Fallen Skies
‘It can sound like a dirge otherwise,’ William said tactfully. ‘It’s the song. It’s draggy. I love the way you do it, but it needs to move along.’
He was not so tender with the feelings of the dancers, nor the jugglers, nor the conjuror.
‘Arnold, get yourself sorted out,’ he said. ‘We could see the ribbons in the baskets. It needs to be quicker.’
‘The girl must hold the basket still,’ Arnold said, looking reproachfully at Madge.
‘She will,’ William said with quiet menace. ‘Now, jugglers – I know it’s difficult on a stage raked as steeply as this one; but you’re hired to catch the bloody things, not fling them past each other into the wings.’
‘Hypnotist – very nice. Lily – very nice. Tumblers – very nice. Can you speed up the final position a bit? It’s slow.’
The tumblers nodded.
‘The walk-down.’ There was a brief depressed silence. ‘Do it again,’ William said. ‘I’m sorry, but we’ll do it again and again until it goes march-march-march. You’re trailing down like you’re off to the Somme. I want a bit of briskness. I want a bit of life. Back up on stage and don’t wander off. You’re all going to the right places but you’re taking too long. I want it quick. I want it catchy. I want you to run if you have to. Gentlemen – you can certainly run. Ladies – an elegant scuttle please. March-march-march. Let’s get a move on.’
There was a general murmur of irritation and boredom and then the cast went back up the catwalk to the stage and took their places.
‘Chorus girls, you’re in your line, in the splits. Don’t bunch up. Spread out. There’s only six of you, there’s no need to advertise it. Spread out and look like twenty.’
Lily wriggled over sideways.
‘Now, Charlie! Can we have the whole thing quicker?’
‘You can do. But it’ll be more of a gallop than a march.’
‘Gallop the bloody thing then. Let’s have the Charge of the Light Brigade, not an advance up the Menin Road. I want it to move!’
Charlie nodded to the orchestra. One, two-three, four,’ he said quickly. ‘That speed. Off we go. One, two-three, four.’
The drum rolled. The chorus line leaped to their feet, stepped briskly forward and bowed. Lily found herself almost running backwards, trying to keep time to the music and get to her place.
The stars stormed down the centre of the stage, bowed, and dashed to their positions. Only Sylvia de Charmante swayed down, serene and unruffled, at the same speed as before, smiling.
‘Thank you,’ William said. ‘Hold it there.’
Lily waited with malicious anticipation for Sylvia de Charmante to receive one of William’s pithy criticisms.
‘Much, much better,’ he said. ‘That’s the speed. That’s fine. Sylvia, you were gorgeous. Just a tiny bit faster to the front and the audience will have longer to see you. You’re lost at the back of the stage, we don’t know you’re there. Come downstage quicker and you have all the time in the world in the spotlight taking your bow.’
Lily eyed William with growing respect.
‘Ok then, we’re done,’ William said. ‘Over to you, Mike.’
The SM came out from the wings, his shirt blotchy with sweat. ‘Tea matinée tomorrow at three,’ he said. ‘Everyone here by two thirty. Any problems with costumes, see Mary in wardrobe straight away. Two thirty tomorrow. Goodnight everybody. Well done.’
Lily went back to the dressing room and found her hat and coat. The hat had fallen off the peg to the floor and was dusty. Lily brushed it absent-mindedly and pulled it on her head. She wanted to see Charlie.
She went back up the stairs to the stage. The crew were tidying up and the SM had gone from his corner. Lily stepped out on to the stage and looked out into the darkness. With the stage lights dimmed she could see the auditorium. Immediately below the stage were the stalls. Each seat had a little bracket where a tray for drinks or tea could be clipped. Lily tried to imagine the seats filled with people talking, laughing, drinking and flirting.
At the back of the theatre was the bar with a half-glass partition to separate the drinkers and promenaders from the seated audience. Lily would have to sing clearly and loudly enough to be heard over their chatter and the shouting of orders. Above them was the circle, and behind the circle seats, the circle bar with waiter service. Lily looked up at the vaulted ceiling painted blue with white and pink clouds and a yellow sunburst in the middle. She breathed in the smell of the theatre – stale cigarette smoke, cold air, the smell of emptiness where there had been a crowd. It smelled of magic. Anything could happen here.
Lily stepped forward, holding out her arms as she had seen Sylvia de Charmante do, as if to embrace an adoring crowd. She bowed with immense dignity as if she were overwhelmed with praise. When she came up she was smiling for a shower of bouquets.
Chapter Five
Helen walked Lily to the theatre for her debut at the tea matinée and then went around to the front of the house and treated herself to a ticket in the circle. Lily had been weepy with nerves and Helen had smiled calmly and told her to fear nothing. Only now that the stage door was closed behind her daughter could she acknowledge how anxious she was feeling. She sat in the little seat and ordered tea. She had not treated herself to such an outing in years but when the tea tray came, and the sandwiches, and the slice of cake, she found her mouth was so dry that she could taste nothing.
Charlie Smith came out with the orchestra, looking handsome and young in his black tie and tails. Helen smiled down at him, knowing he could not see her, willing him to help Lily in performance as she knew he had helped her in rehearsal. So much depended on the girl doing well. Not just the financial investment – all those saved shillings and pennies through all the hard years – but Lily’s whole future. Helen could not see a way for Lily to escape from the backstreets of her home unless her talent could carry her away, far away, to distant music halls and perhaps even theatres. Lily might be one of the prettiest girls in Portsmouth but that was not enough. She had to be seen, she had to be perceived as a talented girl, an exceptional girl. If this chance did not work for her she would be behind the counter of the Highland Road grocery shop for life. Helen put her tea tray to one side. She could not bear to think of Lily working a twelve- or fourteen-hour day, six days a week, to earn a wage that would barely feed her.
The first half of the show passed with frightening speed. Helen stayed in her seat for the interval, then the houselights went down, Charlie slipped into his place at the front of the orchestra and opened the second half with the chorus girls’ number. Helen barely saw them. The girls dashed off stage and then there was a brief silence and the measured beautiful beats of ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring’ started and the spotlight shone down on Lily.
At the first note Helen relaxed. It was flawless. Lily’s pale gold hair and pale face were luminous in the spotlight, her voice as clear as an angel’s. Helen let the music wash over her, freeing her from anxiety. When the last note came and Lily held it clearly, without a quaver of nerves, Helen found that she was shaking with sobs, crying very softly for joy in her daughter’s talent, and pride.
Helen went backstage after the performance with her face calm and powdered. She gave Lily a swift hug at the stage door and promised to collect her after the evening show. She did not think Lily would need a chaperone, the song was not one likely to attract the rougher sort of man, nor even an idle gentleman. But that night, at the stage door, waiting for Lily, were Stephen and David. Helen Pears realized then that Lily’s choices for her future were wider and more hopeful than she had ever imagined.
For the next week Stephen divided his time between his work at the family legal practice, and thinking of Lily. He went to see the show twice more. He liked her singing ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring’, but he hated her dancing the can-can. When she was on the stage he did not look at her or at any of the girls but glared around the bar at other men. If anyone had passed a comment about her, he would have hit him.
After the show he would wait beside the big Argyll with Coventry at the wheel for Lily and her mother and drive them home. He took them out to dinner a second time, at the fish restaurant just off the seafront. He persuaded Lily to try oysters – which she thought disgusting. He ordered lobster in hot butter for her.
Helen let him take Lily for a drive along the seafront in the afternoon, but not out into the countryside. The early May weather was promising. Stephen wanted a picnic. He wanted to sit with Lily in a hayfield and watch larks in the sky. He wanted to lie back on a tartan rug and sleep for once without dreams. He wanted to look from Portsdown Hill across half of Hampshire without planning in his mind where he would put a machine gun post to defend the summit, or calculate how long it would take to dig a good deep trench across those quiet fields.
The hayfields were pale watery green, starred with thousands of wildflowers, rich with butterflies and busy with nesting birds. It was a different world, a different countryside from the lands that had been his home for two and a half years. He could not believe that fields could sprout such different crops as purple vetch and white clover here, and shell cases and dead men over there. The long flat Flanders plain must have been green and growing once. He could not imagine the Menin Road verged with primroses, wet with bluebells. It was another world. There could be no connection between that place which he had left far, far behind him, and this Hampshire, in this spring of 1920 when Stephen fell in love.
He did not know how to court her. Lily’s bright light was for everyone. She smiled with equal radiance on him, on Coventry, on Charlie Smith, on a passer-by who asked her for directions to Clarence Parade. The joyous expectancy of Lily’s smile was a universal currency. Anyone could buy. Stephen longed to ration her.
She loved his car. She learned to enjoy the comfort of a ride home instead of the walk to the tram stop and then the cold wait. She liked to walk into a restaurant on his arm. But the smile she gave a waiter for pulling out her chair was no less grateful than the smile she gave Stephen for paying the bill. She had no sense of money, he could not buy her. If he gave her a bouquet of hot-house roses, sugar pink in tight sweet buds, she would exclaim with pleasure; but she would be just as delighted with a primrose in a pot from Charlie Smith.
She had no sense of status either, and Stephen was uncomfortable with Lily’s blithe belief that the only reason she had not met his mother and visited his house for tea was because his father was so ill that they never entertained.
Mrs Pears understood the situation perfectly, and Stephen feared her dark knowledgeable glance. She knew very well that he was using Lily to amuse himself while he settled to the urgent peacetime tasks of repairing the family business and choosing a girl from his own class for marriage. Mrs Pears held the line against him like a veteran gunner at a salient point. He feared that she would poison Lily against him, abuse him behind his back even though she ate his dinners. But then he realized that Lily was not someone whose mind you could poison. If you said something disagreeable or spiteful, Lily would look at you, rather wide-eyed and surprised. If it was a funny piece of malice – and he had heard Charlie Smith compare Sylvia de Charmante to a Jersey cow in season – then Lily would scream with laughter and then cram her palm against her mouth to muffle helpless giggles. But if she heard spiteful talk, without the sugar of wit, Lily looked somehow anxious – as if it were her own reputation under attack. And then she would look puzzled and ask one of her frighteningly candid questions – ‘Do you dislike him then?’
Stephen learned that Mrs Pears would not oppose him directly. She would bide her time and watch him. When he escorted them home he could hold Lily’s hand in the shadowy darkness of the car. But always Mrs Pears waited in the shop while he said goodnight to Lily on the doorstep. In the ten days while he drove Lily home, and out along the seafront, and paid for expensive dinners, he never even kissed her goodnight.
It was Lily who brought matters to a head. ‘I shall miss you, Stephen,’ she said easily. They were taking tea at a café in Palmerston Road. Mrs Pears had unbent so far as to allow Stephen to take Lily out to tea without a chaperone. Lily had eaten a hearty tea: sandwiches, tea-cakes, scones and a handsome wedge of chocolate cake. ‘Oh, that was divine!’ she said.
‘Don’t they feed you at the theatre? Go on, you can have another slice.’
‘D’you think I dare? No! The waitress is looking at me. She’ll think I’m a starving Belgian. I won’t! But I’ll have another cup of tea.’
As she poured her tea, her earlier sentence suddenly struck Stephen.
‘Why should you miss me? I’m not going away.’
Lily beamed at him. She had a little smudge of chocolate cake at the corner of her mouth. Stephen longed to lean forwards and wipe it off with his napkin. ‘No, but I am. This is a touring show. We go to Southampton next Monday.’
For a moment he felt nothing, as if her words were the whine of a bomb which would rock the ground with a dull terrifying thud a few moments after the incoming shriek. ‘Going? But when will you be back?’
Lily gazed upwards in thought. ‘Um. July,’ she said finally. ‘We’re touring the south coast from here to Plymouth. Misery, misery! How will I ever get enough to eat in Plymouth without you!’
Stephen said nothing. He could imagine only too well how Lily would be wined and dined in Plymouth.
‘Is your mother going?’
Lily shook her head. ‘She can’t get anyone to mind the shop. Well, she could get Sarah. But she doesn’t really trust Sarah to manage on her own. So she has to wait until she can get Clare – but she’s a school teacher, so she can’t come until the school holidays and even then …’
‘Never mind that now! How will you manage, on your own?’
‘I’ll be all right! I’ll be with the other girls in digs. The company books ahead for us, you know. It’ll be just like being here. Same show. Same work. The only thing that will be different is I shan’t have you to buy me lovely teas!’
Stephen could feel a shudder starting up through him. He felt very cold. He felt like smashing the table and shouting at Lily, or at the waitress, or at damned Helen Pears for her careful – no, her suspicious – chaperonage of him and then her feckless way of letting her daughter draggle off all around the south coast with God knows who.
‘You’ll be lonely.’
‘Oh no.’ Lily had been looking out of the window at the people walking by. ‘Stephen! D’you see that woman in that most extraordinary hat! I hope it’s not a new fashion. It’s enormous!’ She glanced back at him and noticed his dark glower. ‘Oh, sorry! No, I won’t be lonely. Some of the girls are nice, and Arnold is all right when you get to know him, and the jugglers are really good fun. Charlie Smith is quite wonderful. It’s a nice company. It’ll be fun going from one town to another, all together. We’ll travel by train, you know. Arnold is going to teach me how to play poker. And Henry – that’s Mesmerio – says he’ll teach me how to hypnotize people! It’ll be good fun. And who knows, someone might see me and like me!’
‘What?’
‘A producer or a director or a manager. Someone might be on holiday and spot me! It could happen. Charlie says it could happen. And then I’d be off to London!’
Stephen nodded slowly. ‘So I won’t see you until July,’ he said.
Lily smiled at him happily. ‘No.’
Stephen nodded at the waitress and paid the bill. ‘Let’s drive back along the seafront,’ he said.
Coventry was parked on the other side of the road, watching for them. But as Stephen took Lily’s arm to guide her across the road a man shuffled forward on a ramshackle home-made wheelchair, a tea chest on little castors.
‘Sir!’ he cried. ‘Captain! D’you remember me?’
Stephen turned. The man was a pitiful sight. His legs had been amputated at the thighs and his trousers were pinned neatly over the stumps. He was wearing an army greatcoat which had been roughly cut to blazer-length to keep his chest and shoulders warm. Around his neck he had a large placard reading: ‘Old soldier, Portsmouth Battalion, wife and three children to support. Please help.’
‘Captain! I can’t remember your name but you were in command of us at Beselare. D’you remember, Sir? I lost my legs there. We got stuck in the shellhole and couldn’t get out? D’you remember we were there all night with the shells going from one side to another like bleeding birds? And Corporal Cray bit through his tongue to stop himself screaming?’
Stephen had shrunk back against Lily. His mouth was working but he could get no words to come. ‘D … d … d …’
‘D’you remember you gave me morphine from my field pack and joked with me? And we had nothing to drink. D’you remember how hot it was that long day?’
Stephen was blanched white. He stared at the crippled man as if he were a ghost.
‘Oh, go away!’ Lily said roughly.
Stephen swallowed his stammer in surprise.
‘Go away!’ Lily said brusquely. ‘Go down to the British Legion and get some work you can do with your hands. You should be ashamed of yourself, begging in the street.’
‘I can’t get work, missis …’ the man said. ‘There’s no work for men like me.’
‘Then your wife should work and you could keep house,’ Lily said swiftly. ‘You’ve no right to clutter up the shops with your stupid little trolley and your horrible stories.’
‘They’re not stories,’ he blustered. ‘They’re true. Every damned word! And if you think they’re horrible you should have been there yourself. There were things I saw over there which would make your dreams a terror to you for the rest of your life.’
‘I’m too young,’ Lily said sharply. ‘It wasn’t my war. I was too young. So don’t tell me about your nightmares because it’s nothing to do with me!’
She pulled Stephen towards the car away from the veteran.
‘You’ve got no pity!’ he shouted at her back. ‘No pity! We died for you and your sort. Out there in the mud. We died for you!’
Lily turned back. ‘I don’t care!’ she shouted. A tram rang its bell and came rumbling between them. ‘I don’t care!’ Lily yelled over the noise of the tram. ‘It wasn’t my war, I didn’t ask you to go, I didn’t ask anyone to die, and I don’t want to know anything about it now!’
Coventry was holding the door. Lily flung herself inside and Stephen followed her.
‘Just drive!’ Stephen forced the words out. Coventry nodded and set the big car in motion. Stephen looked out of the back window. The crippled soldier had gone. He turned to Lily as if he could scarcely believe her.
‘My G … God, Lily, you were angry.’
‘I hate the war,’ Lily said fiercely. ‘All the time, all the time I was a girl if there was anything I wanted to do, or anything I wanted to have it was always “no” – because there was a war on.
‘I was twelve when it started. My dad went rushing off the first moment he could and got himself killed. And now, all the time people want to hear the war songs, want to go on and on about what it was like before, and how it was better then. Well, it’s my time now. And if it isn’t as good as it was then – well, at least it will be as good as I can have.
‘I’m sick of all the old soldiers and sailors and the charities. I’m sick and tired of it. All my childhood we were fighting the war, no-one would talk about anything else, and now it’s over people still want to go on and on about it. I want to leave it behind. I want to forget it!’
Stephen said nothing. Coventry drew the Argyll up at the edge of Southsea Common and the seafront promenade. Coventry got out of the car and stood by the bonnet. He lit a cigarette and smoked it slowly, looking out to sea.
The silence went on.
‘D’you think I’m selfish?’ Lily asked suddenly.
‘I think you’re wonderful,’ Stephen burst out. He felt a great wave of relief. ‘I’ve never heard anyone talk like that before. It wasn’t my war either, you know. I felt as if I never knew why I was there. But I just had to stay and stay and stay there. Whatever it was like. My brother, Ch … Ch … Christopher – he wanted to go. He volunteered.’ He took a breath. ‘But I l … left it to the very l … last moment. They’d have con … conscripted me if I hadn’t gone. They called me a c … a c … a coward. Someone sent me a f … a f … a feather.’ His stammer had escaped his control. He bared his lips, straining to make the words come. Lily watched him with wide scared eyes. Stephen struggled and then shrugged. ‘I can’t talk about it,’ he said.
Lily shook her little head. ‘Well, I don’t want to know. I don’t know whether it should have happened. I don’t know whether you should have been there. I don’t care. It’s over now, Stephen. You don’t have to think about it any more.’
Stephen reached into his pocket and lit a cigarette. His hands were shaking slightly.
‘You d … don’t want to know about it?’
Lily shook her head. ‘Why should I?’ she asked coldly. ‘It’s past. It’s long gone. I want to live my life now. I don’t care about the past.’
Stephen exhaled a long cloud of smoke. The tension was draining away from his face. He was staring at Lily as if she had said something of extraordinary importance. As if she had the key to some freedom for him.
‘It’s over,’ he repeated as if he were learning a lesson from her.
Lily smiled. ‘It doesn’t matter any more,’ she said. ‘It’s finished and gone. You’ll never have to go back there. You don’t have to even think about it. I never want to hear about it from you or anybody else.’
Stephen drew a deep breath. ‘Let’s have a look at the sea.’ He opened the door and got out. Coventry dropped his cigarette and opened the door for Lily.
‘We’ll just walk for a little,’ Stephen said.
Lily’s hat lifted off her head precariously with the offshore breeze. They walked along the promenade and then stepped off the low wall on to the shingle of the beach. Ahead of them was the short white fist of the pier extending out into the sea. The little theatre and amusement parlour at the end of the pier were being repainted white for the summer season of Vaudeville shows. They could see the ladders and the workmen. Lily pulled off her hat and held it in her hand as they walked. Stephen slid his arm around her waist, Lily leaned against his shoulder, comfortable with his closeness.
‘I shall miss you,’ she said as if it were a new thought. ‘I shall miss you while I am away.’
Stephen paused, turned her towards him, leaned down and kissed her on her smiling lips, held her body close to his for the first time and sensed her slightness, the roundness of her breasts against his chest, the warmth of her face against his. He smelled the warm clean female smell of her, the scent of her hair. He kissed her, pressing his lips on hers and then licking the corner of her mouth, tasting that little provocative smudge of chocolate. He was excited by her rejection of the war; he felt elated as if she could set him free from his nightmares, free from his sense that the war could never end while he, and all the men scarred like him, fought it and re-fought it in their dreams. And she was warm like that other girl had been, and soft, like that other girl had been. And her skin smelled of desire.
Lily stayed still, her feet shifting slightly on the shingle for a few moments, struggling with her discomfort. She felt stifled and claimed and overpowered. She let him hold her for a little while with a sense of confused courtesy, as if she should not rebuff him, not after their sudden slide into intimacy. He had trusted her with a confidence; she could not pull her body away roughly. So she let him hold her, resenting the weight of his body against hers, tense against the insistent closing of his arms. Then she felt the disgusting touch of his tongue on the corner of her lips, and the smooth scented brush of his moustache, and she shuddered with instinctive revulsion, and stepped back, her gloved hand up at her mouth rubbing her lips. ‘Don’t!’ she said breathlessly. ‘You shouldn’t …’