Fallen Skies Read online

  Stephen said nothing. Coventry drew the Argyll up at the edge of Southsea Common and the seafront promenade. Coventry got out of the car and stood by the bonnet. He lit a cigarette and smoked it slowly, looking out to sea.

  The silence went on.

  “D’you think I’m selfish?” Lily asked suddenly.

  “I think you’re wonderful,” Stephen burst out. He felt a great wave of relief. “I’ve never heard anyone talk like that before. It wasn’t my war either, you know. I felt as if I never knew why I was there. But I just had to stay and stay and stay there. Whatever it was like. My brother, Ch . . . Ch . . . Christopher—he wanted to go. He volunteered.” He took a breath. “But I l . . . left it to the very l . . . last moment. They’d have con . . . conscripted me if I hadn’t gone. They called me a c . . . a c . . . a coward. Someone sent me a f . . . a f . . . a feather.” His stammer had escaped his control. He bared his lips, straining to make the words come. Lily watched him with wide scared eyes. Stephen struggled and then shrugged. “I can’t talk about it,” he said.

  Lily shook her little head. “Well, I don’t want to know. I don’t know whether it should have happened. I don’t know whether you should have been there. I don’t care. It’s over now, Stephen. You don’t have to think about it any more.”

  Stephen reached into his pocket and lit a cigarette. His hands were shaking slightly.

  “You d . . . don’t want to know about it?”

  Lily shook her head. “Why should I?” she asked coldly. “It’s past. It’s long gone. I want to live my life now. I don’t care about the past.”

  Stephen exhaled a long cloud of smoke. The tension was draining away from his face. He was staring at Lily as if she had said something of extraordinary importance. As if she had the key to some freedom for him.

  “It’s over,” he repeated as if he were learning a lesson from her.

  Lily smiled. “It doesn’t matter any more,” she said. “It’s finished and gone. You’ll never have to go back there. You don’t have to even think about it. I never want to hear about it from you or anybody else.”

  Stephen drew a deep breath. “Let’s have a look at the sea.” He opened the door and got out. Coventry dropped his cigarette and opened the door for Lily.

  “We’ll just walk for a little,” Stephen said.

  Lily’s hat lifted off her head precariously with the offshore breeze. They walked along the promenade and then stepped off the low wall on to the shingle of the beach. Ahead of them was the short white fist of the pier extending out into the sea. The little theatre and amusement parlour at the end of the pier were being repainted white for the summer season of Vaudeville shows. They could see the ladders and the workmen. Lily pulled off her hat and held it in her hand as they walked. Stephen slid his arm around her waist, Lily leaned against his shoulder, comfortable with his closeness.

  “I shall miss you,” she said as if it were a new thought. “I shall miss you while I am away.”

  Stephen paused, turned her towards him, leaned down and kissed her on her smiling lips, held her body close to his for the first time and sensed her slightness, the roundness of her breasts against his chest, the warmth of her face against his. He smelled the warm clean female smell of her, the scent of her hair. He kissed her, pressing his lips on hers and then licking the corner of her mouth, tasting that little provocative smudge of chocolate. He was excited by her rejection of the war; he felt elated as if she could set him free from his nightmares, free from his sense that the war could never end while he, and all the men scarred like him, fought it and re-fought it in their dreams. And she was warm like that other girl had been, and soft, like that other girl had been. And her skin smelled of desire.

  Lily stayed still, her feet shifting slightly on the shingle for a few moments, struggling with her discomfort. She felt stifled and claimed and overpowered. She let him hold her for a little while with a sense of confused courtesy, as if she should not rebuff him, not after their sudden slide into intimacy. He had trusted her with a confidence; she could not pull her body away roughly. So she let him hold her, resenting the weight of his body against hers, tense against the insistent closing of his arms. Then she felt the disgusting touch of his tongue on the corner of her lips, and the smooth scented brush of his moustache, and she shuddered with instinctive revulsion, and stepped back, her gloved hand up at her mouth rubbing her lips. “Don’t!” she said breathlessly. “You shouldn’t . . .”

  Stephen smiled. He felt very much older and more experienced than Lily, who had been a little girl at school when other women had forced him to war. “Was that your first kiss?” he asked.

  “Yes!”

  He chuckled. “I will give you very many more than that, Lily, my lovely Lily.” He drew a breath. He felt daring. He saw himself through Lily’s eyes, handsome, wealthy, powerful. He gave a little excited laugh, freed by Lily’s rejection of the past, by Lily’s hatred of the war. “I will give you many more kisses,” he promised recklessly. “Many, many more. I will marry you. I am prepared to marry you, Lily. So what d’you say to that?”

  Lily’s face was blank with surprise. Her hand fell to her side and the little smudge of chocolate was very dark against the whiteness of her skin. “Oh no,” she said. “I couldn’t possibly. I never thought of you like that. I’m very sorry. I must have been very silly. But I’m much too young. And you’re much too old, Captain Winters. I am sorry.”

  They said nothing, staring at each other in mutual incomprehension. Stephen flushed slowly, a deep dark red. He felt deeply, horribly snubbed by Lily. All of their days together and their treats together were shaken and remade into a new, offensive pattern. He had been a sugar daddy, a patron—while he had thought himself an acknowledged lover.

  “Lily,” he said and he reached out his hand to draw her back from her sudden enmity, from her sudden girlish rejection.

  Wobbly on the shingle in her little shoes, Lily stepped quickly back, out of his reach. The sea, a few yards away, washed in and out, sucking at the pebbles of the foreshore, a nagging ominous sound, like distant gunfire. Lily looked frightened, ready for flight. Stephen was filled with a bullying desire to smack her. She had led him on with her prettiness and her provocative respectability and now she shrank like some virgin child from his touch. She did not understand that she was compromised by his dinners, that she had been bought by his little treats. She was cheating on the sale. He wanted to grab her and pinch her. He wanted to hold her with one arm and rummage inside her pretty jacket. He wanted to rub her breasts and pinch her nipples. He wanted to strip away Lily’s delicacy and thrust his hand up her skirt. She was not a lady, whatever she might like to pretend, she was a chorus girl. If it had been dark he would have grabbed her and slapped her face. Frustrated by daylight and chaperoned by the people walking on the promenade, Stephen stared at Lily with a desire very near to hatred.

  “I should like to go back to the theatre now, please,” Lily said in a very small voice. “I should like to go.”

  6

  STEPHEN WAS NOT WAITING at the stage door to drive Lily home after the last show that night. Helen Pears, accustomed to the silver gleam of the Argyll under the lights at the end of the alley, hesitated and glanced around for it.

  “I don’t think he’ll be here,” Lily said quietly.

  Helen tucked her daughter’s hand under her arm and they walked to the tram stop. Charlie Smith loped up behind them, droplets of water from the sea mist like sequins in his black curly hair. “Lost your beau, Lily?”

  “Looks like it,” she said.

  Charlie cocked an eyebrow at Helen to see how she was taking the news. “Small loss,” he offered.

  “He asked me . . .” Lily was driven to speech by sheer indignation. “You’ll never believe what he asked me! You’ll never believe what he thought I would do!”

  Helen and Charlie exchanged a shocked glance.

  “Don’t look at me, I had him down as a gentleman,” Helen said def