Fallen Skies

by Philippa Gregory

  “They just don’t care.”

  “You would have thought with a million people unemployed that they would want the work!”

  “They were spoiled during the war. Ridiculous wages and too much freedom. We’ll never get the old days back again.”

  “Stephen must wonder what he fought for, he really must.”

  “Yes,” Muriel said, suddenly descending from indignation. “I am afraid he does. It is not the England he left in 1917. Nor the sort of world he thought he would come home to.”

  The maid burst into the room, holding Muriel’s summer jacket. “Beg pardon, M’m. I was out the back.”

  Muriel took the jacket.

  “He should have what he wants,” Jane said. “He was a hero, after all.”

  Muriel nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I’ll bring Lily to see you on Thursday. She is quite presentable, really, you’ll see.”

  • • •

  Lily and Stephen were shopping together in Palmerston Road, Southsea. It was an attractive street, busy with trams running up and down and horse-drawn delivery wagons, boys on bicycles with big iron baskets and the occasional private car. A band of crippled ex-soldiers played a ragged march with a collecting bucket placed before them. A label propped against it read: “Veterans of the Great War. Please give generously. No work, no pensions, no hope.” Lily and Stephen crossed the road to avoid them without comment. They were going to buy Lily’s engagement ring.

  “A sapphire, to match your eyes,” Stephen said.

  Lily remembered her daydream of swanning into the dressing room with a large and expensive ring on her finger. She summoned a smile. “That would be nice,” she said.

  The jeweller was expecting them. Stephen’s clerk had telephoned from work to say they would be coming. “It’s better that way,” Stephen explained. “Then they know who they’re dealing with. It saves time and you get better service.”

  The man had a tray of sapphires ready. Stephen picked out the largest at once. It was a big square-cut stone, set on its own in a claw setting on a thin band of gold. “That’s a beauty.”

  The jeweller manifested intense surprise. “Captain Winters, I had no idea you had any experience with gems.”

  Stephen smiled and smoothed his moustache. “A man of the world has a certain eye . . .”

  “A very certain eye if I may say so. Would the young lady like to try?”

  Lily put out her hand. The ring slid on, the band was far too big. “It’s too big.” She felt it drowned her hand, the big stone and the bright blue of the colour.

  “We can alter it to your size, Madam. Any one of these can be altered to your size. Don’t let that distract you from your choice.”

  Lily pointed to a smaller stone set either side with white diamonds. “That’s pretty.”

  “Charming,” the jeweller said. “A charming choice. A modest little ring which suits a small hand.” He slid it on.

  “Paltry,” Stephen declared. He picked up the ring with the big stone again.

  “Nothing to compare with that beauty of course. But a very pretty ring and exquisitely set. You certainly know craftsmanship when you see it, Madam.”

  “Try this one.” Stephen indicated another.

  Lily slid it on. It was another large stone, only a little smaller than the first. It bumped against her knuckle and weighed heavy on her hand.

  “It feels heavy.”

  “You’ll get used to it. You’ll have to get used to a wedding ring as well, Lily, remember!”

  Lily nodded. She spread her hand and moved it under the lights, making the stone sparkle. It covered the whole of the lower joint of her finger from knuckle to the first joint. Under the smart electric lights it glowed like a blue flame.

  “Either this one, or the bigger one,” Stephen decided. “Don’t you think, Lily? It’s your choice of course.”

  “Whichever you prefer.” Lily could feel a deep weariness spreading through her. She had felt tired for days, ever since the funeral. She wondered if she had caught her mother’s flu.

  Stephen chuckled. “It’s not which I like best, my little darling. It’s which you like best.”

  The jeweller stepped discreetly back from the counter, out of earshot, keeping his eye on the tray of rings.

  “You’re the one that will wear it, dearest.”

  Lily looked up at Stephen; her pale face was quite indifferent. “But you’re the one who will see it.”

  “You’ll see it, little goose! It will be on your hand!”

  She shook her head. “I won’t see it any more than I see my fingernails or my face in the mirror. I shall get accustomed to it. I shall get accustomed to everything in time.”

  “I shall never get accustomed to you.”

  They were silent for a moment.

  “Which one do you really prefer?” Lily asked politely.

  It struck Stephen that they were jointly incapable of taking a decision. Lily was too young and her tastes were still unformed. For instance, she had chosen the small sparkly ring in preference to the large stone which was clearly more valuable.

  Fortunately she had the good sense to give way to him in all decisions, and it would be his duty as her husband to guide and form her taste. Consultation was a courtesy and he would never neglect it. But you couldn’t run a regiment democratically. In any relationship there was a leader and the led. In his relationship with Lily he would lead her and guide her, and, if needs be—order her. She was to be his wife after all. Not an equal but a helpmeet.

  In any case Lily and Stephen had no language for ordinary conversation. In the days of their brief courtship Lily had chattered and he had listened. Now Lily was silent there were no patterns of speech between them that could be adapted to making decisions. Even important decisions about the wedding and their future life had been made by Stephen; Lily only ever consented.

  “We’ll have the big one. Damn the expense.”

  “Is it very expensive?”

  Stephen chuckled indulgently. “And what if it is? I can afford it, and you deserve it.”

  The jeweller measured Lily’s finger and promised that it would be altered at once.

  “Could you send it round when it’s done? We’d want it at once.”

  “Of course, Sir.”

  Stephen passed him a card. The man noted the select address. “I could probably have it ready for this evening. I will deliver it myself. With a jewel of this quality I wouldn’t trust it to anyone else.”

  “We’ll have it safely on your finger in no time,” Stephen said, smiling at Lily.

  “Yes.”

  Coventry had been ordered to meet them after driving Mrs. Winters home. “Let’s stroll towards home and window shop,” Stephen suggested. “You’d better get your skates on, Lily, and buy some clothes. When people know we’re married you’ll be invited everywhere.”

  Lily nodded.

  “You used to be mad for clothes. Every time I took you out for tea or dinner you would be looking at ladies’ clothes. Don’t you want to shop? We could have a dressmaker round, have her run some things up for you? Or London, now? We could go up to town and you could take your pick. I bet you’d like Harrods, eh, Lily?”

  Lily smiled. She hardly heard him. She felt as if she were at the bottom of a thick glass jug. A cider jug with narrow finger-sized handles at the neck, for carrying. A narrow, narrow neck through which she would never escape and a wide echoing body. Lily felt she would roll round and around inside the empty jar while people’s voices boomed and rang around her. But they could never hear her reply. And she could never quite distinguish what they said. She was as incapable of speech, of speaking truly and openly to Stephen, as she was incapable of tears.

  Lily’s grief had stunned her. All she could hear was the echoing booming of speech. All she could see was a curiously shrunken distant world, lacking in colour or interest. All she could feel was the cold lost confusion of a little doll swirling round and around in the bottom of a deep
glass jar.

  “Come on, dear!” Stephen said. “Wouldn’t Harrods be fun? Actually, I’ve a better idea! Let’s leave it all until after we are married and then go up to London for a couple of days. We could stay at a hotel. We could go to some shows. We could have a bit of a lark, Lily—you’d like that. Dancing, sightseeing, a real trip. And you could buy your clothes and come back to Portsmouth with a whole set of London outfits and turn a few heads, eh? What d’you think of that?”

  Lily looked up at Stephen. She saw his bright eager face smiling at her. She remembered a time when he had seemed terribly old, and terribly battered from the war. Now she felt years older than his boyish enthusiasm. Years older, and so weary that she ached with tiredness.

  “That would be great fun, Stephen. Thank you. I should like that.”

  “And if you liked, we could . . .”

  “There’s the car,” Lily interrupted.

  Stephen stepped forward into the road and hailed Coventry with a stentorian shout. Coventry pulled up on the opposite side of the road and held the door open for Lily. Stephen got in the back beside her.

  “Home,” he ordered.

  Coventry drove down Clarendon Road, past East Southsea station to the seafront, and drew up outside the house. He opened the door for Lily but Stephen got out only to escort Lily to the front door and to open it for her. “I’ll go on to the office, my dear,” he said. “Tell Mother I’ll be home for tea.”

  Lily nodded and went slowly inside. She did not notice that Stephen had leaned forward to kiss her cheek and she parted from him without touching him. She had forgotten to thank him for the ring. The door closed behind her. Stephen, thrown off balance by his step forward and his rejected kiss, turned and strolled down the steps to the car.

  “Let’s go to that pub down by the Hard,” he said, getting into the passenger seat beside Coventry. “I’m damned if I’m going into the office this morning. They don’t expect me until after lunch anyway.”

  Coventry drove carefully down the seafront. Stephen stared at the people promenading beside the sea. The women were wearing light summer dresses cut very short with thin white stockings. Many of the men had taken off their blazers and loosened their ties. “Trippers.”

  Children were playing at the edge of the sea. The tide was half in, and the sandy bars of the beach were covered. There were bathing machines rolled down to the water, some ready for hire further up the beach. The new clubhouse for the Southsea swimming club was busy. Men were standing around the steps in boaters and long bathing suits.

  They drove past the pier, past the signs advertising boat trips. They drove beside the common where a space had been allocated for an impressive war memorial which would commemorate the names of all of Portsmouth’s sons who had died on land and sea in the Great War.

  “Bloody Christopher,” Stephen said aloud.

  Coventry drove into Old Portsmouth under the shadow of the old harbour walls, built like the outer walls of a castle, two storeys high. He parked the car at some distance from the pub. Stephen cocked an eyebrow at him. “I daresay you’re right,” he said. “We don’t want anyone getting funny with us. I can’t start fighting at lunchtime half a mile from my office.”

  The pub was a rough working-men’s drinking room, catering mainly to dockers coming off shift, to sailors on shore leave and to anyone prepared to risk being caught drinking out of hours, the new restrictive hours which had come in with the wartime regulations, and never been phased out.

  Stephen knocked on the door and stepped into the shadowy room. Coventry was close behind him. The landlord behind the bar looked up quickly when they came in but then relaxed as he recognized the two of them.

  “What’ll it be, gentlemen?”

  “Two pints and two whiskies.”

  Stephen paid and they took their drinks to a table in the corner. Next to them were two men bent over a cribbage board. At the bar was the only other customer, an ex-boxer. He drank slowly and cautiously, but every now and then his head would twist, and he would throw himself back, once, twice, three times, ducking from imaginary hits. His hands were balled in permanent fists.

  Stephen watched him curiously, a man who carried his battles with him, who could never be free of the fighting he had done. Coventry drank from his pint glass and sipped from his whisky alternately with quiet thoroughness.

  “I love her,” Stephen offered suddenly. “No doubt about that. No doubt at all. But I made no allowances for the amount of work she creates. The inconvenience.”

  Coventry took a cigarette, took two to light them together, recollected where he was and instead offered the packet to Stephen. Stephen took his own and lit it. “She’s not very gay. I know her mother’s only been buried a few days but how long is she going to mope? She sits in Father’s bedroom with him and you know, there’s little to choose between the two of them. I wanted her because she was so untouched. You only had to look into her face to know that she had never been afraid, she had never been hurt, she had never seen death. But she’s different now.”

  Coventry leaned forward and knocked the ash from his cigarette into his cupped palm and then dropped it on the floor. He gave Stephen a long level look.

  Stephen paused on a thought. “No,” he said slowly. “I won’t pull out. I’ll marry her. She’ll perk up when she’s married. She’s still shocked. I can still see that white shocked look about her. Some of them, d’you remember? stayed shocked for days. Not the really bad cases, but if you had a bit of a fright you’d be a bit shaky for a week or so. You’d b . . . be a bit shaky for a w . . . w . . . week or so.”

  Stephen leaned forward and took a large mouthful of whisky to still his stammer.

  “I want her,” he said. “This changes nothing. I want her as she was before she went away, before her mother died. She’ll change back. She’s the girl I want. I knew the moment I saw her that she was the right one for me; and she will be. She can make it all come right for me. She can if she wants to. She can make it all come right for me if she wants to.”

  • • •

  Lily hesitated in the hall listening to the car drive away. The house was quiet. Muriel was upstairs waiting for the gong for lunch. The nurse was feeding Rory Winters. Lily could hear her bright meaningless words of encouragement. She turned to go up the stairs as the tweeny came through the baize door.

  “Oh, Miss Pears, there’s a letter for you, came on the second delivery. Did you see it?”

  Lily hesitated.

  Sally picked up the letter from the hall table, placed it on the little silver tray and offered it to Lily. It was a pink envelope, liberally sprayed with Devon violets perfume—the show had reached Plymouth. Lily could smell it at arm’s length. She grinned at Sally. “A bit strong!” she said.

  “Would that be one of your theatrical friends, Miss?”

  Lily nodded. “Madge Sweet, I should think. They’re on tour, working their way home along the coast.” She took the letter and ran up the stairs to her room. She cast off her hat and slung it towards her dressing table, dropped forwards on to her bed like a girl and tore open the envelope. Madge had not stinted with scent on the letter either.

  “Phew!” Lily waved the letter in the air, half-laughing.

  Dear Lil,

  Thank you for your note though it was v. short. I am sorry to hear about your ma. What a shock. Everyone here says they are very sorry too. That flu is a real killer, my aunt had it and they nearly lost her but she has very strong lungs on account of having been in the busness too as a singer.

  You missed out on some good fun. Plymouth was a lark. Packed out every night and the place crawling with sailors. Jones the Magic was in his element as you can imajine. He nearly had us thrown out of the digs—you can imajine why. Mike smoothed it all down but he was furius. I fell completly in love for two days but then found that he was maried. Anyway I have a nice handbag to show for it so can’t complain.

  Guess who has your spot? Yes me! Not as a choir-boy tha
nk you very much. I do that number you saw me practise with darling Charlie—red hot baby. I wear the red can-can bodice with a pair of frilly red shorts like a bathing costume. Indesent! Charlie desined it, of course. For a man who never seems to do anything more, he does a lot of looking!!!

  Which reminds me that I never heard what happened to you that night! What a shame you had to dash off before you could tell us All About It. And what does your Captain say now?

  Charlie says absolutely zero like the gent. he is. I told him straight that I had put you up to your midnight visit and he looked down his nose and said I was a trumpet!

  Anyway. You’re not at all welcome back since I’ve got your spot! But we do all miss you so you can come and fight me for it. Actuly the show would run better if they dropped Sylvia de Charmante altogether—but don’t say I said so. She was drery as ditchwater in Plymouth. If she goes any slower they’ll fall asleep. She sings Keep the Home Fires like it was a funral march.

  Let us know what is going on. When are you coming back? Got to dash—it’s tea time. Will post this at once.

  Love Madge (The red hot baby!)

  PS Charlie says he will add a page and then seal up the envelope and post it for me. Wonder what he’ll say? Do write and tell me!

  There was one more page in a different hand.

  Dear Lily,

  I am so grieved for you in your loss. I know how much your mother meant to you and how much you must miss her now. She was a fine brave woman. There are no adequate words.

  I hope you will come back to us when you feel able—and not before. If you can’t come back before the end of the tour that will be all right. I’ll straighten it out with William. And you can still audition for the Kings when I come back.

  I have thought of you, and missed you. It was painful for me after you left, having to part so quickly like that, without a chance to talk. I hope it was easier for you.

  Even though I can never be anything more, I am your very good friend. Let me know if there is anything you need.