Fallen Skies Read online

  “Very lucky indeed,” Stephen asserted a little louder.

  “What do you think of it, Lily?” Muriel asked. It was the first sentence she had spoken since Stephen’s news. She was alert at once to Lily’s reserve. “You can’t want to live in the country, surely! All your friends are in town, and all your singing engagements. I should have thought you would have hated it.”

  Lily turned a pale mutinous face to her mother-in-law. “I don’t like it,” she said simply. “The farm is dirty and falling down. The house is tiny. The roof has great holes in it. There’s no bathroom or running water.”

  John Pascoe gave an embarrassed laugh. “Better think again, Stephen,” he said pleasantly. “Can’t make a home without the little bride’s consent! I’ll tell you what, I have a friend who is an agricultural surveyor. I’ll get him to have a look over it. He can tell you a fair price for it and then you can proceed as the two of you wish. There’s nothing so risky as being a gentleman farmer, you know. It’s a pricey hobby at the best of times. And the way the country’s going this is no time to play with your capital.”

  Stephen tried to smile but his face was too tense. “The deal is done,” he said. “I’ve shaken hands on it and paid a deposit. I’ve bought it. I am a farmer already, not a gentleman farmer. I am a farmer. I own a farm.”

  Muriel rang the bell suddenly and noisily and Browning came in and cleared the soup plates though no-one had finished eating. She put the leg of mutton on the sideboard and Stephen, with a triumphant glance at Rory, rose to carve the meat, as the master of the house. Browning carried the plates to the table. Stephen deliberately gave Lily a large portion with a thick slice of pale flabby fat. He returned to his seat and Browning took the vegetables around and then served wine.

  Stephen had one glass, and then another.

  Muriel watched him. “I remember now!” she suddenly exclaimed. “You used to play farms with Christopher. You had some lead animals and a little die-cast farm with a farmhouse and a lead farmer and his wife.”

  “Oh yes,” Stephen said.

  “How you two would squabble!” Muriel reminisced. “And then you would throw the animals across the room and Christopher would say that you would never be a farmer because you had no patience!” She smiled at the recollection. “And you said that you didn’t care because you didn’t want to be a farmer in any case, that farming was for people who could do nothing else, who hadn’t the brains to go into the law, who knew nothing better than to lean on a gate all day and watch a herd of cows!” She laughed lightly, one eye on her son.

  Winifred smiled. “Young men often get these fancies,” she said. “Nothing comes of them.”

  Stephen opened his mouth to argue but then nodded to Browning for another glass of wine.

  “My brother was going to run away to sea!” Winifred said. “I think he would have found it a good deal too uncomfortable! He works in a bank now.”

  “It’s not even a very nice farm,” Lily volunteered. “The yard is all pot-holed and dirty. The cows had marks on their coats. There was a dog chained up and it was all sore around its throat where the collar rubbed.”

  Muriel smiled encouragingly at her. “We’ll talk him out of it!” she said with a roguish smile. “No man in the world can stand against a mother and a wife when they are in agreement!”

  “I should think not!” John Pascoe laughed, trying to overcome the uneasy atmosphere. “I should think not indeed!”

  Stephen pushed back his chair and sat back. He nodded for another glass of wine. “I’m afraid it’s too late for that!” he said again. “The deed is done! The farm is mine! All the arguments in the world can’t stop it.”

  Winifred’s bright gaze went from Muriel’s flushed face to Lily’s pale one. She gave a soft excited laugh. “Oh dear! Quite a scene!”

  Stephen shot one hard look at her and drank from his glass. Lily pushed the fatty meat to one side of her plate and put her knife and fork together.

  “What do you think, Mr. Winters?” Winifred asked.

  Rory raised his heavy head, formed his lips ready for speech. His mouth opened, he drew in a breath. “No,” he said simply. His family was silent, waiting for him to say more. His jaw moved, the muscles sluggish to obey, then suddenly he found the power to speak. “I cannot allow it,” he said simply; and the decision was taken against Stephen.

  • • •

  Stephen and Coventry got quietly drunk in one of the old pubs at the waterfront by the old fortified walls. Stephen was as silent as Coventry, staring into his glass of beer, the whisky untouched to one side.

  “They won’t be satisfied until they destroy me,” he said softly. “All of them. Lily’s with them now too. They don’t want me, they never wanted me. They want Christopher. Now they’ve got another Christopher I mean nothing again. What I want, what I need—all that means nothing to them.”

  He sipped from his glass of scotch and then downed a gulp of beer. “Damn them to hell,” he said. “I won’t forgive them this. Everything I’ve ever wanted came second to Christopher. They sent me out to the Front because he had gone. They sent me to a rotten school because he was at a good one. I had to go into law because he wanted to try for the Foreign Office. Someone had to work in the firm and he wasn’t going to do it. Who should be the one then? Why, Stephen! No-one cares what happens to him!

  “And now I find a place I want to live, and a life I want to lead, and they’re all at me, nibbling away at me until I could scream. And my own wife—my damned own wife—smiles at my mother as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth and says the cows are dirty and she doesn’t want to live in the country!”

  Stephen suddenly kicked out at the table, spilling the drinks and sending the glasses crashing to the floor. The landlord, who had been rinsing glasses behind the bar, looked up, lifted the flap and moved purposefully towards them. “That’s enough now, Sir,” he said.

  Stephen hesitated for a moment, squared up to the man, and then, seeing his bulk and his slow progress forwards, dropped his fists and let his shoulders slump. “What’s the use?” he demanded. “What the hell is the use of anything?”

  He turned and went out into the dark noisome yard outside. Coventry thrust his hand deep into his trouser pocket and handed the landlord a fistful of coins. “Thank you, Sir,” the man said ironically and closed the door behind them.

  Stephen was leaning against a wall, his face turned up to the night sky. “They think I’m done, but I’ll get them,” he said. “They think they’ll get their own way, bend me to their wishes, but I’ll get them. I can get them. I know what they want. I know what’s precious to them. They can be hurt, I’ve seen people hurt. I’ve seen things that these shirkers wouldn’t believe.

  “I care for nothing now. Juliette is dead and Lily’s ganged up against me, hanging over the cradle night and day. Everyone’s in love with Christopher and no-one allowing me what I want.

  “Well, I won’t have it. If they stand in my way I’ll show them. They think that they can stop me, well, I can make them wish that they had given me everything I ever wanted. I can give them nightmares—like they have given me. I can give them nightmares that last all day—nightmares like I have. Nightmares that will last all my life if I cannot have my farm and get away from all of this.”

  Coventry took him gently by the shoulder and turned him towards the street. The car was parked only a little way away. Stephen slumped in the front seat. Coventry glanced at him uneasily, as if Stephen were an officer again, whose orders might mean death in a moment, whose whim had to be obeyed.

  “I shall give them nightmares that last all day,” Stephen said again. His head lolled on to his chest and in moments he was asleep.

  34

  IRONICALLY, THE NEXT DAY, while Stephen was still heavy with his hangover and sulky, the salesman for Morris Motors telephoned him at his office to tell him that the Bullnose Morris he had ordered for his wife had arrived.

  Stephen told the man to take it rou