Fallen Skies Read online

  She blinked quickly and two tears fell on to the baby’s blanket. Lily blotted them with a finger. “But I don’t miss her like I used to,” she said softly. “Now my baby is born I feel like I’m starting a new life, a new life all over again. And to think I didn’t want him at first! To think I should have got that so wrong!”

  The baby’s blue eyes opened and he looked up at Lily with the strange attentive stare of the newborn, as if he were as surprised and delighted with the world as Lily was with him. Charlie swallowed and rubbed his face on his sleeve.

  “Are you tired, Lil?” he asked gruffly.

  “A little,” she said slowly, still not taking her gaze from her baby. “I’ll sleep when I get home. You’ll come in, won’t you, Charlie?”

  “I won’t be able to stay,” Charlie said softly. “Not the done thing, Lil. Mrs. Winters was unhappy enough about me taking you to hospital, she’d be upset if I hung round too much. I don’t want to rock the boat for you, for the two of you.”

  Lily nodded. “Come this afternoon to see me then,” she said. “You always come for tea.”

  Charlie’s grip around her shoulder tightened as the cab drew up outside number two, The Parade. “Yes. I always come for tea,” he repeated bleakly. For a moment he thought of the rest of his life: coming to Lily’s for tea and watching her child grow, and knowing that she should have been his wife and the child should have been his boy. He felt one of the quick stabbing pains in his groin which he had learned to curse and ignore, and the longer unstoppable pain beneath his ribs which was heartache and could neither be cursed nor ignored.

  He paid the driver and his hand was steady. He opened the door for Lily and held her firmly by the elbow. Then he opened the garden gate and led her up the little path.

  The front door swung open and the tweeny stood in the doorway in her working apron. “Oh Mum!” she said. “They said you was at the hospital. You ought to still be there, oughtn’t you?”

  Lily beamed at her. “No, Sally,” she said brightly. “I decided to bring my baby home. He’s quite well enough to be at home, and I hate hospitals. I hate the smell of them.”

  Sally fell back before them and Lily went confidently into the drawing room. “I should like some tea,” she said. “And turn my bed down so that I can rest. I’ll have the baby’s cot in my room for now, so make sure the fire’s lit, Sally. We’ll need to keep the room warm. I’ll want a fire lit in my bedroom all day.”

  “Yes’m,” Sally said, dropping a curtsey and backing out. “I’ll tell Browning.”

  The news that Lily was home with her baby, just hours instead of a full month after the birth, spread through the house at speed: upwards, to Muriel when she came out of her bathroom, and downwards to Cook, the boot boy, the gardener and Coventry.

  Muriel dressed rapidly and came downstairs to the drawing room at once. “Lily,” she said reproachfully. “You ought to be in hospital.”

  Charlie rose to his feet and guided her to a chair. Muriel sank into it, looking paler and more drawn than Lily.

  “I’m going to bed,” Lily said agreeably. “But I couldn’t have stayed in the hospital, Mrs. Winters. I’m sorry if it’s not convenient. But the nurse there wouldn’t let me have my baby. She took him away and she wouldn’t let me see him. She wanted him to be bottle-fed and kept in the nursery. And my ma used to say that bottle-fed babies don’t do as well. I want to breast-feed.”

  Muriel’s eyes slid at once to Charlie at this embarrassing intimacy. Charlie assumed an expression of gentlemanly detachment. “But however did you get home? And what does Dr. Metcalfe say?”

  Charlie cleared his throat. “I was just leaving the hospital when Lily sent for me,” he said. “I thought it better to bring her home to her husband than to leave her there, where she was obviously unhappy.”

  “Oh yes,” Muriel said. “Home to Stephen . . . but he’s not up yet. I’ll send up Coventry to wake him. It really is most . . .” She went to the door and sent Sally with a message for Coventry to wake Stephen, and then returned to her seat. “And whatever does Dr. Metcalfe say?”

  “He wasn’t even there!” Lily protested. “It was just me and the nurse. He didn’t even bother to be there! But have a look at the baby! He’s so sweet! He’s sound asleep. He likes it here.” She pushed back her coat and, cradling her child in her arms, leaned towards Muriel. Automatically Muriel reached out to take the little baby. Lily let her son go to his grandmother and sat back in her chair with a smile.

  Muriel saw the blonde down of hair and the fair smooth skin. She held him close and heard the quiet animal breaths and saw the steady healthy beat of his pulse in the crown of the fair head. “Christopher,” she said longingly. “He is so like Christopher.”

  “Yes!” Lily said delightedly. “That must be his name. Christopher Charles! Christopher Charles Winters!”

  Muriel smiled but did not take her gaze from the baby’s face. “Another Christopher in the house,” she said lovingly. “Christopher.”

  Lily shot a swift covert look at Charlie. He was watching her, his face warm with love and desire.

  “Christopher Charles Winters,” Muriel repeated softly. “It’s a fine name. Why Charles, Lily?”

  “It was my father’s name.” Lily told an easy lie. She glanced at Charlie with a small secret smile that told him that her son was named for him. “I wanted to call him Charles from the moment I knew he was a boy,” she said.

  “A new generation of Winters, a new boy in the house,” Muriel said softly.

  The door opened quietly behind Charlie and he turned and saw Stephen standing in the doorway, looking pale and ill. The deep colours of his silk dressing-gown made him sallow. “I seem to have missed the whole show,” he said, trying for a joke. “Damned sorry, Lily. I was coming down to the hospital just now to see you; and then up you pop at home.”

  “Look, Stephen!” Muriel said. “This is Christopher.”

  A look of immediate anguish at his brother’s name went across Stephen’s face and was wiped away in a second. He stepped forward and looked at his son’s face, touched the edge of his blanket with one clumsy finger. “He looks fine,” he said softly. “Nice hair.”

  “He has slept ever since we left the hospital,” Lily said. “We couldn’t have stayed there, Stephen, they were hopeless. Charlie was just leaving but I made him bring me home.”

  “Good man,” Stephen said, nodding to Charlie. “And you were the hero last night too?”

  Charlie winked at him. “Coventry and me,” he said. “You weren’t fit for roll-call, old man!”

  Stephen shook his head in a pantomime of penitence. “I should be court-martialled. Lily, d’you forgive me?”

  Lily shook her head, smiling. “Nonsense. What could you have done?” she asked. “Coventry drove me to hospital and Charlie got me a cab to come home again. And here we are safe and sound! Me and your son, Christopher Charles Winters. Christopher after your brother and Charles after my father. Don’t you like it?”

  Stephen gritted his teeth on his smile. “If that’s what you want.” He hesitated for a moment, looking to his mother for support. “But I’d have thought you’d have chosen something a bit more modern.”

  Muriel looked up at him. “He’s named after your brother,” she said sharply. “He couldn’t have a better name.”

  Only Charlie saw the anger flare in Stephen’s face before he banked it down. “Good show,” he said determinedly. “It suits him, somehow. Jolly good show.”

  There was a short awkward silence. “I must go,” Charlie said quietly and went to the door.

  “Come for tea this afternoon,” Lily reminded him, without looking up. She was watching her sleeping son in Muriel’s arms.

  “If you’re not too tired,” Charlie said, with an eye on Muriel. He was watching for her disapproval, but the older woman was absorbed in the baby. “Two o’clock then,” Charlie said, threw a half-salute at Stephen and slipped from the room.

  “Let’