Miss Lily’s Lovely Ladies

by Jackie French

  Miss Lily laid her hands quietly on her knees. They were curiously ugly hands at rest, big-knuckled. Sophie realised she had rarely seen them bare of gloves, or unsoftened by the fall of long lace cuffs. Miss Lily’s voice was low, amused. ‘I hope you like this game as well, Prinzessin. I want each of you to shut your eyes. Imagine a swan, gliding through the water.’

  Emily Carlyle again: ‘A swan? Why should I —?’

  Miss Lily held up a hand, so graceful you hardly noticed it was too large for beauty. ‘Because I wish it. Because you are guests here at the request of my friends, who have asked that I share some of the skills that have made their own lives possible. You wish to comment further?’

  Miss Carlyle was silent.

  ‘Then imagine you are that swan. Gliding, gliding. Now, place your right foot exactly behind your left … a little further, if you please, Prinzessin. That is correct. Place your hands to either side, level with your waist. Think of the swan again, gliding, gliding. Now I want you to stand, in one slow gliding movement, your hands flowing down at the same time your body rises. Now …’

  Sophie blinked, then obediently shut her eyes again. It worked — or felt like it worked. Somehow she had risen to her feet as though she too floated on the water.

  ‘Now sit. Arms rise as your body falls. Again. Again. Again. That is quite good.’

  The voice was warm, approving. ‘Open your eyes. Now smile. Not a grin, Miss Higgs. Just a smile. A smile for the world, because you are happy, because anyone who talks to you will be happy too. Not a smile that says, “You are a joke.” A smile that gives, not takes. Imagine something you love — a puppy, perhaps. Imagine the puppy and smile.’

  Sophie glanced at Miss Carlyle. Apparently she, at least, found a puppy worthy of a smile. Even Lady Alison was smiling for the first time since she had arrived. Was that why Miss Lily had asked them to play a game? To relax the tension in the room?

  ‘Good. Now we will rise and smile and walk. But you are not walking across a room. You are a swan, a swan. One foot directly in front of the other, so that you sway, but your hands are floating on the water while your body moves … again … again … again …

  ‘Now sit. Let your body flow down. Now let each part of your body rest. Your hands are heavy. They fall, so. Your head is held up like a puppet’s, held up by the sky. Now stand again … and no, Miss Higgs, your hips should not sway. Your body sways. From now on this is how you will walk, and sit, each foot aligned with the other, your hands and body floating on the water …’

  An hour. Two hours. They sat. They walked. They talked like floating statues. I am a swan, thought Sophie vaguely …

  She was also hungry.

  At last Miss Lily let them go. Sophie felt dazed; by the way the others blinked as they came into the hall she suspected they were dazed as well.

  Was that what the others were here for? Lessons in grace? She walked, swan-like, along the hall and up the stairs. Was Miss Lily creating perfect debutantes here? Girls who would live out the social life she eschewed? Sophie had a sudden vision of the four of them, swan-like in ball gowns, floating through a fairy palace.

  ‘Doris, ring for tea, will you? And scones too, whatever Mrs Goodenough has. I’m too hungry to wait for dinner.’

  ‘I’ll bring it up myself, miss. They’ll be busy down there.’

  The tray had scones. It also bore four cups, not the usual two. Sophie glanced at Doris. Was this a hint to ask the other girls to share it, to make the most of her time with them instead of drinking tea with her maid?

  Laughter came from the corridor, Miss Carlyle’s and the prinzessin’s. So they had known each other before. It would be an intrusion to ask them to join her.

  She thought of Lady Alison, sitting in the armchair furthest from them all. She left the tray in her room, and knocked on the third door along from hers. ‘It’s Sophie Higgs.’

  No answer. Servants just walked in, but servants weren’t really supposed to be there, just their services. She knocked again.

  ‘Come in.’

  Sophie opened the door and stood in the doorway. Lady Alison sat by the window. Her hands were empty, nor was there any sign of her maid. ‘I … I just wondered if you were feeling sufficiently swan-like.’

  ‘Quite.’ Lady Alison gave the smile they had all perfected downstairs.

  Sophie forced herself not to bite her lip, to keep the smile in place. ‘I’m feeling more like a leg of lamb by now. You know, to be served up on a platter with mint sauce.’

  ‘Or like a tin of corned beef on the shelf?’

  Sophie froze, the smile still in place. ‘I’m sorry, I’m interrupting you. I will see you at dinner.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lady Alison.

  Sophie closed the door.

  Chapter 18

  All things are ephemeral. A flower changes from one minute to another, from the bud’s opening to the petals’ fall. A woman’s youth is more ephemeral than a man’s. But grace, compassion and insight will last all your lives.

  Miss Lily, 1914

  Sophie had a bath before dinner. To wash away the scent of corned beef, to wrap herself in the perfume of gardenia and roses from the bath salts Doris scented the water with. She waited till the maids had lugged up the china bath with its faded rose pattern and placed it by the fire, and brought bucket after bucket of hot water up the stairs, poured them in and swished the water about till the salts were dissolved, checking the temperature. All before unbuttoning Sophie’s dress, and stripping off the chemise, unlacing the corset and pulling down petticoat, stockings and then the final underwear, pale pink silk embroidered with roses.

  ‘White,’ insisted Miss Thwaites, but Sophie had laughed.

  ‘Who’ll see it?’

  ‘The laundry woman. Your maid.’

  ‘But the laundry woman won’t know it’s mine. She’ll think it’s yours,’ and she had giggled at the look on Miss Thwaites’s face.

  She would write to Miss Thwaites tomorrow before breakfast. Dear Miss Thwaites.

  She loved Miss Thwaites. She realised that she loved Miss Lily too, despite her rejection, in some way she couldn’t define. She had never realised love could come in so many flavours.

  In spite of Lady Alison’s insult, she wanted to stay, even more deeply than before.

  One of the downstairs maids entered, puffing and red-faced, with more hot water. Doris arranged the screen to keep out draughts, then placed small apple-wood twigs on the fire. It flared up, sending fresh heat through the room. Sophie took up the soap — Shillings had delicious soap — and the big round sponge and began to slowly wash her legs.

  ‘Will I wash your back, miss?’

  ‘I can manage, thank you, Doris.’ Doris always asked, and Sophie always refused. Doris hovered anyway, folding today’s clothes to be washed or sponged or laid in warm bran tonight to freshen and remove stains while Sophie was dining, checking that no hems needed stitching, the buttons were firm, there were no pulled threads in the stockings.

  ‘Doris?’

  ‘Yes, Miss Higgs?’

  ‘Did your sister teach you all this?’

  ‘Yes, miss.’

  Sophie thought of Miss Lily’s maid, black-garbed, eyes down, as swan-like as if she had been practising for twenty years. Which Sophie supposed she might have been.

  ‘She’s much older than you.’

  ‘Twenty-four years, miss. There’s fourteen of us, all girls.’

  ‘Good heavens.’

  ‘Grandpa worked on the estate till he went off to war in India with the earl. Never came back. It was long before I was born. But his lordship looked after Gran, let her keep our cottage. Mum married one of the Rowbottoms, but Miss Lily said she weren’t having a Rowbottom in the house and told Enid to change it to Green when she came here. Miss Lily found positions for all of us girls as we became old enough to work. I was maid here afore — before — you came, to learn the gentry ways.’ She ventured a smile. ‘I was that glad to give up scrubbing
, Miss Higgs.’

  ‘Fourteen ladies’ maids in one family?’ She tried to think how fourteen children fitted into a cottage, two rooms up and two down. But of course the girls would have left home as they turned ten or twelve to start work.

  ‘No — Mary’s a nursemaid, miss. Gladys is cook–housekeeper to the rector. She married Mr Higgins, who does for the rector too. They have two children. The rector is ever so good: our Dorcas took over while Gladys was nursing, but the rector let the babies stay in the kitchen and everything. There’s not many as would do that, miss. Nor be as kind as the earl and Miss Lily neither.’

  This was a kind family.

  ‘Did you want to be a lady’s maid?’

  ‘I like pretty things, miss. I always have. Soft things like silk and stockings. Miss Lily has a French lady come and teach us the latest styles. She subscribes to magazines too, miss. One of them’s in French but it doesn’t matter, because we just need to see the fashions. More hot water, miss?’

  Sophie thought longingly of lying in scented hot water forever — or at least the next two hours. But the dressing gong would sound soon. Even as she thought it the boom sounded hollowly downstairs.

  She stood, then let Doris dry her. Doris had laid out an evening dress — muslin, not silk, with a slightly higher neck than she had worn for the evening before, and in white. Lord Buckmaster was correct: white didn’t suit her. She wanted to outshine every girl there. She had money, beauty.

  But she was also their social inferior, and must not outshine them.

  Stockings, clean underwear, fresh stays, silk evening slippers with a white rosette on each toe. Sophie raised her arms to allow the new clothes to be placed on her body, then sat and lifted one leg then the other for stockings to be slipped on and fastened, then evening slippers, then her opal necklace.

  She moved to the dressing table so Doris could dress her hair, sweeping it back, brushing it over and over to bring out the shine, with drops of lavender oil on the brush, then pinning it behind her head in an artful sweep that looked elegant but was still ‘down’. She was not to wear it fully ‘up’ till she had been presented.

  Presented by the grandmother of that cold girl, presumably even colder than her granddaughter.

  Sophie stared at her image in the mirror. Miss Lily had warned her that corned beef could not be forgotten. Why was she risking repeated humiliations? Would having a London season really make so much difference to her life with Malcolm?

  Sophie hesitated. She had written dutifully to Malcolm every week. She loved him. Except now when she thought of him it was always at Thuringa …

  For the first time in her life she thought of what her life might be if she didn’t marry at all. Not Miss Thwaites’s life, forced to earn a living, but Miss Lily’s. Whatever Miss Lily’s life was like when she wasn’t at Shillings, Sophie was sure it was full, and … lived … that was the word. Miss Lily lived her own life, not part of a husband’s.

  These had been the richest months of Sophie’s life. And now they were ending, not just because she had to leave, but because she had been supplanted by three other ‘lovely ladies’.

  She rose, swan-like. ‘Thank you, Doris. My hair looks perfect, as always.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Higgs.’ Doris curtseyed, a flush of pleasure on her face. Sophie proceeded, swan-like, down the stairs.

  It was strange to see so many places set along the table. The room had too much pale froth of dresses. It didn’t suit the panelling, though the portraits of the earl and his ancestors on the walls remained impassive.

  Turtle soup was served. Sophie had played with giant turtles at the zoo when she was small, ridden the cumbersome animals. They smelled. The soup didn’t. Poor turtles, she thought. Reduced to a scentless soup.

  Salmon replaced the soup, then chicken in a pale lobster sauce. Female food, thought Sophie. Men liked roasts they could carve.

  Sophie let the talk flow over her. At first it was frothy like the food: gossip about mutual friends she had never heard of. Miss Carlyle had accepted the need for pleasantries, it seemed. She had been to a wedding since she had returned from school, and somehow the others all knew each person who’d been there; they wanted details of the dresses, the groomsmen, the lace. The prinzessin had spent Christmas at a château on the Loire. Once again everyone but Sophie nodded at the names, knew about the mother of the hostess … ‘So sad to hear of her passing. She will be missed,’ said Miss Lily.

  Only Lady Alison contributed little. But even she, it was evident, knew the people, though she limited her remarks to ‘Swansdown trimming, Prinzessin? How lovely. It must have looked so beautiful with her hair.’

  The conversation changed with the meat course. Miss Carlyle especially seemed glad to see the gossip go. She sounded well informed about the defeat of Turkey at the hands of the Bulgarians, the declaration of Albania’s independence at peace talks at Constantinople.

  ‘My great-uncle is most pleased at this,’ said the prinzessin, looking up placidly from her chicken.

  ‘Who is your great-uncle, Prinzessin?’ risked Sophie.

  ‘His Majesty Kaiser Wilhelm,’ put in Miss Lily quietly.

  Oh.

  ‘I am most interesting to hear what the English think,’ said the prinzessin. ‘My great-uncle too.’

  Somehow Sophie doubted that the German Kaiser would care what Australians thought. But at least now she could take part in the conversation. ‘Why is the Emperor pleased about Albania’s independence? Prinzessin,’ she added to make the blunt question more polite.

  ‘Because it makes war less likely. If the Balkan states keep their quarrels among themselves, it lessens the threat of war between our countries.’ Sophie had a sudden image of a baby German prinzessin being washed in a bath of Balkan states, then wrapped in a towel of flags. Corned-beef princesses were kept from the family business; this girl knew a great deal about hers.

  ‘Our countries?’

  ‘England and Germany, Miss Higgs. And Australien too, of course. I am sorry, I do not know the English word for your country …’

  ‘It is Australia, Prinzessin,’ said Miss Lily. ‘Almost the same.’

  ‘Ah, thank you. I apologise, Miss Higgs. I have not come across the name in England before. But you must know how close the prospect of war is between the empires. Any lessening of tensions, or even deflecting of them, must please all people of sensitivity.’

  ‘War between England and Germany?’ Not only had it not occurred to her, but she was sure that even her father did not expect it, or he would never have let her come to England. ‘But … but proper countries, big countries, don’t go to war against each other.’ The newspapers hadn’t even mentioned the possibility of war between England and Germany. Wars are fought in places like South Africa, thought Sophie, or the Crimea.

  The prinzessin looked at her almost with amusement; there was the merest flicker of contempt from Miss Carlyle. Lady Alison pretended interest in her bread.

  ‘Again I beg your pardon, Miss Higgs,’ said the prinzessin. ‘But I believe they can.’

  ‘Why do you think England and Germany are increasing their armies, Miss Higgs, if not for war? And the Tsar too.’ Miss Carlyle’s tone was not as gentle as the prinzessin’s.

  ‘I … I didn’t realise they were. Nothing has been said in any of the newspapers I’ve read.’ She wished at once that she hadn’t said it. All the other diners glanced at her, then politely looked away.

  ‘Newspapers never print what really matters,’ remarked Miss Carlyle. The words ‘to those who matter’ echoed, even though unsaid.

  ‘I think it must be comfortable,’ said the prinzessin gently. ‘To live so far away. If war comes, it may not touch your country or those you love.’

  ‘If England goes to war, then Australia will fight too. We did in the Boer War.’

  ‘Indeed you did.’ Miss Lily smiled along the table. ‘Miss Higgs has only a few evenings here. There will be plenty of other nights to discuss politic
s.’

  Sophie flushed. Nights without the ignorant colonial? Suddenly she was all too aware of how little she had really learned from the papers, how much greater had been the depth of understanding in that one ‘history lesson’ from Miss Lily.

  Maybe you needed to live in this world, as the others did, to understand it.

  Her head ached. For the first time since she’d left Sydney she felt alone and very far from home, but too near to its shadows too. How dare that girl opposite taunt her about corned beef? Perhaps she even knew about her mother. At least my mother was beautiful, thought Sophie. People loved her. Who loves you, Lady Alison?

  Someone was saying something. Sophie forced her mind back.

  ‘Miss Higgs,’ repeated Miss Lily. ‘The prinzessin asked you about kangaroos.’

  ‘I am most interesting in kangaroos,’ said the prinzessin kindly. ‘Also wildlife of all kinds, birds most especially. Do you have emus on your estate, Miss Higgs?’

  ‘Yes.’ She grasped at the change of subject. ‘I saw an emu eat a pair of pliers once.’

  ‘Pliers?’ The smile was perfectly in place on Miss Carlyle’s lips.

  ‘They’re tools, for fencing. The stockmen use them at Thuringa. That’s my family’s property.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I thought …’ Miss Carlyle broke off.

  That I lived above a corned-beef factory. But she didn’t say the words.

  ‘What is your Thuringa like?’ The prinzessin sounded genuinely interested.

  ‘About twenty square miles. It stretches along a river — there’s no other water except what we pump up to the water troughs.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘There are as many windmills as trees in some places. But ’roos can live where it’s too dry for cattle, and emus too. There used to be enormous mobs of emus when I was young — hundreds, maybe thousands, like a flood of feathers so you couldn’t even see the ground. But that was in the drought; they were travelling thousands of miles just to get to water. Now it’s rained we just see one or two at a time.’