Fallen Skies Read online

  With my love as I promised,

  Charlie Smith.

  Lily read and re-read Charlie’s letter. Then she put her face deep into her pillow so that her sobs would not be heard in that quiet empty house, and she cried and cried and cried.

  That afternoon she walked down to the post office and asked for a telegram form. She addressed it to Charlie Smith at the digs, copying the address carefully off Madge’s letter. She wrote: “I AM MARRYING STEPHEN WINTERS ON SATURDAY UNLESS I HEAR FROM YOU STOP.”

  She paid with the last pound note in her purse and then she walked back to the silent red-brick house with the white windows overlooking the Canoe Lake.

  • • •

  Charlie’s reply came the next day while Muriel and Lily were finishing their breakfast. Stephen’s broken eggshells and empty cup were still at the head of the table. Lily was moving her hand in the sunlight, watching her ring sparkle with its deep blue colour.

  “A telegram!” Muriel exclaimed as she saw the boy’s peaked cap pass the dining room window to the front door steps. Her colour drained from her face, her hand was up at her pearls, pressing them against her throat. “A telegram!”

  “It’s all right,” Lily said quickly. “It’s probably from Plymouth. I wrote to my friends that I was getting married. It’s all right, Mrs. Winters.”

  The colour began to return to Muriel’s cheeks. “How silly of me.” She was still trembling. “It was just that during the war everyone dreaded the telegram boy. I remember watching him biking down the road and praying that he wasn’t coming here. And then one day it was for us.”

  Lily went to the door to take the telegram from Sally.

  “Silver tray,” Muriel said sharply. “All letters, even telegrams, must be put on the silver tray before you bring them in. I will not tolerate this kind of post-war sloppiness.”

  “Sorry, M’m,” Sally whispered. She snatched the telegram back and disappeared into the hall. Lily had to wait until she brought it back on the silver tray.

  As Muriel watched, Lily took it and opened it. It was from the Midsummer Madness company. “HEARTIEST CONGRATS STOP WILL THINK OF YOU SAT STOP MUCH FUTURE HAPPINESS STOP WHAT A BREAK STOP. MIDSUMMER MADNESS, PLYMOUTH.”

  “Bad news?” Muriel asked, looking at Lily’s shocked face.

  Lily turned with a thin little smile. “No. It is congratulations for Saturday. I telegraphed them yesterday that I was marrying Stephen.”

  She held out the telegram to Muriel. Muriel flinched a little when she came to the bright vulgarity of “WHAT A BREAK STOP.”

  Lily took the telegram back.

  “What a shame none of them will be in Portsmouth for your wedding. Will your friends from Highland Road come to the register office?”

  “No. Stephen and I want to be very quiet.”

  “And have you chosen your dress? Did you see anything when you were out buying your ring?”

  Lily shook her head. “Could we go shopping today or tomorrow?”

  “Of course. What d’you have in mind? A little dress and jacket? Or a coat dress outfit?”

  Lily tried to smile but her whole face was trembling. “I don’t know. Let’s see what there is. I don’t know really.”

  “Are you all right, Lily?”

  “Yes! Oh yes!” Lily crumpled the telegram into a ball and tossed it into the waste paper basket. “Quite all right,” she said.

  14

  LILY’S JULY WEDDING WAS SUNNY. Her dress was yellow linen—low-waisted with a pleated skirt, and matching coat. Her hat was a little panama straw cloche trimmed with a matching yellow ribbon. Muriel thought she did them all credit, under the circumstances. Stephen wore a plain light grey summer suit. He refused to wear his medals. The witnesses were Muriel and John Pascoe from Stephen’s office. The only hitch in the smooth and unemotional proceedings came when Lily’s Aunt Mary and Betty appeared without warning and threw rice and kissed Lily, loud smacking sentimental kisses outside the register office and in full view of anyone who might be passing. Lily flushed rosy red and threw her arms around them and kissed them back. Muriel scowled at Coventry, who was holding open the car door and grinning, and then shot an angry look at Stephen.

  “Would you ladies like to join us? We have booked a table for luncheon at the Dolphin Hotel before we leave for London.”

  Betty and Aunt Mary recoiled at once from Stephen’s icy politeness.

  “Not at all!”

  “So sorry, we can’t.”

  Lily giggled. For a moment in her new yellow dress and little hat, she looked like a pretty girl, a bride.

  “Oh, go away, you two!” she exclaimed. “Coming up to town and making a lot of fuss! I told you it was going to be a quiet wedding!”

  Betty hugged her again. “You look a picture. A picture!”

  She turned to Muriel. “I’m glad to meet you, Mrs. Winters, you couldn’t have a better daughter-in-law than our Lil.”

  Muriel frigidly proffered a white gloved hand. “Thank you, Mrs. . . . er . . .”

  “Betty Hoskins. And this is Lil’s Aunt Mary.”

  Aunt Mary leaned forward. “She’s not had it easy, little Lil,” she confided. “But she’s not one of those flighty types and for all she was on the stage she knows where to draw the line. Her ma—God rest her soul—kept her in line. You can ask anybody.”

  Muriel prompted Stephen with another speaking glance.

  “Lily, we must go,” he said.

  Lily hugged Betty and Aunt Mary again. “You’re a pair of ducks to come!” she said. “An absolute pair of ducks. But I’ve got to go now. I’ll come and see you when we get back.”

  Aunt Mary held her close. “She’d have been glad to see you settled, Lil,” she whispered. “She wanted the stage for you but it was only to see you make your own living. She wanted you to be set up for life. She’d be pleased to see you settled and with a man with a steady income.”

  Lily blinked rapidly. “I know.”

  “Lily . . .” Stephen said, a hint of irritation in his tone.

  Lily stepped back and got into the Argyll. Muriel got in beside her and Stephen and John Pascoe took the little fold-down seats facing the ladies. Lily leaned forward to wave. Betty threw handfuls of rice as they drew away. More by luck than judgement it pattered against the half-open window and spilled over the floor. Stephen tutted at the mess. “My hat, Lily, what an awful pair!”

  Lily looked at him, unsmiling. “What d’you mean?” she asked.

  Stephen shook his head and put his hand to his moustache to hide his smile. “Nothing, my dear. Nothing at all.”

  Lunch was a restrained affair. They had a private dining room and they ate roast beef, Yorkshire puddings, roast potatoes, carrots and overcooked sprouts. John Pascoe ordered a bottle of warm champagne and drank a toast to the happy couple. Lily ate very little and hardly tasted the champagne.

  “Sugar lump!” Stephen said. He reached over to Lily’s glass and dropped a lump of sugar in it. He smiled at John Pascoe and his mother. “We had a young lad in our battalion. Never drunk wine or beer in his life. Methodist family; I think he signed the pledge when he was a child. We had him taste some champagne—we got hold of a case—and he hated it. We put a sugar lump in it and told him it was lemonade and he couldn’t get enough of it. Taste it, Lily!”

  Lily took a cautious sip and then smiled and drank. “I like it better sweet,” she said.

  “How on earth did you have a case of champagne in the trenches?” Muriel asked.

  Stephen winked at John. “Spoils of war. Spoils of war.”

  “And what happened to the teetotaller?”

  Stephen laughed a cracked laugh. “That was funny. He got the most dreadful taste for it and we couldn’t stop him drinking. He’d drink as soon as he got up in the morning and he’d try and buy the men’s tots of rum off them. Every time we went behind the lines he’d be dead drunk!”

  Lily was shocked. She had lived in a class where a drinking husband was a death