Fallen Skies. Philippa Gregory

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СКАЧАТЬ speed. They drove on a low flat road alongside the harbour. The tide was out, and over the mudflats the reflection of the moon chased alongside them. There was a mist rolling in from the sea and somewhere out in the Solent a foghorn called into the lonely darkness. The road raced over a low wood bridge built on piles driven into the chocolate-coloured mud. Stephen glanced inland and saw the black outline of the roofs of Portsmouth houses against the dark sky. There were concrete gun emplacements all along the coast road, and ugly tangles of barbed wire still despoiling the beach. Stephen looked at the mat of wire with a hard face.

      ‘She’s like water,’ he said suddenly. ‘She’s like a cold glass of clean water. She’d take the taste of mud out of my mouth.’

      They turned right on the main coast road, driving east towards the rising moon. It was nearly full, a blue-silver moon, very close to the earth, the craters and pocks on the asymmetric face very clear. The light was so bright that the yellow lamps of the Argyll barely showed on the road ahead. On the right of the road were the flat marshes of Farlington running down towards the sea, and a pale barn owl quartering the sedges and rough grass. On the left was a patchwork of little fields growing vegetables and salty hay.

      ‘Very bright,’ Stephen said uneasily. ‘Very bright tonight.’ Then he shook his head. ‘Doesn’t matter now,’ he reminded himself.

      They drove a little way, and then turned right, south to the sea. There was a small village and then a darkened water mill. Coventry slowed the Argyll and drove past an old toll-gate pub. The inn sign creaked in the wind, the paint all blistered away from the picture of a sailing ship. The mist was coming inshore, rolling in from the sea. Ahead of them was a low narrow bridge joining the island to the mainland. Beneath the mist, the sea, closing from both sides, washed and sucked at the wooden piles of the bridge. Coventry slowed and drove carefully over. Stephen watched the wet mudflats on either side of the car where they gave way to sedge and shrubs and reeds. A sea bird, disturbed in its sleep, called once, a lingering liquid call, and then fell silent. The mist batted against the headlights, fluttered in ribbons on the windscreen.

      ‘Can you see?’ Stephen asked.

      Coventry nodded. He had lived on Hayling Island all his life. He had known this road before the summer visitors came, when it was a mud track for the fishermen and there was no bridge to the mainland, only a ferry. He drove unerringly through the flickering mist to the south of the island where it jutted out into the sea and the waves broke all day and all night on the ceaselessly shifting shingle beaches. They turned right along the seashore. Only one road, a sand track, ran west. At the westernmost point of the island was a solitary inn where you could take the ferryboat which plied across the narrow harbour from Southsea. In summer, people took pleasure trips to Hayling Island for the day, to picnic on the wide beaches and play in the sandy dunes. In the evenings the ferries crossed from one side to another in a constant stream, the women’s sunshades and pretty dresses reflected in the harbour water and in the quiet evening air you could hear people laughing.

      The foghorn moaned. Sand from the high dunes on their left had drifted over the road and Coventry leaned forward to see his way in the mist. The road was pot-holed and the Argyll lurched when one wheel dropped into a rut. Stephen and Coventry were smiling, enjoying the darkness and mist, the bad road, the discomfort.

      On the right of the road was an inlet of still water, a little harbour off the main tidal reach. Dimly in the mist loomed the outlines of houseboats – three of them – pinned in the shallows by little white-painted staircases stretching from the shore. One was a pretty holiday home: there were empty pots waiting for geraniums on the steps. Furthest out, and the most ramshackle, was a grounded houseboat stained black with marine varnish and with no lights showing. It was Coventry’s. He had gone from it in a dull rage when he had been conscripted, knowing that his father could not survive without his earnings, knowing that the houseboat was icily cold in winter and damp all the year round. His father had died in the winter of 1917 and they had not allowed Coventry home in time to be with him. The old man had died alone, wheezing with pneumonia. Coventry had arrived for the funeral and then returned to the Front to serve as Stephen’s batman.

      He parked the car alongside the houseboat and followed Stephen up the rickety gangplank. The houseboat had been long grounded. Its main structure was boat; but a permanent roof had been built on top, and what had once been the engine room and below decks was now a two-roomed cabin. Stephen went in first; the unlocked door opened directly into a small living room. There was one dining chair drawn up to a little table before the fire and one easy chair at the hearthside. Through the doorway beyond was the other room, Coventry’s bedroom, with a box for his clothes and a camp bed, as they had used in the estaminet behind the lines.

      Coventry came in behind Stephen and drew down the blinds and shut the door before he struck a match to light the oil lamp. Stephen sniffed at the smell of burning oil with relish. There was a little coal-burning range and a kettle filled with water set beside it. The fire was laid with newspaper twists and driftwood sculpted into pale monstrous shapes by the ceaseless working of the sea. The two rooms were cold and damp with the tang of the sea fret. Coventry set a match to the bleached wood and shook half a scuttle of coal on top. Stephen sat in the easy chair and watched as Coventry moved silently around the room, fetching the mugs, the teapot, the tea caddy and the sugar.

      ‘Got any biscuits?’ Stephen asked.

      Coventry reached into a cupboard and brought out a tin. Stephen beamed as if his own home – luxuriously equipped, warm and carpeted, and filled with delicacies – were a lifetime away. ‘Oh, good show!’

      While the kettle boiled, both men bent down and unlaced their shoes and put them to one side. The weather had been dry for days and both Stephen and Coventry rode in a car, walking only for pleasure. But they felt their socks with anxious attention, and put their shoes alongside the range so that they could warm through. Stephen undid the belt from his trousers and carefully put it within reach, over the back of his chair.

      ‘There now,’ he said. ‘That’s comfortable.’

      The kettle whistled and Coventry made the tea. Once again he made fresh tea on top of the dregs of the old, and the brew was sour and stewed. Stephen watched him as he measured four spoonfuls of sugar into each mug, poured the tea, stirred it vigorously clockwise and then passed the mug to Stephen. They each took a stale biscuit and ate in silence.

      ‘She’s like water,’ Stephen said thoughtfully. ‘I feel as if I could wash in her and I’d be clean. I feel that if I had her, if she loved me, I would be like I was before it all. I can get back to the world that I had – if I can have Lily.’

      ‘You were late last night,’ Stephen’s mother said pleasantly at breakfast. ‘It was midnight before I heard you come in. Did you have a good time?’

      ‘I went over to Hayling Island and had a brew with Coventry,’ Stephen said from behind his paper. ‘Drove myself home. But if you want to go anywhere this morning Coventry can drive you. He’ll be in at nine to take me to the office. He’s coming over on the ferry.’

      ‘I’m going to the hairdresser at eleven,’ Muriel said. ‘I don’t need the car before then. Will you be home this afternoon?’

      Stephen put down the newspaper and buttered a second slice of toast. ‘I’ve got a client at three but I should be home by four,’ he said. ‘Another wartime marriage on the ropes. Should be fairly straightforward.’

      ‘I’m having some people round for tea. I thought you might like to meet them.’

      Stephen grimaced. ‘A hen party? I’d rather not!’

      Muriel looked at her son across the table. ‘I СКАЧАТЬ