Fallen Skies

by Philippa Gregory

  “He saw a playbill in the Evening News,” Lily said. “I was going to tell him Sunday night, but he saw it in the afternoon. He went mad. He took me upstairs and we had a fight.”

  Madge hissed under her breath. She sat Lily in the bentwood chair and smoothed back her hair. “Hurt bad?” she asked.

  Lily shook her head. “Not too bad,” she said.

  Madge poured some of the pink cream on to a piece of cotton wool and dabbed it on the bruise on Lily’s cheek. Slowly, as the layers of pink built up, the bruise faded and disappeared. Lily was left with a noticeable blob of pink.

  “Lots of powder all over and that’ll blend in,” Madge said uncertainly. “Let’s have a go at the lip.”

  Lily’s lip was swollen but the cut was a little red scab against the redness of her lip. “Can’t do anything about the swelling,” Madge said. She smeared a little of the pink cream on the bottom of Lily’s lip. “Paint your lipstick over the top of it,” she said. “Deep red. Have you got one?”

  Lily nodded.

  “You won though,” Madge said. “Since you’re here. He’s going to let you do the show?”

  Lily leaned forward and stared at herself in the mirror. “Yes,” she said. “As long as I don’t tour. And that means that I can audition for the panto in the winter too.”

  Madge shook her head in admiration. “You’re a caution, you are,” she said. “You look as if butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth and yet you’re a real fighter. What do you have to do?”

  Lily was patting the cream into her cheek, watching the effect in the mirror. “How d’you mean? What do I have to do?”

  “You never get something for nothing from men. What do you have to do for him?”

  Lily smiled awkwardly—her lip hurt. “Nothing much,” she said. “I don’t complain about this to his ma, and I don’t stay out late at night. Nothing more. I’m going to try a bit harder though. I married him, after all. We’ve got to try and make a go of it.”

  Madge sat on one of the chairs before the mirror and started untwisting her curls. “You can try,” she said doubtfully. “You’ve got no choice really, have you? You can’t divorce him—you’ve got no grounds; and you can’t leave him—you’ve got nowhere to go. Might as well have a try at being decent, I suppose.”

  “Can I borrow the cream?”

  Madge nodded. “I don’t use it except when I’ve got spots. You can keep it till the bruise fades.”

  “Thanks,” Lily said and went out into the corridor. All around there was the electric atmosphere of first night excitement. As Lily went down the stairs to her dressing room three of the chorus girls came up chattering and laughing. “Hello, Lil,” they said.

  Lily put up her hand to hide her bruised cheek. “Hello!” she said.

  “Are you nervous?” one of the girls asked. “I’m dying!”

  “Dying!” Lily agreed.

  The girls went on up but on impulse Lily turned away from the dressing rooms and went towards the stage.

  It was busy, work had started hours ago. The great back wall of the stage was crowded with scenery which would be used for other productions. A grand staircase went to nowhere. There was a cottage with a window above a front door. There was a tree with a massive convincing trunk, a wide branch, and then no top at all.

  There was a space between the scenery wide enough to take a horse and cart, and then there were the black curtains which hid the brick wall at the back of the stage. Lily went forward to the wings and looked at the set.

  It was nearly ready for the first act. The chorus girls did a French café number, sitting at little tables and chairs. The backdrop was a gay red and white awning over a little blue-painted restaurant. Lily did not know that the scene painter had lain on a stretcher facing the original of his picture for four hours one hot summer’s day in 1915. The ambulances had been overcrowded and his stretcher had been put out in the sun of Bilbeque square. A piece of shrapnel had torn into his belly and the blood had soaked through the field dressing and was attracting flies. He was nineteen, and he was very much afraid that he was a coward because he could feel himself shuddering, shaking and shivering all over, and he thought that only cowards trembled with fear.

  He was in too much pain to move. He was paralysed with the pain of the wound which pulsed in time to his heartbeat. When he thought that he would die, under that unkindly hot sun, with the ceaseless hammer-hammer-hammer of guns, he heard himself whimpering like a hurt animal. It was then that he opened his eyes and stared ahead of him at the facade of the café.

  One of the tricks of this war was that nothing ever stayed the same, he thought. You joined the army to save Belgium from the dreadful Hun and then you got to Belgium and found that it was you who were wrecking their fields, destroying their villages and eating their food. And the dreadful Hun was a man within calling distance in the opposite trench. After the battle of Loos the Germans had held their fire while the English stretchered their dead and wounded from the open deathfield of no-man’s-land into the safety of the trench. They were not brutal savages, they had played the game. They had been fair, even merciful. They had let the English rescue their wounded, which was something the Allied high command would never allow. The Germans had been kinder than the English. It didn’t make any sense.

  The Bilbeque café was another thing that was an illusion. The glass windows were undamaged, not even cracked. The lettering Café Bilbeque in gold paint was perfect. The little red and white awning fluttered in the breeze. There was a pot of red geraniums at the upstairs window. And behind the charming facade there was nothing. The café had taken a direct hit and had crumbled inside. The proprietor, his wife and their three children had suffocated under the rubble. No-one had yet had time to dig them out and bury them. But their café, their pretty summertime café, had a brave face for the world. A brave face and no body.

  Lily stepped on to the stage to admire the set. She thought it quite delightful. She sat on one of the chairs, she leaned her elbows on the table and dreamed that she might be there in—she turned around and looked at the name—Café Bilbeque, where everything was always delightful.

  “Auditioning for the chorus, Lily?” Charlie asked from the pit. He was checking the music in his stand.

  “Daydreaming,” Lily said. “What’s the time? I’m not late, am I?”

  “You’ve got an hour yet,” Charlie said. “It’s not two.” He played a chord on the open piano and glanced up at Lily.

  “What’s that on your face?”

  Lily’s hand went to the bruise. “Nothing,” she said. “I bumped myself.” She thought rapidly. “In the bath,” she said. “I slipped and bumped myself on the tap.”

  “Wait there,” Charlie said and stepped over the brass orchestra rail and went around to the door that led backstage. Lily met him in the concealing darkness of the wings.

  Charlie took her face in his hands and turned it so the working lights on stage shone full on her. “He hit you,” he said. His voice was very soft.

  “Yes,” Lily said shortly. “He found out I was working. We’ve sorted it out. He’s letting me work. That’s the end to it, Charlie.”

  Charlie let her go and turned away from her so that she wouldn’t see the impotent rage on his face. He took a breath and then spoke softly. “Leave him. If he’s hit you once, he’ll do it again. Leave him tonight, Lil. You can come to my digs, I’ll fix you up with a room.”

  “No.”

  He swung back. “This isn’t a request, this is an order. You’re to leave him. You can get a divorce for this. I’ll take you to a lawyer tomorrow morning.”

  “No.”

  Charlie took her hands. “Please, Lil,” he said. “Don’t let him do this to you. He’s bound to win in the end. You’re not sorted out now just because he lets you do one little show—but belts you before you go on. It’s no good.”

  Lily shook her head.

  Charlie exclaimed in exasperation. “Why the hell do you want to put up
with it? D’you admire him for thumping you? D’you think he’s manly or something? Is he so bloody potent that he can thump you and make love to you and you let him do it? Do you like it? Is that how you are? A woman who takes a blow in her face and then a kiss to make up and thinks this is true love?”

  “Oh, shut up,” Lily said in sudden repulsion. “Is that all you can think about? Is that all you ever think about? About Stephen making love to me? I stay with him because I’ve nowhere else to go. I stay with him because I’ve no money except for what I earn here week by week and this is a short-term contract. And, actually, though you don’t want to believe it, I stay with him because I married him and because he does love me, and I belong there now. I love his father, and his mother’s kind to me. Stephen’s funny from the war. I can’t blame him for that. I can help him with it.”

  “God in heaven!” Charlie exclaimed. “Funny from the war, and you love his dad. You can’t stay with a man for those reasons!”

  Lily pulled her hands out of his tightening grip. “Oh, leave me alone,” she said. “You’re too late, Charlie. I telegraphed you before I married and gave you the chance to stop it then. If you had sent me one word I wouldn’t have gone through with it. I didn’t know where I was nor what I was doing. I was out of my head with Ma’s death and I didn’t know what to do. But you didn’t do a thing. You sent me that telegram from everyone saying ‘Good Luck’! You made your choice then, Charlie. You can live with it. And I made my choice. And I’ll live with it too. I married Stephen and I’m going to be a good wife to him. If you don’t like it then hard luck! You swore you’d never interfere; well, don’t!”

  She turned on her heel and ran from the wings down the dressing room stairs. Charlie heard her high heels rattle down the stone steps.

  He walked slowly over to the prompt corner and sat on the prompter’s stool. He laid his arms carefully on the desk and then put his face deep in the crook of his arm. “God almighty,” he said slowly. “I could wish I’d not made it. I could wish I’d never got through it. I could wish I’d never come back.”

  • • •

  Stephen was waiting with Coventry in the big grey Argyll outside the Kings Theatre when Lily came out from the evening show.

  “Can we give Madge a lift?” she asked.

  Stephen smiled. “Of course, hop in.”

  He held the door for the two girls and then got into the back with them.

  “I have digs in Silver Street,” Madge said, a little breathless at the sight of the soft grey upholstery and Coventry’s uniform. “Down Kings Road, left at Kings Terrace and I’ll get out on the corner.”

  “Nonsense,” Stephen said warmly. “We’ll take you to your door. It’s too late for you to be walking home alone.”

  Lily shot Madge a small superior smile.

  “Good show?” Stephen asked. “I would have got a ticket but they were sold out! That’s got to be good, hasn’t it, Lily?”

  “They give away a lot of tickets for the first night. It’s tomorrow that they want to see a full house.”

  “But it went well,” Madge volunteered. “Lily was lovely. You couldn’t see the bruise under the make-up at all.”

  Stephen’s eyes narrowed for only a second. “What bruise?” he asked. He turned to Lily. “What bruise, my darling?”

  “I slipped in my bath this morning and banged my cheek on the tap,” Lily said wearily. “Madge gave me the lend of some cream for my cheek.”

  “Lent me.”

  “Lent me.”

  “Poor darling,” Stephen continued. “Let me see.”

  Lily turned her face to him and he gently touched the bruise with his finger. “Poor little cheek,” he said. “But it will soon heal. It’s only a little bump.”

  Madge swelled beside Lily in the seat. Lily dug her elbow into Madge’s ribs, commanding her silence. “Left here,” was all she said.

  They drew up outside Madge’s lodging. A curtain twitched at the window and was drawn frankly back so the landlady could stare at Madge getting out of an Argyll with a chauffeur holding the door. Stephen and Lily watched Madge till she stepped in the opening front door.

  “Drive on,” Stephen said.

  Coventry let in the clutch and they went quietly forwards. “Cook left you a little supper,” Stephen said. “I didn’t know how hungry you would be.”

  Lily shook her head. “I’m so tired I could drop,” she said. “I’m not hungry at all.”

  “Well, you must have a little something,” Stephen said. “And then a lie-in tomorrow. There’s no need for you to come downstairs for breakfast. Not while you’re working so late at night.”

  “Thank you,” Lily said.

  The car drew up before the darkened house. “Mother’s gone to bed already,” Stephen said, glancing up at the windows. He let them into the house while Coventry drove away.

  “Isn’t he parking round the back?” Lily asked.

  “No, he wanted to go home tonight. Some nights he likes to go to his home.”

  Lily wastefully switched on all the lights as she went into the house: the chandelier in the hall and the lights on the walls. She switched on the lights for the drawing room on her right though she did not go into the room. She went further down the hall to the dining room and switched on the wall lights and the lights over the dining room table. There was one place laid, with a glass of milk beside it and, in the breakfast chafing dishes, a dish of bubble and squeak—Lily recognized the Sunday dinner vegetables in their second incarnation. Sliced thickly on another plate were tough cold wedges of beef from the Sunday joint.

  Lily helped herself to the two smallest slices and a generous portion of the crispy brown bubble and squeak. Cook had put a pickle jar of her own green tomato chutney on the sideboard so Lily guessed that you were allowed pickles with bubble and squeak. She had once asked for pickle with steak and kidney pie and had seen Stephen and his mother both look deeply shocked. Since then she had learned that pickle or sauce was a very rare treat. Mustard though, a horrible yellow slimy mustard, you could eat with anything.

  Stephen came through the house turning off the lights and then drew up a chair to sit with Lily.

  “What about the things?” she asked, gesturing to the dishes. “Should we clear them?”

  “Oh no,” Stephen said. “Browning will do it.”

  “Hasn’t she gone to bed?”

  “She’ll get up early in the morning to do it. I’ve told them. The house has to be run to your convenience while you are working. They all know.”

  Lily blinked. “Thank you,” she said again.

  “You look surprised?”

  “I didn’t think that you were very happy about me working,” Lily said tentatively.

  Stephen smiled. “I don’t like it at all,” he said frankly. “But since you insist, it doesn’t help us much if we fight every day of your season, does it? We might as well agree to differ and get along as well as we can. Don’t you think, Lily?”

  Lily nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Thank you. Of course.”

  “Bed for you,” Stephen said tenderly. “Want an apple?”

  Lily shook her head. Stephen switched off the dining room lights and then put on one light for the stairs. He slid the bolts on the front door and put the safety chain across. He followed Lily up the stairs to their bedroom.

  There was a thermos flask and a cup and saucer by the bed with some arrowroot biscuits. “Browning’s left you a nightcap,” Stephen said. “Hot milk and cinnamon. She always used to do it for Christopher and me if we were out late somewhere. It’s her treat.”

  Lily smiled and opened the flask. It smelled rather strongly of old tea. The milk inside was tepid, pale brown from the cinnamon powder and speckled with floating pieces of skin stained beige.

  “Lovely,” Lily said. “I’ll drink it while I’m washing my face in the bathroom.”

  She took the cup and saucer through to the bathroom and bolted the door behind her. Then she poured it care
fully down the toilet and pulled the chain. She washed her face and hands, combed her hair, cleaned her teeth and changed into her nightdress.

  Stephen was in bed when she came in, reading a book. When she shut the door behind her he put the marker in place and laid the book carefully on his bedside table. He pulled back the blankets. “Come to bed, little wife,” he said kindly. “I bet you’re exhausted.”

  Lily nodded and climbed into bed beside him, pulling the covers up. “Good night,” she said, turning her back to him and closing her eyes. Stephen waited and then put out his bedside light. They were both asleep in moments.

  In the early hours of the morning, at about three, Stephen jerked awake from a nightmare. He had been running westwards down a well-built zigzagging trench, four paces north, four paces west, four paces south. He knew that there was some vital message he had to get through. There would be an attack but his brigade did not have to advance. He had to get the message through that they must not advance. They must stay in the safety of the trench while someone else’s lot did the work. Someone else’s friends could get shot to pieces, or snagged and torn by the wire, or bombed.

  On and on Stephen ran until he started wondering about the message he carried. What if it were a message ordering an advance? What if it had been some kind of trick from those devils, those mad devils at headquarters? What if they had lied to him and told him that the message said not to advance, knowing he would run like a deer; when in fact the message said “advance and take the brunt of the counterattack.” Suppose it said, as some insane officer had said last week, “we have been ordered to hold the trench at all costs. I expect you to die beside me, men.” Stephen’s legs went slower and slower and then he stumbled and finally stopped. He undid his breast pocket and took out the message. It was written on the standard officer memo pad from CO to Brigadier Wentworth, the time 1400 hrs. It was only two lines. It said: “This messenger is not a hero, he is a murderer. When he arrives, shoot him.”

  In his dream Stephen screamed “No!” and it was this that flung him into his waking world.