Fallen Skies

by Philippa Gregory

  Coventry gave him a slow easy smile.

  “Were you drinking together?” Muriel asked, trying to keep the disapproval from her voice.

  “Oh no, Ma,” Stephen said with a giggle. “We were visiting the war wounded.”

  Lily giggled too and Stephen slid his hand around her shoulder and hugged her.

  So that’s all right, Muriel thought. I shouldn’t worry so much.

  19

  LILY AND STEPHEN ACCEPTED CONGRATULATIONS on their wedding from Muriel’s friends at the garden fete and glowed as if they had found in their marriage the answers they had sought. Stephen, with Lily’s little hand tucked in the crook of his elbow, felt that he had made the right choice for a wife. However inadequate she was proving as an antidote to his nightmares she was, none the less, an attractive asset during the day.

  He enjoyed the night out with her as well. Lily wore the beaded peach dress they had bought in London to the Theatre Royal and Stephen had the pleasure of seeing men eyeing him with visible envy. Coventry drove them home in the early hours of the morning after they had stayed late at the Queens Hotel dancing.

  Lily, feeling joyous and confident, knowing that Charlie Smith was back in Portsmouth and that she would see him again on Monday, enjoyed the evening, drank champagne and staggered a little as she went upstairs to the bedroom. While Stephen was in the bathroom she undressed and got into bed, but she did not put out her bedside light and feign sleep.

  That was a mistake. Stephen’s urbane, attractive charm fell away from him when he got into bed beside Lily. He put his hand firmly on her shoulder and drew her towards him.

  “I’m a little tired,” Lily said instantly.

  “You’re a little liar,” Stephen said baldly. He reached over and turned off his bedside light. “Turn your light off,” he commanded.

  Lily moved away from him and pressed the switch that plunged the room into darkness. For a moment she thought of slipping from the bed and running to the bathroom to lock herself inside. But she knew it was no use. She was married to Stephen and he had rights, legal rights, to use her body when he wished.

  She heard the rustle of him pulling down his pyjama trousers and then she smelled the warm male scent of him. She felt the muscles of her face lock with distaste.

  Stephen heaved himself awkwardly upon her and pulled her nightgown up to her waist. His face was pressed against her neck, his body was heavy on her. “Oh, Lily,” he said softly. “Please love me.”

  Just as she was about to reply she felt the familiar stabbing pain and gasped instead.

  “I’ll be gentle,” Stephen promised. “I’ll really be gentle, Lily. Just lie still.”

  He thrust himself inside her again and again. Lily put her fist in her mouth and bit hard on her fingers. The bed rocked with a sickening rhythm and Lily felt herself submerged and half-drowned under Stephen’s selfish uncaring weight. She moaned very softly against her fist and then gasped as the rhythm suddenly speeded. Then with a groan Stephen tore himself away from her and dropped on his back. Lily could feel the hot spurting semen against her thigh while Stephen twitched uncontrollably, his breathing hoarse.

  Lily took her hand from her mouth and rubbed her face.

  There was silence for a few moments.

  “You will become accustomed to it,” Stephen said.

  “Will we have a baby?”

  Stephen reached out and clicked on the bedside light again. Lily flinched from his warm flushed face, his satisfied glow. Stephen tapped the side of his nose, smiling knowingly at her. “I learned a trick or two in Belgium. We won’t have a baby until we’re good and ready. Don’t worry about it, Lily. I can control myself. I’m not an animal.”

  Lily understood none of what he was saying. “I thought we would have a baby.”

  “Little Lily,” he said caressingly. “We would have a baby if I came inside you. A chap in Belgium explained it all to me. He had a book too—a damned disgusting book written by a woman who is just a disgrace, a disgrace . . .” Stephen’s anger made him break off, then he shrugged. “Anyway, there are things you can do which are wicked, acting like animals. Things no lady would do. And then there is taking care, having a bit of self-control. I can do that. I’ll always do that. We don’t want children, Lily. We don’t want children in the house with the noise and the trouble.”

  Lily said nothing. She did not completely understand, but she did not want Stephen to explain. She shrank from the intimacy of an explanation.

  “Damned disgusting things,” Stephen said, still thinking about the book. “Things that a decent woman would never do. Would never even know about. Things that whores do.”

  He broke off. Then: “I hate whores,” he said. “I hate whores. All the Belgian women were whores. They served in brothels behind our lines, and d . . . d . . . d’you know when the lines m . . . moved they s . . . served G . . . Germans t . . . t . . . too.” His stutter was overwhelming his speech. His breath was coming short. “D . . . d . . . damn whores!”

  Lily said nothing, watching him warily in the soft bedside light.

  “You c . . . c . . . can’t tell with whores!” he said, angry and plaintive at once. “You can’t tell what they’re thinking! You think they’re on your side. You think you’re doing them a favour, r . . . r . . . risking your life for their d . . . damn country. You th . . . think they l . . . l . . . like you. And th . . . th . . . then you find it c . . . c . . . could be anyone! Anyone! A b . . . b . . . b . . . bloody Hun and they’d s . . . s . . . sit on his lap . . .”

  His stutter and his breathless anger suddenly overwhelmed his speech. He rolled towards Lily, taking her by surprise. He clamped his hand over her mouth as she gasped, and thrust inside her again. Lily froze underneath him, her eyes tight shut. Stephen lurched and pushed against her, bumping painfully on her, grinding his pelvis into the delicate skin of her crutch. He flung himself from her after a few moments but kept his hand on her mouth and the other on her neck. As he groaned with pleasure Lily felt his tears wet against her breast. “D . . . damn whores,” he sighed. “All of them. Every woman.”

  When he was still and sleeping Lily slipped out from under him. She went to the newly plumbed bathroom and locked the door. She ran a deep, deep hot bath, careless of the clanking of the water pipes which might wake Muriel or Rory. She poured into it half a jar of the expensive bath crystals, which were for show, not for use, then she stood up in it, scalded pink with the heat, and scrubbed herself all over, first with soap and then with a nail brush. Then she lay down in the water and let the scented heat wash over her. She felt filthy; even after all the washing. She felt as if her skin itself, her scrubbed scalded skin, was rank. She felt as if Stephen’s randy hatred of women was a fault of hers. She stayed in the bath as it cooled and then she topped it up again with hot water. She did not drag herself from the water and dry herself for hours. When she came back into the bedroom there was daylight around the edge of the curtains and it was Sunday morning. When Lily looked at herself in the mirror her face was white and haggard. She had not known that a man could think of women with that perverse combination of hatred and desire. She had not known that Stephen thought of her like that.

  Muriel insisted that they all attend church together at ten o’clock. Lily did not arrive downstairs until the perilously late time of half past nine. Muriel and Stephen were waiting at the foot of the stairs, Coventry was outside holding open the door of the car. Muriel thought of lightly teasing Lily for her pallor, and suggesting she had stayed out dancing too late. But she saw the grimness of Lily’s young face, and remembered the noise of a bath running at three in the morning; and she chose to see nothing, and say nothing.

  Sunday lunch was tomato soup, roast lamb, roast potatoes, peas and carrots, with Cook’s watery trifle for pudding. They drank a thin red wine, and Stephen fell asleep in the study with the Sunday paper over his head.

  He woke at tea time and took Lily for a spin in the car. He let Lily steer and work the g
ear lever and promised to teach her how to drive. They came home in smiling accord and Muriel poured them tea.

  Dinner was mushroom soup, cold lamb sandwiches and fruit salad because Sunday was Cook’s night off and the parlourmaid Browning could not be trusted to prepare anything hot.

  “I feel like a stuffed turkey,” Lily said to Stephen as she drew the curtains back from the window and got into bed. “If I see another slice of lamb I shall bleat.”

  “Well, get ready,” Stephen said unsympathetically. “Because it will be lamb hot-pot or cottage pie with lamb mince tomorrow to finish up the joint.”

  “Why not buy a smaller joint and then we wouldn’t have to eat it for half of the week?”

  Stephen frowned at Lily over the top of the Sunday paper which he was reading in bed. “That’s Mother’s department,” he said. “Mother and Cook decide the menus. I should think you’ve rocked the boat enough already by refusing to eat liver.”

  “If it was my house I should eat what I want,” Lily said, climbing into bed. “I’d have thought that if I’m old enough to get married I’m old enough not to eat liver if I don’t want to.”

  “Well, you’re not eating liver, are you? You made it very clear that you don’t like liver. So now none of us, even those of us who like it very much, will eat liver.”

  “I don’t like lamb either. I certainly don’t like lamb for three meals running. I certainly don’t like roast lamb for dinner and roast lamb sandwiches for tea and minced roast lamb for dinner the next day and probably lamb bone soup the next day as well.”

  “Lunch and dinner,” Stephen corrected. “Not dinner and tea.”

  “Whatever.”

  Stephen rattled the paper and read ostentatiously, implying that menus are women’s work and that men have to be informed about world affairs.

  Lily clicked off the light on her side of the bed and shut her eyes.

  • • •

  Lily was awake at six, trembly with excitement, but she made herself lie still beside her sleeping husband until she could see by the little alarm clock on his bedside table that it was seven. Then she slid from the bed and went to the new bathroom opposite their bedroom. She ran herself a deep bath with bath crystals and perfume poured into the water. She soaped herself thoroughly with the gardenia guest soap which was kept in a little wickerwork basket. The three scents clashed deliciously and fought for supremacy in the hot steamy room. Lily washed her hair with the bath soap for the benefit of the perfume and then lay back, pink and sighing with contentment in the water.

  There was an abrupt knock at the door. “Are you in there, Lily?”

  She raised her wet head. “Yes, of course I am. Who did you think it was?”

  “Well, come out. I have to have my bath before work.”

  Lily surfaced quickly, a tidal wave of water from the overfilled bath washing up to the taps and then back, slopping water over the side. She pulled out the plug, hopped down to the sodden bathmat and then wrapped one bath towel around her and the other around her head. “I’ll just be a minute,” she called.

  “What are you doing in there?”

  “Having a bath,” Lily said irritably. “What d’you think I’m doing? Ballroom dancing?”

  “God in heaven,” Stephen said to himself in a suppressed monotone on the other side of the door. “One week she won’t get up for breakfast and the next she’s bathing at dawn.”

  “All right, all right.” Lily threw open the door and Stephen recoiled as powerfully scented steam billowed out of the little room. Pools of water stood on the new blue lino. The bathmat was a sodden mess of towelling. There were only face towels left on the rack. The ebbing bathwater was leaving a thick rim of suds and blonde hairs. In the middle of this chaos Lily was wrapped in the only two decent-sized towels and radiant.

  “Well, really!” Stephen said. “What a mess! I shall go and use Mother’s bathroom. I don’t know what you think you are doing!”

  He tightened his dressing-gown cord around him and stamped down the stairs to the next landing. Lily heard him tap on the door to his mother’s bedroom. “Excuse me, Mother, but may I take my bath in your bathroom this morning? Lily is using ours.”

  “Of course, dear,” Muriel called back. “I have quite finished.”

  Stephen came back upstairs to collect his shaving brush and mug. He looked around the bathroom in disbelief and then at Lily, who was towelling her hair. “I think it’s easier for us all if you do stay in bed half the morning,” he said unpleasantly. “I can hardly tolerate this mayhem every Monday morning.”

  He turned and went downstairs again. Lily heard the bolt shoot across on the other bathroom door. “Mayhem,” she said with pleasure at a new word. “Mayhem every Monday morning. Midsummer Mayhem.”

  Stephen was stoically bad-tempered at breakfast. Lily had taken all the hot water and he had washed and shaved in cold.

  “Worse things happen at sea!” Lily said brightly.

  Muriel looked at the two of them. Stephen was deep in bad humour but Lily looked like a child about to go on holiday. She was wearing one of her London outfits, a white sun dress with wide shoulder straps which crossed at the neck in front and at the back, leaving her arms and shoulders bare. A little white jacket completed the outfit. Too smart, Muriel thought, for a morning’s shopping in Palmerston Road. Too smart for a morning at home. Where was Lily off to this morning that got her out of bed three hours before her usual time, dressed before breakfast, and as excited as a child before a picnic?

  “What are your plans for today, Lily?” she asked, buttering toast.

  Lily beamed at her. “None,” she said. “Are there any errands I can do for you?”

  Muriel hesitated with the slice halfway to her mouth and then put it carefully on her plate. Lily had never offered any assistance in the house before. “Nothing, thank you,” she said. “Unless you are going near the library. I have some books to take back.”

  “I can go for you,” Lily said agreeably.

  Stephen folded the newspaper with ostentatious care. “I’ll be off,” he said.

  Muriel reminded herself to stay seated and let Lily follow him out to the hall. Browning was there with his hat and umbrella and briefcase. Lily leaned against the newel post at the foot of the stairs with the air of one observing some bizarre foreign ritual, and watched him take his things from the parlourmaid.

  When Stephen had his hat at the correct angle, his briefcase in one hand and his umbrella in the other he stepped forward and kissed Lily on the cheek. Browning held open the door, Coventry, waiting outside by the Argyll, opened the passenger door, Stephen strolled down the steps, inhaled the sea air, looked up at the cloudless sky and got into the car. Lily waved from the doorstep.

  Muriel said nothing while Lily lingered over breakfast and then disappeared upstairs. When she came down again it was ten o’clock and she had been curling her hair. The sleek bob fell straight to her shoulders and then curled under. She had her tiny hat placed far at the back of her head. She had a light scarlet lipstick painted on her lips and she was undoubtedly wearing rouge.

  “Bye,” she said, tripping to the front door.

  “Shall I see you at lunch?” Muriel asked, hurrying from the dining room.

  “I’ll be home for tea!” Lily shouted from the doorstep and slammed the door before Muriel could ask any questions. Watching from the window Muriel saw her swoop down the front steps, fling open the garden gate and dance across the road, past the Canoe Lake, and down the seafront in the direction of town. She was carrying a small vanity case in one hand and her handbag in the other. She had forgotten all about Muriel’s library books.

  “Oh, Lily,” Muriel said anxiously to herself. “Where are you going?”

  • • •

  It was all different for Lily at the Kings Theatre. On the Midsummer Madness tour she had shared a dressing room with the chorus girls, now she shared with only one other girl who assisted the magician. The list of dressing rooms
was pinned up on the notice board by the steps up to the stage. “Miss Valance and Miss White room six,” it said. Lily went up the few steps and then along the corridor past doors numbered three, four and five, till she came to dressing room six. Her name was on the door in a little metal card holder. She tapped on the door, and when there was no reply, she went in.

  Lily scanned the empty room from the doorway, pleased that she was first to arrive. On her left was a row of hooks, a large full-length mirror and one armchair with the stuffing oozing from the seat. Before her was a high window with opaque panes and below it another makeup mirror with a workbench table before it. In the corner was a little sink and two taps. “Hot water!” Lily said. On her right was another long table before another long mirror. This one had electric lights on either side of the mirror and two on a wooden block along the top. There were two rickety bentwood chairs, one before each mirror.

  Lily at once claimed the workbench on her right, with the lights and the mirrors, by opening her vanity case and spreading her things on the worktop.

  She had taken one of Muriel’s best hand towels which she laid like a tablecloth along the workbench and then unpacked her other things, spreading them out to take up as much space as possible. The pot of hair oil Charlie had given her, her hairbrush, a little posy of dried flowers her mother had given her for luck, two postcard views of the Dorset coastline, a playbill for the Midsummer Madness tour, a pot of rouge, a pot of powder, a powder puff, rather grubby she noticed. A pot of wetwhite which she had never yet used. Two different lipsticks, one very pale and one bright scarlet. A small pot of eyeblack and a blackened teaspoon to hold it in, a stub of candle to heat it, and a box of matches to light the candle. Lily’s mother had given her a small watercolour brush to apply the eyeblack as either eyeliner or mascara. She also had a cake of Muriel’s gardenia guest soap, a face flannel, some talcum powder which Stephen had bought in London and a glass bottle of perfume with a squeezy ball vaporizer in knitted pink silk which had belonged to her mother.