Fallen Skies Read online

  2

  THE DINNER WAS NOT A SUCCESS. Lily was overawed by the gold and crimson grandeur of the Queens Hotel dining room, Stephen was awkward in the company of women and had little to say to Lily under these formal circumstances. They had discussed the eclipse of the moon a few nights earlier; Stephen had speculated about British chances at the Antwerp Olympics; then he had fallen silent. He had nothing to say to Lily. If she had been the tart that he first thought, then he would have taken her to some cheerful bar and got her so drunk that she would go to an alleyway at the back of the pub and let him take her, with deliberate roughness, against a brick wall. But with the two women masquerading as ladies, Stephen did not know how to deal with them. He could not resist his desire for Lily, nervous as a child in the formal dining room, wary of waiters and wide-eyed at the other diners. She was cheaply pretty in her little blue cocktail dress and her frivolous feather of a hat. Her mother was as dignified as a duchess in a beaded black gown and gloves.

  The waiter, sensing another hiatus in a stilted evening, removed the pudding plates and replaced them with small coffee cups, cream, sugar, and a large silver coffee pot. Mrs. Pears turned her attention from the band and the dancers and poured coffee into the three cups.

  “Jolly good dinner,” Stephen said, seeking thanks.

  Mrs. Pears nodded.

  “I expect it makes a change for you, from rationing.”

  Mrs. Pears shook her head. “The only good thing about running a shop is that you never go short.”

  “Oh, really, Ma!” Lily exclaimed, thinking of the dried ends of ham joints and day-old bread.

  Stephen had flushed a deep brick-red. “I thought . . . I thought . . . that things were dreadfully short,” he said. “Th . . . th . . . that was what they t . . . t . . . told us.”

  Mrs. Pears’s smile was sardonic. “Yes,” she said. “They would have told you that. But there would have been enough for everyone if people had shared. As it was, those who could afford it never did without.”

  “You s . . . s . . . sold from under the counter?” Stephen demanded. “P . . . p . . . profiteered?”

  “I saw that Lily had shoes on her feet and food on the table. I bought her ballet lessons and singing lessons. I made my money from rich and selfish people who would rather pay a little more than do without. If you call that profiteering, Captain, then I’m a wartime profiteer. But you’d best look around at the company you’re in before you point an accusing finger at me.”

  Lily’s fair head was bowed over her coffee cup. The feathers in her that trembled with embarrassment. “Hush, Ma,” she said softly.

  Mrs. Pears pointed one black-gloved finger at the next-door table. “That man is Councillor Hurt, cloth-maker. Ask him how much khaki and serge he ran off in the four years. Ask him about the greatcoats and trousers like paper. The other is Alderman Wilson, scrap metal. Ask him about the railings and saucepans and scrap given free for the war effort but then sold by him for thousands. And that’s Mr. Askew, munitions. Ask him about the girls whose skins are still orange and about the shells which never worked.” She paused. “We were all profiteers from the war except those that died. Those who didn’t come back. They were the mugs. Everyone else did very nicely indeed.”

  Stephen’s hands were trembling with his anger. He thrust them beneath the tablecloth and gripped hard.

  “Let’s dance!” Lily said suddenly. “I adore this tune.” She sprang to her feet. Stephen automatically rose with her.

  She led him to the dance floor, his arm went around her waist and she slipped her little hand in his. Their feet stepped lightly in time, gracefully. Lily’s head went back and she smiled up at Stephen, whose face was still white with rage. Lily sang the popular song softly to him:

  If you could remember me,

  Any way you choose to,

  What would be your choice?

  I know which one I would do . . .

  Above them the winking chandelier sparkled as they turned and circled the floor. Stephen’s colour slowly came back to his cheeks. Lily sang nonsense songs, as a mother would sing to a frightened child:

  When you dood the doodsie with me,

  And I did the doodsie with you.

  The music stopped and Lily spun around and clapped the band. They bowed. The band leader bowed particularly to Lily.

  “Miss Lily Valance!” he announced.

  Lily flushed and glanced at her mother. The older woman nodded her head towards the bandstand. Lily obediently went up to the band leader, her hand still on Stephen’s arm.

  “Miss Lily Valance, the new star of the Palais!” the band leader announced with pardonable exaggeration.

  “Wait there,” Lily said to Stephen and hitched up her calf-length dress and clambered up on to the bandstand.

  “ ‘Tipperary!’ ” someone shouted from the floor. “Sing ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary!’ ”

  Lily shook her head with a smile, and then stepped to the front of the stage. “I’ll sing ‘Danny Boy.’ ”

  The band played the overture and Lily stood very still, listening to the music like a serious child. The dining room fell silent as Lily lifted her small pale face and sang.

  She had a singing voice of remarkable clarity—more like the limpid purity of a boy soprano than a girl singer from a music hall. She sang artlessly, like a chorister practising alone. She stood with both her hands clasped loosely before her, not swaying nor tapping her feet, her face raised and her eyes looking outwards, beyond the ballroom, beyond the dockyard, beyond the very seas themselves, as if she were trying to see something on the horizon, or beyond it. It was not a popular song from the war, nor one that recalled the dead—the mugs who had gained nothing. Lily never sang war songs. But no-one looking at her and listening to her pure poignant voice did not think of those others who had left England six years ago, with faces as hopeful and as untroubled as hers, who would never come home again.

  When the last note held, rang and fell silent the room was very quiet, as if people were sick of dancing and pretending that everything was well now, in this new world that was being made without the young men, in this new world of survivors pretending that the lost young men had never been. Then one of the plump profiteers clapped his hands and raised a full glass of French champagne and cried: “Hurrah for pretty Lily!” and “Sing us something jolly, girl!” then everyone applauded and called for another song and shouted for the waiter and another bottle.

  Lily shook her head with a little smile and stepped down from the stage. Stephen led her back to their table. A bottle of champagne in a silver bucket of ice stood waiting.

  “They sent it,” Mrs. Pears said, nodding towards the next-door table. “There’s no need to thank them, Lily, you just bow and smile.”

  Lily looked over obediently, bowed her head as her mother had told her and smiled demurely.

  “By jove, you’re a star!” Stephen exclaimed.

  Lily beamed at him. “I hope so!” Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes sparkling. “I really hope so!”

  The waiter brought the round flat glasses for champagne and filled one for each of them. Lily raised her glass to the neighbouring table and dimpled over the top of it.

  “That’ll do,” her mother said.

  Stephen grinned at Mrs. Pears. “I see you keep Lily in order!”

  She nodded. “I was a singer on the halls before I met Mr. Pears. I learned a thing or two then.”

  “Ma goes with me everywhere,” Lily said serenely.

  “Nearly time to go home,” Mrs. Pears said. “Lily’s got a matinée tomorrow. She needs her sleep.”

  “Of course!” Stephen nodded to the waiter for the bill. The two women stood up and drifted across the dance floor to fetch their wraps from the cloakroom while Stephen paid.

  He waited for them outside, on the shallow white steps under the big glass awning. Coventry drew up in the big grey Argyll motor car, got out, walked around to open the back door and stood, holding it wide. Ste