Читать книгу Fallen Skies - Philippa Gregory - Страница 17

Stephen did not speak much to Lily during the first part of the drive. After he had told her all he knew of her mother’s health they sat in silence, watching the countryside roll by as Coventry drove as quickly as the curving country roads allowed. Stephen’s nose prickled. He could smell scent on Lily. He had never smelled perfume on her before. She smelled cheap, like a chorus girl, like a tart. The clarity of his decision, when he had told his mother that he loved Lily, faded away at the girl’s real presence, at her smell. She had been warm and rumpled when she had run downstairs. There had been something domestic and repellent about her cheap pyjamas and her ruffled hair and her sleepy face. Stephen wanted Lily as she was when she was on stage as a choir boy, flawless as a china doll. When she had come down the stairs to the front door she had been a warm sleepy sensuous female. It was not just the smell of cheap perfume he disliked, it was the smell of warm skin.

Stephen shook his head. He had not liked the digs, he had not liked Mrs Harris. And most of all he had disliked how Charlie Smith had been at once a part of that world – he had the same dreamy tranced expression as Lily, he too was still warm from a comfortable bed – and at the same time he had been commanding. Stephen had envisaged himself ordering Lily. But she turned at once to Charlie to ask him what she should do. And Charlie somehow had taken control of the whole situation.

Charlie had looked like an enlisted man, a common man, barefoot, unshaven and scruffy, but even so he had told Lily to pack and sent Stephen and Coventry in for breakfast. Stephen scanned his memory of the man and saw him coming in to the dining room, hastily washed, and saw the long level look exchanged between him and Lily.

He glanced across the back seat at her. Lily was asleep, her head thrown back, her little hat askew. There were dark blue shadows in the delicate skin under her closed eyes. Her face was white, a sprinkling of freckles over her nose showing brown against her pallor. Stephen stared at her, torn between longing and anger. He loved her, he desired her, he wanted to hold her and protect her. He wanted to serve her and keep her. Especially he wanted to keep her well away from that hugger-mugger intimate domesticity that he sensed when she and Charlie had looked at each other and Charlie had decided what she should do.

Stephen shuddered, shook his head. He slid back the glass panel between the rear seats and the driver. ‘We’ll go back the same way,’ he said. He wanted to hear the normality of his voice giving orders. He did not want to think of Lily and Charlie. He could not believe that she would allow such a man, a common man, to be intimate with her. He did not want to see Charlie’s pale dark-jawed face or Lily looking up the stairs, up to him. ‘It was a good road,’ he said to Coventry. ‘We made good time.’

Coventry nodded his alert attentive nod. Coventry always listened, never changed. He had been allocated to Stephen as his batman when Stephen had arrived at the Front and had stayed with him ever since. He had spoken very little, even in those days. But his smile was as reassuring as an older brother. Whenever there had been an attack and they had been pinned down in the trenches, sometimes for hours, Coventry always managed to make a brew and bring Stephen a mug of hot tea and a slice of bread and cheese. When they had to advance, Coventry was always at Stephen’s side. Stephen knew that if he was hit, then Coventry would stop and drag him to safety. All the others would go on, obeying orders and ignoring the wounded even if they screamed for help. But Coventry would stop for Stephen, and while he had morphine in his pack Stephen would never be left, screaming with pain, waiting for the stretcher bearers to reach him, knowing they might never come at all.

Once Stephen had taken an order on the field telephone to advance and the fool at the other end would not listen when Stephen told him that the wire ahead of them had not been cut. He tried and tried to tell him that they could not advance for against them was a sprawl of ragged razor-sharp barbed wire and behind that were the Huns with six machine gun emplacements, and behind the Hun soldiers was their artillery which had the range of the British trenches and would see them as they stumbled across the waste ground. They would snipe at Stephen and his men, with their trained deadly accuracy, and they would mow them down with the easy spray of machine gun fire. Shelling them with big heavy artillery shells would be as easy as range practice for them. Stephen had been screaming, trying to tell that bland voice that it could not be done, when Coventry had leaned over Stephen’s shoulder and snatched the telephone wire from its connecting point, so the phone went suddenly dead. ‘Bad connection,’ he had said. ‘Sorry, sir. Rotten connection. I doubt you could hear him, could you?’

Later that day, while Coventry was leisurely repairing the telephone, a runner arrived to tell them that the attack was cancelled because the weather was too bright and there had been some muddle and there were no reserve forces in place. They would never have cancelled it just because some junior officer at the front line had said that he would die, and all his men would die, if they obeyed.

Stephen had often protested in those days, his early days at the Front in 1917. In those days Stephen had felt anger at his entrapment in the killing grounds of the Flanders plain, had felt an urgent longing to live. In those days Coventry could speak.

Stephen glanced at Lily; her face was turned away, her eyes were shut. He reached through the panel and put his hand on Coventry’s shoulder. He felt the comfort of the good wool material of Coventry’s grey uniform jacket. He felt the reassuring meatiness of Coventry’s muscled shoulder.

‘Four hours,’ he said. ‘I’ll take over driving in four hours,’ and fell asleep.

Lily’s eyes were shut but she was not asleep. She felt trapped in a nightmare of her worst fear. The moment Stephen had told her of her mother’s illness she had felt as if she had stepped into a cold shady morass. Even now, in the comfort of the car with the warm morning sun gilding the upholstery and the veneered wood, Lily could feel herself chilled inside. She could hardly imagine her mother ill in bed. Helen had been remorselessly fit for all of Lily’s life. She was a powerful woman, she could shift crates of lemonade bottles, stack boxes of dried goods. She had risen at six every morning of her life and worked until nine or ten every night. Lily could not imagine her mother with that core of physical strength drained from her. She could hardly imagine her tired – it was impossible to imagine her sick.

Lily turned her face into the sunlight as it flickered through the windscreen. Coventry was driving into the sun, his eyes screwed up against the glare, his hat pulled down so that the peak of the cap shaded his eyes. On the windscreen the splattered bodies of insects glowed like little specks of gold. ‘Please, Jesus, no,’ Lily whispered. ‘Please make her well. Please make her well.’

At midday Coventry pulled over to an open gateway to a field. Stephen awoke as soon as the car stopped.

‘My shift?’ he asked. ‘Where are we?’

In answer Coventry opened the driver’s door and spread the road map on the warm bonnet of the Argyll. Stephen got out of the back seat and stretched. The midday sun was hot on the back of his neck, his dark business suit was crumpled, the shirt dirty at the collar. ‘By God, I’d be a lot more comfortable in uniform. I never thought I’d say that.’

Coventry smiled grimly and pulled a packet of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, lit two in his mouth and passed one to Stephen. They looked at the map, their heads close together.

In the back seat Lily stirred and opened her eyes. Through the windscreen the two men looked as if they were embracing like brothers.

‘We’re making good time,’ Stephen said, pleased. ‘We’ll take a pee-break and I’ll drive.’

He went to the rear door of the car and then suddenly hesitated. He did not know how to tell Lily that she could urinate in the field. Lily looked up at him and got out of the car. She stretched.

‘I slept well,’ she lied. ‘Are we stopping for lunch?’

‘We’ll eat as we drive,’ Stephen said. ‘I’ll drive now. If you want a …’ He broke off. All the euphemisms his mother used at tea parties were hopelessly inappropriate in this thick hayfield. How could he ask Lily if she wanted to powder her nose or wash her hands? Stephen flushed a deep mortified red. He did not know the common forms of speech between men and women. He could not deal with ordinary life with Lily. She was a lady to him, and thus a whole world of experience was taboo, unmentionable.

‘Coventry and I are going to stretch our legs for a moment,’ he said awkwardly. ‘We’ll be five minutes.’

Lily turned her puzzled face to him and Stephen backed away from her, and touched Coventry’s arm. ‘Pee in the next field,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Come on.’

Coventry followed him. Lily, still not understanding, watched the two men go. They climbed over a five-barred gate and then Lily saw the top of Stephen’s brown head and Coventry’s cap line up side by side and stand still. She gave a quick embarrassed giggle. ‘Bloody fool,’ she said. She stepped a little way from the Argyll so that the hedge hid her from the road and squatted to relieve herself. She watched the clear trickle of urine soak into the ground and smelled the damp sweet smell of wet earth and the musky aroused smell of her own body with innocent animal relish. Then she straightened up and pulled down her tailored summer skirt. ‘Damn fool,’ she said again.

Stephen and Coventry stood in the other field staring into the distance until Stephen checked his watch to ensure that he had given Lily the full five minutes, and then they clambered awkwardly over the gate. Stephen was still blushing.

‘Ready to go on?’ he asked Lily.

‘Yes.’

Stephen got behind the wheel with Coventry sitting beside him, leaving Lily alone in the back seat.

‘You eat all you want from the picnic basket,’ Stephen said as he started the engine. ‘Then Coventry will take it from you and we’ll have the rest. We had a good breakfast, so make sure you have all that you want.’

Lily unbuckled the leather straps on the hamper and opened the lid. She was too unhappy to be hungry. She took a slice of bread and a piece of cheese and an apple and one of the bottles of ginger beer. ‘That’s all I want.’

Coventry kneeled up on the front passenger seat and leaned into the back to take the picnic hamper from Lily. Then he sat back into his seat with the hamper on his lap. ‘Cheese sandwich and a piece of that ham in with it too,’ Stephen said, glancing over.

Coventry deftly sliced bread, cheese and ham with his pocket knife and passed a bulky sandwich over to Stephen. He ate nothing himself until Stephen had finished, and he held the ginger beer bottle while Stephen drank. Only when Stephen said, ‘I’m done now’, did Coventry choose his own food and eat. Lily, watching the two men in their monosyllabic communion, sensed long days and nights of working and keeping watch and resting together when there had been nothing to say except a brief order or an assent.

She dozed, lulled by the swaying of the car, and when she awoke it was mid-afternoon and the sun was behind them instead of ahead.

‘Where are we?’

‘Just outside Southampton,’ Stephen said, glancing over his shoulder. ‘Not long now. We’ll go straight to the Royal Infirmary.’

Lily nodded. She watched the wide green fields of Hampshire without seeing them. She still could not believe that her mother was ill. She still could not believe that the little shop which had opened every week day for ten years was shut today and would not open tomorrow.

Stephen drove swiftly and well. A hay cart pulled out in front of him, towed by an old slow tractor. He waited until the road straightened and then pulled out to the right and swept past it. The driver waved amiably, Coventry raised a hand in reply. Lily watched for the familiar landmarks of Portsmouth, the ugly suburbs of Hilsea and Portsdown. Stephen turned right off the coast road and headed south down the Fratton Road to the hospital. The Argyll swept through the gateway and up to the entrance. Lily was out of the car and running through the hospital door before Stephen had brought the car to a complete halt.

‘Damn! I wanted to go in with her,’ he said. He opened his door. ‘Drive home at once and tell Mother that I am back and that she must make up the spare bedroom for Lily. We’ll come home when we’re finished here. Come back here and wait for me. Quick as you can.’

There was no sign of Lily in the shadowy entrance hall. She must have found her way to the right ward at once. Stephen said ‘Damn’ again and ran up the stone steps to the women’s medical ward on the first floor. A nurse was in the corridor. Stephen nodded at her in his authoritative way. ‘Helen Pears?’ he asked.

‘She’s in there,’ the nurse said. ‘I’ll tell Sister you’re here.’

She threw a quick flirtatious look at Stephen from under her eyelashes but he was already turning away and going into the side room.

Lily was leaning over her mother’s bed, her face wrenched with pain. She had her mother’s hand held to her heart. Helen Pears was barely conscious. Her face was waxy and white, the skin of her eyelids and her lips pale yellow. Every breath came unwillingly in a deep rattling sigh. When she opened her eyes they were misty as if they were filming over already. Stephen nodded. He had seen enough men die to know the signs.

‘Ma? Can you hear me? Ma?’

The hand Lily was pressing to her heart tightened slightly.

‘Lily,’ the dying woman said softly.

As her mother said her name Lily gave a little gasp and the tears tumbled down her face. ‘Oh, Ma! You’re all right, aren’t you? You’re going to be well?’

The door behind Stephen opened and the Ward Sister came into the room. ‘Are you the daughter?’ she asked. Lily nodded without taking her eyes from her mother’s face. ‘I should like to have a word with you,’ the Sister said. ‘Would you step outside, Miss Pears?’

Lily glanced up at her with sudden impatience. ‘Not now.’

She pulled up a chair to her mother’s bedside and sat leaning towards her so her head was nearly on her mother’s pillow. ‘I’ve missed you so much,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve had a wonderful time but I’ve missed you so much, Ma. I thought of you every day. And I so wished you could have come too.’

A small weary smile went across the pale face.

‘But after this season I might get work in town,’ Lily said encouragingly. ‘Charlie may be MD at the Kings! Think of that, Ma! And he has worked on an audition piece for me and wants me to try for an act there! You get well and you’ll be able to see me up on that lovely stage!’

‘Miss Pears,’ the Sister interrupted again. ‘I have other patients to attend to. Please come outside for a moment.’

Lily glanced up at the woman and Stephen realized that although she had heard the harshness of the tone and the irritation in the voice she had not taken in the words at all. Her whole awareness was focused on her mother. She had forgotten that Stephen or the Sister were even there.

He took the Sister’s arm. ‘I’m a friend of the family,’ he said. ‘I’ve just fetched Lily from Sidmouth to see her mother. Please tell me the news. I’ll tell Lily later.’

He drew her from the room. ‘She should prepare herself for the end,’ the Sister said bluntly. ‘Mrs Pears has an acute form of Spanish influenza and she has not responded to any treatment. It has developed into pneumonia. We don’t think she will last the night.’

Stephen nodded. ‘I thought so,’ he said. ‘Is she in pain?’

The Sister shook her head. ‘We are giving her morphine to control the pain,’ she said. ‘But of course it makes her rather vague. If her daughter wants to speak to her we could stop the morphine for a little while. I had not thought she was so young.’

Stephen shook his head decisively. ‘Mrs Pears should not suffer pain,’ he said firmly. ‘Lily needs no words of advice. She has friends who will care for her. They both know that. She would not want to see her mother suffer.’

The Sister nodded. ‘I’m afraid there’s nothing more we can do,’ she said.

Stephen smiled slightly and touched her arm. ‘I am sure you have been wonderful,’ he said. ‘I wonder, could you obtain a cup of tea for Miss Pears? It has been a long and worrying day for her.’

The Sister nodded and sent a junior nurse scurrying. Stephen stayed outside the room in the corridor, watching Lily through the little porthole window in the door. For a long while she stayed with her head close to her mother’s head on the pillow. When the junior nurse came in with the tea she took it without thanking her and drank it almost as if she did not know what she was doing. She stroked her mother’s hair off her face, she smoothed the coarse cotton of the pillow slip. She held her hand. She talked to her constantly. Stephen watched her animated face through the window and knew that she was trying to push death away with the force of her will, to summon her mother back to life. She was trying to build a bridge between life and the drowsy half-coma that held Helen Pears. She sang to her. Stephen saw Lily’s face uplifted and the tears on her cheeks and heard, muffled through the door, her silver longing voice.

It nearly worked. It very nearly worked. She nearly succeeded. Helen’s grip on her daughter’s hand tightened and her primrose-coloured eyelids flickered open once. She stared at her for one moment with a curious intensity as if she wanted to convey a whole lifetime of wisdom and experience in one look. And then there was a deep gurgling rattle in her throat and she spewed a lungful of yellow slime on to the pillow, and she closed her eyes and died.

Stephen was in through the door in a moment, drawing Lily away from the bed, shouting for the nurses. They came in and bundled the two of them out of the room while they cleaned her up. Stephen held Lily close while they stood together in the corridor outside. He watched through the porthole window over her head. He was unemotional. Stephen had seen too many deaths to be moved by one more, and that of a civilian and a woman. When they had changed the pillow slip and the dead woman was clean they let them in again. Stephen stepped back and let Lily say goodbye to her mother alone.

Lily had no idea what she should do. She had seen the rituals of mourning on her street but never been present at a death. She had some vague memory of an Irish family whose child died and they had opened the window to let the soul fly to heaven. Stephen, watching through the door, saw Lily bend over her mother and kiss her cold still lips. Then she went to the window and tried to open it. It was an old sash window, the cords had broken and it had been painted shut with successive layers of thick magnolia gloss. It would never move. Lily tugged and tugged at it, her fingers thrust through the handles at the foot of the window. It would never move. Stephen watched her. Lily banged against the frame, trying to loosen it. Stephen watched her in case she smashed the glass with her bare hands but although she had the intensity of an anxious child she was not hysterical.

Lily turned from the window. He could see she was not crying though her face was very pale. She went back to her mother, lying so still and cold in the bed, and he saw her nod and say something to the dead woman. Then, still whispering, she came towards the door.

She opened the door and held it open, in an odd gesture as if she were calling someone to follow her. She went past Stephen without a glance at him. ‘Come on,’ he heard her say. ‘Come with me. Come with me. I’ll set you free.’

She went swiftly past him to the head of the stairs, her high heels clattering lightly down the stone steps and he could hear her still saying, ‘Come on, come with me. Come on,’ as she ran down to the entrance hall.

He quickly went after her, watched her as she held the swinging entrance door open with that odd gesture again, as if waiting for someone to follow behind her. ‘Come on,’ she said to the empty air and the deserted hall. ‘Come on.’

Outside at the head of the hospital steps she paused. Stephen stood in the doorway, waiting to see what she would do next.

‘There,’ she said and her voice was as desolate as a bereaved child’s. ‘There. You can see it now. You can see the sky. You can go straight up to heaven now. And I’m letting you go, Ma, I’m letting you go. Good luck. God bless. Goodbye.’

She was shaking now as if the words were being forced from her when really she wanted to hold her mother beside her for ever. She even raised her hand in a little helpless wave like a child when a parent leaves for the first time. ‘Goodbye,’ Lily whispered.

Stephen, watching her, thought of the other dead he had seen. The thousand thousand thousands of them, dead in dug-outs, buried in shellholes, blown into fragments, cut by bullets, gassed, smashed, spitted on bayonets. He turned and nodded to Coventry and the waiting car. Another death made little difference. Lily would get over it, he thought.

She got into the car without realizing where she was. Coventry raised an eyebrow at Stephen and Stephen shook his head in that old familiar gesture which meant that someone, a friend, a colleague, a beloved comrade had bought it. Dead. Coventry shrugged, which meant acceptance of the news. The two men, and all the other survivors, had learned a code for death which was now so familiar as to be unconscious. Of course, they would never grieve for any loss ever again.

Coventry drove to the front door of Stephen’s home and held the passenger door open for Lily. She stepped out of the car and took Stephen’s arm without looking around her. On the Canoe Lake behind them a swan chased a seagull and the bird squawked and flew off. Lily did not turn her head. She did not hear it.

The tweeny had been waiting for them, the door swung open. Muriel Winters came out of the drawing room, her face stiff with anger. Stephen guided Lily past her into the handsome room and thrust her into an armchair. ‘Sit here. I’ll get you some tea, and then you must have a lie down,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a room ready for you here. Don’t worry about a thing.’

He took his mother firmly by the arm and drew her from the room across the hall into the dining room opposite.

‘Stephen, I simply cannot …’

‘Lily’s mother has just died. She has nowhere to go. She is to stay here until she has decided what she wants to do.’

‘She must have family or friends of her own.’

‘She has no-one.’

Muriel looked at her son in open disbelief. ‘She must have someone. A neighbour who would take her in.’

‘She has no family and no close friends, and anyway, I want her to stay here.’

‘It’s most unsuitable,’ Muriel said. ‘For how long is she to stay here? And what am I to say about her? I am sure that I’m very sorry about her bereavement, Stephen; but surely you see that she cannot possibly stay here.’

‘She will stay here. And you may tell everyone that we are engaged to be married. That makes it all right, doesn’t it? I will post a notice in the Telegraph tomorrow. That makes it quite all right, doesn’t it, Mother?’

Muriel fell backwards and then steadied herself with a hand on a dark wooden table. ‘Oh no, Stephen. Not marriage. Not to a singer. Not to a chorus girl!’

‘Yes, marriage. And she is not a chorus girl any more. She will retire from the stage of course. She will become my wife and she will never sing in public again. You can tell your friends that she is a local girl whose parents had a small retail business. I suppose that is suitable?’

Muriel could feel her whole face trembling. ‘Stephen, I beg you to reconsider.’ Her voice shook with her distress. ‘This is because of the war, I know. You think that none of the girls of your sort can understand how you feel. But they can, my dear, we all suffered. We all put a brave face on it. You don’t have to pick up some little nobody because you think you can teach her to suit you. There are so many girls, nice girls. Of course Miss Pears can stay while she makes other arrangements. She can stay as long as she wishes. But let’s not be hasty, Stephen. Don’t announce an engagement. Let’s not say anything to anyone.’

Stephen gave a harsh laugh. ‘I’ve made up my mind, Mother. Nothing you can say will change it. But you are right, you’re damnably right, I give you credit for seeing that. It is to do with the war. It is because you and the nice girls packed me and every one of those p … p … poor devils into a place that none of you could ever imagine. You sent me like a child to p … p … play on a tram track. You, and all the nice girls, sent me with a handful of white feathers and then posted me a parcel of c … c … cake and a pair of mittens. I don’t think I’ll ever forgive you! Any of you! Not just you, but all the p … p … pretty harpies. You and all the nice girls marching under b … banners and singing p … patriotic songs. All of you women who b … believe in war, and send others to do the fighting.’

Muriel was trembling, her face was pale. ‘I knew you felt like this, Stephen.’ Her hand was at her throat, gripping her pearls. ‘I knew you were angry with me and your father for making you go. But don’t punish me by marrying an unsuitable girl. If you marry a girl who is no good, a girl from the stage, then you’ll have misery ahead of you. The war’s over and thank God you came through safely. I want you to have a good life now, Stephen, not some dreadful struggle with a bad wife.’

Stephen turned on her a face with so ghastly a gleam that Muriel recoiled, fell back until she was against the heavily polished sideboard. The rattle of expensive china stopped her.

‘I came through safely, did I?’ Stephen repeated. His smile was like the wide grin of a naked skull. ‘Safely, is it, Mother! Safely with the dreams I have, and the sudden panics. A chauffeur who can’t speak and a life that is unbearable to me? Filled with hatred for the old m … men. F … filled with hatred for the young women. Hating the men who survived like me, wondering who they b … betrayed, where they skulked to miss the killing shells. Hating the ones who d … d … died because they are the saints and now I will always live in their shadow. And this is safety?’

Muriel gave a little cry and put her hand up to her mouth to stifle the sound.

‘I tell you Lily is my saviour! She is free of the smell of it, free of the sound of it, free of the knowledge of it. How it happened I don’t know but it hasn’t touched her or spoiled her or corrupted her. When she’s beside me I feel clean again. I can’t tell you how or why. But if I don’t marry her and have her for ever, for ever, Mother, then I will go m … m … m …’ He snatched a deep breath to say the word. ‘Mad.’

There was a short terrible silence.

Stephen went on very quietly. ‘I know it. I know it. I feel half mad already at times. I dream – I dream – but you don’t want to know my dreams.

‘You kept your distance from the reality and you don’t want to know the taste of it as it comes back to me. I wake vomiting sometimes, Mother. I dream of something I found in my mess tin. We were shelled while eating dinner, and a new officer, a young lad, was sitting beside me one moment, and the next, he was gone … but in my mess tin, and on my spoon halfway to my mouth, and on my face, on my lips so that I tasted it, was his blood and his bits of flesh, against my lips, in my mouth …’ Stephen gagged on his words and turned away. Muriel held on to the sideboard with both hands. Her knees were trembling, she would have fallen if she had let go. Stephen pulled out a chair from the table and flung himself down with his head in his hands, breathing deeply until the sweat on his neck cooled and his stomach stopped churning.

‘I b … beg your pardon, Mother,’ he said with careful politeness. ‘I c … c … can’t think what I was saying. I have had too little sleep over the past few days. Please forgive me.’

Muriel rubbed her slack mouth. ‘My dear,’ she started. ‘I knew you felt …’

‘You really must excuse me,’ Stephen said icily. ‘I don’t know what I was thinking of, dragging all that old weary stuff up. I p … p … p … prefer not to talk of it.’

Muriel stared at him hopelessly as he got to his feet and turned a cold shut face towards her. ‘But I hope you will be glad for me,’ he insisted tonelessly. ‘I hope you will be happy for me, Mother, and that you will learn to love Lily in time.’

Muriel looked up at him imploringly. ‘Of course,’ she said quietly. ‘If that is what you truly wish.’

‘I’ll go to her now,’ Stephen said. ‘She’s had the devil of a day. She should go to bed, I think. Did you have the blue room made ready for her?’