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THE DINNER WAS NOT A SUCCESS. Lily was overawed by the gold and crimson grandeur of the Queens Hotel dining room, Stephen was awkward in the company of women and had little to say to Lily under these formal circumstances. They had discussed the eclipse of the moon a few nights earlier; Stephen had speculated about British chances at the Antwerp Olympics; then he had fallen silent. He had nothing to say to Lily. If she had been the tart that he first thought, then he would have taken her to some cheerful bar and got her so drunk that she would go to an alleyway at the back of the pub and let him take her, with deliberate roughness, against a brick wall. But with the two women masquerading as ladies, Stephen did not know how to deal with them. He could not resist his desire for Lily, nervous as a child in the formal dining room, wary of waiters and wide-eyed at the other diners. She was cheaply pretty in her little blue cocktail dress and her frivolous feather of a hat. Her mother was as dignified as a duchess in a beaded black gown and gloves.
The waiter, sensing another hiatus in a stilted evening, removed the pudding plates and replaced them with small coffee cups, cream, sugar, and a large silver coffee pot. Mrs. Pears turned her attention from the band and the dancers and poured coffee into the three cups.
“Jolly good dinner,” Stephen said, seeking thanks.
Mrs. Pears nodded.
“I expect it makes a change for you, from rationing.”
Mrs. Pears shook her head. “The only good thing about running a shop is that you never go short.”
“Oh, really, Ma!” Lily exclaimed, thinking of the dried ends of ham joints and day-old bread.
Stephen had flushed a deep brick-red. “I thought . . . I thought . . . that things were dreadfully short,” he said. “Th . . . th . . . that was what they t . . . t . . . told us.”
Mrs. Pears’s smile was sardonic. “Yes,” she said. “They would have told you that. But there would have been enough for everyone if people had shared. As it was, those who could afford it never did without.”
“You s . . . s . . . sold from under the counter?” Stephen demanded. “P . . . p . . . profiteered?”
“I saw that Lily had shoes on her feet and food on the table. I bought her ballet lessons and singing lessons. I made my money from rich and selfish people who would rather pay a little more than do without. If you call that profiteering, Captain, then I’m a wartime profiteer. But you’d best look around at the company you’re in before you point an accusing finger at me.”
Lily’s fair head was bowed over her coffee cup. The feathers in her that trembled with embarrassment. “Hush, Ma,” she said softly.
Mrs. Pears pointed one black-gloved finger at the next-door table. “That man is Councillor Hurt, cloth-maker. Ask him how much khaki and serge he ran off in the four years. Ask him about the greatcoats and trousers like paper. The other is Alderman Wilson, scrap metal. Ask him about the railings and saucepans and scrap given free for the war effort but then sold by him for thousands. And that’s Mr. Askew, munitions. Ask him about the girls whose skins are still orange and about the shells which never worked.” She paused. “We were all profiteers from the war except those that died. Those who didn’t come back. They were the mugs. Everyone else did very nicely indeed.”
Stephen’s hands were trembling with his anger. He thrust them beneath the tablecloth and gripped hard.
“Let’s dance!” Lily said suddenly. “I adore this tune.” She sprang to her feet. Stephen automatically rose with her.
She led him to the dance floor, his arm went around her waist and she slipped her little hand in his. Their feet stepped lightly in time, gracefully. Lily’s head went back and she smiled up at Stephen, whose face was still white with rage. Lily sang the popular song softly to him:
If you could remember me,
Any way you choose to,
What would be your choice?
I know which one I would do . . .
Above them the winking chandelier sparkled as they turned and circled the floor. Stephen’s colour slowly came back to his cheeks. Lily sang nonsense songs, as a mother would sing to a frightened child:
When you dood the doodsie with me,
And I did the doodsie with you.
The music stopped and Lily spun around and clapped the band. They bowed. The band leader bowed particularly to Lily.
“Miss Lily Valance!” he announced.
Lily flushed and glanced at her mother. The older woman nodded her head towards the bandstand. Lily obediently went up to the band leader, her hand still on Stephen’s arm.
“Miss Lily Valance, the new star of the Palais!” the band leader announced with pardonable exaggeration.
“Wait there,” Lily said to Stephen and hitched up her calf-length dress and clambered up on to the bandstand.
“ ‘Tipperary!’ ” someone shouted from the floor. “Sing ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary!’ ”
Lily shook her head with a smile, and then stepped to the front of the stage. “I’ll sing ‘Danny Boy.’ ”
The band played the overture and Lily stood very still, listening to the music like a serious child. The dining room fell silent as Lily lifted her small pale face and sang.
She had a singing voice of remarkable clarity—more like the limpid purity of a boy soprano than a girl singer from a music hall. She sang artlessly, like a chorister practising alone. She stood with both her hands clasped loosely before her, not swaying nor tapping her feet, her face raised and her eyes looking outwards, beyond the ballroom, beyond the dockyard, beyond the very seas themselves, as if she were trying to see something on the horizon, or beyond it. It was not a popular song from the war, nor one that recalled the dead—the mugs who had gained nothing. Lily never sang war songs. But no-one looking at her and listening to her pure poignant voice did not think of those others who had left England six years ago, with faces as hopeful and as untroubled as hers, who would never come home again.
When the last note held, rang and fell silent the room was very quiet, as if people were sick of dancing and pretending that everything was well now, in this new world that was being made without the young men, in this new world of survivors pretending that the lost young men had never been. Then one of the plump profiteers clapped his hands and raised a full glass of French champagne and cried: “Hurrah for pretty Lily!” and “Sing us something jolly, girl!” then everyone applauded and called for another song and shouted for the waiter and another bottle.
Lily shook her head with a little smile and stepped down from the stage. Stephen led her back to their table. A bottle of champagne in a silver bucket of ice stood waiting.
“They sent it,” Mrs. Pears said, nodding towards the next-door table. “There’s no need to thank them, Lily, you just bow and smile.”
Lily looked over obediently, bowed her head as her mother had told her and smiled demurely.
“By jove, you’re a star!” Stephen exclaimed.
Lily beamed at him. “I hope so!” Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes sparkling. “I really hope so!”
The waiter brought the round flat glasses for champagne and filled one for each of them. Lily raised her glass to the neighbouring table and dimpled over the top of it.
“That’ll do,” her mother said.
Stephen grinned at Mrs. Pears. “I see you keep Lily in order!”
She nodded. “I was a singer on the halls before I met Mr. Pears. I learned a thing or two then.”
“Ma goes with me everywhere,” Lily said serenely.
“Nearly time to go home,” Mrs. Pears said. “Lily’s got a matinée tomorrow. She needs her sleep.”
“Of course!” Stephen nodded to the waiter for the bill. The two women stood up and drifted across the dance floor to fetch their wraps from the cloakroom while Stephen paid.
He waited for them outside, on the shallow white steps under the big glass awning. Coventry drew up in the big grey Argyll motor car, got out, walked around to open the back door and stood, holding it wide. Ste
phen and Coventry looked at each other, a long level look without speaking while Stephen lit a cigarette and drew in the first deep draw of fresh smoke. Then the doorman opened the double doors and the women came out, muffled against the cool of the May evening. The men broke from their silent communion and stepped forward. Stephen licked his fingers and carefully pinched out the lighted ember of his cigarette, and raised his hand to tuck it behind his ear. Coventry shot a quick warning glance at him, saying nothing. Stephen exclaimed at himself, flushed, and dropped the cigarette into one of the stone pots that flanked the steps.
He helped Lily and her mother into the luxurious grey-upholstered seats of the car and got in after them. Coventry drove slowly to the Highland Road corner shop and parked at the curb. Mrs. Pears went into the dark interior of the shop with a word of thanks and good night as Lily paused on the doorstep, the glazed shop door ajar behind her. Stephen thought Lily was herself a little commodity, a fresh piece of provender, something he might buy from under the counter, a black-market luxury, a prewar treat. Something he could buy and gobble up, every delicious little scrap.
“Thank you for a lovely evening,” Lily said, like a polite child.
“Come out tomorrow,” he said. “Coventry can drive us along the seafront.”
“Can’t. I’ve got a matinée.”
“The next day then, Sunday?”
“If Ma says I can.”
“I’ll call for you at three.”
“All right.”
Stephen glanced shiftily towards the darkened shop. He could not see Mrs. Pears in the shadowed interior. He leaned towards Lily. Her pale face was upturned to look at him, her fair hair luminous in the flickering gas lighting. Stephen put his hand on her waist. She was soft under his tentative touch, unstructured by stiff corsets. She reminded him of the other girl, a girl long ago, who only wore corsets to Mass on a Sunday. On weekdays her skin was hot and soft beneath a thin cotton shirt. He drew Lily towards him and she took a small step forward. She was smiling slightly. He could smell her light sweet perfume. He could feel the warmth of her skin through the cheap fabric of her cocktail dress.
“Time to come in, Lily,” said her mother’s voice immediately behind them.
Stephen released her at once.
“Good night, Captain Winters. Thank you for a lovely dinner,” said Mrs. Pears from the darkness inside the shop.
The door behind Lily opened wide, and with a glance like a mischievous schoolgirl, she waved her white-gloved hand and went in.
Stephen sat beside Coventry for the short drive home, enjoying the open air of the cab.
“Damned pretty girl,” he said. He took a couple of cigarettes from his case and lit them both, holding the two in his mouth at once. The driver nodded. Stephen passed a cigarette to him. The man took it without taking his eyes from the road, without a word of thanks.
“Pity about the mother,” Stephen said half to himself. “Fearfully respectable woman.”
The driver nodded, exhaled a wisp of smoke.
“Not like a showgirl at all, really,” Stephen said. “I could almost take her home for tea.”
The driver glanced questioningly at Stephen.
“We’ll see,” Stephen said. “See how things go. A man must marry, after all. And it doesn’t matter much who it is.” He paused. “She’s like a girl from before the war. You can imagine her, before the war, living in the country on a farm. I could live on a little farm with a girl like that.”
The cool air, wet with sea salt, blew around them. It was chilly, but both men relished the discomfort, the familiar chill.
“There are plenty of girls,” Stephen said harshly. “Far too many. One million, don’t they say? One million spare women. Plenty of girls. It hardly matters which one.”
Coventry nodded and drew up before the handsome red-brick house. In the moonlight the white window sills and steps were gleaming bright.
“You sleeping here tonight?” Stephen asked as he opened the car door.
The driver nodded.
“Brew-up later?”
The man nodded again.
Stephen stepped from the car and went through the imposing wrought-iron gate, through the little front garden, quiet in the moonlight, and up the scoured white steps to the front door. He fitted his key in the lock and stepped into the hall as his mother came out of the drawing room.
“You’re early, dear,” she said pleasantly.
“Not especially,” he said.
“Nice dinner?”
“The Queens. Same as usual.”
“Anyone I know?”
“No-one you know, Mother.”
She hesitated, her curiosity checked by their family habit of silence and secrecy. Stephen went towards the stairs.
“Father still awake?” he asked.
“The nurse has just left him,” Muriel said. “He might have dozed off, go in quietly.”
Stephen nodded and went up the stairs to his father’s bedroom.
It was dark inside, a little nightlight burning on the mantelpiece over the fireplace. The fire had died down, only the embers glowing dark red. Stephen stood inside the door waiting for his eyes to get used to the darkness. Suddenly, he felt his chest constrict with terror and his heart hammered. It was being in the darkness, waiting and straining to be able to see, and knowing he had to go forward, half-blind, while They could watch him, at their ease, in safety; watch him clearly against the pale horizon, and take Their time to put the cross-sight neatly in the centre of his silhouette, and gently, leisurely, squeeze the trigger.
He put his hand behind him and tugged the door open. The bright electric light from the landing flooded into the room and Stephen shuddered with relief. He loosened his collar and found his neck and his face were wet with the cold sweat of fear. “Damn.”
He could see now that his father was awake. His big head was turned towards the door and his sunken eyes were staring.
“I hate the dark,” Stephen said, moving towards the bed. He pulled up a low-seated high-backed chair and sat at his father’s head. The sorrowful dark eyes stared at him. The left side of the man’s face was twisted and held by the contraction of a stroke. The other half was normal, a wide deeply lined face.
“Took a girl out to dinner,” Stephen said. He took his father’s hand without gentleness, as if it were a specimen of pottery which had been handed to him for his inspection. He hefted the limp hand, and let it fall back on the counterpane. “Music hall girl,” he said. “Nothing special.”
With an extended finger he lifted one of his father’s fingers and dropped it down again. There was no power in any part of the man’s body.
“You’re like a corpse yourself, you know,” Stephen said conversationally. “One of the glorious dead you are. You’d never have been like this but for Christopher, would you? Mother told me—she handed you the telegram, you took one glance at it and fell down like you were dead.”
There was complete silence in the room except for the slow ticking of the mantelpiece clock.
“You wouldn’t have dropped down half-dead for me, would you?” Stephen said with a hard little laugh. “Not for me! One of the white feather brigade?” He raised his father’s hand, casually lifting the limp index finger with his own. Then he dropped it down again. “Who would ever have dreamed that I’d come home a hero and Christopher never come home at all?” He smiled at the wide-eyed, frozen face. “You do believe I’m a hero?” he asked. “Don’t you?”
Stephen heard his mother’s footsteps on the stairs and he got up from the chair and smoothed the counterpane. “Sleep well.” He went quietly out of the room.
“Good night, Mother,” he said.
She was going to her bedroom opposite. “Are you going to bed now?”
“I’m having a brew with Coventry,” he said.
She smiled, containing her irritation. “You two are like little boys having feasts after lights out. Don’t leave cigarette ends around, Cook complains and it’
s me who has to deal with her—not you.”
He nodded and went down the stairs, through the baize door at the head of the basement stairs and down to the warm, sweet-smelling kitchen. It was the only place in the house that smelled of life. His father’s bedroom smelled like a hospital, the drawing room smelled of cold flowers and furniture polish. But down here there were mingled smells of cooking and soapsuds, tobacco smoke and ironing. The range was still hot and Coventry had a kettle on the top. On the wide scrubbed kitchen table drawn up before the range was a battered tin teapot and two white enamelled mugs. Coventry poured the tea, added four spoonfuls of sugar to each cup and stirred them each ritually, five times, clockwise. The two men sat in comfortable silence, facing the kitchen range. They hunched up their shoulders, they wrapped their hands around their mugs. They sat close, shoulders, forearms and elbows just touching, huddled as if they were still in a dug-out. They did not speak; their faces were serene.
• • •
Lily, dressed in cotton pyjamas, leaned against the window frame and watched the moonlight reflected on the shiny slates of the roofs opposite.
“He’s ever so handsome,” she said.
Helen Pears, turning down the bed and slipping a hot water bottle between the cold sheets, grunted noncommittally.
“Don’t you think he’s handsome?”
“Get into bed, Lil. You’ll catch your death of cold.”
Lily left the window unwillingly. Helen drew the thick blackout curtains on the lingering yellow moon.
“He was a hero in the war,” Lily claimed. “One of the girls had read about him in the newspaper. He captured a farmhouse and killed all the Huns.”
Helen held up the covers, Lily slid into bed reluctantly and Helen tucked her up like a child.
“Did I sing well?”
“Like a bird.”
“They liked me, didn’t they?”
“They loved you.”
“Will you sit with me till I’m asleep?”
“I’ve got a bit of sewing to do, I’ll sit in my chair.”
Helen fetched her sewing and sat in the basketweave nursery chair under the gaslight. She was darning Lily’s stockings, her face screwed into tired lines. When Lily’s dark eyelashes closed, Helen put her work away and turned down the light. She paused for a moment in the darkness, watching her sleeping daughter, as she had done for the long years of Lily’s babyhood and childhood. “Good night,” she said very quietly. “Good night, my dearest. Sweet dreams.”
Fallen Skies Page 2