Fallen Skies Read online

  “Go on slowly,” Lily said. “I’ll catch you up. I promised I’d walk with him.”

  The nurse nodded and opened the door for Coventry to manhandle the chair down the front steps. Lily opened the door to the drawing room and went in.

  “Stephen?” she said.

  He was standing by the fireplace. As she came in he turned to her and she saw his face was crumpled with distress.

  “Oh, Stephen!” she said and went towards him.

  He flung himself on her and she staggered under his weight. He held her breathlessly tight and she felt his body shake with deep sobs. Lily put her arms around him and patted his back with her little hands. “It’s all right,” she said helplessly. “It’s all right.”

  The weight of him was bearing her down, she felt smothered by his need. “Do stop it,” she said gently. “Stephen, do stop.” She felt a half-disgusted pity for him, but she did not understand. “Shush,” she said gently. He was leaning heavily on her. “Do stop,” Lily said.

  Slowly he recovered, pushed her away and pulled out his handkerchief from his jacket pocket and wiped his face. “I don’t want to see you with a bath chair!” he said, speaking very low. “I don’t want to see you with a half-dead man. I don’t want to see him myself. He’s one of the war dead! Can’t you see? Can’t you see how obscene it is to get him dressed up and wheel him around like a big rag doll? I don’t want you near him! I married you because you were young and alive and not like any part of the war. I don’t want you wheeling a wheelchair!”

  “He’s your dad,” Lily said simply. “And the doctor said it would do him good.”

  “He’s nothing to me!” Stephen said passionately. “No-one is anything to me except Coventry and you. You two. Everyone else is part of the war. Mother who sent me off to it. John Pascoe who sent his son. The Dents who did very well out of it, thank you. All the women who stayed at home in comfort and let us do the fighting for them. They’re all part of it. I look around and everyone I see has been part of it.” He broke off on a racking sob, and then drew a deep breath, rubbing his face. “Except you,” he said. “You, because you were too young to know anything, and because you hate it as much as I do. And Coventry, who has forgotten it all.”

  Lily went closer to Stephen and took his hand. She was frightened by his earnestness. She didn’t know what to say to reassure him, she did not know what to do with the power he thrust on her when he wept in her arms. “I don’t like you like this,” she said uneasily. “Don’t be like this, Stephen. Come out for a walk. We can walk in front of him if you like, or behind him. I won’t push the chair. But I promised him, I’ve been promising him for weeks that I’d take him out for a walk by the sea.”

  “He can’t hear you!” Stephen shouted in frustration. “It doesn’t matter what you say to him, what you promise him. He can’t hear a thing and he can’t feel a thing. He’s dead. He’s dead except that he eats and breathes. You want to walk out with a corpse, Lily. You’ve been talking to a dead man. You should leave him alone, Lily, leave him to the nurse. You should be thinking about me—about the promises you made to me.”

  “He’s not dead . . .” Lily started.

  “I married you so that I could forget about pain,” Stephen interrupted. “I married you so that I could be free of the war. And now you want me to push a wheelchair, and my dreams are worse than ever before.”

  “Your dreams?”

  Stephen put his face close to her and spoke as if he hated her, as if he blamed her for his nights. “Dreams,” he said quietly. “Dreams that you would rather die than see. Bodies bobbing up out of the mud, friends blown away in a storm of red and wet. A whore spread out against the kitchen wall with bullets stitched through her. A baby . . . a baby . . .”

  His arm held Lily’s waist. He thrust his face so close to hers that she could smell his warm breath. She leaned away from him as far as she could go. “Why don’t you see a doctor?” she asked.

  Stephen abruptly released her and Lily staggered back and nearly fell.

  “See a doctor! See a doctor!” Stephen mimicked. “What for? Can he make it so the war never happened? That’s all I need. Can he make it so I was never there, so I never saw, so I never did?”

  Lily shook her head, saying nothing.

  They were silent.

  “I was counting on you to make things better here,” Stephen said. His voice was businesslike, as if he had a legitimate complaint. “I married you to make things better.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I do try.”

  Stephen gave a hard little laugh and turned towards the window. “Now she can’t manage the steps up to the promenade,” he said irritably, watching the nurse and Coventry helping her. “They’ve got themselves stuck.”

  “I’ll go,” Lily said. “I promised him.”

  Stephen rounded on her. “I’ll fetch my hat,” he said savagely. “I suppose I’ll have to go or see my father tipped out like a guy on the road.”

  He slammed out of the door and fetched his hat from the cloakroom. Lily waited for him by the front door and then took his arm in silence as they went down the white scoured steps.

  On the skyline of the promenade they could see Nurse Bells, her cape blown back by the sea breeze, pushing the wheelchair. She had managed the steps with Coventry’s help and she was strolling along, pushing the lightweight chair. Lily and Stephen crossed the road, walked around the Canoe Lake and then on to the promenade. They caught up with the wheelchair in a few moments. They walked ahead of it, Stephen eyeing people carefully, hoping that they would meet no-one they knew. Lily’s hand was tucked into his arm and he held her tight without affection.

  “This will bring the colour to our cheeks,” Nurse Bells said cheerfully. “And give us a good appetite for our dinner! What a nice change of scene! How thoughtful of Mrs. Winters to buy us a wheelchair! What a lovely treat for us all this is!”

  • • •

  Muriel did not come down at tea time, though she must have heard the bumping of the wheelchair going up the stairs to Rory’s bedroom. When she came down to dinner she said nothing about the walk and the atmosphere was silent and strained.

  “I have to see Pascoe about a case,” Stephen announced when they were drinking coffee in the drawing room. “I’ll pop over now and be back late. Don’t wait up for me.”

  Muriel looked at Lily to see if she had registered the lie. Lily was sitting in the window seat, looking at a magazine, not reading the words, just looking at the pictures, flicking forwards and back and then examining very carefully the detail on a skirt or a dress.

  “At this time of night?” Muriel asked, trying to alert Lily to the fact that Stephen was going out alone, and that it was extremely unlikely that his destination was the Pascoes’ quiet house.

  “Yes,” Stephen said. “Is nine o’clock so very awful? Coventry can drive me.”

  Lily looked up from her magazine and smiled at her husband. “Good night then,” she said pleasantly.

  Stephen kissed her on the top of her head and left the room. Coventry came up the back stairs without being called—so they had arranged to go out, Muriel thought. The women heard the front door slam, and then the car doors. They heard the engine start. Lily opened the curtains a crack and looked out. Stephen was sitting in the front seat of the car, one arm along the back of Coventry’s seat, the other hand holding two cigarettes in his mouth. As she watched, he passed one over to Coventry. Coventry let in the clutch and they drove off.

  Muriel opened her mouth to speak to Lily, to tell her that she doubted very much that John Pascoe was working at nine o’clock on a Saturday night. Lily smiled her untroubled smile. Muriel said nothing.

  • • •

  Stephen and Coventry drove around the darker streets of Portsea and then parked the car under a gaslight. They walked to a cheap music hall which played behind a pub near the docks. The hall was full of sailors on shore leave drinking heavily and looking for a fight. The show was just end