Fallen Skies. Philippa Gregory
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