Fallen Skies. Philippa Gregory
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the nightmares, when he woke the whole house with his screaming – these too would stop. Stephen’s wife would turn him back into a civilian. Stephen’s wife would pick up the pieces left by the war and mend him into a whole man again.
The girl from the Palais and this picnic in the country could not be prevented. Muriel had lost her power over Stephen when she sent him to his brother’s graveyard. He had thought then that if she had loved him at all she would have fought to keep him safe, at home. Her betrayal had opened a wide gulf between them that Muriel alone could not bridge. But Muriel still had authority. The chorus girl from the Palais would never set foot in number two, The Parade.
Lily lay on her back, a stem of grass in her mouth, hat askew, watching the blue sky and the small pale clouds drifting across it. Stephen was leaning back against the Argyll’s polished mudguard, hardly daring to breathe for fear of harming his sense of peace.
‘This is nice,’ Lily said carelessly.
Stephen nodded. There were no words for how he felt, watching Lily’s face turned up to the sky, her long body stretched seductively over a tartan rug, her little feet in white stockings and white sandals, demurely crossed. On the corner of the rug Mrs Pears repacked the picnic basket. Coventry sat on a log a little way off smoking a cigarette.
There was a lark going upwards and upwards into the blue. Lily’s eyes – as blue as the sky – watched it soaring, listening to its call. ‘Funny little bird,’ she said. ‘What’s it doing that for?’
‘For joy,’ Stephen said softly. His heart felt tight in his chest. Lily’s profile, as clear and exquisite as a cameo, burned into his mind. He thought he would see her face, blanched by the bright colours of the tartan rug, for ever. He thought this one picture of a pretty girl on a summer day might drive all the other pictures from his mind.
‘How lovely,’ Lily said wonderingly. ‘I never thought they sang because they were happy. I thought they just sang because they had to.’
Stephen smiled. He could feel laughter bubbling inside him like an underground spring, blocked for too many years. ‘Like a paid choir?’ he asked.
Lily giggled at her own silliness. ‘Like the chorus line,’ she said. ‘Whether they feel like it or not. Up at dawn and in a line, twitter twitter twitter. You, sparrow, you’re flat!’
‘And the stars come on later,’ Stephen suggested. ‘The blackbird. And the nightingale only comes for command performances. And the cuckoo has a really short season!’
‘Does it? Why?’
Stephen was puzzled by her ignorance. ‘It’s only here in spring,’ he said.
Lily turned to look at him, one casual hand shielding her eyes from the sun. Stephen drank in the crook of her elbow, her short hair spilling out from her hat.
‘Is it?’
‘You know the song – “April come she will, May she will stay, June she change her tune …”’
Lily giggled gloriously. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Sing it to me!’
Stephen laughed, a croaky unfamiliar feeling. ‘I can’t sing!’
‘Sing!’ Lily commanded.
Stephen glanced across at Coventry and Mrs Pears, embarrassed. Both of them were deaf and blind to him and Lily. Coventry was slowly smoking, looking out over the hills. Mrs Pears had taken some sewing out of her bag and was concentrating on her stitching.
April, come she will,
May she will sing all day,
June she will change her tune,
July she will fly,
August go she must.
Lily sat up, clasping her knees, to listen.
‘Sing it again!’ she commanded.
This time she joined in with him, her clear steady voice hesitating around the tune and stumbling on the words.
‘Again,’ she said when they had finished. ‘Please, Stephen. It’s so pretty.’
He sang it again with her, watching her mouth shaping the words and the unwavering concentration on her face. She was very young still. He thought of Marjorie and Sarah at his mother’s tea party with their affectations and tricks. Lily was like a child beside them. Like a child or like a woman of extraordinary purity. As if she lived in a different country altogether from post-war England with its greed and compromise. She was like the other girl, when he first saw her in Belgium, a simple girl who worked on the land and knew only the seasons and crops. A girl who trotted her donkey cart past a line of silent marching men and looked at them with pity in her eyes.
‘I’ve got it,’ Lily said. She gestured him to be quiet and then sang the song through to him. ‘Is that right?’ she asked.
Stephen felt his heart move inside him as if it had been frozen and dead for years.
‘Oh Lily, I do love you so,’ he said.
And Lily, with the sun on her back, too content to demur, reached forward and put her hand to his cheek in a gesture that silenced and caressed him, at once.
On the drive home Stephen hesitated about asking permission to visit Lily in Southampton or elsewhere on tour. But Lily’s smiling contentment throughout the long sunny day had made him more confident.
‘I should like to visit Lily next week, while she is in Southampton,’ he said, speaking across her to Mrs Pears. ‘I have to go to Southampton for business on Wednesday. If you would give your permission I should like to take Lily out to dinner and take her back to her lodgings later.’
He watched for the slight movement which was Lily’s nudge and her nod. Mrs Pears hesitated. ‘Lily’s still very young, Captain Winters,’ she said. ‘I don’t want her talked about. Girls gossip and there’s more gossip talked in the theatre than you would imagine. I think it’s perhaps better for Lily if she goes home with the other girls after the show.’
‘Oh, Ma!’ Lily remonstrated.
Helen Pears shook her head, addressed herself to Stephen. ‘I don’t want to make one rule for you and a different one for everyone else,’ she said frankly. ‘Lily’s bound to get asked. The answer should always be the same. She doesn’t go out to dinner without me. If I can’t be there, then she can’t go.’
Lily hunched her shoulders but she did not appeal against her mother’s decision.
‘What about taking her out for tea, between the shows? As I have done in Portsmouth?’ Stephen asked. He could feel his anger rising that Helen Pears should stand between him and Lily. Like all women, he thought, very quick to sacrifice someone else for their own ends.
Helen nodded. ‘If it is not inconvenient for you when you are working,’ she said. ‘Lily may certainly go out to tea with you in Southampton.’
Lily peeped a smile at him from under her hat. ‘On Wednesday?’ she asked.
‘Wednesday,’ he said.
‘You keep Captain Winters at arm’s length,’ Helen observed to Lily as she watched the Argyll drive off from the upstairs sitting room window. ‘He’s very much in love with you. And if he asks you out to dinner again, you remember I said no.’
‘He’s nice though,’ Lily said. ‘He’s nice to take us out like that. I haven’t had such a lovely day ever, I don’t think. And did you see the china? And the teapot? It was solid silver, wasn’t it?’
Helen nodded. She had felt the weight of the pot as she had repacked the hamper.
‘Plenty of money there,’ she observed. ‘But not for you. You don’t have to marry, you don’t have to make a choice for years. You can be free, Lily, with your talent. You’ve got your career ahead of you and all sorts of opportunities.’
Lily