Fallen Skies Read online

  The room was very quiet, wrapped in a deep blue darkness. Lily at his side was sleeping deeply, breathing softly. She had rolled over in the night and was sleeping on her back with one arm flung above her head. She was smiling in her sleep.

  Stephen shifted the bedclothes slightly and then fumbled with his pyjama trousers and took out his erect penis. He moved on to her and thrust himself steadily and slowly inside her.

  Lily’s eyes flew open and she opened her mouth to scream as his hand came down, gagging her.

  “Please let me,” he whispered very softly, his mouth furred with sleep, his nightmare still driving him. “Please let me, Lily. It takes the bad dreams away. Please let me, I won’t hurt.”

  Lily closed her eyes to shut Stephen’s flushed determined face from her mind. She felt her bruised body being hurt again. She bit her lip and turned her face away as Stephen, as gently as he could, pushed himself inside her uninviting body and took his relief. But he did not pull away as he used to do. Lily felt him gasp and then grow limp inside her.

  It was minutes before he rolled over to his side of the bed and, purged of his fears, fell asleep at once.

  Lily lay on her back as he had left her, looking at the ceiling which grew paler as the sun rose over the quiet ebb sea.

  22

  THE NEXT DAY MARKED THE START of a new routine for Lily and the household which now revolved around her work—as before it had revolved around Stephen alone.

  Breakfast was still at eight thirty sharp for Mr. Stephen but now the house had to go on tiptoe until ten thirty, when Browning would take a pot of tea and two slices of toast to the young Mrs. Winters’s bedroom. Only after eleven could noisy housework commence. The young Mrs. Winters had to have her sleep.

  Stephen took to coming home for lunch to be with Lily before she went to the theatre so Cook had to be warned that the skimpy little omelettes and reheated left-overs, which had sufficed for the women lunching alone, now had to be expanded to suit the man of the house. Cook managed by the inventive strategy of exchanging dinner menus with luncheon menus so that poor Lily’s hated parade of oversalted soups, overcooked meat and damp vegetables was now served at midday, and she went to the afternoon matinée with the weight of Cook’s cuisine heavy in her stomach. The food seemed even more indigestible at noon, with the sunshine beating through the dining room windows, and Lily wilted in the heat before her well-stocked plate.

  Muriel ate lunch with them and then took her dinner at the usual time of seven, when she was served Cook’s lighter offerings of a boiled egg, soufflé, omelettes, veal and ham pie, or overcooked fish. Stephen and Lily, late home after the theatre, would have soup left hot for them, or sandwiches or a limp salad. As often as not, as the weeks went on and Stephen and Lily adapted to the new freedom, they went out to dinner after the theatre, sometimes with other members of the cast.

  Even Charlie joined them in the second week of the run. He had barely spoken to Lily for a week, but when she included him in the general invitation to dinner he had looked up and given her a grim little smile. “Yes, I’ll come,” he said.

  There had been eight of them, a jolly rowdy party in the respectable Southsea restaurant. But much could be forgiven to actors; and when Lily consented to sing a song and Charlie sat at the piano and accompanied her, there was a round of applause from the other diners. They knew of Lily’s name, she had been praised in the Portsmouth paper and even one of the national papers had named her as a young singer of promise. Stephen glowed at the praise for his wife and kept a proprietary arm along the back of her chair.

  He watched Charlie narrowly for any signs of jealousy. He had not forgotten him, lounging in the stage door at the start of the Midsummer Madness tour, making sure that Lily was back on time. But the man was no threat, Stephen decided. Lily barely looked twice at him and he was relaxed and friendly with everyone at the table. If anything, he was attentive to Madge. When the band started to play again after their break he danced only once with Lily, but twice with Madge. Stephen, holding Lily close as they danced, knew himself to be with the prettiest woman in the room, in unquestioned ownership of her.

  When the bill came, he paid for them all—he felt like paying. The chorus girls kissed him on the cheek for gratitude and the men smiled and said thank you. Then Stephen swore that he could drop everyone at their digs in the Argyll. Six of them squeezed in the back, and Lily sat on Stephen’s lap in the front. They sang and giggled all their way to every quiet lodging house and noisily whispered good night on the pavements. Then Coventry drove Lily and Stephen home to number two, The Parade.

  “That Charlie, he was in the show, wasn’t he?” Stephen asked, tossing his shirt into the laundry basket in the corner of their bedroom.

  “He’s musical director,” Lily said from the bed.

  “Not your little show,” Stephen said. “The show. The war.”

  “Yes. Not for long. I think he was a gunner. He was invalided out.”

  “A blighty?”

  Lily shrugged. “You know I don’t understand soldiers’ slang,” she said pettishly. “What’s a blighty?”

  “A blighty is a wound which gets you shipped home—back to Blighty. Not so bad that you’re in too much pain, but bad enough so they can’t patch you up and push you back which, God knows, they did. Half of them shot themselves. Was he one of them? A convenient wound in the knee?”

  Lily thought of Charlie’s stitched and scarred body, of the secret wound which he had showed to her, and of his hands which had touched her and moved her in a way that a whole man like her husband could not. “Why?” she asked. “Isn’t that what you had? A blighty? A bullet in your ankle?”

  Stephen flinched. “That’s damned insulting, Lily,” he said. “I got my wound when I was leading an attack against a f . . . f . . . farmhouse. The H . . . H . . . Huns were . . . in there . . . with the v . . . village women . . . they had raped them and then stabbed them, the place was like a b . . . b . . . butcher’s sh . . . sh . . . shop . . .”

  “Stop it,” Lily said suddenly, with her hands over her ears. “I don’t want to hear about it. Don’t think about it! You’ll only give yourself bad dreams. Forget it, Stephen! Pretend it never happened!”

  For a moment he was angry, and then his face cleared. “Yes,” he said. “Let’s pretend it never happened.”

  He moved to the bed and Lily could tell by the curiously intent look on his face that he would want her again. He put his arms around her; Lily’s skin was icy, as welcoming as cold water. He slid the little straps from her shoulders so that he could see her breasts. “They were whores,” he said clearly. “They deserved to die. It wasn’t even rape.” He pushed her gently back on the bed and thrust into her.

  • • •

  On Saturday night there was a birthday party for one of the chorus girls and Stephen and Lily went along. It was held after the show in the upper circle bar. There was a piano and Charlie obligingly played dance music so the girls could Charleston. They all went on to a nightclub later, piled two deep into the Argyll. One of the chorus girls begged that Coventry should go in with them, so at Stephen’s nod he left his cap in the car and went dancing too.

  “Don’t mention it to Mother, Lily,” Stephen warned.

  Lily nodded. Charlie was dancing with Madge again, and with one of the chorus girls called Isabel. They had started a line and other people were joining at the end, a repetitive easy dance step, two forwards, a kick, and two back.

  “Come on,” Lily said. She dragged Stephen’s arm and broke into the line beside Charlie. When the music changed Charlie caught her up and danced her off, while Madge and Stephen partnered each other.

  “All right, Lil?” Charlie said quietly.

  “All right,” she said.

  Marjorie Philmore strolled on to the floor and tapped Madge on the shoulder as she danced with Stephen. “Ladies’ Excuse Me,” she said and took her place.

  Stephen looked surprised. “Oh God, don’t say you don’