Fallen Skies. Philippa Gregory
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known that it was morally wrong to use gas, that gas was banned from warfare. Everyone knew that the attack would fail and that men would die for nothing. But the HQ staff let it go ahead because they wanted to see the gas, and because the chain of command was so slow and unwieldy that it was almost impossible to cancel an advance even though it was bound to fail. A thousand deaths here or there made little difference – and anyway, that is the nature of war.
Stephen started to say that Jim died a hero. That he would not have suffered. That when you run forward, stumbling through the churned earth towards the bright flashes of cracking fire with the shells whining above you and the sudden earth-shaking crump of them landing near you, then you go joyfully: for your country, for freedom, for your God. But his stammer choked on the lies and all he could do was to shake his head, shake his head like a broken doll and say: ‘He d … he d … he d …’
‘I’m sorry,’ John Pascoe had said quickly. ‘I beg your pardon. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.’
They never spoke of the war again.
‘Busy day?’ Pascoe asked now, opening his door at Stephen’s footstep on the stairs. The office was a twisted old building in Old Portsmouth, the most ancient part of the town. The streets were cobbled, they glowed an eerie shadowy blue from the gas lighting at night. The office floors went up and down and there were little turns and extra stairs in every corridor. It was not an efficient building but it suited the firm’s Dickensian style.
‘Not very busy,’ Stephen said. ‘Anything I can do for you?’
John shook his head. ‘I’ve got a paternity suit you might like to look at,’ he said. ‘I think we’ve got a good case. She’s a respectable girl, and the man sounds a bit of a cad.’
‘All right,’ Stephen said. ‘Shove the file over later on.’
He worked on letters all the morning, dictating replies to his clerk. They would be typed and posted in the afternoon. The clerk had only one arm. Stephen kept his eyes turned away from the pinned sleeve. The man’s job had been done by girls while he was away at the Front, but Stephen had insisted that men take the jobs when they returned, though they were not paid at the pre-war rate. Stephen kept the cheaper women’s wages and gave jobs back to men. He did not like women in the office. He did not like their high frivolous voices answering the telephone. He thought it unsuitable that a spinster should read the divorce cases with their detailed adulteries and abuses, and he would never have employed a married woman whose place was at home.
In the afternoon, after a leisurely lunch with John Pascoe at their usual table at the Dolphin Hotel on the High Street, he saw Mrs Shirley Walker, whose husband had beaten her, buggered her, and finally run off. She had no evidence and no witnesses either for the beatings or buggery.
‘Did you tell no-one?’ Stephen asked gently.
She was pale with distress at having to tell the secret, and to a stranger. She was as guilty as if she had been the abuser. She shook her head.
Stephen stayed silent for a few moments, hoping the quiet of his room and the measured judicial tick of the clock would calm her. He was sleepy and quiet himself. On Tuesdays at the Dolphin Hotel it was stew with dumplings and he felt full and satisfied.
‘May I ask,’ he said softly, ‘is there any especial reason why you wish to divorce your husband? Do you wish to remarry?’
She shook her head again and blew her nose into a damp scrap of plain handkerchief. Stephen assessed her looks. She would have been a pretty girl at her marriage in 1914. Since then she had given birth to one child and watched it die in the flu epidemic at the end of the war, and then her soldier-husband had come home and knocked the hope out of her. She was pale, underweight and miserable. In these competitive times she would not be remarrying. There were thousands and thousands of widows far prettier than her, looking for men to replace those who still lay in the mud.
‘What I suggest is that we note that your husband has abandoned you and that you divorce him for desertion in seven years from now.’
Her pink-rimmed eyes leaped to his face. ‘Why can’t I divorce him right now?’
Stephen hesitated. ‘I am sorry to say that you have no grounds for divorce.’
She looked dumbfounded. She gestured to the notes Stephen had made of her stilted account of her marriage. ‘But he hit me, and he did … that.’
Stephen nodded. ‘Unfortunately we have no proof. If he were to deny it in court then it would simply be your word against his.’
‘But he’s been with other women!’ She was becoming angry now, there were red spots on her cheeks.
Stephen sighed. ‘Adultery by the husband is not grounds for divorce.’
‘I thought it was.’
‘If a wife is adulterous, then that is a ground for divorce. But if a husband is adulterous then there has to be some offence to aggravate his adultery. And we have no evidence of anything else against your husband.’
‘It doesn’t seem right, that.’ She was dissatisfied. She got up from the chair. She had a small brown handbag, worn at the seams, and an umbrella with an ugly synthetic handle. Stephen thought of Lily’s light grace. ‘I’m no further on than I was.’
‘You cannot have an immediate divorce as the law stands,’ Stephen said. ‘But we can get you a divorce in seven years’ time if Mr Walker does not return.’
‘That’s not right,’ she said. ‘That’s not fair. All through the war I worked in the dockyard. I painted the ships. I was a painter. Long hours I worked and precious little pay. What do I get for serving?’
Stephen looked at her with sudden dislike. ‘I don’t think anyone came out of the war very well,’ he said sharply. ‘But the women did better than most! They stayed at home in perfect safety after all!’
He saw the rebellion in her face flare, and then bank down. ‘Thank you very much, Sir,’ she said.
He saw her from the room with as much courtesy as if she had been a lady and then took his hat and his soft tailored greatcoat from the coatpeg in the corner and ran down the stairs to where Coventry was waiting for him by the car. Stephen’s earlier calm had deserted him and did not return on the short journey home. He felt rattled by the woman’s ugliness and her sordid story, and he did not want to attend his mother’s tea party which was in full swing when he entered the drawing room.
‘What’s wrong, Captain Winters?’ Marjorie Philmore said blithely. ‘A penny for your dark thoughts!’
They had trapped Stephen between two girls, Marjorie and Sarah, on the sofa, a small table before him with his tea cup and plate and a napkin on his knee.
‘Just business worries. A poor woman came to see me today to divorce her husband. He’s a bit of a brute.’
‘How horrid!’ Sarah exclaimed, opening her eyes very wide. ‘How absolutely horrid!’
‘Can’t she dump him?’ Marjorie asked. She was ‘fast’, Stephen noticed. She wore an outrageously short skirt and silk stockings. He knew, with weary prescience, that after tea she would take a cigarette holder out of her sequined clutch bag and insist upon smoking a cigarette in his mother’s drawing room. Stephen, who never smoked except in his own room, or in his study, would have to watch her puffing ostentatiously, but not inhaling, while his mother tried to look as if she were not anxious about the smell on the curtains.
‘I think divorce is possible,’ he said dryly. ‘I am advising her.’
‘How horrid!’ Sarah said again. ‘Do you have to do all sorts of ghastly things, Captain? As a lawyer? All sorts of horrid quarrels?’
‘Some.’
‘Oh, do tell!’ Marjorie said. ‘Really steamy divorces with shocking evidence? Do you employ private detectives or do you snoop around hotels yourself?’
‘Marjorie