Fallen Skies. Philippa Gregory
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morning and sometimes call Lily into the room to sing with him. She would sing for as much as a couple of hours at a time until she was tired. ‘Slower,’ Charlie would say. ‘More oomph, Lily. A little more slur there and raise your eyes and smile, really slowly. Attagirl! That’s it!’
And Lily would lean, as he commanded, against the piano and sing leisurely, as if the audience would wait all night for the next note.
‘Keep ’em guessing!’ Charlie said. ‘You’re a queen and they’re your subjects. Don’t ever let them think they know what it’s all about. You’ve got to be the boss.’
Lily’s teacher at home had been a singer trained in the classical tradition. She had taught Lily to sing standing upright with her eyes fixed on a distant horizon. Charlie taught her to drape herself over a piano and introduced her to ragtime.
Not that ragtime was particularly easy. ‘Count, for God’s sake, Lily!’ he said impatiently. ‘Don’t guess it!’
‘I did count!’ Lily protested. ‘I came in on the third beat!’
‘You rushed it. It’s syncopated. You sing it like a march. Leave it slow, Lil. Do it one-two-and-three this time.’
Lily sang it again and was rewarded by one of Charlie’s dark-eyed beams. ‘Angel,’ he said. ‘Do it again, and really hit it this time.’
On Wednesday Stephen came as he had promised. The Argyll was waiting outside the Southampton Palais stage door. Charlie chanced to be going out as Lily met Stephen on the doorstep.
‘Hello, Captain Winters,’ Charlie said easily. ‘Taking Lily out to tea?’
Stephen nodded, his eyes never leaving Lily’s face, pink under Madge’s cream cloche hat.
‘The Raleigh Tea Rooms are very nice,’ Charlie observed.
‘We’re going to the Grand,’ Stephen said. ‘There’s a band there, and dancing. I thought you might like it, Lily.’
‘Divine!’ Lily said.
‘Back at six,’ Charlie said impartially. He glanced at Coventry, holding the passenger door open for Lily. He smiled at him. Coventry looked at him and slowly put a finger to his cap.
‘See you at six,’ Charlie said again and sauntered down the street.
Lily enjoyed the tea dance. Stephen was relaxed and more amusing when they were alone. He could dance well and Lily liked being held by him. His arm was warm and firm around her waist and she felt that her hand in his was held as if it were precious. She enjoyed the feeling of being dainty, special. She liked how Stephen rested his cheek softly against her hat. He was close without being oppressive. His touch on her was light, a caress, not an embrace.
The Grand was expensive. Lily was the youngest woman there, and certainly the only girl in a borrowed hat and without a little fur stole. She liked the waiters’ deference to Stephen, and the shining service for the tea. She liked the little cakes and the good china.
‘I wish Ma could be here. She’d love it.’
‘Shall I take her a message from you? Would you like me to go and see her?’
‘That’d be nice of you,’ Lily said. ‘I write to her every couple of days. She’s only got a delivery lad to help in the shop and it’s a lot of work for one. Especially on Thursdays when the wholesalers’ lorries deliver.’
‘I could go and see her on Thursday evenings and telephone you,’ Stephen said. ‘I could keep an eye on her for you.’
Lily giggled. ‘I don’t think she’d like that! But you could pretend you were passing. You could go in and buy some cigarettes or something, couldn’t you?’
‘And then I’ll phone you,’ Stephen said. ‘If you give me the number of all of the places on your tour I could call you every Thursday to tell you that she’s all right.’
The dance ended and Lily beamed up at him and clapped the band. ‘You’re lovely. Thank you. I’d like that.’
Stephen returned Lily to the stage door at six o’clock on the dot. Charlie Smith was leaning against the door smoking a cigarette and watching girls walk past.
‘Hello again, you’re very prompt.’
‘Army training,’ Stephen said with a grimace. ‘Were you over there?’
‘Briefly,’ Charlie said. ‘I took a piece of shell at Arras and ended up training conscripts in Wales for the rest of the war.’
‘One of the lucky ones.’ There was an edge to Stephen’s voice.
‘I know it.’
‘I was there till the bitter end.’
Lily put out her gloved hand to Stephen. ‘Thank you for a lovely tea,’ she said formally. ‘I will write to you with the telephone numbers.’
Stephen took her hand and held it. He glanced over her head. Charlie smiled blandly at him from the doorway.
‘Goodbye, Lily.’ Stephen yielded to yet another chaperone. ‘Have a lovely time and come home to us soon.’
Lily patted his cheek and then vanished inside the stage door.
‘Bye,’ Charlie said.
Stephen got into the passenger seat beside the driver and the big Argyll eased away.
‘Bye,’ Charlie said again to the empty street.
In the following weeks Stephen missed Lily more every day. In her absence he could forget the way her speech sometimes grated on him and the occasional cheerful twang of her Portsmouth accent. He forgot Lily’s vanity and her ambition to succeed in a vulgar profession in a vulgar age. He forgot how much he disliked the determined gentility of Mrs Pears, and the way she looked at him as if he were not to be trusted. He forgot his dislike of Charlie Smith who had seemed to linger at the stage doorway to see Lily safely in. He forgot his jealousy of Lily’s bright promiscuous smile. All he remembered was the light in Lily’s face, the exact shade of blue of her eyes, her silky cap of fair hair. He remembered her at the picnic sprawled out on the rug, at once wanton and demure with her little white-stockinged feet in the white sandals crossed at the ankles. He adored her hats – frivolous little pots which fitted her head like a bluebell on the head of an elf in a children’s picture. And he felt that enjoyable half-painful ache of desire when he thought of her against the red curtain in her blue choir boy’s gown with her pale face upraised and her voice as clear and pure as a ringing bell from heaven.
He drove past the corner shop every day. He did not care whether Helen Pears was well or ill. But if she were to be taken sick then someone would have to contact Lily and fetch her home. Stephen wanted to snatch her from the music hall tour. Stephen wanted to draw up in his big car and take her away from the noisy, reckless crowd of them. He wanted to take her away from the chorus line, from the men who would drink at the bar and watch the girls’ legs, from Charlie Smith. But every day the sign on the door was turned to ‘Open’ at seven thirty promptly, and Helen did not turn it around to ‘Closed’ until seven or eight o’clock at night.
Stephen’s work continued around him in its slow routine. Women seeking to escape husbands married in a hurry in the excitement of the war came to his office and wept, registered their complaint and left thinking Stephen sympathetic and kindly. An officer who had married a nurse in a spasm of wounded despair, and then learned that she was the hospital cleaner, an unmarried woman with three children at home, found Stephen worldly and understanding. A woman charged with theft, a man charged with violence, a drunkard, a wartime profiteer making his will, an officer whose estate had to be managed by a trust now that he vomited in crowds and screamed at night, all these victims of the war traipsed through Stephen’s office and told their stories, and thought him compassionate.
Not one of them touched him. Muriel Winters, watching her son who had gone to the war in despair and come back stricken, thought that her firstborn