Fallen Skies Read online

  They had brought a picnic tea. Outside the tiny village of Rowlands Castle they pulled off the road and Coventry spread a tablecloth in the shade of trees and laid out plates with scones and jam and cream, sandwiches and cake.

  Lily put Christopher on his back at the edge of the tablecloth and let him kick and look at the sky between his fists and feet. She took dabs of jam and cream and tea on her fingers and let him suck them, laughing as his face screwed up at one taste and then another. Stephen watched them, trying to share their pleasure, trying to feel as if he belonged with them. But mostly he was aware that though the wood was adequate cover, an officer who wanted to survive would have dug in the moment they arrived and sent out a scouting party. It was a thick dark wood, like Mametz had been before the shells had stripped it down to tortured naked stalks. He could not be easy in a place so like Mametz wood, where they had climbed over dead bodies to reach the German lines, struggling to get forward and meet their own deaths.

  When they finished tea, Coventry packed up. Lily handed Christopher to Stephen while she brushed crumbs from her frock. Christopher beamed at the strange face of his father, and then he blushed red and scowled hard. The baby suddenly stank worse than a latrine.

  “He smells!” Stephen exclaimed in distaste. “He stinks!”

  “Oh, really!” Lily exclaimed. “He needs a nappy change, that’s all.”

  Stephen held the baby at arm’s length, his face frowning with disgust. Lily snatched the child from him. “For heaven’s sake, Stephen! You must have seen worse than this! You can’t have been at Ypres for two years and not seen worse than this!”

  He shot a look of intense dislike at her, that she should so casually invoke his war, as if it could be compared to peacetime, as if it could be compared to anything.

  “He stinks like a cesspit,” he said coldly. “I suggest you see to him, if you know how.”

  Lily turned her shoulder to him and spoke to Coventry. “Christopher’s basket is in the boot,” she said. “Can you bring it to me, please? And some warm water?”

  Coventry fetched the things and together they laid the baby down on a little square of towelling. The basket had a bowl and a sponge, a little towel and a small piece of scented soap. Coventry put these things at Lily’s right hand, and poured a little hot water from the tea kettle into the bowl. He spread out the new nappy and a pair of rubberized drawers. Lily stripped Christopher with easy competence.

  Stephen drew away and lit a cigarette to ward off the smell. The baby’s nappy was a nauseating goo of pale yellow-brown. Stephen stared in fascinated disgust. Christopher’s legs and little round buttocks were dirty with faeces. Lily held his feet like a chicken ready for trussing and wiped him, first with paper, and then with the sponge. She washed around his penis and his rosy tiny scrotum. Stephen gazed at the two of them in a sort of horror: at his son’s innocent babyish maleness, and at Lily’s confident handling of him. As if she were some kind of red-handed nurse, as if she were not a lady at all. Stephen was appalled that Lily should lower herself to be so intimate with the child. It was worse than servitude, what she chose to do. It was disgraceful that she should do it and feel no shame at being watched.

  When Christopher was washed clean and she had bundled the soiled nappy in on itself, Lily lifted him up with one hand and slid the folded clean nappy under his back. When she let his legs go Christopher kicked and giggled, his little penis jiggling with the movement. Lily dried him and powdered him, making sure none of the delicate skin was left damp, then she folded the nappy around him and pinned it, with her hand inside to feel for the sharp point of the pin coming through the towelling. Then she pulled his little feet through fresh drawers, and through his white lawn bloomers, and the baby was clean again.

  Lily looked over her shoulder at her husband. He was staring at her as if he had seen her behave shamefully. He looked at the baby with open hostility. Lily gathered Christopher close and asked: “What’s wrong?”

  Stephen pinched out the ember of his cigarette and threw it away. “Nothing,” he said tightly.

  “You’re staring,” Lily said. “You looked funny.” Her hand was spread at the back of Christopher’s head as if to shield him from his father’s hard gaze.

  Stephen shook his head. “It’s nothing,” he said again. “Shall we go—or is there anything worse he can do?”

  Lily stared at him uncomprehendingly. “He’s just a little baby,” she started.

  “I don’t want to discuss it,” Stephen said tightly.

  He held open the door for Lily and she handed Christopher to him to hold as she climbed into the car. Stephen held his son at arm’s length and looked into his innocent open face. The baby smelled sweet, of powder and soap and fresh linen. He cooed beguilingly at Stephen and waved small tightly clenched fists. His blue eyes were open very wide as if he were surprised. Stephen could not feel tenderness for his baby. He had seen his nakedness and smelt the stink of him. It was too much like the smell of the mud. The little naked body was too much like the stripped corpses. Stephen could not disentangle images of life and death. He stared at Christopher as if the baby were some threatening enigma, and he could not smile at him even though the baby kicked and cooed.

  Lily held out her arms. Stephen handed over the baby, and walked around the back of the car to get in the other side. Coventry was putting the basket of nursery things in the boot. Stephen saw his face as he bent over. It was gentle, tender. The shut-in shut-out mute expression had melted away. He looked as he had looked that warm summer of 1917 when they had taken leave, and gone haymaking on Perot’s farm. Coventry looked alive to feeling again, he looked tender. He looked ready to speak.

  It was Christopher who had worked this magic, because Coventry could handle the child. He could touch him, soiled or clean, and feel the flow of tenderness pass from his gentle fingers to the baby. Stephen stared at the man’s face and Coventry straightened up and faced his master. At once the warmth left his face and the old mute indifference took its place.

  “All right?” Stephen asked. He was suddenly aware of the cruel inappropriateness of the question. It was all wrong for Coventry, and all wrong for Stephen, and it had been since the trenches had brutalized them, since the little farm had disappointed them, and since their own violence had corrupted them, fatally and permanently.

  Coventry nodded, and held the door open for Stephen. They reversed quietly out of the little glade and on to the lane, then Coventry turned the car for home.

  They were on the little road between Havant and Portsmouth when Stephen suddenly exclaimed, “Hang on a minute!” and then tapped Coventry’s shoulder and said, “Stop.”

  Coventry slowed and pulled the car over.

  “What is it?” Lily asked.

  “A ‘For Sale’ sign, on a little farm. Drive back there, Coventry. Let’s have a look at it.”

  “Whatever for?” Lily asked. It was getting late, Christopher would soon be hungry and tired.

  “I’d like to see it,” Stephen said vaguely. “Looked a pretty place.”

  Coventry turned the car and they drove back the way they had come. The sign was hand-painted, mounted on a post at the edge of a field raggedly planted with some leafy crop which Stephen did not recognize. A little track led off the road past a barn towards a small cluster of buildings. “Let’s go down,” Stephen said. “Drive on.”

  Coventry slipped the car into gear and they went slowly forwards, bumping on the ruts. Outside the barn was a tractor half-covered by a tarpaulin, with the engine missing. A rusting harrow was partly blocking the track. The way the track made a little dogleg corner around it showed that it had been there for some time.

  The farmhouse itself was thatched, a silvery grey thatch greening with moss at the eaves, which overhung the windows like vegetal eyebrows. The front door was overgrown, clearly never used. The back door was a stable door, the bottom half fastened, the top thrown open. A pane of glass in the kitchen window had been broken and replac