Miss Lily’s Lovely Ladies

by Jackie French

  Dedication

  To Lisa, who saw a book,

  twisted it and created this series:

  my love and deepest gratitude always

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  … that was when I realised that war is as natural to a man as chasing a ball on a football field. War is a scuttling cockroach, something that a woman would instinctively stamp on. Women bear the pain of childbirth, and most deeply feel the agony of their children’s deaths. Could one marshal women to fight against the dreams of war?

  But women have no power, except what they cajole from men.

  Miss Lily, 1908

  FLANDERS, 12 JULY 1917

  ‘Stop!’ yelled Sophie.

  She peered out of the car window through the night and gun smoke at the huddled mound on the bomb-scarred track.

  The blob became a dog, large and lifeless, its dark fur almost invisible in the smoke. The dog’s blood showed red and vivid in the headlights. Beyond them, the big guns echoed like a singer trying to be heard over the orchestra: the constant rumble and belch of the front line.

  Three years of war had taught Sophie this: if blood flowed, the patient was still alive. This dog lived.

  Tomorrow yet more men would die, even more horribly. But how could she leave a dog?

  Only a minute, she thought as the driver pulled on the brake. She pushed open the door.

  ‘What the damnation are you doing?’ They were the first words the driver had spoken since he had greeted her politely again outside the French hotel, opened the rear door for her and the picnic basket, then driven, hour upon hour, in resentful silence, through the afternoon, through yellow smoke-lit dusk, and now through the night.

  She’d hoped desperately he would say something about her quest, about her reappearance in his life, ask why she had been in a hotel bedroom with a half-dressed French général. He hadn’t. Now it was her turn not to answer.

  Instead she stumbled out of the back seat, into the darkness. The moon crouched on the world’s dark ceiling above her. The land on either side looked frozen into shattered glass. Flat land. Black glass, mud and soot, a flash of orange perhaps a mile away, giving a sudden glimpse of tangled barbed wire draped with what Sophie hoped were rags, not flesh.

  This world was dead. Everything here was dead, except for the two of them. And, just perhaps, a giant dog.

  She kneeled and touched its fur. The dog opened its eyes.

  ‘Good dog. It’s all right, you’re a good dog.’ She spoke automatically.

  ‘We’re in France, in case you haven’t noticed. I don’t suppose this mutt understands English.’

  She hadn’t heard him come up behind her. His face was white, his hands clenched in fear or anger.

  The dog lifted its head, trustingly, and laid it on her lap.

  A gun boomed to their left, louder than the ones before. She was beginning to make out the sounds of the different explosions now.

  The dog made a small noise. It almost sounded like a plea.

  ‘There’s blood on its shoulder,’ she said. ‘Maybe it’s been shot.’

  ‘Things do get shot in war.’

  ‘Help me carry it back to the car.’

  In the darkness, the man didn’t move. ‘You’re worried about a dog? You might have thought of my chances of survival before you had me ordered here.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll carry it myself.’

  ‘You wouldn’t get a dog that size two yards.’ He bent swiftly, then cradled the massive animal in his arms. ‘You don’t seem to realise that every second we spend here is dangerous. Open the door …’

  He laid the dog on the leather seat, beside the picnic basket Madame had packed for them. Sophie pulled out the Thermos. She knew you shouldn’t give a dog coffee, but this would be mostly chicory, and it needed fluids.

  She pooled a little into one of her hands. The dog raised its head and lapped. She unwrapped the chicken and pulled off most of the breast meat. The dog swallowed it in three gulps, then licked her fingers, wanting more, and gulped down the bread she offered too.

  She looked at the man in the front seat, who was peering at the road. Yesterday she’d loved him, had thought he loved her.

  Hannelore had said love between a man and a woman was illusion, bright colours to disguise the necessary distributions of power involved in mating. But Miss Lily had once whispered, ‘Oh, yes, there is love.’

  Would Sophie see Hannelore or Miss Lily again? Perhaps she’d die here. Perhaps Miss Lily and Hannelore were already dead.

  The car swerved onto another track. She leaned forward. ‘Are you sure we’re going the right way?’

  The man at the wheel didn’t glance back. ‘No.’

  ‘I told you, this is urgent.’

  He shot her a look. ‘I’m doing my best. Do you think there are maps of battlegrounds?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sophie.

  His lips quirked into a reluctant smile. ‘You’re right. But I don’t have one.’

  ‘I should have asked the général.’

  ‘I doubt the général had a map with him when he lent you his car and my services earlier. It’s not the sort of thing one takes to a seduction.’

  ‘I don’t suppose it is.’ She tried to keep her voice light. The dog slobbered gently on her lap.

  The ground beside them exploded. Dirt and pebbles rained down onto the car. For a few seconds the windscreen was black, then the dirt fell off.

  ‘Holy hell.’

  She had never heard a man swear before. Not at home in the paddocks — not even the men they’d nursed in the past few years.

  Sophie swallowed, trying not to sound afraid. A man doesn’t like to hear fear in a woman’s voice, Miss Lily said. Fear is an accusation that he has failed in hi
s duty to protect you. You may sound apprehensive, but never shrill. ‘That came from nearby.’

  ‘Too near. They’re firing at us. They’ll fire again as soon as they reload.’ He peered at something through the smoke.

  She tried to see what he was looking at. A farmhouse, she realised, or at least its walls, the rubble of its sheds, about twenty yards away.

  He swung the wheel towards it suddenly. ‘When I say so, get out. Run behind the nearest wall.’

  She heard the next explosion in front of them an instant before she felt it. He wrenched the car onto the farmhouse cobbles.

  ‘Move!’ He leaped out as the car jerked to a stop.

  Another shell ripped across the cobbles, from a different direction this time. Sophie flung herself out of the car and behind the farmhouse wall, landing hard on her knees.

  The edge of the wall exploded. She shut her eyes till she thought the debris had stopped falling, then checked her arms, her deeply inappropriate silk dress, her shredded stockings.

  Stupid. She would have felt wounds or a burn before she saw them. Instinct had taken over.

  Instinct is what drives the world, Miss Lily said. Use it, enjoy it, but never let it take control.

  Sophie peered through darkness that was more dust than night. The car was intact. The dog lay unmoving on the leather seat. Two steps and she had it hoisted like a sack of potatoes over her shoulder. She staggered under its weight.

  ‘Sophie! Get over here!’ His voice came from what looked like a fireplace, set deep in the wall.

  Once — a year ago, a world ago — this had been a kitchen. Some French farmwife had scrubbed the hearth. Stews had bubbled here, and pots of strong coffee for the men to dip their lumps of sugar into. Now it was two walls and a patch of sagging roof, with a bird’s nest up in the rafters.

  ‘Hurry!’

  It took a second for her to realise that the fireplace would protect them from the shells.

  Perhaps. For a while. Until the German soldiers followed with their guns and bayonets. But perhaps, Sophie thought desperately, they would be English, French, even Australian …

  Two more shots. The picnic basket, still in the car, shattered behind her. Madame’s roast chicken hung in an incongruous crucifixion on the steering wheel.

  She tried to run under the weight of the dog, felt his arms grab it, then pull her into the safety of the chimney as more shells ripped the air.

  ‘You should have grabbed the picnic basket, not the dog.’ But he laid the dog down gently as he said it, at the back of the chimney where it would be safest.

  The dog sat up and stared from one to the other.

  The driver rubbed its long, fluffy ears. ‘Sorry, old boy, no more chicken for either of us. How’s the motorcar?’

  ‘Intact. They shot the basket, though.’

  ‘Probably by accident. They want to kill us, not destroy the car. They’ll want to use it.’

  ‘The whole German army can’t escape in one car.’

  He shrugged, causing a small cascade of soot from the chimney. ‘There aren’t many out there, I don’t think. Two groups shooting at each other. Might only be half a dozen men. Patrols, maybe. Lost like us. We just happened to get in the middle.’

  Except you’re here because of me, thought Sophie. This man had loved her. But he was here because of orders, not love. ‘So one lot are our chaps?’

  Another shrug, more careful this time. ‘Maybe. Or the French. I don’t know this part of the line. We won’t know who’s shooting who till one lot takes this place, or till another gang rolls up to help them.’

  She glanced out into the shadows. One lot of shots had come from what she thought might be a hen house. The return fire had come from a crumpled barn. ‘When do you think that will be?’

  ‘Tonight. Tomorrow morning. A decade’s time. That’s what we’ve been doing for the last three years, us and the Boche. You capture a few yards of mud, hold it for days or weeks or months. Then you die as the other side takes it back again.’

  ‘And now we’re in the middle.’

  With difficulty: ‘Sophie, I’m sorry. I must have taken the wrong turn in the dark. The front should still be a mile from here.’

  ‘Maybe it moved. It’s not your fault.’ Suddenly she began to cry, trying to swallow the sobs.

  He put an arm around her tentatively, then, when she didn’t shrug it off, hugged harder. ‘Sophie …’

  The dog whined. It laid a bearlike paw on her silk skirt. She bent down and hugged it, savouring its warmth, its doggy smell, like the sheepdogs of Thuringa, even its slobber.

  ‘I’m not scared. Not for myself.’ She peered up at his face in the grimy darkness. ‘But men are going to die if I don’t do something.’

  He sat too, his back against the chimney wall. ‘Men are already dying. Have died. Will die. This is war.’

  ‘I don’t mean die from being shot. Worse. Impossibly worse.’

  Another blast — a rocket, this time — hit the ground outside.

  He waited till the ground stopped shaking, till the cracked tiles no longer fell around them. ‘I’ve seen men hung on the barbed wire of No Man’s Land who took three days to die, their eyes pecked out by crows, screaming all the time. I’ve seen myself hanging there, in nightmares. Tell me one thing you’ve seen in your drawing rooms that is worse than that.’

  I’ve seen a woman scream in childbirth for two days, then die as her blood drained from her body, she thought. I’ve seen a man try to make a life with no eyes left, and half a face. But he was right. This was his world, not hers. And he had tried to protect her.

  She wiped her eyes, feeling the sting of soot. She knew she needed food, though she wasn’t hungry. ‘I don’t suppose you have anything to eat?’

  ‘Chocolate.’ He took it from his pocket and passed it to her.

  A big block, she saw gratefully. The dog shoved its furry face towards her. ‘Oh, no you don’t. You just ate bread and chicken.’ The dog sat back, drooling reproachfully. ‘You don’t have a pistol in your pocket too?’

  ‘No. There’s one in the car. But I was dressed for an afternoon off at the hotel, not war.’

  ‘I do. But then I wasn’t at the hotel for the same reason as you.’ She reached into her own pocket and pulled it out. Somehow the pistol seemed smaller here, with the massed armies of so many nations around them.

  He stared at it. ‘Where in damnation did you get that?’ He reached for it.

  She pulled the pistol back. ‘I can shoot a ’roo a hundred yards away.’

  ‘I can shoot a grouse. They’re smaller.’ He hesitated. ‘Keep the pistol.’

  She had been going to, but suddenly the meaning of his words hit home. The Germans out there would kill him. But they might spare her. For a while, until they’d finished.

  ‘What else have we got?’

  He reached into his pockets. ‘My identity card. Francs. Pen knife. It’s got tweezers and a nail file.’

  ‘Just what I need right now, a nail file.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘Francs, pounds.’ A lot of English pounds, but she didn’t tell him that. ‘Four diamond rings.’

  ‘You brought diamonds into a war zone?’

  ‘Diamonds are easier to carry than money.’

  She broke off six squares of the chocolate, then handed him the rest.

  He shook his head. ‘Keep it.’

  ‘Forget gallantry. You need to eat. If there’s any chance of getting away from here, we have to keep going.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, why? What’s so important that you would risk our lives to get to the front line?’

  The comfort of the chocolate vanished. ‘Why didn’t you ask before?’

  ‘I was angry.’

  ‘You’re not angry now?’

  ‘Three hours ago I found the woman I thought I loved in the bedroom of a French général.’

  A small hole ripped in Sophie’s heart. But she had known already. How could any m
an still love her after what she had done today?

  He looked at her steadily through the erratically gun-lit gloom. ‘I’m probably going to die on this expedition of yours, and that makes me angry too. But you know what makes me angriest? You haven’t even had the courtesy to tell me why.’ His gesture took in the chimney, the silent dog, the thousand shades of yellow, white and red from the explosions beyond them.

  You could have asked me, she thought, instead of sulking as you drove.

  Then she glanced at him, his face white in the flashes of shellfire. She had been wrong. His silence had been fear, not pique. She had misjudged him, badly.

  ‘The Germans are going to try a new weapon. Worse than guns or chlorine gas.’

  ‘Another sort of land engine?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then what?’

  She hesitated. Could she trust him? He might even refuse to keep going if he knew what was ahead of them.

  What would Miss Lily advise now? More tears, whispered Miss Lily.

  Sophie glanced at the poor helpless dog, its eyes closed, faintly panting. This shouldn’t be a dog’s war. Now the tears were real.

  ‘I … I can’t tell you.’ She pulled out her handkerchief and blew her nose.

  It worked. He put his arm around her again. His voice was gentler now. ‘You think Miss Sophie Higgs can stop the enemy?’

  ‘No. But I can warn our officers in the field to get their men away. I tried to speak to someone with authority back in England, but I couldn’t manage it. Not in time.’

  ‘So you’re going to try to speak to whoever is in command at Ypres? Even if we survive, you won’t get past the first sentry post.’

  You have no idea what I can do, she thought. Sentries are only men too. ‘I will be in the général’s car, with a decorated English officer driving. And I’ve got a letter.’

  ‘One letter? Who’s it from? The King?’

  ‘A German princess.’

  He stared at her silently. But it wasn’t silence; there was no silence here. Even the earth vibrated with the shelling a mile away. Every few minutes another rocket screamed outside.

  His voice was wary now. ‘A Hun? How exactly did you get a letter from a German princess in wartime? How do you even know one?’

  She was suddenly impossibly weary. ‘The letter came via Switzerland. I met the princess through Miss Lily.’

  The wariness was as thick as syrup now. ‘Who’s Miss Lily?’