Fallen Skies Read online

  “He saw a playbill in the Evening News,” Lily said. “I was going to tell him Sunday night, but he saw it in the afternoon. He went mad. He took me upstairs and we had a fight.”

  Madge hissed under her breath. She sat Lily in the bentwood chair and smoothed back her hair. “Hurt bad?” she asked.

  Lily shook her head. “Not too bad,” she said.

  Madge poured some of the pink cream on to a piece of cotton wool and dabbed it on the bruise on Lily’s cheek. Slowly, as the layers of pink built up, the bruise faded and disappeared. Lily was left with a noticeable blob of pink.

  “Lots of powder all over and that’ll blend in,” Madge said uncertainly. “Let’s have a go at the lip.”

  Lily’s lip was swollen but the cut was a little red scab against the redness of her lip. “Can’t do anything about the swelling,” Madge said. She smeared a little of the pink cream on the bottom of Lily’s lip. “Paint your lipstick over the top of it,” she said. “Deep red. Have you got one?”

  Lily nodded.

  “You won though,” Madge said. “Since you’re here. He’s going to let you do the show?”

  Lily leaned forward and stared at herself in the mirror. “Yes,” she said. “As long as I don’t tour. And that means that I can audition for the panto in the winter too.”

  Madge shook her head in admiration. “You’re a caution, you are,” she said. “You look as if butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth and yet you’re a real fighter. What do you have to do?”

  Lily was patting the cream into her cheek, watching the effect in the mirror. “How d’you mean? What do I have to do?”

  “You never get something for nothing from men. What do you have to do for him?”

  Lily smiled awkwardly—her lip hurt. “Nothing much,” she said. “I don’t complain about this to his ma, and I don’t stay out late at night. Nothing more. I’m going to try a bit harder though. I married him, after all. We’ve got to try and make a go of it.”

  Madge sat on one of the chairs before the mirror and started untwisting her curls. “You can try,” she said doubtfully. “You’ve got no choice really, have you? You can’t divorce him—you’ve got no grounds; and you can’t leave him—you’ve got nowhere to go. Might as well have a try at being decent, I suppose.”

  “Can I borrow the cream?”

  Madge nodded. “I don’t use it except when I’ve got spots. You can keep it till the bruise fades.”

  “Thanks,” Lily said and went out into the corridor. All around there was the electric atmosphere of first night excitement. As Lily went down the stairs to her dressing room three of the chorus girls came up chattering and laughing. “Hello, Lil,” they said.

  Lily put up her hand to hide her bruised cheek. “Hello!” she said.

  “Are you nervous?” one of the girls asked. “I’m dying!”

  “Dying!” Lily agreed.

  The girls went on up but on impulse Lily turned away from the dressing rooms and went towards the stage.

  It was busy, work had started hours ago. The great back wall of the stage was crowded with scenery which would be used for other productions. A grand staircase went to nowhere. There was a cottage with a window above a front door. There was a tree with a massive convincing trunk, a wide branch, and then no top at all.

  There was a space between the scenery wide enough to take a horse and cart, and then there were the black curtains which hid the brick wall at the back of the stage. Lily went forward to the wings and looked at the set.

  It was nearly ready for the first act. The chorus girls did a French café number, sitting at little tables and chairs. The backdrop was a gay red and white awning over a little blue-painted restaurant. Lily did not know that the scene painter had lain on a stretcher facing the original of his picture for four hours one hot summer’s day in 1915. The ambulances had been overcrowded and his stretcher had been put out in the sun of Bilbeque square. A piece of shrapnel had torn into his belly and the blood had soaked through the field dressing and was attracting flies. He was nineteen, and he was very much afraid that he was a coward because he could feel himself shuddering, shaking and shivering all over, and he thought that only cowards trembled with fear.

  He was in too much pain to move. He was paralysed with the pain of the wound which pulsed in time to his heartbeat. When he thought that he would die, under that unkindly hot sun, with the ceaseless hammer-hammer-hammer of guns, he heard himself whimpering like a hurt animal. It was then that he opened his eyes and stared ahead of him at the facade of the café.

  One of the tricks of this war was that nothing ever stayed the same, he thought. You joined the army to save Belgium from the dreadful Hun and then you got to Belgium and found that it was you who were wrecking their fields, destroying their villages and eating their food. And the dreadful Hun was a man within calling distance in the opposite trench. After the battle of Loos the Germans had held their fire while the English stretchered their dead and wounded from the open deathfield of no-man’s-land into the safety of the trench. They were not brutal savages, they had played the game. They had been fair, even merciful. They had let the English rescue their wounded, which was something the Allied high command would never allow. The Germans had been kinder than the English. It didn’t make any sense.

  The Bilbeque café was another thing that was an illusion. The glass windows were undamaged, not even cracked. The lettering Café Bilbeque in gold paint was perfect. The little red and white awning fluttered in the breeze. There was a pot of red geraniums at the upstairs window. And behind the charming facade there was nothing. The café had taken a direct hit and had crumbled inside. The proprietor, his wife and their three children had suffocated under the rubble. No-one had yet had time to dig them out and bury them. But their café, their pretty summertime café, had a brave face for the world. A brave face and no body.

  Lily stepped on to the stage to admire the set. She thought it quite delightful. She sat on one of the chairs, she leaned her elbows on the table and dreamed that she might be there in—she turned around and looked at the name—Café Bilbeque, where everything was always delightful.

  “Auditioning for the chorus, Lily?” Charlie asked from the pit. He was checking the music in his stand.

  “Daydreaming,” Lily said. “What’s the time? I’m not late, am I?”

  “You’ve got an hour yet,” Charlie said. “It’s not two.” He played a chord on the open piano and glanced up at Lily.

  “What’s that on your face?”

  Lily’s hand went to the bruise. “Nothing,” she said. “I bumped myself.” She thought rapidly. “In the bath,” she said. “I slipped and bumped myself on the tap.”

  “Wait there,” Charlie said and stepped over the brass orchestra rail and went around to the door that led backstage. Lily met him in the concealing darkness of the wings.

  Charlie took her face in his hands and turned it so the working lights on stage shone full on her. “He hit you,” he said. His voice was very soft.

  “Yes,” Lily said shortly. “He found out I was working. We’ve sorted it out. He’s letting me work. That’s the end to it, Charlie.”

  Charlie let her go and turned away from her so that she wouldn’t see the impotent rage on his face. He took a breath and then spoke softly. “Leave him. If he’s hit you once, he’ll do it again. Leave him tonight, Lil. You can come to my digs, I’ll fix you up with a room.”

  “No.”

  He swung back. “This isn’t a request, this is an order. You’re to leave him. You can get a divorce for this. I’ll take you to a lawyer tomorrow morning.”

  “No.”

  Charlie took her hands. “Please, Lil,” he said. “Don’t let him do this to you. He’s bound to win in the end. You’re not sorted out now just because he lets you do one little show—but belts you before you go on. It’s no good.”

  Lily shook her head.

  Charlie exclaimed in exasperation. “Why the hell do you want to put up