Fallen Skies Read online

  There was a general murmur of irritation and boredom and then the cast went back up the catwalk to the stage and took their places.

  “Chorus girls, you’re in your line, in the splits. Don’t bunch up. Spread out. There’s only six of you, there’s no need to advertise it. Spread out and look like twenty.”

  Lily wriggled over sideways.

  “Now, Charlie! Can we have the whole thing quicker?”

  “You can do. But it’ll be more of a gallop than a march.”

  “Gallop the bloody thing then. Let’s have the Charge of the Light Brigade, not an advance up the Menin Road. I want it to move!”

  Charlie nodded to the orchestra. “One, two-three, four,” he said quickly. “That speed. Off we go. One, two-three, four.”

  The drum rolled. The chorus line leaped to their feet, stepped briskly forward and bowed. Lily found herself almost running backwards, trying to keep time to the music and get to her place.

  The stars stormed down the centre of the stage, bowed, and dashed to their positions. Only Sylvia de Charmante swayed down, serene and unruffled, at the same speed as before, smiling.

  “Thank you,” William said. “Hold it there.”

  Lily waited with malicious anticipation for Sylvia de Charmante to receive one of William’s pithy criticisms.

  “Much, much better,” he said. “That’s the speed. That’s fine. Sylvia, you were gorgeous. Just a tiny bit faster to the front and the audience will have longer to see you. You’re lost at the back of the stage, we don’t know you’re there. Come downstage quicker and you have all the time in the world in the spotlight taking your bow.”

  Lily eyed William with growing respect.

  “OK then, we’re done,” William said. “Over to you, Mike.”

  The SM came out from the wings, his shirt blotchy with sweat. “Tea matinée tomorrow at three,” he said. “Everyone here by two thirty. Any problems with costumes, see Mary in wardrobe straight away. Two thirty tomorrow. Good night everybody. Well done.”

  Lily went back to the dressing room and found her hat and coat. The hat had fallen off the peg to the floor and was dusty. Lily brushed it absentmindedly and pulled it on her head. She wanted to see Charlie.

  She went back up the stairs to the stage. The crew were tidying up and the SM had gone from his corner. Lily stepped out on to the stage and looked out into the darkness. With the stage lights dimmed she could see the auditorium. Immediately below the stage were the stalls. Each seat had a little bracket where a tray for drinks or tea could be clipped. Lily tried to imagine the seats filled with people talking, laughing, drinking and flirting.

  At the back of the theatre was the bar with a half-glass partition to separate the drinkers and promenaders from the seated audience. Lily would have to sing clearly and loudly enough to be heard over their chatter and the shouting of orders. Above them was the circle, and behind the circle seats, the circle bar with waiter service. Lily looked up at the vaulted ceiling painted blue with white and pink clouds and a yellow sunburst in the middle. She breathed in the smell of the theatre—stale cigarette smoke, cold air, the smell of emptiness where there had been a crowd. It smelled of magic. Anything could happen here.

  Lily stepped forward, holding out her arms as she had seen Sylvia de Charmante do, as if to embrace an adoring crowd. She bowed with immense dignity as if she were overwhelmed with praise. When she came up she was smiling for a shower of bouquets.

  5

  HELEN WALKED LILY TO THE THEATRE for her debut at the tea matinée and then went around to the front of the house and treated herself to a ticket in the circle. Lily had been weepy with nerves and Helen had smiled calmly and told her to fear nothing. Only now that the stage door was closed behind her daughter could she acknowledge how anxious she was feeling. She sat in the little seat and ordered tea. She had not treated herself to such an outing in years but when the tea tray came, and the sandwiches, and the slice of cake, she found her mouth was so dry that she could taste nothing.

  Charlie Smith came out with the orchestra, looking handsome and young in his black tie and tails. Helen smiled down at him, knowing he could not see her, willing him to help Lily in performance as she knew he had helped her in rehearsal. So much depended on the girl doing well. Not just the financial investment—all those saved shillings and pennies through all the hard years—but Lily’s whole future. Helen could not see a way for Lily to escape from the backstreets of her home unless her talent could carry her away, far away, to distant music halls and perhaps even theatres. Lily might be one of the prettiest girls in Portsmouth but that was not enough. She had to be seen, she had to be perceived as a talented girl, an exceptional girl. If this chance did not work for her she would be behind the counter of the Highland Road grocery shop for life. Helen put her tea tray to one side. She could not bear to think of Lily working a twelve- or fourteen-hour day, six days a week, to earn a wage that would barely feed her.

  The first half of the show passed with frightening speed. Helen stayed in her seat for the interval, then the houselights went down, Charlie slipped into his place at the front of the orchestra and opened the second half with the chorus girls’ number. Helen barely saw them. The girls dashed off stage and then there was a brief silence and the measured beautiful beats of “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” started and the spotlight shone down on Lily.

  At the first note Helen relaxed. It was flawless. Lily’s pale gold hair and pale face were luminous in the spotlight, her voice as clear as an angel’s. Helen let the music wash over her, freeing her from anxiety. When the last note came and Lily held it clearly, without a quaver of nerves, Helen found that she was shaking with sobs, crying very softly for joy in her daughter’s talent, and pride.

  Helen went backstage after the performance with her face calm and powdered. She gave Lily a swift hug at the stage door and promised to collect her after the evening show. She did not think Lily would need a chaperone, the song was not one likely to attract the rougher sort of man, nor even an idle gentleman. But that night, at the stage door, waiting for Lily, were Stephen and David. Helen Pears realized then that Lily’s choices for her future were wider and more hopeful than she had ever imagined.

  • • •

  For the next week Stephen divided his time between his work at the family legal practice, and thinking of Lily. He went to see the show twice more. He liked her singing “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” but he hated her dancing the can-can. When she was on the stage he did not look at her or at any of the girls but glared around the bar at other men. If anyone had passed a comment about her, he would have hit him.

  After the show he would wait beside the big Argyll with Coventry at the wheel for Lily and her mother and drive them home. He took them out to dinner a second time, at the fish restaurant just off the seafront. He persuaded Lily to try oysters—which she thought disgusting. He ordered lobster in hot butter for her.

  Helen let him take Lily for a drive along the seafront in the afternoon, but not out into the countryside. The early May weather was promising. Stephen wanted a picnic. He wanted to sit with Lily in a hayfield and watch larks in the sky. He wanted to lie back on a tartan rug and sleep for once without dreams. He wanted to look from Portsdown Hill across half of Hampshire without planning in his mind where he would put a machine gun post to defend the summit, or calculate how long it would take to dig a good deep trench across those quiet fields.

  The hayfields were pale watery green, starred with thousands of wildflowers, rich with butterflies and busy with nesting birds. It was a different world, a different countryside from the lands that had been his home for two and a half years. He could not believe that fields could sprout such different crops as purple vetch and white clover here, and shell cases and dead men over there. The long flat Flanders plain must have been green and growing once. He could not imagine the Menin Road verged with primroses, wet with bluebells. It was another world. There could be no connection between that place