Читать книгу Fallen Skies - Philippa Gregory - Страница 14

Helen did not go with Lily to the station. She ordered a cab for her and waved her off from the shop doorway. There were customers in the shop and they had no time for any farewell more than a hurried peck on the cheek.

‘Write to me if you need me,’ Lily said hastily as her mother thrust her into the cab. ‘You know I’ll come home if you need me.’

‘Stuff and nonsense,’ Helen said brusquely. ‘You go and have a lovely time, Lily. Be sure you eat properly and get enough sleep.’ She slammed the car door. ‘And remember what I said – no dinners out.’

Lily nodded and waved, turning around to watch her mother’s indomitable figure recede as the car drove away. Helen stood in the road, her arm raised, waving and waving until the cab was out of sight. Then she wiped her face roughly on her white apron and strode back into the shop. ‘Who’s next?’ she said crossly. ‘And there’s no credit, so don’t ask for it.’

Lily, gripping her handbag tightly on her lap, with her vanity bag on the seat beside her, rode on her own to the station, tipped the driver and called the porter for her suitcase all by herself, and then merged joyously with the company waiting on platform two for the Southampton train.

Charlie was there, supervising the trunks going into the luggage wagon. Sylvia de Charmante was being driven to Southampton by a gentleman friend and would meet them at the theatre.

‘I’d have thought you’d have got Captain Winters to drive you,’ Madge said. ‘Is he back on the scene for keeps?’

Lily smirked. ‘He took me and Ma out for the day yesterday. In the Argyll. We had a picnic. He has a real silver teapot. And really good china. Just for a picnic!’

The train drew in, snorting smoke and hissing steam. The stoker leaned out over the curved panel of the cab and winked at the girls, his face shiny with sweat and streaked with coal dust. Porters opened the doors and the company piled into adjoining carriages. Charlie found himself seated beside Lily.

‘So, are you planning your wedding, then, Lily?’ he asked with a smile under cover of the noise of the girls getting settled and piling their hatboxes into the overhead shelves.

Lily giggled. ‘No, I told him not, and he’s not going to ask me again. Ma won’t let him take me out to dinner on my own but I can have tea with him. He’s coming to Southampton on Wednesday.’

‘Well, watch your step,’ Charlie advised. ‘If your ma is happy with it then I suppose it’s all right. But watch your step with him, Lily.’

Lily turned her candid blue gaze on him. ‘What d’you mean?’

Charlie flushed a little and shifted in his seat. ‘Oh dammit, Lil, you know what I mean!’

‘D’you mean he might want to kiss me and spoon even though I told him we wouldn’t get married?’

Charlie nodded.

‘He won’t do that!’ Lily said decidedly. ‘He’s a gentleman after all.’

The engine hissed a cloud of white steam and the doors slammed down the length of the train.

‘Shut the window! Shut the window! We’ll all get covered in smuts!’ the girls cried.

They pulled the window up, and fastened it with the big leather strap on the brass hook. The station master blew a loud blast on his whistle, raised the green flag and dropped it. The engine started forward and there was the exciting thump as the carriages moved too, and then with a rattle the whole train eased forward and wheels rolled into their regular clatter.

‘Well, that’s all right, then,’ said Charlie ironically. ‘A gentleman!’

Lily had thought the show would be different in another theatre, but it was reassuringly the same. There was less of a panic in the quick costume changes because the girls’ dressing room was nearer the stage. It was a bigger room and Lily had a proper place at the mirror, and her own peg for her costume. Charlie Smith complained about a draught in the orchestra pit and wore a vest and then a ludicrous pair of combinations under his immaculate white shirt and black bow tie. One of the scene changes was too much for the Southampton crew, and after they had fluffed it for two successive nights it was dropped entirely. But apart from small alterations, the show was up and running, and Lily found the familiar songs and scene changes and the acts made the theatre feel like home in a strange city.

The lodgings were fun. They were all living together in the same house and Lily loved supper after the last show, when Charlie Smith sat at the head of the table and Mike the SM sat at the foot, and the girls gossiped and told jokes and stories of theatre life. Lily felt the proud glow of being one of the elite. There were other lodgings in Southampton, there were other dinner tables. But this was the table for the cast at the Palais. They were all noisy and exhibitionist even when the curtains had closed and they were home for the night.

Sylvia de Charmante’s gentleman friend took her out to dinner at night and she rarely spent time with the rest of them. The other acts ate with the chorus girls, or picnicked in their rooms. There was always someone going shopping who wanted company, or someone who had to stay home and sew her stockings who wanted Lily to sit with her.

There was a piano at the digs and Charlie would play every morning and sometimes call Lily into the room to sing with him. She would sing for as much as a couple of hours at a time until she was tired. ‘Slower,’ Charlie would say. ‘More oomph, Lily. A little more slur there and raise your eyes and smile, really slowly. Attagirl! That’s it!’

And Lily would lean, as he commanded, against the piano and sing leisurely, as if the audience would wait all night for the next note.

‘Keep ’em guessing!’ Charlie said. ‘You’re a queen and they’re your subjects. Don’t ever let them think they know what it’s all about. You’ve got to be the boss.’

Lily’s teacher at home had been a singer trained in the classical tradition. She had taught Lily to sing standing upright with her eyes fixed on a distant horizon. Charlie taught her to drape herself over a piano and introduced her to ragtime.

Not that ragtime was particularly easy. ‘Count, for God’s sake, Lily!’ he said impatiently. ‘Don’t guess it!’

‘I did count!’ Lily protested. ‘I came in on the third beat!’

‘You rushed it. It’s syncopated. You sing it like a march. Leave it slow, Lil. Do it one-two-and-three this time.’

Lily sang it again and was rewarded by one of Charlie’s dark-eyed beams. ‘Angel,’ he said. ‘Do it again, and really hit it this time.’

On Wednesday Stephen came as he had promised. The Argyll was waiting outside the Southampton Palais stage door. Charlie chanced to be going out as Lily met Stephen on the doorstep.

‘Hello, Captain Winters,’ Charlie said easily. ‘Taking Lily out to tea?’

Stephen nodded, his eyes never leaving Lily’s face, pink under Madge’s cream cloche hat.

‘The Raleigh Tea Rooms are very nice,’ Charlie observed.

‘We’re going to the Grand,’ Stephen said. ‘There’s a band there, and dancing. I thought you might like it, Lily.’

‘Divine!’ Lily said.

‘Back at six,’ Charlie said impartially. He glanced at Coventry, holding the passenger door open for Lily. He smiled at him. Coventry looked at him and slowly put a finger to his cap.

‘See you at six,’ Charlie said again and sauntered down the street.

Lily enjoyed the tea dance. Stephen was relaxed and more amusing when they were alone. He could dance well and Lily liked being held by him. His arm was warm and firm around her waist and she felt that her hand in his was held as if it were precious. She enjoyed the feeling of being dainty, special. She liked how Stephen rested his cheek softly against her hat. He was close without being oppressive. His touch on her was light, a caress, not an embrace.

The Grand was expensive. Lily was the youngest woman there, and certainly the only girl in a borrowed hat and without a little fur stole. She liked the waiters’ deference to Stephen, and the shining service for the tea. She liked the little cakes and the good china.

‘I wish Ma could be here. She’d love it.’

‘Shall I take her a message from you? Would you like me to go and see her?’

‘That’d be nice of you,’ Lily said. ‘I write to her every couple of days. She’s only got a delivery lad to help in the shop and it’s a lot of work for one. Especially on Thursdays when the wholesalers’ lorries deliver.’

‘I could go and see her on Thursday evenings and telephone you,’ Stephen said. ‘I could keep an eye on her for you.’

Lily giggled. ‘I don’t think she’d like that! But you could pretend you were passing. You could go in and buy some cigarettes or something, couldn’t you?’

‘And then I’ll phone you,’ Stephen said. ‘If you give me the number of all of the places on your tour I could call you every Thursday to tell you that she’s all right.’

The dance ended and Lily beamed up at him and clapped the band. ‘You’re lovely. Thank you. I’d like that.’

Stephen returned Lily to the stage door at six o’clock on the dot. Charlie Smith was leaning against the door smoking a cigarette and watching girls walk past.

‘Hello again, you’re very prompt.’

‘Army training,’ Stephen said with a grimace. ‘Were you over there?’

‘Briefly,’ Charlie said. ‘I took a piece of shell at Arras and ended up training conscripts in Wales for the rest of the war.’

‘One of the lucky ones.’ There was an edge to Stephen’s voice.

‘I know it.’

‘I was there till the bitter end.’

Lily put out her gloved hand to Stephen. ‘Thank you for a lovely tea,’ she said formally. ‘I will write to you with the telephone numbers.’

Stephen took her hand and held it. He glanced over her head. Charlie smiled blandly at him from the doorway.

‘Goodbye, Lily.’ Stephen yielded to yet another chaperone. ‘Have a lovely time and come home to us soon.’

Lily patted his cheek and then vanished inside the stage door.

‘Bye,’ Charlie said.

Stephen got into the passenger seat beside the driver and the big Argyll eased away.

‘Bye,’ Charlie said again to the empty street.

In the following weeks Stephen missed Lily more every day. In her absence he could forget the way her speech sometimes grated on him and the occasional cheerful twang of her Portsmouth accent. He forgot Lily’s vanity and her ambition to succeed in a vulgar profession in a vulgar age. He forgot how much he disliked the determined gentility of Mrs Pears, and the way she looked at him as if he were not to be trusted. He forgot his dislike of Charlie Smith who had seemed to linger at the stage doorway to see Lily safely in. He forgot his jealousy of Lily’s bright promiscuous smile. All he remembered was the light in Lily’s face, the exact shade of blue of her eyes, her silky cap of fair hair. He remembered her at the picnic sprawled out on the rug, at once wanton and demure with her little white-stockinged feet in the white sandals crossed at the ankles. He adored her hats – frivolous little pots which fitted her head like a bluebell on the head of an elf in a children’s picture. And he felt that enjoyable half-painful ache of desire when he thought of her against the red curtain in her blue choir boy’s gown with her pale face upraised and her voice as clear and pure as a ringing bell from heaven.

He drove past the corner shop every day. He did not care whether Helen Pears was well or ill. But if she were to be taken sick then someone would have to contact Lily and fetch her home. Stephen wanted to snatch her from the music hall tour. Stephen wanted to draw up in his big car and take her away from the noisy, reckless crowd of them. He wanted to take her away from the chorus line, from the men who would drink at the bar and watch the girls’ legs, from Charlie Smith. But every day the sign on the door was turned to ‘Open’ at seven thirty promptly, and Helen did not turn it around to ‘Closed’ until seven or eight o’clock at night.

Stephen’s work continued around him in its slow routine. Women seeking to escape husbands married in a hurry in the excitement of the war came to his office and wept, registered their complaint and left thinking Stephen sympathetic and kindly. An officer who had married a nurse in a spasm of wounded despair, and then learned that she was the hospital cleaner, an unmarried woman with three children at home, found Stephen worldly and understanding. A woman charged with theft, a man charged with violence, a drunkard, a wartime profiteer making his will, an officer whose estate had to be managed by a trust now that he vomited in crowds and screamed at night, all these victims of the war traipsed through Stephen’s office and told their stories, and thought him compassionate.

Not one of them touched him. Muriel Winters, watching her son who had gone to the war in despair and come back stricken, thought that her firstborn was mouldering to Flanders clay, and her second was calcifying to stone. Stephen’s head would nod, and his hand would move slowly, accurately across the page, but he was as distant from the pain of the people who came to him for help as Muriel had been from the battle when she had heard the rumble of guns like a faraway thunderstorm one still sunny day in Kent and said innocently, ‘Listen! What’s that noise?’ and then been unable to imagine what it must be like to be under shellfire in Belgium so savage that the noise of it could be heard in an English garden.

Muriel gave a dinner party. She knew the house was too quiet. The silent man upstairs, Stephen walled inside himself, Coventry neurasthenic and mute. Muriel wanted noise in the house which was not the thin hidden cry of a woman who has lost both sons. She invited the Dents and Sarah. It was another failure. Sarah was huge-eyed and trembling with sensitivity. Stephen’s work, his father’s health, even the weather drew from Sarah a little shiver of compassion and an earnest nod. She put her hand on Stephen’s hand and whispered to him that she knew the war had been awful – too dreadfully awful. Muriel saw Stephen hold his hand still under the insult of the woman’s pity. But after dinner, when the guests had gone, Muriel saw Stephen slip through the baize door to the kitchen and knew that he would sit late with Coventry that night in the silence which was their last and most secure refuge.

Stephen’s best moment in the week was when he went into the corner shop on Thursday to buy his cigarettes and ask after Lily. Helen Pears seemed pleased to see him. The second time he came she made tea for them both and they perched on stools on either side of the counter in the empty shop and Helen read to him from Lily’s letter. She had written from Bournemouth of the grandness of the hotels and the wonderful long sandy beach. They were playing at a music hall near the Winter Gardens and Lily went out in the afternoons and sat in a deck-chair by the bandstand to listen to the band play and watch the people walking by. She never mentioned a man’s name. She never asked her mother to send her good wishes to Stephen, though she knew he was calling. Her letters were full of the summer gardens, and hats, the lengths of skirts which were being worn and the fun they had on their day off when the entire cast went down to the beach and paddled. Lily had bought a swimming costume and was teaching some of the other girls to swim. Stephen thought of Lily’s long pale legs stretched out on the sand and felt his throat contract with a feeling as potent as fear, which he had come to know as desire.

Once a week he spoke to Lily. He timed his call so that she would be off stage at the end of the performance. He telephoned the numbers she had sent to him, ticking each stage door off the list as she moved steadily away from him: from Southampton to Bournemouth, to Poole, further and further away, travelling westwards down the coast. Behind her voice, on the crackly line, he could hear doors banging and people calling to each other. He knew she was only ever half-attentive. Once he found himself talking to one of the other girls as they teased Lily about his phone call. All day Stephen would plan what to say when he spoke with her, but then he would find Lily morose and quiet after a bad performance, or bubbling with joy after a good evening and a delivery of flowers. She was out of his control. Stephen hated her being beyond his control.

‘Is Ma well?’ was the only question Lily would always ask. And after he had told her that Helen was well and busy he knew that he would lose her attention, and that however long he tried to spin out their talk Lily’s mind was no longer with him. She was, he thought, too frivolous, too light and above all too young to be trusted far from home. If he had not loved her so much Stephen thought he would have hated her.

On the fourth Thursday of Lily’s absence there was a change. The shop was shuttered and dark when Stephen called at seven o’clock in the evening. He knocked on the door for some moments and stepped back to look up at the little flat. The windows were all in darkness, and no light came on at his knock.

‘She’s poorly,’ a woman volunteered from the red brick doorway beside the shop. ‘She’s got the flu and they’ve taken her to the Royal. Proper poorly she is.’

Stephen stepped forward eagerly. ‘Very bad? Should her daughter be sent for?’

The woman nodded. ‘Yes, but none of us know where she is. She’s on tour with one of the music halls. And Helen’s mind was wandering with the fever. She kept asking for her but we didn’t know where to send.’

‘I know.’ Stephen found his hands were shaking. ‘I know where she is. Should I fetch her?’

The woman nodded. ‘The doctor said she’d best come home. But none of us knew where to send. We didn’t even know which town she was in. And Helen couldn’t tell us. It’s the Spanish flu, you know, she’ll be lucky if she pulls through.’

Stephen turned away and strode to the Argyll. ‘The Royal Hospital,’ he said shortly to Coventry. ‘My luck’s turned at last.’

He was not allowed to see Helen. The ward sister spoke to him in the corridor outside the ward. She said that the daughter should certainly be sent for. The mother was sick, but not in immediate danger. She was asking for her daughter and the girl should be there.

Stephen drove home and found Muriel while Coventry packed for them both.

‘I have to go to Sidmouth, I’ll take the car and Coventry.’

Muriel dropped her sewing into her lap. ‘Sidmouth? But why, Stephen? What has happened?’

‘The girl I was seeing, Lily Pears, her mother is ill and asking for her. I’m going to fetch her. I should be back late tomorrow night, or early Saturday. Depends on the roads.’

Muriel followed Stephen out into the hall. Coventry was holding his coat out for him. ‘Stephen …’

He turned and she saw his face was alight with a kind of wild excitement. Coventry too had the same keen expression, as if something at last was about to happen. As if all the long months of the peace had been wasted time. As if they were both only half-alive during the peace, as if sudden action were the only joy they could feel.

‘She’s not the sort of girl you want to get involved with,’ Muriel said rapidly and softly. She put her hand on Stephen’s arm to draw him back to the sitting room. ‘Send her a telegram, my dear, that’s all you need to do. You shouldn’t go and fetch her. It’s not right.’

Stephen brushed her hand off his arm. He hardly even saw her. ‘I love her,’ he said simply. ‘I hope she’ll marry me. Of course I’m going to fetch her.’

He turned abruptly away from her and ran up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time. His father’s room was in half-darkness, lit only by the light from the dying fire, but his father was still awake. He looked towards the door as Stephen burst in and his dark gaze focused on Stephen’s sudden vitality.

Stephen stepped up to the bed. ‘I’m going away for a couple of days. I’m going to fetch a girl I know. Her mother’s sick and she should come home.’ Stephen’s smile was radiant. ‘I like her awfully, Father. I’ll bring her to see you. I think you’d like her too.’

He moved towards the door. ‘I’ve got to go now,’ he said. Then he suddenly checked himself and came back into the room. He picked up his father’s limp hand from its place on the counterpane. He held it and looked into his father’s immobile face. ‘I’ve been a bastard. I’ve been a bastard to you. If Lily will have me, it’ll all be different. I’ll be different.’

Stephen swung from the room. His mother, waiting at the foot of the stairs, watched him run down and thought, for the first time since he had come home, that he moved with the grace of a young man, that he was still a young man, one who could fall in love and flirt and chatter and laugh. He kissed her on the cheek as he went past, hardly checking his stride, and then he and Coventry were down the front steps and out through the garden gate. Coventry slung the suitcases into the boot of the car and Stephen got into the front passenger seat beside him. As the car moved away she caught a glimpse of their faces, as excited as boys.

‘Coast road,’ Stephen said, consulting the map book. ‘D’you know it? Southampton, Bournemouth, Weymouth, Sidmouth. Quite a run.’

Coventry nodded.

‘We’ll do it in watches,’ Stephen decided. ‘You drive for four hours now, wake me at midnight. I’ll take twelve till four and then wake you. What about petrol? Are there cans in the boot?’

Coventry nodded again, watching the road as they drove along the front, careful of summer visitors in their best clothes returning to their hotels after admiring the sunset over the sea.

‘Provisions?’

Coventry jerked his head to the rear seat. There was a picnic basket half-shut on a loaf of bread and a ham, a flask for a hot drink and some apples. Coventry had raided the kitchen as casually as an invading army.

‘Should get there around midday, maybe earlier,’ Stephen said, scanning the map. ‘Catch her before she goes to the theatre anyway. Pack her bags, bring her home. Home by midnight or so.’

He stretched luxuriously in his seat and shut his eyes. ‘Wake me at midnight,’ he ordered, and he fell instantly asleep.