Chapter Eleven

      Stephen did not speak much to Lily during the first part of the drive. After he had told her all he knew of her mother’s health they sat in silence, watching the countryside roll by as Coventry drove as quickly as the curving country roads allowed. Stephen’s nose prickled. He could smell scent on Lily. He had never smelled perfume on her before. She smelled cheap, like a chorus girl, like a tart. The clarity of his decision, when he had told his mother that he loved Lily, faded away at the girl’s real presence, at her smell. She had been warm and rumpled when she had run downstairs. There had been something domestic and repellent about her cheap pyjamas and her ruffled hair and her sleepy face. Stephen wanted Lily as she was when she was on stage as a choir boy, flawless as a china doll. When she had come down the stairs to the front door she had been a warm sleepy sensuous female. It was not just the smell of cheap perfume he disliked, it was the smell of warm skin.

      Stephen shook his head. He had not liked the digs, he had not liked Mrs Harris. And most of all he had disliked how Charlie Smith had been at once a part of that world – he had the same dreamy tranced expression as Lily, he too was still warm from a comfortable bed – and at the same time he had been commanding. Stephen had envisaged himself ordering Lily. But she turned at once to Charlie to ask him what she should do. And Charlie somehow had taken control of the whole situation.

      Charlie had looked like an enlisted man, a common man, barefoot, unshaven and scruffy, but even so he had told Lily to pack and sent Stephen and Coventry in for breakfast. Stephen scanned his memory of the man and saw him coming in to the dining room, hastily washed, and saw the long level look exchanged between him and Lily.

      He glanced across the back seat at her. Lily was asleep, her head thrown back, her little hat askew. There were dark blue shadows in the delicate skin under her closed eyes. Her face was white, a sprinkling of freckles over her nose showing brown against her pallor. Stephen stared at her, torn between longing and anger. He loved her, he desired her, he wanted to hold her and protect her. He wanted to serve her and keep her. Especially he wanted to keep her well away from that hugger-mugger intimate domesticity that he sensed when she and Charlie had looked at each other and Charlie had decided what she should do.

      Stephen shuddered, shook his head. He slid back the glass panel between the rear seats and the driver. ‘We’ll go back the same way,’ he said. He wanted to hear the normality of his voice giving orders. He did not want to think of Lily and Charlie. He could not believe that she would allow such a man, a common man, to be intimate with her. He did not want to see Charlie’s pale dark-jawed face or Lily looking up the stairs, up to him. ‘It was a good road,’ he said to Coventry. ‘We made good time.’

      Coventry nodded his alert attentive nod. Coventry always listened, never changed. He had been allocated to Stephen as his batman when Stephen had arrived at the Front and had stayed with him ever since. He had spoken very little, even in those days. But his smile was as reassuring as an older brother. Whenever there had been an attack and they had been pinned down in the trenches, sometimes for hours, Coventry always managed to make a brew and bring Stephen a mug of hot tea and a slice of bread and cheese. When they had to advance, Coventry was always at Stephen’s side. Stephen knew that if he was hit, then Coventry would stop and drag him to safety. All the others would go on, obeying orders and ignoring the wounded even if they screamed for help. But Coventry would stop for Stephen, and while he had morphine in his pack Stephen would never be left, screaming with pain, waiting for the stretcher bearers to reach him, knowing they might never come at all.

      Once Stephen had taken an order on the field telephone to advance and the fool at the other end would not listen when Stephen told him that the wire ahead of them had not been cut. He tried and tried to tell him that they could not advance for against them was a sprawl of ragged razor-sharp barbed wire and behind that were the Huns with six machine gun emplacements, and behind the Hun soldiers was their artillery which had the range of the British trenches and would see them as they stumbled across the waste ground. They would snipe at Stephen and his men, with their trained deadly accuracy, and they would mow them down with the easy spray of machine gun fire. Shelling them with big heavy artillery shells would be as easy as range practice for them. Stephen had been screaming, trying to tell that bland voice that it could not be done, when Coventry had leaned over Stephen’s shoulder and snatched the telephone wire from its connecting point, so the phone went suddenly dead. ‘Bad connection,’ he had said. ‘Sorry, sir. Rotten connection. I doubt you could hear him, could you?’

      Later that day, while Coventry was leisurely repairing the telephone, a runner arrived to tell them that the attack was cancelled because the weather was too bright and there had been some muddle and there were no reserve forces in place. They would never have cancelled it just because some junior officer at the front line had said that he would die, and all his men would die, if they obeyed.

      Stephen had often protested in those days, his early days at the Front in 1917. In those days Stephen had felt anger at his entrapment in the killing grounds of the Flanders plain, had felt an urgent longing to live. In those days Coventry could speak.

      Stephen glanced at Lily; her face was turned away, her eyes were shut. He reached through the panel and put his hand on Coventry’s shoulder. He felt the comfort of the good wool material of Coventry’s grey uniform jacket. He felt the reassuring meatiness of Coventry’s muscled shoulder.

      ‘Four hours,’ he said. ‘I’ll take over driving in four hours,’ and fell asleep.

      Lily’s eyes were shut but she was not asleep. She felt trapped in a nightmare of her worst fear. The moment Stephen had told her of her mother’s illness she had felt as if she had stepped into a cold shady morass. Even now, in the comfort of the car with the warm morning sun gilding the upholstery and the veneered wood, Lily could feel herself chilled inside. She could hardly imagine her mother ill in bed. Helen had been remorselessly fit for all of Lily’s life. She was a powerful woman, she could shift crates of lemonade bottles, stack boxes of dried goods. She had risen at six every morning of her life and worked until nine or ten every night. Lily could not imagine her mother with that core of physical strength drained from her. She could hardly imagine her tired – it was impossible to imagine her sick.

      Lily turned her face into the sunlight as it flickered through the windscreen. Coventry was driving into the sun, his eyes screwed up against the glare, his hat pulled down so that the peak of the cap shaded his eyes. On the windscreen the splattered bodies of insects glowed like little specks of gold. ‘Please, Jesus, no,’ Lily whispered. ‘Please make her well. Please make her well.’

      At midday Coventry pulled over to an open gateway to a field. Stephen awoke as soon as the car stopped.

      ‘My shift?’ he asked. ‘Where are we?’

      In answer Coventry opened the driver’s door and spread the road map on the warm bonnet of the Argyll. Stephen got out of the back seat and stretched. The midday sun was hot on the back of his neck, his dark business suit was crumpled, the shirt dirty at the collar. ‘By God, I’d be a lot more comfortable in uniform. I never thought I’d say that.’

      Coventry smiled grimly and pulled a packet of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, lit two in his mouth and passed one to Stephen. They looked at the map, their heads close together.

      In the back seat Lily stirred and opened her eyes. Through the windscreen the two men looked as if they were