Fallen Skies

by Philippa Gregory

  There were three upstairs rooms in the same configuration as the downstairs space: one on each side of the house that matched the store room and parlour and one large room that matched the kitchen, looking out over the fields.

  “Now this would be your nursery,” the farmer said, opening a door at the front of the house. It was piled high with junk: enamel bowls with the bottoms holed, a washstand with the china basin missing, anonymous tea-chests, a bookcase empty of books, a bedstead on its side, a pile of carefully darned linen.

  “The main bedroom,” the farmer said, indicating the room over the parlour.

  The room had windows over the front garden and backwards over the fields. It smelled hauntingly of cow dung. A large double bed and a matching wood wardrobe took up much of the room but could not overwhelm the view of fields and woodlands and the gently rising hills. From the front-facing window Stephen could see the blue of the horizon and the glint of sea.

  “It’s beautiful,” he said.

  The farmer double-checked, as if to see what Stephen was describing, and then realized he was looking at the unprofitable fields and the distant hills.

  “It is that,” he confirmed. “And that’s our land, almost as far as you can see. It’s a great thing that, to be able to look out of your window on a morning and see your own land stretching away. Not many businessmen can say that.”

  “No,” Stephen said with deep feeling.

  “And this is another bedroom, with enough space for you to put a bathroom in,” the man improvised rapidly.

  The walls were less stained with damp because of the chimney from the kitchen range which bulged along the wall. There was a single bed and a small chest of drawers with a little flyspotted mirror.

  “You could make it into a big bathroom,” the farmer suggested. “Or a bathroom and a bedroom beside it. It’s a big room. One sweet, they call it, don’t they? It’s the size of the kitchen downstairs, don’t forget.”

  Stephen nodded, still dazed by the view from the windows, hazy with his sense of returning to a safe haven, of finding Little England again, untouched and undamaged, despite the war, despite the time when he ran his own madness into the kitchen and spattered the clean walls with fistfuls of blood.

  The man led the way downstairs. There was a pot of tea on the kitchen table and Lily was sitting stiffly and silently, drinking from a china cup with Christopher on her knee. Coventry was standing in the doorway, his cap under his arm. It was to Coventry that Stephen spoke as soon as they came into the kitchen.

  “It reminds me of there,” he said. “Doesn’t it? Isn’t it exactly like there?”

  Coventry smiled slightly and shook his head.

  “It is,” Stephen urged him. “The house is even built the same, or nearly. And the fields, and the whole atmosphere . . .” He broke off.

  Coventry smiled his distant smile.

  “You do remember,” Stephen said. “Isn’t it like that . . . that place?”

  Coventry smiled again and nodded slightly, as if he were agreeing from mere politeness. Stephen did not press him any further. He drew back the wheelbacked chair from the table and sat down. Without speaking, the farmer’s wife put a mug before him and poured tea. Stephen checked her before she could add milk. He added four spoonfuls of sugar and drank it black and strong. Lily glanced at him in surprise. When she poured him tea at number two, The Parade, Stephen had milk and no sugar at all.

  Christopher kicked his little feet and cooed, the farmer’s wife went back to the range and leaned her broad hips against it. The farmer drew out a chair and sat on Stephen’s left.

  “Would you be interested in buying?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Stephen said simply.

  Lily jumped at that and looked to Coventry but he was watching the red tiled floor beneath his boots. He looked deaf as well as mute.

  “Yes, I would,” Stephen said. “Is anyone else interested in it?”

  The man nodded. “My neighbour would buy the fields tomorrow. He would rent them off you, if you ever thought of not farming yourself, but just owning land. And there are scores of people who would buy the farmhouse on its own. City people from Portsmouth. They’re attracted by the price because we’re in a hurry to move. We want to join my daughter, in Bristol.”

  Stephen nodded. “Have you accepted an offer?”

  The farmer nodded. “Nothing definite,” he said. “I’ve been tempted, but I want to sell it as a working farm. To someone who will keep it as a farm. Someone like yourself, Sir, who knows good land when he sees it. Someone who would buy it as an inheritance for himself and his son.”

  “What sort of price?” Stephen asked. He was breathing a little fast, Lily noticed. She was watching him as if she had never seen him before. She could not imagine what fancy had taken hold of him. She thought he must be planning to buy the farm for a client, or as some business investment. But there was some brightness, some wildness about Stephen that she had never seen before.

  The farmer looked at Stephen carefully, assessing Lily’s clothes, the chauffeur, the Argyll parked in the stable yard, the fine lawn of the baby’s smock and the perfect embroidery.

  “It would be four thousand pounds for the whole farm,” he said. “That’s with all the stock, that fine herd of cows you saw, all the machinery—that’s a tractor and a thresher, harrows, ploughs, you won’t need to spend another penny to move in tomorrow. All the furniture in the house, even the curtains at the window. Four thousand pounds lock stock and barrel.”

  Lily gasped. Even Stephen looked dashed. “That much?” he asked.

  The farmer nodded emphatically. “I could get half as much again selling separately,” he said. “But I’m not prepared to do it. It’s a working farm, it deserves a man to farm it. Our boys died for places like this. It’s a little bit of England, it is. I feel that they died to keep it safe, and it’s my job to pass it on to the next man.”

  Stephen nodded, his eyes never leaving the man’s face. “I am that man,” he said suddenly. “I’ll buy it from you.”

  The farmer hesitated. “It’s a fair price . . .”

  “I know it is.”

  “With all the stock.”

  Stephen nodded and stretched out his hand. “Let’s shake on the deal!” he said. “Four thousand pounds for the whole farm.”

  The farmer reached his hand out across the table. “Four hundred pounds down, and the rest on completion,” he said quickly. The two men shook.

  33

  LILY WAS SILENT UNTIL they were in the car and driving back up the bumpy track.

  “I didn’t know you planned to buy it,” she said. “I thought you were just looking around it. Who is it for?”

  “For me,” Stephen said. “For us.”

  “What?”

  “It’s what we need,” he said urgently, and then the words came spilling out. “It’s what we’ve needed from the beginning. We needed a place of our own. I shouldn’t have taken you to live in my mother’s house, we should have had our own place, to organize how you liked. Well, we can get that right now. It’ll be the most wonderful place for Christopher to grow up in, he’ll have a real country childhood. Now that my father is better, they don’t need me at home. They don’t need me at the office either.

  “I never wanted to be a lawyer, Lily. I always wanted to do something else. And ever since Belgium I’ve wanted to live in the country. I wanted to be a farmer. I could see then what I really needed, the sort of life I wanted to live. It’s like a vision, Lily. It’s like a vision. I should have done it the moment I was demobbed. But it’s not too late. We can start again. It’ll be the very thing for us.”

  “I can’t live there!” Lily exclaimed. She had felt an instant repugnance for the dirty yard and the worn kitchen. “It’s filthy.”

  Stephen waved the objection away. “It needs a good clean, and a bit of money spent on it. But it’s a sound little house and wonderful land. You heard what he said. We’d make it our house together, Lily.
It would be a fresh start for us.”

  Lily held Christopher tightly to her. “We aren’t like that,” she said. “We’re not country people. For heaven’s sake, Stephen, I don’t know one end of a cow from another! I come from Highland Road, Pompey, and I trained as a singer-dancer. I can’t go and live in the country. I wouldn’t know what to do!”

  Stephen laughed. “You don’t do anything!” he said delightedly. “That’s the whole thing about it. You just live. We’ll just live, Lily. We’ll live simply, like simple people in a simple way. You don’t like Nanny Janes. Well, we won’t have her there! We’ll just live there, you and I and Christopher, like ordinary simple people.”

  “No cook?” Lily queried. “No parlourmaid? No tweeny? No gardener?”

  Stephen shook his head, beaming. “No-one! Oh! I expect we’ll have a couple of men at harvest-time. But we’ll do the work ourselves, Lily. We’ll be simple people. We’ll make our lives the way we want them to be, not the ways that have been forced upon us.”

  Lily shook her head. “You keep talking about simple lives,” she observed. “There’s nothing very simple about getting up at six in the morning and having to make your own breakfast. You can think that farming is all fine weather and pretty fields but you wouldn’t like it in winter.”

  “I’m not a fool,” Stephen said sharply. “And I’ve worked on a farm, which is more than you have done.”

  “I’ve got up at six every day of my life, which is more than you’ve ever done!” Lily snapped. “And you’ll never convince me that life is better if you do your own washing.”

  Stephen stared at her in dislike. “I am doing this for us,” he said. “So that we can be together. So that we can have a home of our own. So that we can send Nanny Janes away.”

  “This is nonsense!” Lily said impatiently. “We can have a home of our own in Portsmouth. We don’t have to bury ourselves at the back end of a bog! We can send Nanny Janes away today! We don’t have to give up a cook and two maids as well!”

  Stephen was so angry that his stammer was choking him. “Y . . . y . . . y . . . you’re ag . . . ag . . . against me,” he finally got out.

  Lily nodded recklessly. “Yes, I am,” she said. “And so will everyone be. You’ll have to find some way to make that horrid man give you back your note for four hundred pounds, Stephen. It’s just not possible that we could live there. If I’d known you were buying it for us I’d have stopped you then and there. I just didn’t dream of it. I thought it was for a client or someone.”

  “Y . . . y . . . you’ll n . . . n . . . n . . . not stop me,” Stephen said, struggling for speech.

  Lily turned her head away from him and looked determinedly out of the window. “I won’t even discuss it,” she said with finality.

  Stephen stared at the back of her little hat.

  “I’m doing this for you,” he said again, willing her to turn around and smile at him with the easy open-hearted smile of Juliette Perot, willing her to see the place through his eyes, as a haven, as a place of safety where they could forget the war and the uneasy compromises of the peace.

  Lily turned and looked at him with anger and hatred in her face. “I won’t even discuss it,” she said again. “It won’t happen, Stephen. You are mad to even think of it.”

  He glared at her, his anger rising to match hers. He wished very much that they were at home in the privacy of their bedroom so that he could have slapped her determined face and made her cry. He wished that she was a man so he could plunge a clenched fist into her belly, kick her in the groin. For a moment he thought of Juliette Perot as he had last seen her, her arms flying upwards like a puppet as the bullets lifted her off the man’s lap and flung her against the wall. All women are whores, he thought with bitter clarity. All of them. You do what you can for them, you risk your life for them, and then you find that at heart they are all whores and cheats.

  Lily turned her little head away from him and looked out of the window. A daisy on her hat nodded its certainty that he was wrong, that she was right, and that she would win.

  “Enemy,” Stephen whispered very softly, so low that only he could hear the word. Christopher turned and looked at him. His face was clear and empty of expression but Stephen saw Lily’s scornful dark blue eyes in his little round face. “Enemy,” he whispered again to the baby.

  • • •

  They were late home. Lily did not pause to apologize to Muriel but swept upstairs to change her dress. She took her clothes to the bathroom so that she should not be half-naked in front of Stephen, and as he pulled on a fresh shirt and fastened the studs before the mirror he despised her for the tease she was. Withholding the sight of her underwear as part of her displeasure, and then at other times letting him lie on her as part of their marital contract.

  “Bitch,” he said softly to the mirror.

  Lily came into the room in an apricot evening dress with a pale shawl around her shoulders. She slipped her feet into her little satin shoes and went quietly to the door. She glanced at Stephen before she went out, as if expecting him to speak. When he said nothing she went out of the room and ran down the stairs.

  Since Rory had been dining with them, the family had renewed their pre-war habit of meeting in the drawing room for a drink before dinner. As Lily came in the room she saw John Pascoe and his wife, Winifred, with Rory and Muriel. Rory smiled at her, and John rose to his feet.

  “I am sorry we were late home,” Lily said, shaking hands. “I hope you have not been waiting.”

  Muriel glanced at the clock. “I was afraid something might have happened, but I knew nothing could be wrong with Coventry driving.”

  “We stopped at a farmhouse,” Lily said.

  Browning handed her a small glass of sweet sherry on a silver salver. Lily was given a glass of sweet sherry every evening. She disliked the sugary taste almost as much as the heavy numbing effect of the alcohol. She felt that she exhaled sherry fumes for the rest of the evening. But if she refused a drink then she was asked if she had a headache or if she were unwell. There was no drink except sweet sherry for women. There was no dry sherry in the house, and only men were offered spirits.

  Stephen came into the room and greeted the Pascoes and his parents.

  “At a farmhouse?” John Pascoe asked. “For tea?”

  “We had a picnic tea,” Lily said, skirting the topic. “Just outside Rowlands Castle.”

  Stephen waved Browning aside and poured himself a large whisky. “Anyone else?” he asked heartily.

  The two older men shook their heads. Rory watched thoughtfully as Stephen added a very little water.

  Browning came into the dining room and whispered to Muriel.

  “Shall we go in?” Muriel asked.

  Coventry appeared and wheeled Rory down the hall to the dining room, positioning his chair at the head of the table. Stephen sat on his mother’s right at the far end, John Pascoe on her left. Winifred sat between Stephen and Rory, and Lily sat opposite her, close enough to Rory to tuck his napkin under his chin and slice any extraordinarily tough pieces of meat.

  It was cream of mushroom soup with a few leathery pieces of floating mushroom, roast mutton with mashed potatoes, roast potatoes, limp broccoli and hard peas, and shape for dessert. Lily took her slightly soiled napkin from its ring and spread it on her lap with the familiar choking feeling that always came with Muriel’s formal dinners.

  Rory’s hands were bad tonight. He could not manage his soup without spilling.

  “Shall I spoon for you?” Lily asked in an undertone.

  Rory, one eye on his wife’s glacial disapproval, shook his head. “Bether not,” he said. He had lost control of the muscles of his face too. He was having difficulty with words. His head twitched slightly from time to time. Stephen looked studiously down the table towards his mother, or across at John Pascoe, anywhere but at his father.

  “You had lovely weather for your picnic,” Muriel said. “It’s been as warm as the south of France to
day.”

  “And now the crowds will be dreadful for August,” Winifred said with a sigh. “I envy you your house all winter, but when the crowds come I am glad of our privacy. It’s so crowded on the seafront, and every year it gets worse!”

  “And the pier!” Muriel exclaimed. “They are permitting more and more entertainment, and of the most unsuitable kind. All it does is lower the tone and encourage the sort of visitor who can do the resort no good. I have written to the council but I get no satisfaction at all.”

  “It quite makes one think about moving house altogether,” Winifred said. “They should think of that when they increase the rates and then squander them on amenities for trippers. It’s what the residents require that should be their concern.”

  Stephen looked up and smiled. “We have some news about moving,” he said easily. “We looked at a farm today and I have paid a deposit on it. We are going to move into the country, a little place, just between Havant and here.”

  “My dear!” Muriel exclaimed. Her hand went to her pearls and she dropped her spoon in her bowl. “A farm!”

  There was a short silence.

  “This is rather sudden, isn’t it, Stephen?” John asked amiably.

  “Actually no,” Stephen said. “I had a couple of leaves on a little farm in Belgium, well behind the lines, and I got bitten by the bug then. It’s a great life. I wanted to come home and farm. But when I got home you were short-staffed at the office, and Father was ill, and I never really thought about it again. But now with Christopher growing up, and the office settling down, and Father well again—there’s no reason that we should not settle in the country.”

  Winifred glanced at Muriel’s appalled face, scenting tension. “Is it far?” she asked.

  “Just before Havant,” Stephen replied. “A snug little place, a mixed farm, a good herd of cows, hay meadows, some crops. I daresay the soil is good enough for fruit. You can see the sea from the bedroom windows. It’s a very pretty place, and a good price. The family lost their son in the show, they’re pulling out and want a quick sale. I think I’m lucky to get it at the price.” He shot a quick glance down the table to his father. Rory’s head was still, his trembling hands resting on the tablecloth. His whole attention was fixed on his son.