Fallen Skies. Philippa Gregory
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Название: Fallen Skies
Автор: Philippa Gregory
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Историческая литература
isbn: 9780007370108
isbn:
Stephen brushed her hand off his arm. He hardly even saw her. ‘I love her,’ he said simply. ‘I hope she’ll marry me. Of course I’m going to fetch her.’
He turned abruptly away from her and ran up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time. His father’s room was in half-darkness, lit only by the light from the dying fire, but his father was still awake. He looked towards the door as Stephen burst in and his dark gaze focused on Stephen’s sudden vitality.
Stephen stepped up to the bed. ‘I’m going away for a couple of days. I’m going to fetch a girl I know. Her mother’s sick and she should come home.’ Stephen’s smile was radiant. ‘I like her awfully, Father. I’ll bring her to see you. I think you’d like her too.’
He moved towards the door. ‘I’ve got to go now,’ he said. Then he suddenly checked himself and came back into the room. He picked up his father’s limp hand from its place on the counterpane. He held it and looked into his father’s immobile face. ‘I’ve been a bastard. I’ve been a bastard to you. If Lily will have me, it’ll all be different. I’ll be different.’
Stephen swung from the room. His mother, waiting at the foot of the stairs, watched him run down and thought, for the first time since he had come home, that he moved with the grace of a young man, that he was still a young man, one who could fall in love and flirt and chatter and laugh. He kissed her on the cheek as he went past, hardly checking his stride, and then he and Coventry were down the front steps and out through the garden gate. Coventry slung the suitcases into the boot of the car and Stephen got into the front passenger seat beside him. As the car moved away she caught a glimpse of their faces, as excited as boys.
‘Coast road,’ Stephen said, consulting the map book. ‘D’you know it? Southampton, Bournemouth, Weymouth, Sidmouth. Quite a run.’
Coventry nodded.
‘We’ll do it in watches,’ Stephen decided. ‘You drive for four hours now, wake me at midnight. I’ll take twelve till four and then wake you. What about petrol? Are there cans in the boot?’
Coventry nodded again, watching the road as they drove along the front, careful of summer visitors in their best clothes returning to their hotels after admiring the sunset over the sea.
‘Provisions?’
Coventry jerked his head to the rear seat. There was a picnic basket half-shut on a loaf of bread and a ham, a flask for a hot drink and some apples. Coventry had raided the kitchen as casually as an invading army.
‘Should get there around midday, maybe earlier,’ Stephen said, scanning the map. ‘Catch her before she goes to the theatre anyway. Pack her bags, bring her home. Home by midnight or so.’
He stretched luxuriously in his seat and shut his eyes. ‘Wake me at midnight,’ he ordered, and he fell instantly asleep.
Lily loved Weymouth even more than Bournemouth. The town was smaller and the audiences less smart but the countryside around the little resort was spectacularly beautiful with wide sheep-grazed fields interlinked with winding hedged country lanes and scatterings of prosperous grey stonebuilt villages. Charlie borrowed a motorbike and sidecar from one of the stage crew and on their day off, Sunday in the first week of June, drove Lily out along the coast. Lily, very daring, wore a pair of slacks lent to her by Madge.
‘Keep your legs in the sidecar, you’ll cause a riot, you hussy,’ Charlie said tolerantly.
Lily had hesitated. ‘D’you like them? I’m not sure if they’re all right to wear out of doors.’
‘We’ll go down secluded lanes, all you will frighten is cows.’
They took a picnic with them. Lily, remembering the Argyll and the grand picnic set, laughed when she saw Charlie’s doorstep sandwiches of cheese and pickle in brown paper bags, and a bottle of lemonade for them to drink.
‘You’re a good deal too choosy.’ Charlie spread his feast on Lily’s outspread head scarf. They had stopped at the crest of a cliff, looking out to sea. Below them a little white chalk path wound down to a bay. The waters were a clear light-filled blue, so clean that Lily could see the shadows of seaweed shifting in the currents and sometimes the flicker of a school of dark fish.
‘The trouble is you’ve been spoiled,’ Charlie pronounced.
‘I have not! I like cheese and pickle. I can like posh things and ordinary things. I can like both.’
Lily took a sandwich and bit into it Beside them, at clifftop level, a kittiwake gull riding the thermals from the beach below them wheeled inland, its bright black eyes on Lily and her sandwich. Lily took a piece of crust and flung it upwards.
‘There you go, wasting good food!’ Charlie said instantly.
Lily chuckled easily. ‘I didn’t waste it, I gave it to a seagull. Seagulls have a right to be fed I suppose.’
Charlie unstoppered the lemonade and took a swig from the bottle before wiping the mouth and handing it to Lily. ‘Forgot cups.’
‘That’s all right.’
Lily drank and handed the bottle back to him. ‘D’you think Sylvia de Charmante is really good? I’ve watched and watched her and I can’t see what she does that is so much better than anyone else.’
‘Better than you, you mean?’
Lily flushed and shot a shy look at Charlie. ‘Well yes, actually. I know I’ve got loads to learn and everything but …’
He nodded. ‘She’s no better than you, in fact her voice is weaker and she’s much less musical. But she got herself a name during the war and she’ll trade on that for the rest of her life. I saw her once, she did one of those recruitment shows with a film of the Western Front and free beer at the bar, and some songs and a kiss for the lads who went up and signed on. Poor fools.’
‘Did many go?’
Charlie shrugged. ‘A dozen or so, I suppose. It made little difference in the end. Once conscription came in everyone had to go. It just made the difference to what time you got there.’
‘I’m glad you weren’t there for long,’ Lily said. ‘I don’t like to hear about it. It spoiled everything for me when I was a girl. The streets had to be kept dark, and it was always cold. Everyone’s dads and brothers went away. Everyone was short tempered and there was never enough money.’
Charlie nodded. ‘Poor Lily,’ he said mockingly.
Lily threw the rest of the crust to the gull and lay back on the short springy turf. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’m supposed to think I was lucky because I was a girl, and my dad died quickly and didn’t come home a cripple, and my ma had the shop. But she never thought there was any point to the war. Not from the very beginning. And so I never thought it was so wonderful either. And when the kids in the streets did pageants, or the girls did knitting, or collected newspapers or cloths or whatever, I always thought that it was a great big lie. And I thought Kitchener was a bully, I hated his face on the posters everywhere you went. СКАЧАТЬ