Fallen Skies Read online

  Coventry gave him a slow easy smile.

  “Were you drinking together?” Muriel asked, trying to keep the disapproval from her voice.

  “Oh no, Ma,” Stephen said with a giggle. “We were visiting the war wounded.”

  Lily giggled too and Stephen slid his hand around her shoulder and hugged her.

  So that’s all right, Muriel thought. I shouldn’t worry so much.

  19

  LILY AND STEPHEN ACCEPTED CONGRATULATIONS on their wedding from Muriel’s friends at the garden fete and glowed as if they had found in their marriage the answers they had sought. Stephen, with Lily’s little hand tucked in the crook of his elbow, felt that he had made the right choice for a wife. However inadequate she was proving as an antidote to his nightmares she was, none the less, an attractive asset during the day.

  He enjoyed the night out with her as well. Lily wore the beaded peach dress they had bought in London to the Theatre Royal and Stephen had the pleasure of seeing men eyeing him with visible envy. Coventry drove them home in the early hours of the morning after they had stayed late at the Queens Hotel dancing.

  Lily, feeling joyous and confident, knowing that Charlie Smith was back in Portsmouth and that she would see him again on Monday, enjoyed the evening, drank champagne and staggered a little as she went upstairs to the bedroom. While Stephen was in the bathroom she undressed and got into bed, but she did not put out her bedside light and feign sleep.

  That was a mistake. Stephen’s urbane, attractive charm fell away from him when he got into bed beside Lily. He put his hand firmly on her shoulder and drew her towards him.

  “I’m a little tired,” Lily said instantly.

  “You’re a little liar,” Stephen said baldly. He reached over and turned off his bedside light. “Turn your light off,” he commanded.

  Lily moved away from him and pressed the switch that plunged the room into darkness. For a moment she thought of slipping from the bed and running to the bathroom to lock herself inside. But she knew it was no use. She was married to Stephen and he had rights, legal rights, to use her body when he wished.

  She heard the rustle of him pulling down his pyjama trousers and then she smelled the warm male scent of him. She felt the muscles of her face lock with distaste.

  Stephen heaved himself awkwardly upon her and pulled her nightgown up to her waist. His face was pressed against her neck, his body was heavy on her. “Oh, Lily,” he said softly. “Please love me.”

  Just as she was about to reply she felt the familiar stabbing pain and gasped instead.

  “I’ll be gentle,” Stephen promised. “I’ll really be gentle, Lily. Just lie still.”

  He thrust himself inside her again and again. Lily put her fist in her mouth and bit hard on her fingers. The bed rocked with a sickening rhythm and Lily felt herself submerged and half-drowned under Stephen’s selfish uncaring weight. She moaned very softly against her fist and then gasped as the rhythm suddenly speeded. Then with a groan Stephen tore himself away from her and dropped on his back. Lily could feel the hot spurting semen against her thigh while Stephen twitched uncontrollably, his breathing hoarse.

  Lily took her hand from her mouth and rubbed her face.

  There was silence for a few moments.

  “You will become accustomed to it,” Stephen said.

  “Will we have a baby?”

  Stephen reached out and clicked on the bedside light again. Lily flinched from his warm flushed face, his satisfied glow. Stephen tapped the side of his nose, smiling knowingly at her. “I learned a trick or two in Belgium. We won’t have a baby until we’re good and ready. Don’t worry about it, Lily. I can control myself. I’m not an animal.”

  Lily understood none of what he was saying. “I thought we would have a baby.”

  “Little Lily,” he said caressingly. “We would have a baby if I came inside you. A chap in Belgium explained it all to me. He had a book too—a damned disgusting book written by a woman who is just a disgrace, a disgrace . . .” Stephen’s anger made him break off, then he shrugged. “Anyway, there are things you can do which are wicked, acting like animals. Things no lady would do. And then there is taking care, having a bit of self-control. I can do that. I’ll always do that. We don’t want children, Lily. We don’t want children in the house with the noise and the trouble.”

  Lily said nothing. She did not completely understand, but she did not want Stephen to explain. She shrank from the intimacy of an explanation.

  “Damned disgusting things,” Stephen said, still thinking about the book. “Things that a decent woman would never do. Would never even know about. Things that whores do.”

  He broke off. Then: “I hate whores,” he said. “I hate whores. All the Belgian women were whores. They served in brothels behind our lines, and d . . . d . . . d’you know when the lines m . . . moved they s . . . served G . . . Germans t . . . t . . . too.” His stutter was overwhelming his speech. His breath was coming short. “D . . . d . . . damn whores!”

  Lily said nothing, watching him warily in the soft bedside light.

  “You c . . . c . . . can’t tell with whores!” he said, angry and plaintive at once. “You can’t tell what they’re thinking! You think they’re on your side. You think you’re doing them a favour, r . . . r . . . risking your life for their d . . . damn country. You th . . . think they l . . . l . . . like you. And th . . . th . . . then you find it c . . . c . . . could be anyone! Anyone! A b . . . b . . . b . . . bloody Hun and they’d s . . . s . . . sit on his lap . . .”

  His stutter and his breathless anger suddenly overwhelmed his speech. He rolled towards Lily, taking her by surprise. He clamped his hand over her mouth as she gasped, and thrust inside her again. Lily froze underneath him, her eyes tight shut. Stephen lurched and pushed against her, bumping painfully on her, grinding his pelvis into the delicate skin of her crutch. He flung himself from her after a few moments but kept his hand on her mouth and the other on her neck. As he groaned with pleasure Lily felt his tears wet against her breast. “D . . . damn whores,” he sighed. “All of them. Every woman.”

  When he was still and sleeping Lily slipped out from under him. She went to the newly plumbed bathroom and locked the door. She ran a deep, deep hot bath, careless of the clanking of the water pipes which might wake Muriel or Rory. She poured into it half a jar of the expensive bath crystals, which were for show, not for use, then she stood up in it, scalded pink with the heat, and scrubbed herself all over, first with soap and then with a nail brush. Then she lay down in the water and let the scented heat wash over her. She felt filthy; even after all the washing. She felt as if her skin itself, her scrubbed scalded skin, was rank. She felt as if Stephen’s randy hatred of women was a fault of hers. She stayed in the bath as it cooled and then she topped it up again with hot water. She did not drag herself from the water and dry herself for hours. When she came back into the bedroom there was daylight around the edge of the curtains and it was Sunday morning. When Lily looked at herself in the mirror her face was white and haggard. She had not known that a man could think of women with that perverse combination of hatred and desire. She had not known that Stephen thought of her like that.

  Muriel insisted that they all attend church together at ten o’clock. Lily did not arrive downstairs until the perilously late time of half past nine. Muriel and Stephen were waiting at the foot of the stairs, Coventry was outside holding open the door of the car. Muriel thought of lightly teasing Lily for her pallor, and suggesting she had stayed out dancing too late. But she saw the grimness of Lily’s young face, and remembered the noise of a bath running at three in the morning; and she chose to see nothing, and say nothing.

  Sunday lunch was tomato soup, roast lamb, roast potatoes, peas and carrots, with Cook’s watery trifle for pudding. They drank a thin red wine, and Stephen fell asleep in the study with the Sunday paper over his head.

  He woke at tea time and took Lily for a spin in the car. He let Lily steer and work the g