Fallen Skies. Philippa Gregory
he had to go forward, half-blind, while they could watch him, at their ease, in safety; watch him clearly against the pale horizon, and take Their time to put the cross-sight neatly in the centre of his silhouette, and gently, leisurely, squeeze the trigger.
He put his hand behind him and tugged the door open. The bright electric light from the landing flooded into the room and Stephen shuddered with relief. He loosened his collar and found his neck and his face were wet with the cold sweat of fear. ‘Damn.’
He could see now that his father was awake. His big head was turned towards the door and his sunken eyes were staring.
‘I hate the dark,’ Stephen said, moving towards the bed. He pulled up a low-seated high-backed chair and sat at his father’s head. The sorrowful dark eyes stared at him. The left side of the man’s face was twisted and held by the contraction of a stroke. The other half was normal, a wide deeply lined face.
‘Took a girl out to dinner,’ Stephen said. He took his father’s hand without gentleness, as if it were a specimen of pottery which had been handed to him for his inspection. He hefted the limp hand, and let it fall back on the counterpane. ‘Music hall girl,’ he said. ‘Nothing special.’
With an extended finger he lifted one of his father’s fingers and dropped it down again. There was no power in any part of the man’s body.
‘You’re like a corpse yourself, you know,’ Stephen said conversationally. ‘One of the glorious dead you are. You’d never have been like this but for Christopher, would you? Mother told me – she handed you the telegram, you took one glance at it and fell down like you were dead.’
There was complete silence in the room except for the slow ticking of the mantelpiece clock.
‘You wouldn’t have dropped down half-dead for me, would you?’ Stephen said with a hard little laugh. ‘Not for me! One of the white feather brigade?’ He raised his father’s hand, casually lifting the limp index finger with his own. Then he dropped it down again. ‘Who would ever have dreamed that I’d come home a hero and Christopher never come home at all?’ He smiled at the wide-eyed, frozen face. ‘You do believe I’m a hero?’ he asked. ‘Don’t you?’
Stephen heard his mother’s footsteps on the stairs and he got up from the chair and smoothed the counterpane. ‘Sleep well.’ He went quietly out of the room.
‘Goodnight, Mother,’ he said.
She was going to her bedroom opposite. ‘Are you going to bed now?’
‘I’m having a brew with Coventry,’ he said.
She smiled, containing her irritation. ‘You two are like little boys having feasts after lights out. Don’t leave cigarette ends around, Cook complains and it’s me who has to deal with her – not you.’
He nodded and went down the stairs, through the baize door at the head of the basement stairs and down to the warm, sweet-smelling kitchen. It was the only place in the house that smelled of life. His father’s bedroom smelled like a hospital, the drawing room smelled of cold flowers and furniture polish. But down here there were mingled smells of cooking and soapsuds, tobacco smoke and ironing. The range was still hot and Coventry had a kettle on the top. On the wide scrubbed kitchen table drawn up before the range was a battered tin teapot and two white enamelled mugs. Coventry poured the tea, added four spoonfuls of sugar to each cup and stirred them each ritually, five times, clockwise. The two men sat in comfortable silence, facing the kitchen range. They hunched up their shoulders, they wrapped their hands around their mugs. They sat close, shoulders, forearms and elbows just touching, huddled as if they were still in a dug-out. They did not speak; their faces were serene.
Lily, dressed in cotton pyjamas, leaned against the window frame and watched the moonlight reflected on the shiny slates of the roofs opposite.
‘He’s ever so handsome,’ she said.
Helen Pears, turning down the bed and slipping a hot water bottle between the cold sheets, grunted non-committally.
‘Don’t you think he’s handsome?’
‘Get into bed, Lil. You’ll catch your death of cold.’
Lily left the window unwillingly. Helen drew the thick blackout curtains on the lingering yellow moon.
‘He was a hero in the war,’ Lily claimed. One of the girls had read about him in the newspaper. He captured a farmhouse and killed all the Huns.’
Helen held up the covers, Lily slid into bed reluctantly and Helen tucked her up like a child.
‘Did I sing well?’
‘Like a bird.’
‘They liked me, didn’t they?’
‘They loved you.’
‘Will you sit with me till I’m asleep?’
‘I’ve got a bit of sewing to do, I’ll sit in my chair.’
Helen fetched her sewing and sat in the basketweave nursery chair under the gaslight. She was darning Lily’s stockings, her face screwed into tired lines. When Lily’s dark eyelashes closed, Helen put her work away and turned down the light. She paused for a moment in the darkness, watching her sleeping daughter, as she had done for the long years of Lily’s babyhood and childhood. ‘Goodnight,’ she said very quietly. ‘Goodnight, my dearest. Sweet dreams.’
Lily had been stage-struck from babyhood when she would drape herself in her mother’s old feather boa and traipse around the little flat above the shop, singing in her true little voice. Against all the odds Helen Pears had forced the corner shop into profit and saved the money to send Lily to ballet school and to a singing teacher. Scrimping on the household bills and hiding money from her husband, she had managed to get Lily a training which had been good enough to win her a place in the chorus of the Palais, owned by the Edwardes Music Halls of Southsea, Bournemouth and Plymouth. It was not what Helen Pears had wanted for her daughter, but it was the best she could provide. And it was the first step in moving the girl away from the narrow streets and narrow lives of Portsmouth.
Lily might have been a dancer in the chorus line for ever, if she had not caught the eye of the musical director, Charlie Smith, in the first week of rehearsals.
‘Here, Lily, can you sing?’ he asked during a break in one of the sessions. The dancers were scattered around the front seats of the darkened theatre, their feet up on the brass rail that surrounded the orchestra pit, drinking tea out of thermos flasks, eating sandwiches and gossiping. Charlie was picking out a tune on the piano.
‘Yes,’ Lily said, surprised.
‘Can you read music?’
Lily nodded.
‘Sing me this,’ he said, tossing a sheet of music at her.
Charlie started the rippling chords of the introduction. Lily, her eyes still on the song sheet, walked to the orchestra pit, stepped casually over the brass rail and leaned against the piano to sing.
There was a little silence when she had finished.
‘Very nice,’ he said casually. ‘Good voice production.’
‘Back to work everybody, please,’ the stage manager called from the wings. ‘Mr Brett wants to see the greyhound number. Just mark it out. Miss Sylvia de Charmante will be here this afternoon. Until then please remember to leave room for her.’
Charlie winked at Lily. ‘Buy you lunch,’ he said.
The girls climbed the catwalk up to the stage and got into line, leaving a space in the middle for the soloist.
‘She’s got a dog,’ the stage manager said dismally. ‘A greyhound thing. Remember to leave space for it.