Fallen Skies

Stephen smiled. He felt very much older and more experienced than Lily, who had been a little girl at school when other women had forced him to war. ‘Was that your first kiss?’ he asked.

‘Yes!’

He chuckled, ‘I will give you very many more than that, Lily, my lovely Lily.’ He drew a breath. He felt daring. He saw himself through Lily’s eyes, handsome, wealthy, powerful. He gave a little excited laugh, freed by Lily’s rejection of the past, by Lily’s hatred of the war. ‘I will give you many more kisses,’ he promised recklessly. ‘Many, many more. I will marry you. I am prepared to marry you, Lily. So what d’you say to that?’

Lily’s face was blank with surprise. Her hand fell to her side and the little smudge of chocolate was very dark against the whiteness of her skin. ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t possibly. I never thought of you like that. I’m very sorry. I must have been very silly. But I’m much too young. And you’re much too old, Captain Winters. I am sorry.’

They said nothing, staring at each other in mutual incomprehension. Stephen flushed slowly, a deep dark red. He felt deeply, horribly snubbed by Lily. All of their days together and their treats together were shaken and remade into a new, offensive pattern. He had been a sugar daddy, a patron – while he had thought himself an acknowledged lover.

‘Lily,’ he said and he reached out his hand to draw her back from her sudden enmity, from her sudden girlish rejection.

Wobbly on the shingle in her little shoes, Lily stepped quickly back, out of his reach. The sea, a few yards away, washed in and out, sucking at the pebbles of the foreshore, a nagging ominous sound, like distant gunfire. Lily looked frightened, ready for flight. Stephen was filled with a bullying desire to smack her. She had led him on with her prettiness and her provocative respectability and now she shrank like some virgin child from his touch. She did not understand that she was compromised by his dinners, that she had been bought by his little treats. She was cheating on the sale. He wanted to grab her and pinch her. He wanted to hold her with one arm and rummage inside her pretty jacket. He wanted to rub her breasts and pinch her nipples. He wanted to strip away Lily’s delicacy and thrust his hand up her skirt. She was not a lady, whatever she might like to pretend, she was a chorus girl. If it had been dark he would have grabbed her and slapped her face. Frustrated by daylight and chaperoned by the people walking on the promenade, Stephen stared at Lily with a desire very near to hatred.

‘I should like to go back to the theatre now, please,’ Lily said in a very small voice. ‘I should like to go.’

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