The Lavender Keeper

by Fiona McIntosh

  ‘I prefer Forester, if you don’t mind. I’m trying to anglicise my life as best I can.’

  ‘Of course. Forgive me.’ The man cleared his throat politely. She decided he looked like a fat blackbird chick with his round shape and dun-brown garments.

  ‘However, it’s your “Frenchness” that has brought me here. I would very much like it if you would agree to meet a colleague of mine. I can’t tell you his name because … well, because it’s a secret.’ He gave a short tight smile. ‘Miss Forester, it has not escaped our notice that you speak several languages … and that you speak them flawlessly.’

  She blushed. ‘How do you know this?’

  He sighed. ‘We’ve had you under what you might call surveillance for several months.’

  Lisette blinked in confusion. ‘Surveillance?’

  He nodded and had the good grace to appear embarrassed.

  ‘What do you suspect me of?’ she asked, almost breathless with shock.

  ‘Oh, no, no … good grief, no, Miss Forester. Nothing like that! Quite the contrary, in fact. What I mean is we’ve been admiring your skill with language. You are superb.’

  Now she didn’t know whether to be flattered or just plain relieved. She frowned more deeply. ‘Why are you watching me?’

  ‘It was by accident, really. You were serving a colleague of mine at Joe Lyons. She noticed that you moved to another table where some guests were speaking in French, and it was obvious to her that you understood what was being said.’

  ‘How is that possible?’

  Her visitor took a breath. ‘She’s an observer of people, Miss Forester, and noticed that you smirked at something they’d said.

  ‘A few days later you served another colleague of mine, an English man. But on this occasion he spoke to you in French.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘And he had brought another colleague with him whom he introduced as Swiss. You took it upon yourself to speak quietly in German to that man. I must confess to you, the Swiss visitor was English – a plant, you could say – but your German was spot on. What’s more, you were clearly comfortable in the vernacular.’

  ‘Mr Collins. It’s true that I speak several languages; I also have some French dialects to my credit. Language is my specialty. It’s why I work at the French Canteen and at Lyons, although I refrain from using German, for obvious reasons. I remember that Swiss man. He was very polite. What is this all about?’

  ‘Miss Forester, we could very much use your services. The, er … the War Office needs as much information as it can gather. Someone with your linguistic skills is a rare prize we cannot ignore.’

  It finally dawned on Lisette that the authorities were hoping she’d agree to learn wireless operation or something similar. She felt a thrill of excitement that she might finally be involved in Britain’s war effort. If she was going to risk her life in London, she might as well risk it for a good cause.

  ‘How do you feel about that?’ he asked, leaning forward.

  ‘Well, Mr Collins, as my granny says, we must all do our bit.’

  ‘Oh, indeed,’ he said, nodding. ‘May I set up an appointment for you to discuss this further?’

  ‘Yes … but I would need to speak with—’

  ‘Miss Mappleton? That’s all taken care of. Can we say four p.m., tomorrow, then?’

  ‘That quick?’

  He nodded. ‘No time like the present, Miss Forester. Do you know the Hotel Victoria? It’s not too far.’

  ‘Northumberland Avenue, isn’t it?’ she said.

  ‘Very good. Room 238. Could you be there a little earlier?’

  ‘Yes, if you wish, and providing my shift has been cleared.’

  ‘Please don’t fret on that account,’ Collins said, standing and giving Lisette a vague bow. ‘Thank you for the tea,’ he added and looked away quickly from his still full cup. ‘I’ll look forward to seeing you tomorrow.’

  Lisette showed him to her door and then raced around, bathing, changing, primping her hair and becoming quietly excited at the prospect of working with people who were actually helping to change the course of the war. Lisette hoped with all her heart that she’d one day take down a message from one of the spies who courageously sent back messages from France. Maybe that’s why they needed her? To translate messages from French men and women working in the field?

  The following day at three, knowing it was far too early to leave but unable to sit still, Lisette walked slowly to Northumberland Avenue. She wore her cream blouse and new chocolate-brown cardigan that had cost her ten clothing-ration coupons. She’d left her face scrubbed clean but at the last minute decided to smudge a soft-pink lipstick lightly across her lips – a gift from her dad before he died. As she’d looked at her reflection she thought it was as though he was sending her a good-luck kiss.

  She arrived at the hotel at three-forty. A woman was waiting in the lobby for her. ‘Miss Forester?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, admiring the woman’s thick, dark hair and chiselled features. She could have been French with those looks.

  ‘Early. That’s what we like. I’m Vera Atkins.’ They shook hands and Vera kept Lisette walking as she murmured to a woman behind the hotel desk.

  ‘This way,’ Vera said, leading her up two flights of stairs and through various corridors until she tapped lightly on a door. She ushered Lisette inside. ‘Have a seat. Captain Jepson will be here immediately.’

  It didn’t look like a hotel room, but rather a sitting room. Another door opened and in walked a lean man in his early forties. He had an oval-shaped face and genial eyes. His long nose led down to a mouth that seemed to be suppressing amusement.

  ‘This is Captain Selwyn Jepson,’ Miss Atkins said.

  Lisette shook Jepson’s hand. She was grateful that he didn’t crush her hand as so many uniformed men were apt to do. ‘Good afternoon, Miss Forestier,’ he said.

  ‘Forester,’ she corrected.

  ‘Ah, Collins did mention that. Thank you for seeing us,’ he said, and moved into rapid-fire French. ‘You live alone.’

  She shifted into French as well. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why not?’

  He twitched a smile. ‘No friends?’

  ‘Plenty.’

  ‘Is that true?’

  Lisette held his gaze, and realised she couldn’t stare him down. ‘I prefer to keep my friendship group small.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve been in Britain only since 1938; I haven’t had a chance to develop many relationships since … well, since getting here.’

  ‘No boyfriends?’ It sounded like an accusation.

  ‘No one special.’

  ‘Do you like living alone?’

  ‘Captain Jepson, is this relevant?’ She only now noticed that Vera Atkins had left the room.

  ‘May I call you Lisette?’

  She nodded. She could hardly refuse.

  ‘Lisette, presumably Mr Collins mentioned that we are looking to recruit you.’

  ‘He did, but I don’t see how my living arrangements—’

  ‘We are at war, and we must know everything – we are handing over our trust to each other.’

  ‘I understand. Well, I have very few friends, I have no boyfriend, and yes, I enjoy living alone because I can’t bear other people’s noise and mess.’

  ‘Are you fanatically tidy?’

  ‘No. I cope just fine with my own mess.’

  ‘So you’re messy?’

  ‘Not at all. I am living in rental accommodation. I can’t afford to be messy in case the Railways do a check.’

  ‘That’s your friend’s flat, isn’t it?’

  She was surprised. ‘Yes, Harriet Lonsdale.’

  He nodded as if he already knew. He shifted into Italian. ‘Tell me about your parents.’

  ‘Your accent is terrible,’ she said to him in the same language.

  He laughed. It changed his whole demeanour. ‘I know. That’s why I couldn�
��t possibly be a spy.’ And then his gaze narrowed. She felt speared.

  His words floated in her mind. Then they seemed to settle, resound more clearly. Spy? What?

  ‘You’re recruiting me to spy?’

  ‘How does that make you feel?’ he asked, switching back to French.

  ‘Nervous.’

  ‘That’s good. If you’d said excited or happy, I’d have worried. How would you feel about returning to France?’

  She sat back in her chair, speechless.

  Jepson sat forward and switched to English. ‘I know that you’ve been slowly building a life for yourself here. In fact, I know a great deal about you, Lisette. You work at the Lyons Corner House and you volunteer one evening a week at the French Canteen. Why?’

  ‘I get a very good free meal at the end of it,’ she said. ‘A proper French meal.’

  ‘No doubt you can practise your French too. That’s smart. Your father was German, wounded in action, and moved to France in 1918, where he met and married your half-French, half-English mother when they were both twenty. They settled in Lille, where you were born two years after the end of the Great War. Your family name is Foerstner but your parents adopted Forestier for convenience – being German wasn’t terribly popular in 1918.’

  She was sorry that he’d noticed her eyes mist.

  ‘Forgive me. I don’t mean to upset you.’

  ‘It’s all right. My father always said he felt more French than German.’

  ‘Did he hate his own people?’

  She looked up, stung. ‘He was not a coward, Captain Jepson.’

  ‘I didn’t say he was; but I gather others did.’

  ‘My father was an academic, a wise, gentle man. He hated that Germany started a war that killed so many of its fine young men. He was fourteen when it began, and he was injured at seventeen on the first day of his active service. He lost a hand – but I’m sure you know that too.’

  Jepson nodded.

  ‘He regretted that he could never pick me up easily as a newborn, could never hold my mother’s face with two hands. He had to learn to write again, left-handed. But because he was sent home so early, he was called a coward. He began to hate Germany for that, and for killing his friends. His three best friends all died in the trenches.’ She hadn’t realised a tear had escaped, and she quickly wiped it away.

  Jepson continued. ‘Your parents moved with you to Strasbourg when you were three, after your mother became depressed over the death of your infant brother to the Spanish Flu pandemic after the war. Your father took a position at the university. I’m glad to note that your mother’s health improved, although she had no further children and you became the adored only child.’

  Lisette listened to him rattle off her life, not sure whether she was angry or shocked by how easily her history could be pared down to facts. She could feel her heart thumping at her chest in protest – like a child drumming its fists uselessly. She was digging her nails into her palms, wishing it would stop, and yet knowing he wasn’t deliberately punishing her. She forced herself to relax and listen.

  ‘Your paternal grandmother was German and your paternal grandfather French?’

  She nodded, astonished at his wealth of information.

  ‘Your mother worked as a private secretary to a banker in Strasbourg, Monsieur Eichel, who was a great friend and helped you to organise their affairs upon their death. Your maternal grandparents – your only surviving relatives – are living in Hampshire – Farnborough, to be exact – and your grandmother is French while your grandfather is British. No wonder language is your thing.’ He smiled kindly at her stricken expression. ‘It’s our job to know these things. Your parents were nervous about what was happening in Europe and decided to come to Britain in 1937. While they finalised the purchase of a house in Sussex, you were packed off to England early and deposited at Roedean to finish off your schooling.’

  She looked down again, not wanting him to say it, but knowing he would.

  ‘Your mother and father died in a car crash the night before they were due to move permanently to England. That must have been very hard for you, although I note that you aced your final exams nonetheless.’

  ‘I was eighteen,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t give up, so I learnt how to get on.’

  Jepson sat back and regarded her. ‘You’ve got money. Why do you live so frugally?’

  She flashed him an angry glance. ‘I don’t want my parents’ money. I’m happy to make my own way.’

  ‘You want to be a normal twenty-three-year-old?’

  ‘I suppose,’ she said, glad her voice was steady. He’d reopened a wound she’d worked so hard to heal. ‘There would be nothing normal about someone my age living in a big, draughty old house with nothing to do behind blacked-out windows.’

  ‘Do you find London dangerous?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I gather Harriet Lonsdale was killed in one of the air raids.’

  Lisette took a deep breath. Please don’t ask me more, she begged inside. Everyone I love dies young. I’m a curse. ‘Yes.’

  ‘You were close to her?’

  Jepson had no intention of leaving any aspect of her life untouched. But she wanted this role he was offering – whatever it was – more than she could believe. It would change her life, give her reason to – Lisette wasn’t sure what the word was that she searched for – breathe, perhaps. Right now it felt as though she was moving through life stifled. Captain Jepson was waiting. ‘I was close to Harriet. She befriended me when I first came to London – she was kind, very funny, full of …’ She shook her head, remembering first Harriet’s gust of a laugh that was so indicative of the generous personality behind it. She preferred to remember Harriet with gleaming blonde hair and those blue eyes full of life and mischief, rather than how she last saw her. ‘Full of dreams,’ she finished.

  ‘I know this may be painful for you to recall, but you missed being killed by that same event by moments, didn’t you?’

  Lisette permitted the banished memory back into her conscious thought. It was the last day she remembered ever being happy. The war then, when Harriet was alive, had seemed like something that was happening to others. Meanwhile they were full of plans for the future; Harriet wanted to make use of Lisette’s languages, desperate to move away from her boring desk job as a typist in the city, and had suggested they set up a travel company together. ‘Guided tours of the Continent, Lissy,’ she’d said, eyes shining at the thought of it. ‘Imagine that! Travellers won’t be able to resist.’ Harriet had seen a little of Europe, and the trips to France and Switzerland had whet her appetite to see the rest of the world.

  ‘We’ll marry disgustingly wealthy Europeans. I’ll marry a baron – I think Baroness Harriett has a nice ring to it – while you must marry a count because “Countess Lisette” just slips so easily off the tongue,’ she’d said, laughing as Lisette rolled her eyes. Harriet was lying on a slab in the hospital morgue two days later. Lisette had been required to formally identify her. By then Harriet’s body had been cleansed of all the blood and dirt, and her face, mercifully unharmed – save a tiny bruise near one eyebrow – looked peaceful. But no longer smiling.

  Lisette cleared her throat. ‘I was meeting Harriet after work. We planned to meet in the forecourt of the station. She arrived early, just as it was hit by a German bomber. I … She was alive when I found her.’ It all came rushing back now. Even the tangy, metallic smell of Harriet’s blood assaulted her. She refused to remember what it felt like to cradle Harriet’s head in her lap. It had taken Lisette months to lock that memory away. She no longer suffered the constant nightmare of feeling useless as her friend slipped away from life. Instead, she’d taught herself to become a bystander; an observer of Harriet’s death but not the grief-stricken friend whose hands were stained with her blood, whose tears mixed with the grime of the bombing, or the person who heard Harriet’s last words.

  ‘Tell Mum and Dad I’m sorry, Lissy.’ Lisette could rec
all every word, every grimace, every nuance of those minutes before her friend fell slack in her arms. Harriet had said, ‘They always liked me to be early for an appointment but for once in my life I shouldn’t have been. Then I wouldn’t be dying.’

  Lisette had lied. ‘You’re not dying, Hat, you’re injured, and we have to get you to the hospital at Whitechapel. Can you hear the ambulance? They’re coming for you.’

  ‘And for once all the noise and activity can be about me,’ Harriet had said, reaching up a bloodied hand to stroke Lisette’s chin.

  It was not meant with any malice. As much as Lisette railed against the constant refrain that she was the pretty one, the intelligent one, the one who would go places and leave a mark on the world, her best friend wouldn’t give up. It had made Lisette shrink even further in social situations, but men still sought her out, still asked her to dance before Harriet.

  Harriet had turned her normally bright-blue gaze on Lisette then. ‘You’re a good liar – you always were.’

  ‘Don’t talk,’ Lisette had said, anguished by the blood she could feel soaking into her dress. The ambulance was certainly not coming for Harriet.

  ‘Take my mind from here, Lissy,’ Harriet had begged. ‘You’re so good at storytelling.’

  ‘All right. Let’s imagine ourselves in a vineyard in France.’

  ‘No, a lavender field. We made a promise we’d go see the lavender one summer, didn’t we?’

  ‘We did. Can you smell the lavender?’

  ‘I’m trying to.’

  ‘Think of it swaying around at knee height while you stand in the middle of it. What can you hear?’

  ‘Birds,’ Harriet answered. ‘The drone of bees.’

  ‘Good. I can too. Think now. What can you smell?’

  ‘That fresh fragrance of lavender when I rub it between my fingers.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Summer. I’m smelling dry earth.’

  Lisette looked up as one of the ambulance men finally arrived. Bending over, he examined her friend. He shook his head sadly. ‘Won’t be long now,’ he whispered, and that perhaps had been the worst moment of all – to have a kindly stranger confirm that Harriet was not long for this life.