Miss Lily’s Lovely Ladies

by Jackie French

  Why had her father lied?

  She let Nanny bathe her, then changed once more to dine with Miss Thwaites on chicken salad and strawberry jelly, a meal that would shock the mothers of the Suitables, who fed their children mince and tapioca, the tasteless mush deemed proper for a child.

  At last it was time to see her father. Mr Jeremiah Higgs dined by himself each night in the library, not in the dining room with its table that sat forty, used only on the few occasions he had guests. Miss Thwaites would always act as hostess on such occasions, even though she was just a governess; the fact that she was the daughter of an honourable made it different.

  Sophie’s father didn’t believe in cutlery, except in company, which was one of the reasons why he preferred to eat alone. Fingers before forks, he said. Sophie assumed for years that this was because he was from New Zealand — that New Zealanders, for some reason, avoided cutlery. Only a careful study of Cousin Oswald’s use of knife and fork convinced her otherwise.

  Mr Jeremiah Higgs’s lunch was a slab of bread and cheese at his desk at the factory or in the library on Sunday — the only day of the week he didn’t work — with a slice of apple pie and still more cheese, every day of his life. (A pie without cheese is like a kiss without whiskers, he’d said once, while stroking his moustache.)

  Dinner was served when he felt like it, and ‘no palaver about it’, in his armchair facing the library fire in winter, or the vase of gum leaves that occupied the fireplace in summer.

  Till she was five, Sophie had imagined he ate the same meals as she and Miss Thwaites: lamb cutlets, roast chicken or squab with baked potatoes. But one night she had interrupted his meal to show him the pen wiper she had finished (finally) for the church fair.

  It was as close to guilty as she had ever seen him look. She’d found him with his pocket knife in one hand and a slab of roast beef in the other, slicing off bits to put on the bread on his lap. A bowl of mustard sat on the table within easy reach.

  Sophie and Miss Thwaites ate dinner at five o’clock, with milk from their own cows out at Thuringa, for her father didn’t trust town milk: the dairymen added chalk dust to make it thick and white, he said. Sophie was allowed to see her father only at six o’clock, for an hour in the library, after he had changed from the clothes he wore to the factory, and both of them had bathed — as though we have washed away everything we have done during the day, thought Sophie. For her father, she wondered if it was to wash away the smell of corned beef.

  Today she had changed into the loose white cotton gown suitable for a girl to wear to see her father after work. She wore a pink sash, and pink ribbons too, even though she hated ribbons flapping at her cheeks, but because her father liked her to wear ribbons. And she loved him.

  ‘Good evening, Papa.’

  He smiled at her from his armchair and held out his arms. They were short arms. Sometimes her father reminded her of an ant: a bull ant, in charge of all the other ants. The top of his head reached only to Miss Thwaites’s shoulders. ‘And how’s my princess today?’

  Jeremiah Higgs had never tried to turn his New Zealand accent into mock upper-class English, as most wealthy Australians did. Sophie was glad. Papa wouldn’t have been Papa if he spoke in any other way, though Miss Thwaites ensured that Sophie’s own accent was impeccable.

  Sophie willingly participated in tonight’s hug. Her father wasn’t good at hugging, but she knew he liked it and so did she. He was older than other fathers, his hair white at the temples and sideburns, which made him special. He had told her once he’d decided not to have a wife or child until he could ‘do right by them’, which meant a big house and money.

  She sat on the stool by his feet. The brocade didn’t match the green velvet curtains or the dark wood of the library. It had pink roses on it and golden tassels. Papa never put his feet on this stool. It was hers.

  ‘I can do long division now.’ Miss Thwaites had snorted, just like a cow, when one of the Suitables’ mothers had said that mathematics stunted girls’ bodies and made them unfit for motherhood.

  ‘What about your piano practice?’

  ‘I don’t like piano,’ said Sophie.

  ‘All ladies play the piano.’

  Sophie considered. ‘I won’t,’ she said.

  He stroked her hair. He was better at hair-stroking than hugging. ‘You’ll be the finest lady in Sydney.’

  ‘Then I won’t need to play the piano. Piano playing is … repulsive.’

  ‘Is that your new word?’

  Sophie nodded. ‘It’s a good word. We went to the Tearooms and met a boy. He’s repulsive too.’

  ‘Why’s he repulsive?’

  ‘Because he said a stupid thing. He said Mama vanished.’

  Her father became still.

  She watched him. ‘You said Mama had died.’

  He chose his words with care. ‘That was easiest for a little girl to understand.’

  ‘Then she did vanish?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why didn’t you find her then?’ Sophie’s voice was fierce. Her mother was hers. She’d have felt as protective of a lost doll.

  ‘Sophie love …’ Papa’s accent changed when he called her that. ‘Have I ever failed to give you what you’ve asked for?’

  ‘Yes. I want a proper horse, not just a pony,’ said Sophie promptly.

  ‘You’ll get that horse when you’re fourteen years old. What else?’

  Sophie pondered. There had been Rufus, who had died. But dogs did die when they got old; Papa had explained that. She wasn’t allowed to play with sail boats in the fountain either, because girls didn’t; nor was she allowed to have bare feet like all the boys around Thuringa. Even Papa wasn’t able to change the rules set down for ladies.

  ‘No,’ she said at last, cautiously, not wanting to give him too much credit. If he usually gave her what she wanted, sometimes it took a lot of arguing to convince him not to give her things she didn’t want, like piano lessons and cod liver oil.

  ‘If I could have given your mother back, don’t you think I would have?’

  He was speaking the truth. Sophie always had a pretty good idea if someone was speaking the truth.

  ‘Why did she go?’

  Her father hesitated. That means he is wondering how much more to tell me, she thought.

  The thought didn’t anger her. Adults usually considered what bits they should tell children.

  ‘I can’t tell you why she left, Sophie.’

  ‘Did … didn’t she like me?’

  He smiled at that. ‘Everyone loves you, Sophie.’

  That wasn’t true, but he probably thought it was.

  ‘Was it because of corned beef?’

  ‘It was not. She knew about that when she married me.’

  Sophie took a breath. ‘Was it because you don’t have a leg?’

  He stopped breathing for a few seconds. ‘Who told you about my leg?’

  ‘No one.’ She wished she could swallow back the words.

  ‘Then how’d you know?’

  ‘I went into your room when you had the influenza last year. Miss Thwaites wouldn’t let me in, in case I caught it, but I wanted to see if you were all right. You were sleeping.’ He sat there watching her. ‘It was by your bed. It looked like a leg, but with straps on. And I could only see one foot under the bedclothes.’

  He still looked at her, considering. ‘Yes, I’ve a wooden leg. Lost my real one in the wars on the Indian North West Frontier when I was a soldier. But your mother knew that when she married me too.’

  ‘How did she go missing?’

  ‘You want a story then?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sophie. Sometimes Papa told stories of when he was a little boy back in New Zealand, of how Greymouth was grey, just like its name, and he’d been so poor he’d warmed his feet in fresh cow droppings. Other times he described how he’d seen Thuringa after it rained and looked green and lush, then when it dried out he’d thought that it was ugly till one day he saw
the golden hills and fell in love with it again.

  ‘This one’s not a nice story, Sophie love.’

  She shrugged. She liked stories in which heroes ripped off giants’ heads better than nice ones. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘All right then. Your mama was sleeping down the hall, recovering after your birth. I went down to breakfast that day and asked the maid how her mistress had slept. The fool said she’d taken her dinner and breakfast up, and when she wasn’t in the bedroom either time, nor the bed slept in, she’d just brought the tray down again — eaten it herself, most likely. She said she thought your mother might have spent the night with me. But she hadn’t. I ran up the stairs …’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I searched. The police searched. I hired men to search. There’s still a grand reward for finding her.’

  ‘Papa … did someone kill her?’

  ‘I don’t see why they would,’ he said heavily. ‘She were … she was a girl everyone liked. No one’d want to kill her. How could they, in her own house, with servants downstairs?’

  There was something he wasn’t saying. ‘Was she kidnapped by pirates, to pay a ransom, like in Treasure Island?’

  ‘I’d have paid it,’ he said gently. ‘No one ever asked.’

  ‘White slavers?’

  She was pretty sure she wasn’t supposed to know what white slavers were. But he just said, ‘White slavers take girls who don’t have families to care for ’em. Nay, Sophie love. Whatever happened, it weren’t that.’

  ‘Then what could have happened?’

  I should be crying now, thought Sophie. That’s what a heroine in The Girl’s Own Annual would be doing. But she just felt a dawning excitement.

  Other girls had mothers. She had a mystery …

  ‘I wish I had an answer for you,’ he said.

  She thought for a moment. ‘Papa?’

  ‘Yes?’ he asked, a little warily.

  ‘Can I see your wooden leg now?’

  He laughed, his face breaking up into a hundred tiny wrinkles. She could see his worn-down bottom teeth, all yellow. ‘Yes.’ He reached down and pulled up a trouser leg.

  She looked at it, disappointed. It still looked just like a round of wood, vanishing into his sock just like a real leg would.

  He hesitated, then pulled his trouser leg up further. The knee was more interesting, hinged like the legs of one of her dolls.

  ‘Is it heavy?’

  He let the trouser leg fall. He was smiling. ‘No more than a real leg. You get used to it.’

  ‘What was the war like?’

  ‘Now you’re just trying to keep me talking instead of going to bed.’

  ‘No, I want to know. Were you a hero?’

  A hero would make up for corned beef.

  ‘No. I was just there. It was hot and dusty, then it was freezing and dusty. Too many were killed and even more wished they had been. War isn’t a good story, Princess. You don’t talk about wars, not when you come home.’

  He touched her cheek. He had never done that before. ‘Sophie love, if you ever hear gossip about me, about our family, come to me about it, as you have tonight. You promise?’

  ‘I promise.’

  He kissed her on the forehead then, which was her signal to go to bed.

  Almost by magic — or as if she’d been listening — Miss Thwaites arrived to take her upstairs. Sophie heard the library door shut behind her.

  One day she would find out. Maybe not soon — she was realistic about how much she could hunt for a missing mother with Miss Thwaites as her constant shepherd, not to mention piano lessons she still had to convince her father she didn’t need. But one day she would find out what had happened to her mother.

  Chapter 5

  To some men an opinion from a woman is like mustard on their egg: unthinkable. For others it can be opening a window to let clean air into a crowded and stuffy drawing room.

  Miss Lily, 1913

  FLANDERS, 12 JULY 1917

  The dog drooled gently on Sophie’s lap. ‘What sort of dog is it, do you think?’ she asked.

  ‘Sheepdog, I think.’

  ‘What? I’ve known sheepdogs all my life. This one is bigger than a sheep.’

  ‘A Spanish sheepdog.’

  She ruffled her hands through the woolly fur. ‘What on earth are Spanish sheep like then?’

  He ignored the question. ‘Which regiment was your father in?’

  ‘Only a man would want to know that. I never asked. My father came out to Australia after his time in the army, because Australia has more cattle to be turned into corned beef than New Zealand has, and more people to sell it to and ships to export it in. That’s all he’s ever told me.’

  Gunfire suddenly rattled from what had been the barn. A man called out, a warning perhaps. The dog’s ears twitched.

  ‘German,’ said Sophie.

  ‘You speak German?’ The suspicion was back in his voice.

  ‘Only enough to recognise it. Could we make it to the car?’

  ‘No. Both sides will be watching it. Both probably want it.’

  ‘We could run away in the darkness then …’ She paused. ‘No. We need the car too.’

  He didn’t disagree. Another shot cracked from behind them almost at the same time as the first volleys of gunfire crumbled more of the wall in front. ‘Stalemate,’ he said. ‘Neither side dares move in case the other sees them.’

  ‘So what happens now?’

  ‘They’ll try to take each other by surprise. Or if there’s an officer he may order some of the men to advance and take out the other side, even if it means the poor duffers die in the attempt.’

  ‘We might get to the car while they’re fighting each other.’

  ‘And we might get shot if we try. We can only wait, Sophie. That’s what war is mostly about. Waiting to die.’

  ‘You think we’re going to die?’

  ‘I’ve known I’m going to die in this war for the last two years. It’s a case of when, not if. But a girl like you shouldn’t even be thinking about death.’

  Sophie was glad it was too dim for him to see her face.

  ‘Let’s talk of something else,’ he went on. ‘So, did you ever find out about your mother?’

  ‘A little, over the next couple of years. My father moved house six months after she vanished, I suppose to get away from people who pointed and said, “That’s the house where that woman disappeared.” We moved again, a few years after that, to an even grander house. But I found a trunk of my mother’s clothes in the attic. They must have been brought with us in each move. And I found two people who had known her.’

  ‘Mothers of the Suitable Friends?’

  ‘No. The women who had known her weren’t really friends of hers. They had just dined with my parents fairly often, as you do without being close. My mother had only lived in Sydney for a little over a year, so no one knew her well. One said my mother was pretty, another that she had a lovely laugh. Both were sympathetic and slightly excited by the mystery. As you are.’

  ‘I’m not … Yes, I am. But only because it doesn’t seem to have hurt you.’

  ‘It did hurt,’ said Sophie slowly. ‘It still does. I know it seems odd to miss something you can’t remember. When I discovered she’d vanished it was like the house suddenly had an empty space I hadn’t seen before, a voice in far-off rooms, a shadow in the corridor. I kept staring at her portrait. Somehow her smile seemed to say, “I know, but you do not.”’

  ‘Hard to grow up without a mother.’

  ‘I suppose that depends on the mother.’

  ‘Did you find out any more when you were older?’

  ‘You do pick up on things. I think I did,’ she added slowly, ‘when I met Miss Lily.’

  ‘I wondered when we’d get to Miss Lily,’ he said dryly.

  ‘Not yet. We haven’t even got to my twelfth birthday.’

  ‘Was that birthday important?’

  ‘Very. My mother was just a story. Kno
wing about the mystery didn’t really change my life at all, though it explained some things I’d sensed, as children do. But my twelfth birthday was when I …’ she shrugged ‘… began to be the Sophie Higgs I am today.’

  Chapter 6

  We are all hungry. Those with a hunger for food need their hunger fed more urgently.

  Miss Lily, 1913

  SYDNEY, 1907

  The birthday cake was three tiers high: lots of tiny icing roses surrounding the twelve candles, in the middle of each tier a layer of yellow butter cream.

  It was an impressive cake for a twelve-year-old. The Suitable Friends who had been invited to share it, however, were boring. Miss Thwaites’s impassioned descriptions of Socrates discussing philosophy with his friends were far more interesting than comparing cats and new dresses.

  Today’s birthday afternoon was made worse by the absence of Sophie’s father. Mr Higgs was at work, of course, but he wouldn’t be home tonight either. There was a Dinner; the capital letter meant it was a meal with business benefits beyond the food.

  Sophie wasn’t sure she loved her father properly. The love children gave their parents in Dickens or the Suitable novels didn’t seem like what she felt at all. But her father was interesting, with horizons that weren’t restricted to tearooms and tennis courts.

  Finally the Suitable Friends melted away to their carriages; one to a motorcar. Mr Higgs had not yet bought a horseless carriage, saying he preferred to rely on transport with brains: if his driver was a fool, then the horses would still see him home.

  Miss Thwaites was upstairs, superintending the turnout of Sophie’s winter wardrobe. Sophie looked at the cake. The lower, largest tier had not been touched. And it was her birthday.

  Sophie pulled the bell.

  ‘Tell Rogers to bring the carriage round,’ she told the servant. She nodded at the cake. ‘And ask Mrs Cleaver to put the cake on a fresh plate, with a cake knife, please. I’m taking it to my father.’

  ‘Shall I call Miss Thwaites?’

  ‘Don’t bother Miss Thwaites. She’s busy.’

  The carriage was at the front steps by the time she had fastened on her hat, pale straw with white netting in a swirl, a new one. All her hats were new.