Fallen Skies

by Philippa Gregory

  Muriel in the dining room made no sound. She sat with her tea cup still in her hand, waiting and listening. She heard the click of the telephone being picked up, she heard Lily’s low voice say to the operator: “Would you get me Portsmouth 214?” Then she heard Lily’s hushed moan of anxiety as the phone rang and rang at the other end.

  Muriel put her tea cup down on the saucer with microscopic attention. She twisted her napkin in both hands and held it tight.

  “Charlie?” Lily said in a soft voice in the hall. “Oh! I’m so glad you’re there!”

  There was a momentary pause as he spoke at the other end. “No, I’m fine. No, I’m well. It’s you—I heard you were going. I heard from Stephen that you’d been offered a place in the American band . . .”

  Muriel’s face muscles were locked rigid. There was a tone in Lily’s voice she had only heard before when Lily was talking of her childhood and her mother. It was a warmth, a trustfulness. Muriel thought that the hall of her house had never heard that tone before. It was a tone of confident love. No-one in Muriel’s house ever spoke like that.

  “And do you want to go?” Lily asked.

  There was a pause.

  “I do ask,” Lily said hesitantly. “I am sorry, Charlie. I know I shouldn’t. But I do ask you not to go.”

  There was a silence as Lily listened to Charlie’s answer. Muriel found herself perversely wishing against her own interests, that Charlie would obey Lily. That Lily’s heart should be given to a man who cared for her. Who cared enough to sacrifice an exciting career for her. Who would stay with her, even if he only saw her four times a week for tea, and that in her mother-in-law’s house.

  “Thank you,” Lily said in a small voice. “Oh my darling, thank you.”

  Muriel found she had been holding her breath and took a deep sigh.

  “I’m very glad,” Lily said softly in the hall. “I’m sure I’m a selfish pig but . . . oh, Charlie . . . I can’t be without you. Not now, with the baby coming. I can’t live here without you at least sometimes . . .”

  Muriel put her hands over her face, but she did not block her ears.

  But Lily said no more. She whispered, “Goodbye,” and then, “Yes, yes, goodbye.” Then there was the quiet click of the telephone being replaced.

  Muriel heard Lily humming as she went up the stairs. It was a Victorian lovesong Charlie had taught her last week:

  And if she cannot come to me

  then I shall wait for ever more.

  For if she cannot come to me

  then I shall wait for ever more.

  Muriel rested her face in her hands and found she was weeping.

  24

  THAT NIGHT AT THE TROCADERO CLUB the black jazz band played better than ever. Charlie hunched over the keyboard, laughing with pleasure as he tried to follow them, “jamming.” When they went to a bar for their break, the sweat was pouring off his face. “God! You’ve got some nerve!” he said, nodding to the barman for a pint of beer. “I didn’t have the faintest idea what you were doing! I was just following along. Something like two bars behind all the time!”

  They laughed and the trumpeter did a hunch-backed mime of Charlie trying to keep up, but always lagging two bars behind, when the door opened and Marjorie Philmore fell into the club. Her dress was ripped and she had a raw graze on her shoulder. Her hair was rumpled and there was a red mark which was turning blue on the side of her cheek.

  “Christ, Charlie,” she said. “Thank God you’re here. Can you take me somewhere to clean up? I can’t go home like this.”

  Her voice was loud, edgy. Charlie threw a quick glance around the club. Everyone within earshot was staring. He gave an apologetic shrug at the band. “Catch you later,” he said. “It seems I have to be a white knight.”

  “A what?” the trumpeter asked.

  “I’ll be back in an hour,” Charlie said. He spoke quickly to the barman and borrowed the manager’s car which was parked at the back of the club. He slid his dinner suit jacket over Marjorie’s shoulders to hide the damage to her dress and the long graze on her shoulder and arm, and he took her firmly by the elbow and led her out of the club.

  She was drunk; she walked hesitantly and stumbled once or twice. When the night air hit her she steadied a little and gave a short sob which ended in a hiccough. “Christ,” she said again.

  Charlie pushed her gently into the passenger seat of the car. It was an old Ford and he had to crank-start it. When the engine was running he got behind the wheel. Marjorie was leaning forward, against the dashboard, her eyes shut.

  “Who hurt you?” Charlie asked grimly.

  She shrugged. “What does it matter? He won’t do it again.”

  “You want me to clean you up, you tell me what I want to know,” Charlie said reasonably. “Who was it?”

  Marjorie dropped back in the seat and yawned in his face. “Stephen Winters,” she said bitterly. “The bloody war hero.”

  Charlie’s face was set. “Why?”

  “Because he caught me with one of the band,” she said wearily. “He’s a bit of a prude is our Stephen. He went barmy, frankly. He called me a whore and God knows what else and then he slapped me and when I tried to get away he pushed me against the wall.” Her hand crept inside the jacket to touch the sore graze. “Not quite the gent we all thought,” she said.

  “D’you want to charge him?” Charlie asked levelly. “Assault? Grievous bodily harm? Shall I take you to the police?”

  Marjorie laughed shrilly. “And tell them I was spooning with a nigger in the alley, and that my married lover caught me and slapped me around? No thanks, Charlie-boy. Just take me to your place and let me have a wash and powder my little nose and then I’ll take a taxi home. Chances are, Ma won’t even see me.”

  Charlie let the clutch in and the little car went forward. “Stephen’s your lover, is he?” he asked.

  “Not any more,” Marjorie said. She rested her head on the back of the seat and closed her eyes. “I’m not that kind of a fool.”

  “How long has it been going on?”

  Marjorie shrugged and then winced at the hurt on her shoulder. “Oh, a couple of months. His wife’s pregnant—but of course you’d know. You’re round there almost every day, aren’t you?”

  “I teach her the piano, I’m her accompanist,” Charlie said.

  “I bet.”

  There was a little silence.

  “He’s a bit free with his fists, isn’t he?” Charlie asked, keeping his voice carefully neutral.

  Marjorie shrugged. “He’s one of those who hate women at the same time as having them, darling. You know the sort. He calls us all whores but can’t keep his hands to himself.”

  Charlie turned the car right down his road. “Is he all right?” he asked. “I mean, in his head.”

  Marjorie smiled. “Well, he has nightmares and screams about the trenches. If he smells Devon violets perfume he gets down on the floor and covers his mouth with his hands. That’s what the gas used to smell of, they say. He dreams about a raid he made on a farmhouse where some women and a baby were found dead. And he cries in his sleep and says the name Juliette. He hates his job, he hates his parents, and he loves and hates his wife.” Marjorie laughed her sexy low laugh. “In a word—right as rain. You find me a man with the right number of arms and legs and adjacent parts who doesn’t cry in his sleep and I’ll marry him tomorrow, darling. They’re all crazy as coots, or missing essential bits as far as I can see.”

  “He hit his wife once,” Charlie said, stopping the car outside his flat.

  “So would I,” Marjorie said unkindly. “Po-faced bitch.”

  “I mean, he’s violent,” Charlie said. “D’you think he’s dangerous?”

  Marjorie opened her wide beautiful grey eyes. “No more than anyone else,” she said certainly. “He’s quick-tempered and he’s spiteful. He’s half-mad from the war and he drinks too much. But he’s no more dangerous than you or me. We’re the jazz age, remember? We’re br
ight young things! We’re the mad young things of the twenties! What d’you expect him to be? A vicar?”

  “Christ knows what I expect,” Charlie said sharply. “Whatever it is I expect—I certainly never get it.” He got out of the car and led her to his front door. “I’ll leave you here then,” he said. “I should get back. Are you sure you can manage?”

  Marjorie looked at him sideways, with a little smile. “Won’t you come in and kiss it better?” she asked.

  Charlie kissed her cheek and then turned her around and gave her a little push. “I think you’ve had enough kissing for one night,” he said.

  She paused on the doorway. “So what is it with you?” she asked. “Don’t you like girls? Is it what the chorus girls say about you—that you go down to the dockyard on a Saturday night for the little apprentices and the midshipmen?”

  Charlie’s banked-down anger never showed. “Friday night,” he said easily. “I always go down on a Friday night. And it’s a handsome stoker for me! Leave the key under the mat when you leave. There’s a number for a hackney cab by the telephone.”

  Marjorie nodded. “Well, thanks anyway,” she threw over her shoulder and slammed the door.

  Charlie walked slowly back to the car, started it and drove back to the club. “The jazz age,” he said as he parked and walked under the winking sign which said “Trocadero.” “Bright young things. Christ help us.”

  • • •

  Stephen’s workload increased noticeably after Christmas. He called in to John Pascoe’s office one Friday afternoon in early January to see what the senior partner thought about them taking on another lawyer into the practice.

  “I’d been sure that the war divorces would drop off,” Stephen said as the clerk brought them tea, handling the tray awkwardly with one hand. Stephen did not help the man. He watched him carefully as he put the tray down on a small table and then pushed it into the centre. The pinned-up sleeve flapped like the wing of a broken bird. “But the marriages seem to be as bad as ever. You’d have thought people would have settled down by now.”

  “And wardships and trusteeships,” John Pascoe agreed. “I’m still getting a number of cases of ex-servicemen having to go into hospitals with nerve damage. It really drags on and on. You can sympathize with the distress of the family when the man of the house suddenly finds he can’t cope three years after the whole thing ended.”

  Stephen nodded. “I think in most cases you’ll find it is men who weren’t suited to the war in the first place,” he said. “That was the problem with conscription. It dragged in people who should never have been there. Even I th . . . th . . . th . . .” He found he had lost the ability to finish the sentence.

  John Pascoe waited. Stephen waved the end of the sentence away. “Any instability and the war would bring it out,” Stephen said instead. “But it certainly keeps us busy.”

  “Where would we get another partner?” John asked.

  Stephen said nothing. They were both thinking of Jim Pascoe, who had run into a cloud of British gas on that clear bright morning and never come back to claim the desk that had been waiting for him.

  “We’ve never advertised,” John said dismally.

  “Well, we could use another man at least for half the week.”

  “D’you have anyone in mind, Stephen?”

  “There was a chap I knew at Oxford, he read law and said he was going into the profession. I could drop him a line, I don’t know what he’s doing these days. I know he survived, he got himself attached to general staff very early on. His family live in the New Forest.”

  John Pascoe nodded. “Your father will never be well enough to come back?”

  Stephen shrugged and spread his hands.

  “I see they’re making a start on the war memorial on the common,” John said, as if it were somehow relevant.

  “Jim will be on it. And Christopher.”

  “We’ll never know the full cost,” John said. “My son, your brother. But your father as well, and the plans we had. The way this practice was to run. The way the country was going to be. It’s all changed, Stephen, without anyone deciding to change it. It’s as if, when the boys were away at war, the country changed behind their backs and we can’t get it right again.”

  Stephen had gone a little pale. “Ch . . . chaps used to say they felt like ghosts—when they c . . . came home on leave. P . . . place was still the same but they had no part of it. G . . . girls all different, m . . . most of them working. W . . . windows blacked out. No f . . . fruit in the sh . . . sh . . . shops. And no . . . no . . . no . . .” He took a deep breath. “Nobody understood.”

  John Pascoe was listening with painful intensity, trying to hear the voice of his lost son through Stephen’s halting speech. “Understood? Understood what?”

  “Wh . . . wh . . . what it was like!”

  “In the trenches?”

  Stephen nodded.

  “What was it like?” John Pascoe whispered. “I want to understand, Stephen. What was it like?”

  Stephen shot him a small sideways smile, almost sly. But his brown eyes were glittery with tears. “I can’t say,” he said in a low voice. “Th . . . th . . . th . . . that’s my w . . . w . . . war wound, if you like. I can’t say.”

  “Because if you said, if you told me, you would not be able to bear it?”

  Stephen was holding tight to the arms of his chair. His knuckles gleamed white. John Pascoe could see the blue veins bulging on the back of his head and the rising flush in Stephen’s face.

  “Stephen, we were talking about men cracking up even now,” John Pascoe said very softly. “Are you sure you are quite well?”

  Stephen’s head was bent low. John thought irresistibly of a photograph he had seen of a wagon horse bogged down on the Menin Road, where the shell-craters were so deep that they went ten, twenty feet down. The horse was foundering, up to its chest in mud, its back legs kicking deep into slurry, its neck straining against the collar and the gun carriage sinking behind it dragging it down. Stephen’s neck was strained forwards in the same way, his neck muscles knotted in a hopeless struggle.

  “Are you sick, Stephen? Sick from the war?”

  Stephen looked forward under his fair eyebrows. His broad handsome face was contorted with a scowl. He was choking on words that he could not say. John Pascoe knew he had neither the skill nor the courage to summon the words from Stephen so that he need drag the weight of his horrific memories no more.

  “Shouldn’t you see a doctor, old man? Get some help?”

  Stephen’s head moved slowly from side to side.

  “But how can you bear this?”

  Stephen reared up in the chair and John saw him iron the pain from his face. First he unknotted his forehead and settled his eyebrows. He relaxed his cheeks and drew his mouth away from its painful grimace. He forced his shoulders back out of their hunched strain and straightened his back. Only his eyes could not deny the truth. In their blankness John Pascoe saw what he had only feared before, that the war had damaged Stephen Winters more deeply than anyone could have imagined. Stephen’s eyes were cold and blank as if they had seen such horrors that they would never look directly at anything again.

  “It’s not so bad,” he said. “It’s all right if I don’t think about it. If I could never think about it at all, I’d be fine.”

  The two men sat in silence for a little while. “Is Lily a help?” John asked softly.

  Stephen shook his head. “Not much.”

  “Your parents? Friends?”

  Stephen cleared his throat. “It’s not important,” he said distantly. “Nothing to bother about. A few dreams, a bit of a reaction sometimes. All the chaps have it. We can’t all be mad!” He said it for a joke but his voice quavered and it sounded more like a defiant hope. “We can’t all be mad!” he said again.

  • • •

  That night Stephen had a dream. he dreamed he was back in St. Omer, where they used to be sent for short leaves. The men were po
sted in small farms around the town but the officers stayed in the town itself. There was a club there, and a good little café with chairs and tables outside. In his dream St. Omer was as he had first seen it in March of 1917, a grey town of quiet walled houses, a central square and an imposing town hall. Around the square ran blocks of shops: a fruit shop with a richness of goods spread out on the pavement in the early morning sunlight, a woman washing down the steps of her shop before opening, iron gated doorways, cafés steaming with the heat of coffee and fresh bread and croissants, their windows all misty with the warmth inside. It was a cold bright March with hard sunny days.

  Later the houses would be picked off like rotten teeth leaving ugly gaps in a familiar smile. Every building of any size would become a hospital or a headquarters building, or a whorehouse. There would be no more fruit and vegetables as everything that could grow was requisitioned for the monster armies which were leaching the goodness from France, from Belgium, from Austria and Germany. There would be no croissants, there would be no coffee. Shopkeepers would not take their own currency, they preferred gold. And there was a ceaseless secretive trade in dreadful things: snub-nosed dumdum bullets—a collector’s item because of their dreadful power to tear open flesh, and because they were illegal but used by both sides; German helmets, especially the old-fashioned type with the spike; Brussels lace embroidered with German names; an Iron Cross cut from a dying man’s chest; and, worst of all, blackened fingers, or dried-out ears looking like decayed apricots.

  The land around St. Omer made Stephen think of Cambridgeshire, wide and naked under a huge arching sky. There was nowhere at all to hide. The land undulated gently, there were no hills, no cover. There were only a few trees, willows, with hair like ill-kempt women, lining drainage ditches and little canals. The road running north and west to the Front sometimes arched over a mud-filled river which had long ceased to flow since the canals and drainage ditches had been shelled into bog. It was wet land, the earth sodden with the water table only inches below the surface.

  In his dream Stephen remembered suddenly comprehending why the trenches had been built in the first place—something he had never understood, folding the newspaper in a fury at home. But once he was there, once he was under that wide exposed sky, he saw immediately that a soldier, even an unwilling new soldier like himself, would need no orders to take a spade and dig a hole. There was no other chance of escaping shots or bombs. There was nowhere to hide, there was no shelter. No-one could have withstood the temptation to dig themselves a little hole to get their vulnerable body off the open ground. A man would have become serpent and wormed his way into the earth rather than stand on that open wide blowy plain.