Fallen Skies Read online

  “What is he like?” Jane demanded.

  “I don’t know,” Muriel confessed. “I haven’t spoken except to say good afternoon.”

  “Well, speak to him then,” Jane said simply. “This is the 1920s. Noone seems to care about gentlemen at all any more.”

  “Because there are so few left,” Muriel said bitterly. But she took Jane’s advice and within a few days was able to report back that at least Charlie had been commissioned during the war, that he spoke with no trace of an accent and seemed to know how to behave. Stephen at any rate was perfectly happy that he should come three times a week to teach Lily to play the piano and sing, and though there was a good deal of chatter and the lessons lasted from early afternoon until the evening when Charlie had to go to work, Muriel was certain there was no hint of impropriety, even though both the man and her daughter-in-law were stage people. Lily’s condition must be chaperone enough, and also there was a warmth and a comfort between Lily and Charlie that was nothing like flirtation but more like a deep fraternal affection.

  When Muriel mentioned lightly to Stephen that Charlie was coming to tea even on the days when a piano lesson had not been booked, Stephen smiled and patted her hand. “If it keeps Lily out of that damned theatre we have to be glad,” he said. “And he’s a good chap. He knows how to keep the line. He’s got a string of girls of his own, he’s just keeping Lily company.” Besides, Stephen thought but did not say aloud, why should any man be interested in the rapidly fattening Lily when he could have his pick of the chorus girls of Portsmouth, and a choice of many society girls too?

  During the season of classical plays at the Kings Charlie used his freedom from the theatre to play solo twice a night in a new nightclub, the Trocadero, off Palmerston Road. Marjorie Philmore, Sarah Dent, Constance, Alma, Violet, Diana, a whole crowd of young, single girls, thought him quite divine. Stephen, dropping into the club late one night, was very glad to be called over to Charlie’s table to join half a dozen girls and Charlie, lazily smiling, in their midst.

  “I say, old boy, you do spoil yourself,” Stephen said in an undertone.

  Charlie waved a drunken hand. “Les Girls,” he said idly. “All these women hanging around me, and I can’t do a damn thing.”

  “Drink?” Stephen said understandingly.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Charlie replied equably. He was drunk but not so drunk that he could not see the play Marjorie made for Stephen and Stephen’s responsiveness.

  “Your husband’s a bit of a lad,” he said the next day to Lily at tea time. “Marjorie again.”

  Lily was respectably engaged in sewing a nightdress for the baby. “Doesn’t worry me,” she said, biting off a thread.

  “Haven’t you got any scissors? It sets my teeth on edge when you do that!”

  “They’re around somewhere,” Lily said idly. “You’re probably sitting on them.”

  Charlie exclaimed and cautiously felt in the sofa cushions. He came up with Lily’s small embroidery scissors. “You are a useless girl,” he said. “You could have mortally injured me.”

  “A small loss,” Lily said cheerfully, tossing aside the nightshirt, and pouring them both a cup of tea. “So where do these assignations take place?”

  “At the Troc,” Charlie said. “It’s nothing too serious yet, Lily, but she’s a lady, not a chorus girl.”

  Lily passed him a cup with a steady hand. “So?” she said easily. “I won’t break my heart over it. Anyway, what’s a man to do?”

  Charlie gave her a sharp unsympathetic look. “Are you suggesting that Stephen’s appetites are so irresistible that if you are not available he has to be permitted to make love elsewhere?”

  Lily took a large bite of chocolate cake and nodded with her mouth full.

  “Bloody slavish, you are,” Charlie said irritably.

  Lily shook her head and swallowed. “Indifferent,” she said shortly.

  Charlie sighed. “I won’t queer his pitch then,” he said. “I thought perhaps you wanted him home.”

  Lily shook her fair head. “Not really.”

  Charlie nodded. “Does having the baby make no difference?” He was thinking of how he would have prized Lily if she were his pregnant wife.

  “It makes a difference to me,” Lily said. She was smiling a small inward smile. “At last I’ve got something to love. I can’t tell you what it’s like—knowing that there’s a baby growing and growing and getting ready to be born. I think I can feel it moving sometimes, just a little. I lie awake at night and whisper to it. It doesn’t really matter about Stephen and me. The baby is much more important.”

  Charlie nodded.

  “And Stephen will never be better, I don’t think,” she said. “There’s a part of him which was made sick in the war and it will always be there. He’ll never forget it. It waits for him in dreams or in sudden smells or moonlit nights.” She laughed shortly. “And of course, the war was the time when he was most happy.”

  “Happy?” Charlie exclaimed. He was remembering the terror that had gripped him. The way the ground itself had shaken under the gunfire. How horrible the trees had seemed with their bark hanging in strips and the boughs clawing with broken fingers at dark skies. He could not imagine what it would be to endure that desolate landscape year after year as Stephen had done. “You must have got it wrong, Lil, he can’t have been happy.”

  “In a way he was. He wasn’t the second-rate son like at home. He was a first-rate officer. He knew where he belonged and what he had to do. Coventry, his batman, was always beside him and they trusted each other. They would have died for each other. There were no women to bother him, there was no boring work, there were no money problems, or demanding parents, or being a gentleman in Portsmouth. There was just the line of the trench, and his men.

  “And he had time off. There was a farm where he used to go and work. There was an old farmer there and his wife and a couple of daughters. He said it was like a little haven, just behind the lines but in a fold of ground so it had never been shelled. A sanctuary. He and Coventry used to go there and help plough and harvest.”

  “What happened to the farm?”

  Lily shrugged. “I don’t know. Shelled, I suppose. What happened to everything over there in the end?”

  They were quiet for a few moments. “He could see a doctor,” Charlie suggested. “There are an awful lot of good men dealing with neurasthenia. He could get some help with his nightmares.”

  Lily put down her cup and smiled. “Not Stephen!” she said. “He employs a chauffeur so shellshocked that he cannot speak and he still says there is no such thing! He deals with it in his own way. He thought I would solve it for him but I can’t, I don’t know how to.” She shrugged. “I’d be sorry for him if he wasn’t my husband.”

  “But they are kind to you here?” Charlie pressed. “He doesn’t hurt you? Your mother-in-law is reasonable?”

  “We are so polite,” Lily said. “You don’t need love in a house which is as polite as this. We never know what we are all thinking, we never know what we care about. We are so polite that there is no room for anything else.”

  Charlie put his hand over hers. “Oh, Lily,” he said sorrowfully.

  She put her other hand on top, holding him, and she looked into his face. “I’m not lonely now,” she said quietly. “I thought I would die here when I was first married. My mother gone and the house so silent. But now I’ve got the baby I don’t mind so much. The baby and me—we can live here, we can make our own place here. It doesn’t matter that everyone else is silent. We’ll have each other.”

  Charlie’s face was full of pain. “I wish it were different for you,” he said softly. “I love you so much, Lily.”

  Lily bent her head and took her hand away. He thought he heard her whisper “I love you too” but it was so faint he might have imagined it. Then Browning came in to clear the tea things and he played for Lily to sing until six o’clock, when Stephen came home and poured them both cocktails b