Fallen Skies

by Philippa Gregory

  They had brought a picnic tea. Outside the tiny village of Rowlands Castle they pulled off the road and Coventry spread a tablecloth in the shade of trees and laid out plates with scones and jam and cream, sandwiches and cake.

  Lily put Christopher on his back at the edge of the tablecloth and let him kick and look at the sky between his fists and feet. She took dabs of jam and cream and tea on her fingers and let him suck them, laughing as his face screwed up at one taste and then another. Stephen watched them, trying to share their pleasure, trying to feel as if he belonged with them. But mostly he was aware that though the wood was adequate cover, an officer who wanted to survive would have dug in the moment they arrived and sent out a scouting party. It was a thick dark wood, like Mametz had been before the shells had stripped it down to tortured naked stalks. He could not be easy in a place so like Mametz wood, where they had climbed over dead bodies to reach the German lines, struggling to get forward and meet their own deaths.

  When they finished tea, Coventry packed up. Lily handed Christopher to Stephen while she brushed crumbs from her frock. Christopher beamed at the strange face of his father, and then he blushed red and scowled hard. The baby suddenly stank worse than a latrine.

  “He smells!” Stephen exclaimed in distaste. “He stinks!”

  “Oh, really!” Lily exclaimed. “He needs a nappy change, that’s all.”

  Stephen held the baby at arm’s length, his face frowning with disgust. Lily snatched the child from him. “For heaven’s sake, Stephen! You must have seen worse than this! You can’t have been at Ypres for two years and not seen worse than this!”

  He shot a look of intense dislike at her, that she should so casually invoke his war, as if it could be compared to peacetime, as if it could be compared to anything.

  “He stinks like a cesspit,” he said coldly. “I suggest you see to him, if you know how.”

  Lily turned her shoulder to him and spoke to Coventry. “Christopher’s basket is in the boot,” she said. “Can you bring it to me, please? And some warm water?”

  Coventry fetched the things and together they laid the baby down on a little square of towelling. The basket had a bowl and a sponge, a little towel and a small piece of scented soap. Coventry put these things at Lily’s right hand, and poured a little hot water from the tea kettle into the bowl. He spread out the new nappy and a pair of rubberized drawers. Lily stripped Christopher with easy competence.

  Stephen drew away and lit a cigarette to ward off the smell. The baby’s nappy was a nauseating goo of pale yellow-brown. Stephen stared in fascinated disgust. Christopher’s legs and little round buttocks were dirty with faeces. Lily held his feet like a chicken ready for trussing and wiped him, first with paper, and then with the sponge. She washed around his penis and his rosy tiny scrotum. Stephen gazed at the two of them in a sort of horror: at his son’s innocent babyish maleness, and at Lily’s confident handling of him. As if she were some kind of red-handed nurse, as if she were not a lady at all. Stephen was appalled that Lily should lower herself to be so intimate with the child. It was worse than servitude, what she chose to do. It was disgraceful that she should do it and feel no shame at being watched.

  When Christopher was washed clean and she had bundled the soiled nappy in on itself, Lily lifted him up with one hand and slid the folded clean nappy under his back. When she let his legs go Christopher kicked and giggled, his little penis jiggling with the movement. Lily dried him and powdered him, making sure none of the delicate skin was left damp, then she folded the nappy around him and pinned it, with her hand inside to feel for the sharp point of the pin coming through the towelling. Then she pulled his little feet through fresh drawers, and through his white lawn bloomers, and the baby was clean again.

  Lily looked over her shoulder at her husband. He was staring at her as if he had seen her behave shamefully. He looked at the baby with open hostility. Lily gathered Christopher close and asked: “What’s wrong?”

  Stephen pinched out the ember of his cigarette and threw it away. “Nothing,” he said tightly.

  “You’re staring,” Lily said. “You looked funny.” Her hand was spread at the back of Christopher’s head as if to shield him from his father’s hard gaze.

  Stephen shook his head. “It’s nothing,” he said again. “Shall we go—or is there anything worse he can do?”

  Lily stared at him uncomprehendingly. “He’s just a little baby,” she started.

  “I don’t want to discuss it,” Stephen said tightly.

  He held open the door for Lily and she handed Christopher to him to hold as she climbed into the car. Stephen held his son at arm’s length and looked into his innocent open face. The baby smelled sweet, of powder and soap and fresh linen. He cooed beguilingly at Stephen and waved small tightly clenched fists. His blue eyes were open very wide as if he were surprised. Stephen could not feel tenderness for his baby. He had seen his nakedness and smelt the stink of him. It was too much like the smell of the mud. The little naked body was too much like the stripped corpses. Stephen could not disentangle images of life and death. He stared at Christopher as if the baby were some threatening enigma, and he could not smile at him even though the baby kicked and cooed.

  Lily held out her arms. Stephen handed over the baby, and walked around the back of the car to get in the other side. Coventry was putting the basket of nursery things in the boot. Stephen saw his face as he bent over. It was gentle, tender. The shut-in shut-out mute expression had melted away. He looked as he had looked that warm summer of 1917 when they had taken leave, and gone haymaking on Perot’s farm. Coventry looked alive to feeling again, he looked tender. He looked ready to speak.

  It was Christopher who had worked this magic, because Coventry could handle the child. He could touch him, soiled or clean, and feel the flow of tenderness pass from his gentle fingers to the baby. Stephen stared at the man’s face and Coventry straightened up and faced his master. At once the warmth left his face and the old mute indifference took its place.

  “All right?” Stephen asked. He was suddenly aware of the cruel inappropriateness of the question. It was all wrong for Coventry, and all wrong for Stephen, and it had been since the trenches had brutalized them, since the little farm had disappointed them, and since their own violence had corrupted them, fatally and permanently.

  Coventry nodded, and held the door open for Stephen. They reversed quietly out of the little glade and on to the lane, then Coventry turned the car for home.

  They were on the little road between Havant and Portsmouth when Stephen suddenly exclaimed, “Hang on a minute!” and then tapped Coventry’s shoulder and said, “Stop.”

  Coventry slowed and pulled the car over.

  “What is it?” Lily asked.

  “A ‘For Sale’ sign, on a little farm. Drive back there, Coventry. Let’s have a look at it.”

  “Whatever for?” Lily asked. It was getting late, Christopher would soon be hungry and tired.

  “I’d like to see it,” Stephen said vaguely. “Looked a pretty place.”

  Coventry turned the car and they drove back the way they had come. The sign was hand-painted, mounted on a post at the edge of a field raggedly planted with some leafy crop which Stephen did not recognize. A little track led off the road past a barn towards a small cluster of buildings. “Let’s go down,” Stephen said. “Drive on.”

  Coventry slipped the car into gear and they went slowly forwards, bumping on the ruts. Outside the barn was a tractor half-covered by a tarpaulin, with the engine missing. A rusting harrow was partly blocking the track. The way the track made a little dogleg corner around it showed that it had been there for some time.

  The farmhouse itself was thatched, a silvery grey thatch greening with moss at the eaves, which overhung the windows like vegetal eyebrows. The front door was overgrown, clearly never used. The back door was a stable door, the bottom half fastened, the top thrown open. A pane of glass in the kitchen window had been broken and replac
ed by cardboard. As Coventry stopped the car in the cobbled yard a skinny collie ran the length of a chain and yelped as it was brought up short. The yard was slick with slurry. Coventry got out of the car and opened Lily’s door and then Stephen’s. Lily merely glanced at the wet cobbles, and did not move, but Stephen went to the back door, looking around him as he walked.

  The frantic barking of the dog summoned a man who came around the corner of the barn, wiping his hands on his thick working trousers. At the sight of the big car he straightened up and came forward slowly, his gaze flicking suspiciously from Stephen to Coventry, smart in his grey uniform.

  “Yes?” he asked in a slow Hampshire drawl.

  A woman came to the half-door and leaned fat arms over the top, watching the newcomers in silence. She took in every inch of Lily’s long tea gown, and the baby’s white smock. Lily stared back at her.

  “Saw your sign,” Stephen said. Unconsciously his voice was louder, clearer, as authoritative as he had been when he had given orders every day. “Your sale sign. We could be interested. We’d like to take a look.”

  The man nodded and smiled, showing damaged yellow teeth. “Landowners, are you?” he asked.

  “I’ve done a bit of farming,” Stephen said defensively. “During the war, in Belgium. I’ve worked on a farm.”

  The man nodded. “I can show you around,” he said pleasantly. “Would your good lady care to step inside? She can have some tea.”

  The woman at the door smiled ingratiatingly at Lily and swung the door open. She was wearing a thin print frock with a ragged cardigan on top. A stained apron was tied around her broad waist. “Step in!” she said.

  “I’ll wait here,” Lily said simply. “Thank you.”

  Stephen hesitated but then he let Lily stay in the car.

  The farmer led the way towards the dairy. “Beautiful milkers,” he said shortly. “You’d know good beasts when you see them, I daresay. Beautiful milkers.”

  The thick-coated cows were standing wearily in their stalls, their udders full, waiting for afternoon milking. Two had open sores in the matted ginger coats and the back leg of one animal was trembling unstoppably. The farmer stood before her, shielding her from sight, and gestured at the others. “It’s a core,” he said. “The core of a dairy herd. Were you thinking of dairying, Sir?”

  “Possibly,” Stephen said. “D’you get a good price for milk?”

  The farmer raised his hands as if expressing a demand for milk which a million cows could not fulfil. “Portsmouth so near!” he said. “And the Navy needs! I have a contract with a local dairy, they collect every morning. I could sell my milk ten times over.”

  They walked through the barn, ignoring the dirty stalls and the slurry between the cobbles and thick in the drains. There was a hay barn at the back with a number of ragged bales badly stacked. If Stephen had looked closely he would have seen more weeds than grass in the bales, but he had stepped back and was looking at the roof where nesting sparrows twittered and an old swallow’s nest clung precariously to the back wall.

  “It needs patching,” the farmer said, following his gaze. “I’ve got the corrugated iron to do it, I could get it done tomorrow.”

  “Good show,” Stephen said vaguely. He was listening to the sighing sound of the trees behind the farm. They sounded like the trees at the Little England farm. “Got an orchard?” he asked suddenly.

  The farmer beamed at him. “Wonderful crop of apples!” he exclaimed. “Your lady wife would love the blossom. It’s this way.”

  He led the way to the back of the house where once there had been a little flower garden, now overgrown and rank with nettles. Tall spires of foxgloves painted the green with white and mauve. Beyond a tumbling-down wall was a small field with a couple of goats cropping on tethers. Gnarled apple trees, thick with age, their boughs bending with little spotted rosy apples, whispered softly in the breeze. Beyond them was a field of cut hay, shorn pale green, beyond that the cows’ pasture, and beyond that a little wood and the hills.

  “How far does your land go?” Stephen asked softly.

  “Just past the wood,” the farmer said. “A very fine stand of timber. I’ve never cut it. You would know how much wood like that would fetch. I was saving it for my boy.”

  Stephen turned and looked at him. “Your boy?”

  The man shrugged. “Went down on the HMS Hampshire with Kitchener,” he said briefly. “We’re getting too old for the farm now. We want to sell it and move near my daughter. She lives near Bristol. It’s a young man’s life, farming. A wonderful life. Were you in the Navy, Sir?”

  “Infantry,” Stephen said briefly. “Good soil, is it?”

  “The very best. Not too heavy and not too light. All the farmers around here’ll tell you the same. Rich and easy. You can grow anything on it!”

  Stephen glanced back at the farmhouse and the thick nettles thriving in the garden. “What about the house?” he asked.

  “Freehold,” the man said. “You can see it in the Doomsday Book. Freehold, and always has been. You own a bit of English history with this house.”

  Stephen nodded, impressed. “And what sort of state is it in?” he asked.

  “Perfect,” the man said simply. “No gimcrack improvements. No brickbuilt extensions, no cheap partitions. It’s as it was built, and you can’t say fairer than that. If you want to change it, that’s your right. If you want to put in a bathroom and an extra bedroom or so—the fabric of the house is all sound. You’ve got the freedom to do it. But there’s been no cheap alterations that you won’t care for. It’s the genuine thing. An old-fashioned English farmhouse. There’s many who would give their eye teeth for such a place. I’ve had more offers than I can count from people wanting the house alone. I’d consider selling the house and the fields separately—but I’d prefer to sell it as it is: as a going concern, as a farm.”

  Stephen glanced at the roof. “Needs re-thatching,” he suggested.

  The man shrugged. “If you want to put a bonny new thatch on it I can tell you the man who’d do it for you, for half the price you might expect. And you can thatch it with your own straw for free.”

  “I thought thatch was reeds,” Stephen expostulated faintly.

  The man shook his head. “Not Hampshire thatch,” he said. “You can thatch it yourself, with your own straw, and know you’ve done a good job. You’d live off the land here, Sir. I take it that’s your intention?”

  Stephen flushed suddenly, as if with desire. “The place where I worked,” he said urgently, “it was like nowhere else in the world. The quiet of it, hidden away, and safe. This place is like that. It might be like that again for me. I was planning on buying a farm after the war, farming it myself. But I got caught up in business, and my father was sick, but now . . .”

  He broke off; his eyes followed a flock of wood pigeons wheeling over the derelict fields to roost in the overgrown wood.

  “All the shooting you could want,” the farmer said. “It’s the fat of the land here.”

  “A simple life,” Stephen said. “Absolutely unchanged by the war. The same as it’s always been.”

  The farmer, whose experience of post-war farming was of unobtainable workers and high wages, poor prices for produce and the falling value of agricultural land, nodded encouragingly. “You couldn’t get further from your business worries here, Sir,” he said. “Or further from the war.”

  Stephen drew in a deep breath. “I’ll see the house,” he said.

  They walked together around the side of the house. The collie snapped at their heels. Lily was still sitting in the car, Coventry standing beside her with his cap off in the sunshine. The farmer’s wife observed them both in interested silence over the half-door.

  She stepped back as the two men came towards her and opened the bottom half of the door.

  “Shall I put the kettle on?” she asked indifferently.

  Her husband nodded. “Take a cup of tea out to the lady,” he said. “You’ll have t
o make allowances, Sir. We’re just simple people.”

  Stephen nodded. “I understand,” he said. “Where I was before . . .” He broke off as he saw the big scrubbed table with the bench on one side and the wheelbacked chair at the head of the table, the old-fashioned smoke-blackened range and the cracked red tiles underfoot. There was a clothes rack hanging at the ceiling with a pair of flannels draped on it and a ham in a net dangling from one end. There was a zinc sink with a pump and handle over it. A door with a fingerlatch led off the kitchen into a tiny cramped hall before the bolted front door.

  “Parlour,” the farmer said, opening the door to the right and motioning Stephen in.

  It was the best room of the house, opened only for weddings and funerals. Everything was coated in a fine haze of grey dust. There was a weighty sideboard and three stiffly upholstered chairs. There was a cheap modern table with drop-leaves in lightweight wood. There was a heavy cakestand with six cake plates in diminishing sizes. The curtains were a crushed dark velvet, permanently drawn against the damaging sunshine and faded in long symmetrical stripes. The room smelled stuffy and hot.

  They went back into the hall. “We just use this as a store room,” the farmer said, opening the door opposite them. Stephen peered in. There was some unrecognizable piece of machinery stripped down and lying in pieces on the floor, there were some crates with punnets piled on top of them, there were a couple of packing cases and a large drying rack.

  “And upstairs?” Stephen asked.

  The farmer led the way out of the room, closing the door carefully behind him. “We don’t use the front door,” he said. “Except on occasions. I expect you and your lady would open it up. The front garden’s pretty as a picture when the roses are in full bloom. A real cottage garden. You’ve just missed the best of the roses, they were early this year.”

  He opened a small wooden door set high on the first step of a flight of stairs and led the way upwards. Stephen, remembering Perot stamping up the stairs undoing the braces on his trousers, followed the man’s boots. He had a tremendous sense of peace, of homecoming. He looked behind him for Coventry to see if he felt the same, and remembered with a twitch of irritation that Lily had kept Coventry by the car.