Fallen Skies Read online

  Stephen moved up the bed towards her. He put his hand down to the crutch of the camiknickers and he fumbled with the little buttons. Lily, her eyes still shut, flinched a little at the touch of his hand probing at her secret, private parts. “If you knew Suzie, like I know Suzie . . .”

  Stephen had the buttons undone at last. Lily felt the bed sink as he moved over her. She felt him fumble to free his penis from his pyjama trousers. She kept singing in her head, determinedly holding the tune, as if someone else were singing a different song in her ear, trying to distract her.

  Stephen was pushing against her. Lily felt something hard and rubbery and horrible at her thigh, at her belly, at the crutch of her body and then he stabbed her suddenly, without warning, and Lily pulled away from him and screamed. He had his hand over her mouth in a moment. “Sssh, Lily,” he said urgently. “Don’t cry, it’s all right, I’ll be as gentle as I can. It always hurts a bit, you know. You mustn’t shriek though!”

  Lily lay still again, searching for the song she was singing in her mind, hunting for the tune. “If you knew Suzie . . .”

  Stephen lay still for a few moments and nothing hurt too much except the sense of being suffocated and crushed. Lily felt horridly filled by him, an extraordinary sensation, as if she were being stuffed like a helpless Christmas turkey. “Oh! oh! oh what a girl . . .”

  Stephen started moving. His hand tightened over Lily’s mouth to muffle her cry. Her vagina was quite dry and at every movement Stephen rubbed against her dryness, pulling the delicate skin. She was bleeding now and the feel of the warm wetness excited him, and made his movements more rapid and easier. He arched his back to push further inside her. Lily found that she had moved on to Madge Sweet’s song, “I’m a Red Hot Baby, try-ing to get along . . . a Red Hot Baby . . . never done no wrong,” and somewhere in her mind she noted the incongruity of that song at that moment.

  Stephen plunged deeper inside her. Lily gasped at a new level of pain, and then Stephen said, “Oh God! oh God!” and tore himself away from her and fell at her side, groaning in pleasure as his seed, stained red from the blood on his penis, spurted against Lily’s pretty camiknickers.

  They lay very still for a little while. Lily drew her legs together and noted, as a dancer, that though she was stiff and sore that no muscles were torn. She felt dry-mouthed and weary. The headache from the champagne and from the fatigue of the day was closing on her neck and on the back of her head. She felt neither resentment nor anger. It had been a good deal worse than she had imagined but it had been over quicker than she had thought, and she had not disgraced them by crying or screaming.

  She was surprised, though, that the experience was so thoroughly nasty. She thought of Charlie and the moment of utter delight when he had lain on her and she had wrapped herself around him, pressing him closer and closer. She could hardly understand that the same movement with Stephen had made her feel smothered and sick. She did not understand his desire, his insistent eager burrowing into her flesh. She did not understand the sudden tearing away from her and the hot disgusting wetness at her side. She thought of Charlie and the smooth hairless skin of his crutch, criss-crossed with scars where his male body had been shot away and they had stitched him and patched him, and saved his life but made him into a strange sexless being, almost like a girl. Then she turned her thoughts away from Charlie, because he had written to her that he could be nothing more than a friend. And now she understood what he meant. He could not do this with her. Now she was a married woman. She would have to do it with her husband whenever he wanted, and it would be easier if she did not think of Charlie at all.

  “Are you hurt?” Stephen asked softly. His hand came up to stroke her hair, and Lily flinched from the smell of it. A deep rich smell like sweat, only riper.

  “A little.”

  “Lie still, I’ll fetch a towel.”

  He went, not to the bathroom, but to his suitcase. He had brought an old towel from home, planning to wipe Lily’s blood with it and then throw it away. Lily watched him as he took it from his suitcase and dabbed at her thighs and at the bottom sheet. She found his preparedness insulting, he was too knowing. He had planned ahead and he had known she would bleed for him.

  “There we are, dear. Are you in much pain?”

  Lily looked carefully at him. She heard her cue and saw the curious elation on Stephen’s face.

  She smiled at him wanly and let her lower lip tremble a little. “It doesn’t matter. If it was what you wanted then it doesn’t matter.”

  He bent over her and kissed her. “You’re the first lady I’ve ever been with,” he said. “I didn’t know what it would be like. We used to hear such stories—you know—from the other chaps. About what girls liked and what girls would do. You never really know where you are.”

  Lily was listening carefully, gathering clues of what Stephen wanted from this painful intrusive experience, urgent to get the information she needed to manage him.

  “You didn’t like it at all, did you, Lily?”

  Lily shook her head tentatively, it seemed to be the proper response. It was what his mother had said, it was what he wanted.

  Stephen leaned over and put out the light. His sigh was deeply contented. He gathered her to him and rested her head on his shoulder. “That’s how it should be. I won’t trouble you often, there is no need to be concerned.”

  In a few moments he was deeply asleep.

  Lily lay awake. The bright lights of the London streets shone through the curtains. On the ceiling the curtain rings let in little circles of light and when a cab went past, its motor rumbling, the little circles of light moved along the ceiling from one end of the curtain pole to the other.

  Stephen started to snore.

  Lily held up the blankets and slid noiselessly out of bed. She dropped the camiknickers from her shoulders. They were stained with her blood and with the pallid cream of Stephen’s semen. Lily put them, unhesitatingly, in the waste paper bin. She felt that the cost of them was a legitimate fine which Stephen should pay.

  The suspender belt was tight around her waist. She undid it, and undid the clips on her stockings and rolled them down. She put them in the dressing table drawer with the belt and then pulled on the new silk nightdress. The light fabric felt as cold and slick as snow against her skin. Lily shivered. There was nowhere warm in the room. There was nowhere for her to go but back to bed beside Stephen. She sat for a little while in the armchair, watching him sleeping in the half-light which came through the curtains, watching the big shadow of the bed leap and flicker in the quickly moving light from passing cars. Somewhere near the hotel there was a party going on. Cars came and went, people were dancing, drinking, having fun. Women were in the arms of men they liked and when they kissed they did not feel a suffocating repulsion but instead that melting feeling of desire which Lily had known once. Lily sat in the darkness, watching her husband sleep, knowing that she must make the best of this marriage which she had undertaken in shock and in grief, and must now live with for the rest of her life.

  • • •

  It was hot in London in July, not a good time to go sightseeing around a crowded city. The parks were dusty and the flower beds drying out. The hotel was filled with visiting Americans and Stephen complained that the waiters were surly and slow from being constantly overtipped. Stephen and Lily went to another show, they took a pleasure boat up the Thames. They visited the Houses of Parliament, they went to London Zoo. Lily was amazed at the energy Stephen had for visiting places. Left to herself she would have wandered aimlessly along some interesting streets and then rejoiced in the idleness of sitting in restaurants, and cafés, doing nothing. But Stephen woke them early each morning with an itinerary that had to be completed by tea time. Lily was forced to learn history: at the Tower of London he bought a book on the kings of England and expected her to know one from another. She was forced to study architecture—he constantly pointed out buildings to her. Lily had never thought of churches or br