally said, dropping a curtsey and backing out. “I’ll tell Browning.”

  The news that Lily was home with her baby, just hours instead of a full month after the birth, spread through the house at speed: upwards, to Muriel when she came out of her bathroom, and downwards to Cook, the boot boy, the gardener and Coventry.

  Muriel dressed rapidly and came downstairs to the drawing room at once. “Lily,” she said reproachfully. “You ought to be in hospital.”

  Charlie rose to his feet and guided her to a chair. Muriel sank into it, looking paler and more drawn than Lily.

  “I’m going to bed,” Lily said agreeably. “But I couldn’t have stayed in the hospital, Mrs. Winters. I’m sorry if it’s not convenient. But the nurse there wouldn’t let me have my baby. She took him away and she wouldn’t let me see him. She wanted him to be bottle-fed and kept in the nursery. And my ma used to say that bottle-fed babies don’t do as well. I want to breast-feed.”

  Muriel’s eyes slid at once to Charlie at this embarrassing intimacy. Charlie assumed an expression of gentlemanly detachment. “But however did you get home? And what does Dr. Metcalfe say?”

  Charlie cleared his throat. “I was just leaving the hospital when Lily sent for me,” he said. “I thought it better to bring her home to her husband than to leave her there, where she was obviously unhappy.”

  “Oh yes,” Muriel said. “Home to Stephen . . . but he’s not up yet. I’ll send up Coventry to wake him. It really is most . . .” She went to the door and sent Sally with a message for Coventry to wake Stephen, and then returned to her seat. “And whatever does Dr. Metcalfe say?”

  “He wasn’t even there!” Lily protested. “It was just me and the nurse. He didn’t even bother to be there! But have a look at the baby! He’s so sweet! He’s sound asleep. He likes it here.” She pushed back her coat and, cradling her child in her arms, leaned towards Muriel. Automatically Muriel reached out to take the little baby. Lily let her son go to his grandmother and sat back in her chair with a smile.

  Muriel saw the blonde down of hair and the fair smooth skin. She held him close and heard the quiet animal breaths and saw the steady healthy beat of his pulse in the crown of the fair head. “Christopher,” she said longingly. “He is so like Christopher.”

  “Yes!” Lily said delightedly. “That must be his name. Christopher Charles! Christopher Charles Winters!”

  Muriel smiled but did not take her gaze from the baby’s face. “Another Christopher in the house,” she said lovingly. “Christopher.”

  Lily shot a swift covert look at Charlie. He was watching her, his face warm with love and desire.

  “Christopher Charles Winters,” Muriel repeated softly. “It’s a fine name. Why Charles, Lily?”

  “It was my father’s name.” Lily told an easy lie. She glanced at Charlie with a small secret smile that told him that her son was named for him. “I wanted to call him Charles from the moment I knew he was a boy,” she said.

  “A new generation of Winters, a new boy in the house,” Muriel said softly.

  The door opened quietly behind Charlie and he turned and saw Stephen standing in the doorway, looking pale and ill. The deep colours of his silk dressing-gown made him sallow. “I seem to have missed the whole show,” he said, trying for a joke. “Damned sorry, Lily. I was coming down to the hospital just now to see you; and then up you pop at home.”

  “Look, Stephen!” Muriel said. “This is Christopher.”

  A look of immediate anguish at his brother’s name went across Stephen’s face and was wiped away in a second. He stepped forward and looked at his son’s face, touched the edge of his blanket with one clumsy finger. “He looks fine,” he said softly. “Nice hair.”

  “He has slept ever since we left the hospital,” Lily said. “We couldn’t have stayed there, Stephen, they were hopeless. Charlie was just leaving but I made him bring me home.”

  “Good man,” Stephen said, nodding to Charlie. “And you were the hero last night too?”

  Charlie winked at him. “Coventry and me,” he said. “You weren’t fit for roll-call, old man!”

  Stephen shook his head in a pantomime of penitence. “I should be court-martialled. Lily, d’you forgive me?”

  Lily shook her head, smiling. “Nonsense. What could you have done?” she asked. “Coventry drove me to hospital and Charlie got me a cab to come home again. And here we are safe and sound! Me and your son, Christopher Charles Winters. Christopher after your brother and Charles after my father. Don’t you like it?”

  Stephen gritted his teeth on his smile. “If that’s what you want.” He hesitated for a moment, looking to his mother for support. “But I’d have thought you’d have chosen something a bit more modern.”

  Muriel looked up at him. “He’s named after your brother,” she said sharply. “He couldn’t have a better name.”

  Only Charlie saw the anger flare in Stephen’s face before he banked it down. “Good show,” he said determinedly. “It suits him, somehow. Jolly good show.”

  There was a short awkward silence. “I must go,” Charlie said quietly and went to the door.

  “Come for tea this afternoon,” Lily reminded him, without looking up. She was watching her sleeping son in Muriel’s arms.

  “If you’re not too tired,” Charlie said, with an eye on Muriel. He was watching for her disapproval, but the older woman was absorbed in the baby. “Two o’clock then,” Charlie said, threw a half-salute at Stephen and slipped from the room.

  “Let’
s take him to show your father!” Lily said, suddenly remembering Rory upstairs.

  Muriel rose to her feet and held out the baby to Stephen for him to carry upstairs. Lily at once intercepted the gesture and took her son. Stephen stood blinking owlishly and then opened the door as Lily passed through into the hall. Lily could smell the staleness of his breath, he was still half-drunk. The parlourmaid Browning was waiting in the hall to see the baby, Cook, Coventry and the gardener behind her.

  Lily beamed with delight at them all. “Have you all come to see my baby? Look! Isn’t he beautiful?”

  She held the baby up for them to see. “Christopher Charles Winters,” she said. “He’s to be called Christopher Charles Winters.” She smiled past Cook at Coventry. “Isn’t he lovely?”

  The housemaids cooed and Cook brushed the back of her floury hand to her cheek. “Christopher,” she repeated softly. “And as like to young Master Christopher when he was a baby as a little pea in a pod.”

  Muriel felt her own tears rising. “It’s time you were in bed, Lily,” she said. “Up the stairs with you. Can you manage with the baby?”

  “Coventry can carry him,” Lily said.

  The big man flushed slightly and stepped to Lily’s side, his arms out ready. Lily put her baby carefully into Coventry’s arms. He looked down into the small sleeping face. “Hssh hssh sshhh,” he said. It was the first time anyone in the house had heard Coventry make any noise at all. “Hssh hssh sshh,” he said again, like a groom soothing a restless horse.

  “You made a sound, Coventry,” Lily said in amazement. “Can you speak?”

  Coventry shook his head. His gaze met Stephen’s warning glare across Lily’s head. He gave a small grim smile as if to reassure Stephen that his silence would be unbroken for ever, and shook his head again.

  “I bet you can,” Lily said. “If you can say ‘sshh’ then you can say all sorts of things.”

  “Point is,” Stephen interrupted loudly, “is that he can’t. He had an injury, Lily. He can’t speak any more. Not really fair to ask different of him, is it?”

  “I didn’t mean to be unkind . . .”

  “Come along,” Muriel said. “Never mind now. Lily should be in bed.”

  “Quite right, Ma,” Stephen said. “Really she shouldn’t be here at all. She should still be at hospital. Let’s show the baby to Father and get you into bed, Lily.”

  Lily smiled and went up the stairs, followed by Coventry carrying the baby and Muriel and Stephen. Stephen looked down over the bannisters to the staff who gazed upwards. “Show’s over,” he said nastily. “Suggest you go back to your posts.”

  Lily took the baby from Coventry at Rory’s bedroom door. Coventry opened the door and she went in. There was a keen alert look about Rory and his hands, pinned at the end of his unmoving arms, flexed and closed with his desire to reach out for the child.

  “Yes,” she said, responding to the question in his dark face. “We’re both well. It’s a boy.”

  She laid the baby on his counterpane, across his immobile thighs. She helped him put one hand on the baby’s head and cup the other around his feet.

  Rory looked down, his mouth working, trying to frame words. “Boy,” he said finally.

  Lily nodded. “Yes. A boy. We’re going to call him Christopher Charles Winters.”

  Rory paused for a moment, searching for the words. “Chris’opher,” he repeated. “Like Chris’opher.”

  Stephen’s face was a mask of polite interest.

  “Yes,” Lily said patiently. “Christopher, named after your son Christopher. Now you have a grandson Christopher. And when the weather is nice we can go out for walks down to the Canoe Lake and along the prom, you and me and Christopher in his pram.”

  Rory nodded, the muscles in his neck flexing slowly.

  Lily leaned forward and took up her son. “I’m taking him upstairs now,” she said gently. “I’ll put him in his new cot. He can sleep in my room for the first few nights, and then we can make Stephen’s little dressing room into a nursery.” She spoke with assurance. “It’ll be better for me to have him near me, especially until he sleeps through the nights,” she said. “But I should rest now.”

  Rory nodded. One uncontrolled tear spilled out from the corner of his eye and rolled down his cheek. Lily had been told that his tears meant nothing, that they were a reaction caused by the damaged muscles of his eyes. She never believed it. She took a handkerchief from the pocket of her coat and gently patted his cheek dry.

  “There’s nothing to cry for,” she said softly. “Here’s a new baby in the house, a new Christopher. We’re all going to be very, very happy.”

  Stephen held the door open for her and stepped back as she went through, his face rigid.

  Upstairs in Lily’s bedroom the fire was lit and the bedclothes turned down. The cot with flowing white curtains was in the octagonal turret corner of the room. As Lily put Christopher gently down in his cot she could see the grey waves breaking into white foam on the shingle beach. The May sky overhead was palest blue and the wind was from the east. It was still very early, not yet eight.

  “Bed’s the best place for us,” Lily said with enormous satisfaction. She was unconsciously echoing her mother’s domestic wisdom. “A cold day like this! Bed is the best place to be.”

  Stephen, hearing echoes of Highland Road in Lily’s speech to her son, scowled and dropped into the chair before the dressing table. He watched Lily undress and pull on her nightgown without comment. Her belly was as fat as ever, but slack and flaccid. Her breasts were swollen with milk and stained with fat blue veins. Stephen could not recognize the thin androgynous star-struck girl he had married in this confident plump woman. He found her repellent, he was afraid of the rich fertile maturity of her body.

  “And what time shall I have your ladyship called?” he asked bitingly. “After you have taken your rest?”

  Lily looked at him in surprise. “I’ll sleep till lunchtime, I expect. If I don’t wake for lunch, then they can save me something.”

  “And what about the baby? Who is going to care for him?”

  Lily plumped up the pillows, lay back against them and drew the covers up to her chin. “I will, of course,” she said. “If he wakes I’ll just give him a feed and he can go back to sleep again.”

  “You make it sound delightfully easy,” Stephen said nastily. “I think, however, that you will find there is more to it than that. You’re rather unprepared, you see. You should have been away from home for a month as we arranged. Then you could have come back and we could have had a nanny ready and waiting. This dash away from the hospital may make things a little inconvenient for you. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!”

  A certain hardness came into Lily’s face. “Stephen, I don’t know how much you know about babies, and I don’t claim to be an expert; but in this house there are two maids, one cook, one grandmother and one fully trained nurse as well as me. I think we can manage one little sleepy baby between the six of us!”

  Stephen reached into his dressing-gown pocket and took out his cigarette packet. “Neither the maids nor the cook have time to help you. The nurse is paid by me to care for my father. My mother does not work as a skivvy in a nursery.”

  “Don’t smoke in here.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Stephen paused with a cigarette to his lips.

  “I don’t like the smell of cigarette smoke. And babies should have fresh air. If you want to smoke you must go to your room.”

  Stephen glared at Lily and she held his gaze without fear. Then his well-trained manners overcame his anger, and he put the cigarette back in the packet.

  “I shall have a bath,” he announced. “I have a devil of a headache. I shall expect you down for lunch. If you are well enough to march out of hospital you are certainly well enough to come down for lunch.”

  Lily nodded equably and waited until he had gone out of the door and it had closed behind him. “Well, I hope it’s not bloody liver,” she said r
ebelliously.

  27

  STEPHEN’S WARNINGS TO LILY were swiftly proved wrong. Christopher was a placid easy baby. He slept through the night after only a fortnight of waking at dawn; and in any case, Lily loved taking him into her big bed for a feed and then falling asleep with him in her arms.

  “You’ll smother him,” Muriel warned. “You’ll lie on him and suffocate him. You’ll spoil him too, Lily. He should be put in his cot and left to cry. It’s not healthy to hold him so close.”

  But Lily would not treat the baby as Muriel wished. She never argued with the older woman, she never contradicted her. But Christopher was picked up the moment he cried and allowed to fall asleep anywhere he wished: in his mother’s arms, tucked into the corner of the sofa while she sang with Charlie, on her bed, naked after a bath. “You’ll ruin him!” Muriel warned.

  And he was allowed to feed like a savage. Lily had no discipline at all. When he cried in her bedroom, or in the bathroom, she simply undid her shirt and offered him her breast and Christopher would settle at once to loud and sensual sucking which made Muriel colour with embarrassment and leave the room. She had to ask Stephen to make sure that Lily knew that on no account might she ever feed Christopher in the drawing room or in any of the downstairs rooms, or before any of the servants.

  “She feeds him in her bedroom, in the bathroom. I even caught her feeding him in front of your father!”

  There was a brief disgusted silence. Stephen said, “For God’s sake! I hope you told her that it wasn’t the done thing, Mother. She still needs a lot of guidance.”

  “How can I?” Muriel demanded. “I’ve told her how to care for the baby. I have told her he must be put down and left for four hours between feeds. I have told her that even if he screams she must simply shut the door on him and leave him or he will be spoiled. But she won’t do it. Apparently in Highland Road they feed their babies almost continuously, and sleep in the same bed with them all night. Lily seems to think that is the way everyone should behave.”

  Stephen pulled gently at his moustache. “I’ll have a word,” he said thoughtfully. “She’s got to learn. Maybe we should get a nanny?”