Fallen Skies

by Philippa Gregory

  He nodded and smoothed the thick hair of his moustache. He stepped forward and took up the two flat hairbrushes from the little plinth of the pier glass. He brushed his hair, smoothing it back from his face, admiring the shine on it.

  “A hero,” he said again softly. “And now it’s over and I’m going to have the life I deserve. The life a hero deserves. My country owes it to me. My family owes it to me. My wife—” He broke off at the thought of Lily’s continual intransigence. “She’ll have to learn,” he said. “She’ll have to learn the drill. Good drill can make a man do anything. She’ll have to square-bash. She’ll have to knuckle down. I’ll knock her into shape.”

  He nodded at his own reflection, and his mirror-image smiled in agreement at the thought of breaking Lily’s independent spirit and remaking her into a wife fit for a hero. “I’ve been lax,” he said. “Damned lax. But it’s all going to change.”

  He put down the brushes, straightened his tie and went from the room. His heavy confident tread marched down the stairs, pausing outside his father’s room. Stephen knocked and put his head around the door of the sickroom.

  “Good morning, Father,” he said pleasantly. “All well?”

  Nurse Bells bustled forward. “Mr. Winters!” she said. “This is a nice surprise! Yes, we’re very well this morning. We’ve had a good breakfast and we may sit up by the window later on.”

  Stephen looked past her to the man in the bed. He found his father even more repugnant now the man was recovering speech. He had preferred his corpse-like silence to the continual struggle for movement and the gurgling battle towards expression. The man started now: “Gl . . . gloo gloo . . .”

  “He’s saying good morning!” Nurse Bells interpreted confidently. She nodded, beaming at the old man. “Very good!”

  “Got to go to work,” Stephen said clearly. “I can’t spend all day doing nothing. Someone has to earn the money to keep the house going.” He looked critically at Nurse Bells as if she were an expensive luxury which he might well reduce, but she was beaming at Rory, who was struggling to find another word.

  Stephen stepped back and shut the door and ran down the stairs to the front door. As he went past the day nursery the door opened and Lily came out. He was pleased to see she was without Christopher. Already Nanny Janes had fractured their unity.

  “Good morning, darling,” Stephen beamed. He stopped and brushed his lips against her cold cheek. “Must dash. I’m late. Coventry’s waiting.”

  “I don’t want her,” Lily said in a swift undertone. She laid hold of Stephen’s lapels and looked up at him. “Please, Stephen,” she said. “I’ll do anything. Let me keep Christopher. Don’t make me give him to her.”

  Stephen looked down into Lily’s white frightened face. “But my darling!” he said gently. “We agreed! Of course he has to have a nanny! You’re not losing him! You’re just making sure he is brought up properly. You can’t care for him yourself, and keep up your singing and see your friends, and get back to normal! Of course he has to have a nanny!”

  “I’ll give up singing,” Lily said instantly. “I’ll never sing again if you don’t want, Stephen. I’ll do anything you ask. Anything.” She hesitated and then nerved herself to step closer, to slide one hand inside his jacket to his shirt front. She fingered the buttons of his shirt, intimately, as if she desired him. She looked up, her eyes dark with her fear of losing her son. “Anything,” she promised.

  Stephen, radiant, detached himself from her clinging grasp. “Of course you must keep up your singing,” he said generously. “Especially when you are doing so well! Let’s just give it a trial period, eh, Lily? And if, after a month, you don’t want to keep her on, then she can go. All right?”

  Lily followed Stephen downstairs. “If I don’t want her after a month she can go?” she repeated, breathless with anxiety.

  Stephen nodded. He rang the bell and Browning brought him his greatcoat and his hat. Lily took them from the parlourmaid and waved her away. Stephen let his wife hold his coat for him and pass him his hat with a sense of delicious triumph. She had never waited on him before. Always she had leaned on the newel post and watched him helped into his coat as if it were some bizarre ritual constructed to serve his vanity. Now she stood as humble as a servant and waited to see if he wanted his umbrella.

  “I should like to have my things moved back into my bedroom,” he said. “Tell Browning, will you, darling?”

  Lily handed him his briefcase with her eyes downcast. “Of course,” she said obediently.

  “And we’ll go out tonight,” Stephen said. “See the show at the Regal, maybe go down to the Troc and listen to Charlie.”

  Lily thought of Christopher sleeping in his cot without her to watch over him. She thought of him waking in the night and finding himself in a strange room with a stranger at the side of his bed, strange arms holding him and a bottle forced into his mouth instead of being allowed to nuzzle lazily at the sweet-smelling warmth of his mother’s breast.

  “Yes,” she said tightly.

  Stephen kissed the top of her head, opened the front door, and ran lightly down the steps to the waiting car.

  “ ‘Victory is mine, saith the Lord,’ ” he remarked to Coventry. “She’s well and truly beat.”

  • • •

  The summer month of June—the traditional month for warfare—was the month of Stephen’s campaign of reparation against his wife. He was thinking, unconsciously, of the absurd ten-million-pound penalty the Allies had sworn that Germany should pay for starting the war, for losing the war. He was thinking of the conversations in estaminets behind the lines when men had sworn that all German factories should be packed up and moved wholesale to England and France, that the German prisoners of war should be individually tried as murderers and rapists and hanged for their crimes. That all the German soldiers should be kept in squads of work parties until every piece of shell, every coil of barbed wire had been picked clear from the Atlantic coast to the Mediterranean. Nothing was too bad for a defeated enemy.

  In Stephen’s battle against Lily he wanted to see her pay for every little slight he had suffered since his marriage. He wanted her to pay for every light-hearted moment when her natural joy bubbled up. He wanted her to pay for making his house a place where you could hear music, and slamming doors, and running feet on the stairs, and the doorbell ringing with callers. He wanted her to pay for being a child of the peace, while he was still locked in the war. More than anything else, he wanted to punish her for bringing home a baby and calling him Christopher.

  But nothing defeated Lily. Stephen kept her away from Christopher every night by insisting that they go dancing, that they dine out, that they go to one theatre after another. Lily danced all night, ate hugely at late supper parties, greeted actress-friends and singers with delight, got up on stage at the Troc to sing ragtime at three in the morning and still was out of bed at six to give Christopher his morning feed.

  Stephen started to give long and tedious luncheon parties at home, inviting senior clients and their wives for interminable meals of overcooked meat and heavy puddings which Lily had to arrange. But when the men joined the ladies in the drawing room he would find them clustered around Christopher, who would be kicking his bootees on the sofa, and Lily would laugh and say she had just brought him downstairs for a moment, not more than a moment, but he would stay and stay.

  At the weekend Stephen insisted that he and Lily drive out into the country for walks, leaving Christopher in the nursery at home. Lily never demurred. She would put on her hat, kiss her son goodbye and be waiting for Stephen in the hall. He could not fault her. She would walk as long and as far as he insisted. They were caught in a sudden thunderstorm one day three miles from the car and Lily never complained. But the second she was home she skipped up the stairs to the nursery and Stephen heard Christopher’s loud coos of greeting and Lily’s delighted half-sung replies.

  He had moved into her bedroom as he had promised, but it was Li
ly who had given the orders that his clothes should be hung in the wardrobe of the big bedroom. Christopher’s little toys, his cot, the lingering sweet powdery smell of him, was banished from the room. Lily never complained. Stephen would roll on her in the night, consciously brutish, and Lily would lie still and obedient, and let him do what he wished.

  • • •

  “Will you conceive again?” Charlie asked, coldly frank in the middle of the month.

  Lily shook her head. “Madge got me a thing,” she said. “There’s a doctor who will give them out if you say you’re married and you’ve already got three children. Madge and I went together. It’s really expensive, but I won’t have another baby until I want.”

  Charlie played a ripple of a chord on the drawing room piano. Lily was standing by the window, watching to see Christopher being wheeled back from his walk. Nanny Janes allowed him to come into the drawing room after this. Both Charlie and Lily waited longingly for the doorbell to ring and the bump-bump of Coventry pulling the perambulator up the steps.

  “You could always leave,” Charlie said. “If you took all the work you’ve been offered you could earn your own living now, Lil. You’d not have to go back on the stage again. You could live off your concert work, or very nearly.”

  She shook her head. “He’d take Christopher from me,” she said simply. “He’d never let me have him if I left home. I’m here for keeps, Charlie. What I have to do is to keep my side of the bargain and make sure he keeps his. Nanny Janes goes in two weeks, he promised. Then I’ll have Christopher all to myself again.” She smiled across the piano at him. “As long as I have Christopher I don’t really care about the rest. As long as I can have Christopher with me then all the rest of it,” her gesture took in the uncomfortable pretentious house, the paralysed man upstairs, the secret fears of her husband, “all the rest of it doesn’t matter. Marriage, love, nothing matters as much as Christopher.”

  Charlie nodded. “I know,” he said simply. As soon as Christopher had been born he had despaired of Lily ever leaving home. She was right, Stephen would instantly separate her from her child. Stephen knew the law, and the law was designed to protect the family and the children. A part-time singer-actress would have no case for custody against a prominent citizen, a wealthy man, and a war hero.

  He played a catchy dance tune. “Know this one?”

  Lily was instantly diverted. “Is that ‘Sweet Summer Rag’?”

  Charlie nodded. “The score’s in my bag,” he said, still playing. Lily rummaged in his bag and found the words. Charlie started at the beginning again and Lily began to sing. The doorbell rang, Lily moved to answer it, still singing, and caught Christopher up and danced lightly around the room with him, singing softly in his ear. The baby cooed and waved his fists, his eyes never leaving Lily’s bright face. Charlie watched them both, smiling.

  29

  LILY DID NOT STRUGGLE against Nanny Janes any more than she struggled against Stephen during the long month of the woman’s trial period. She never argued with her, she never confronted her. She employed the low cunning and street-fighting skills of Highland Road. She smiled at her, she treated her with every courtesy. And she undermined her daily: with the maids, with Cook, with Coventry, with Muriel. She imitated her broad-beamed waddle in hilarious charades in Rory’s room. She made faces behind the woman’s back. She circumvented her discipline of the nursery whenever she could.

  Christopher was to be put out into the garden every day to sleep from nine thirty until midday. Only then could he be brought indoors and changed ready for his midday feed, which was never earlier than one P.M. Lily would watch the pram being wheeled into the garden and then Nanny Janes going indoors to tidy the nursery. At once Lily would throw on a cardigan and go out to smell the roses or to take a breath of fresh air. Nanny Janes, glancing from the nursery window, would see the baby and his mother in silent and mutually absorbing communion as Lily sat on the bench in the garden with the pram turned towards her so that she could see Christopher’s face as he smiled at her, and cooed, and then gradually fell asleep.

  The first two or three times Nanny Janes surged downstairs and drove Lily indoors, threatening her that the baby would be spoiled or over-stimulated, or over-tired. But each time, as soon as she went away, Lily would steal out again to pick a handful of lavender as an excuse, or taking a slice of cake for the bird table.

  While Christopher slept, Lily sat on the seat and guarded his rest. She feared nothing, she was not a nervous mother. She did not think that a cat would scratch him, or that it would suddenly come on to rain and he would catch a chill. She was just drawn to be beside him, as naturally as a mare and a foal move together as one animal. Lily could not be separated from Christopher. Not even Nanny Janes could do it.

  Nanny Janes complained to Stephen that Mother was interfering with her running of the nursery. Stephen raised the subject at dinner and pointed out that Nanny Janes had successfully supervised the upbringing of countless children and that Lily would regret any interference in the system. Lily opened her blue eyes very wide and assured Stephen that she never interfered. Nanny Janes was with them for a month’s trial and Lily had agreed to this. If it so happened that on one morning Lily had been in the garden when Christopher had been wheeled out for his rest it was hardly interference. “You surely don’t want me to avoid him?” Lily asked. And Stephen was forced to say “No, of course not.”

  Thursday afternoons were Lily’s heaven. Nanny Janes would bring the heavy pram in from the garden at midday, wash and change Christopher, and then begrudgingly hand him over to Lily. Mother and baby were reunited for the whole blissful afternoon and evening. Nanny Janes was not on duty again until nine A.M. Friday morning. On fine days Lily would take Christopher out in his pram along the seafront. Charlie would come with her, pushing the pram along the promenade while Lily strolled beside it, her finger clasped firmly by the child. On other days Coventry would drive Charlie, Lily and Christopher out into the country and Lily would hold Christopher up to the window to show him the countryside. Christopher, pleased at his mother’s embrace, watching only her delighted face, cooed like a throaty pigeon. One Thursday it rained and Lily and Charlie had tea in the drawing room, and ordered an unseasonal fire to be lit, then sang and played together while Christopher sprawled on the sofa and beat time with his little fists, and dozed.

  On Thursday nights Lily would bathe Christopher in her bathroom with extravagant handfuls of bath salts in the water, using the best gardenia guest soap. She would roll him in a big towel before her bedroom fire and sprinkle him thickly with expensive talcum powder. Free from nappies and clothes the baby would kick and gurgle with pleasure. Lily would bury her face in his stomach, press his firm feet to her mouth and nibble at his toes. They played like animals, unconscious of time. When the gong went for dinner, Lily would pretend that she had a headache and forgo her dinner for the pleasure of sitting in the shadowy nursery with her son.

  It was a different room now. One end of it was taken up with Nanny Janes’s bed, and a large screen for her to hide from the baby’s male gaze as she dressed and undressed. Christopher’s cot was tucked into the corner by the chimney breast. The landscape pictures by amateur watercolourists had been taken down from the walls as too distracting when he should be sleeping. The curtains were drawn closed all day against the beguiling summer sunshine and only pulled back at night when there was nothing to see except a few pinpricks of stars in the black sky. The window was always tight shut. Nanny Janes believed that night air was cold and unhealthy. The room smelled clean but stuffy, like a well-kept museum.

  Lily would put her son to bed on Thursdays at the time she had been ordered, but then she would pull up the nursery chair and sit beside his cot, stroking his plump little stomach until he fell asleep. Muriel and Stephen, eating dinner downstairs in silence, would hear Lily’s sweet soft voice singing lullabies to her son.

  “Lily’s headache can’t be too bad then,” Stephen said s
arcastically.

  Muriel glanced at him. “She always has a headache on a Thursday.”

  Stephen nodded. “But except for Thursdays, Nanny Janes seems to have the whole thing under control.”

  Muriel nodded and swallowed a spoonful of cold pale blancmange. “Lily will thank us for it in years to come.”

  They drank their coffee in the drawing room; Stephen read the evening paper. At ten thirty they heard the front doorbell ring as Nanny Janes returned, and the light footfall as Lily slid from the nursery like a thief, closing the door behind her.

  Stephen shook the paper. “Well, she’ll go hungry,” he observed.

  But Lily did not go hungry. She had a tin box concealed in Rory’s room especially for Thursday nights. She had biscuits and a bar of chocolate. She had apples and a jar of potted meat. She had a wedge of cheese. Charlie, wondering privately at the ways of the middle classes, had given her a little pen-knife with a tin opener, a knife, fork and spoon. While Stephen and his mother sat downstairs in uneasy silence, and Nanny Janes suspiciously inspected the placing of the nursery chair and the sleeping baby, Lily slipped into Rory’s bedroom and spread out the goodies on his bedside table.