Miss Lily’s Lovely Ladies

by Jackie French

  ‘How long did the drought last?’ Miss Carlyle’s voice had lost its contempt. She looked at Sophie with what Sophie was starting to recognise was her usual intensity.

  ‘About twenty years. I was six when it finally rained. My governess says I demanded to know when the rain would stop; I’d never known more than a few minutes of rain at a time.’

  The whole table was looking at her — at her, she realised, not at the daughter of corned beef. They seemed genuinely fascinated.

  ‘It must have meant great hardship,’ said the prinzessin.

  ‘I suppose it must. I’ve never really thought about it before.’ She knew cattle prices were lower now, and had a vague idea that her father had bought cheaply because property prices were low in the drought, and chosen Thuringa because its river frontage ensured a supply of beef for his factories. But had food prices been higher in the drought? She suddenly realised she had no idea of the cost of a loaf of bread, here or in Australia. Bread simply was, and rolls, and toast.

  ‘Scarcity of supply is always hardest on the poor.’ Miss Carlyle leaned forward in her eagerness. ‘The Corn Laws created poverty where none need have existed.’

  ‘The Corn Laws?’

  ‘The tax on imported grains, on flour, from 1815 to 1846. The tax helped large landowners, but meant their farmworkers starved.’ Miss Carlyle looked at her levelly. ‘Your country was settled by starvation, Miss Higgs. The starving farmworkers during the height of the effects of the Corn Laws, the Scottish families turned out during the Highland Clearances, the starving Irish after the Potato Famine — did you know that even at its worst Ireland still exported food?’ She shook her head. ‘Politicians knowingly let people starve simply to make fortunes for themselves and others.’

  Her father had joked once that childhood hunger had stunted him; he’d never had the food to grow tall. What had caused poverty in New Zealand? She had never even thought of wider causes of poverty before.

  ‘You look solemn, Miss Higgs,’ said the prinzessin.

  ‘I was thinking of my father. He is so very proud of feeding people,’ she added apologetically.

  For a second she wished the words had remained unsaid. She had just put a can of corned beef on the table, symbolically at any rate. But the tension at the table seemed to relax a little, not increase.

  ‘Feeding people is a most honourable industry,’ said the prinzessin. ‘My cousin married a Krupps heiress — not an honourable industry at all, making guns and armoured war machines. Of course one does not mention the connection …’

  ‘You just have,’ murmured Lady Alison. They were the first words she had said for the past half-hour.

  ‘Here we can speak freely,’ said the prinzessin. ‘Can we not, Miss Lily?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Your father must be happy,’ said the prinzessin kindly, ‘with his useful factories and his Thuringa. It makes me all the more interesting to see this Australia some day.’

  ‘But what about your home, Prinzessin? I’m sorry — when I think of Germany it’s all snow and fairy castles. I know I am ignorant about Europe. As you say, we are very far away.’

  ‘There is snow and there are castles. I am not believing in the fairies, though one of my cousins says she has seen a troll. But that was in Denmark. Perhaps it is different there.’ It was hard to know if the prinzessin was making a joke or not.

  ‘You live in a castle?’

  ‘I live in an apartment in my brother’s castle. My brother believes you must be cold to be strong, so it is a cold castle. You sit close to the stove and breathe the smoke, or you sit away from the stove and be cold. Either way you cough.’ It was definitely a joke. ‘So I go to Switzerland to the Ladies’ Academy and I meet Miss Carlyle.’

  So both of you were ‘finished’ before you came here, thought Sophie. Presumably that was the academy Miss Lily was sending her to. Was Lady Alison’s family too poor to send her to school in Switzerland? But poverty was relative. Perhaps she was too timid to venture so far.

  ‘Miss Carlyle also comes from a castle. But it is a warm castle and a very pretty one.’

  ‘And very new. My grandfather built it. He made his money in soap.’

  Their eyes met. The soap might be a generation away from her corned beef, but it was still trade, castle or not. And Miss Carlyle was admitting it at this table. It was almost a gesture of friendship.

  ‘I am liking a new castle,’ said the prinzessin. ‘I am thinking only a new castle can be warm.’ She pronounced it ‘varm’, but it was attractive.

  And Miss Lily smiled, the firelight flickering behind her as Jones ushered a footman in with more apple wood for the fire.

  It was late when they left the library, self-consciously walking like swans. The after-dinner coffee had almost tasted good. I could like it, thought Sophie sleepily as she trailed up the stairs with the other girls.

  ‘Good night,’ she called as the prinzessin opened her door along the hall.

  ‘Gute Nacht. It was most interesting about the emus. I am hoping one day to see them, perhaps. It sounds warm, your country, too.’

  ‘I would love to show you Thuringa.’ To her surprise she meant it.

  To her further surprise, the prinzessin’s smile in response seemed real. ‘That would be most interesting. And warm, I have no doubt.’

  A talent for making commoners feel at ease, learned in her childhood or at finishing school? Yes, but there was something else there too. The prinzessin, like Sophie, had come there for a reason, and not just to escape the draughts in her castle.

  ‘Good night.’ Miss Carlyle, too, sounded friendly.

  Sophie turned to Lady Alison, but she had already closed her door.

  Chapter 19

  Cooks study cooking. Politicians receive guidance on their way to prime ministership. But there are no schools for the most essential part of life.

  I decided to remedy that.

  Miss Lily, 1914

  FLANDERS, 12 JULY 1917

  The moon looked like a yellow rosette pinned to the sky above the crumbling farmhouse walls: a smudged rosette, dimmed by the smoke from the guns. The dog made a small noise in its sleep, half a whimper, breaking the night’s silence.

  No, not silence, thought Sophie. The front lines were never quiet. The guns’ vibration came up through your shoes, through every surface you touched. Shellfire still hiccupped, but there had been no crossfire for half an hour perhaps, ever since it grew dark, too dark for her to look at her watch, an enamelled one on a gold chain from her father. ‘Do you think they’ve gone?’ she whispered.

  ‘The Huns? Or our men?’

  ‘Either. Both.’

  ‘No. This is ground to be taken. Once they take it, it will be secured — which means searching it minutely for the enemy, for trip wires, for bombs.’

  ‘How can taking a ruined farmhouse matter?’

  ‘Ask the generals that. The bloodiest battles of this war have been back and forth over a few hundred yards of mud and barbed wire. They’ll be digging out bones for hundreds of years when all this is over. If it ever is.’

  ‘So both sides are waiting for daylight?’

  ‘Or moonlight, if the clouds clear.’

  ‘Oh. When does the moon rise tonight?’

  ‘In about three hours. Early morning. Sophie, keep on talking.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because whatever happens I will only ever have this one night with you. If we get out of here, I will go one way and you another. If we don’t …’

  ‘There will be other times. You have to believe that. Even an after-the-war-is-over time.’

  He shrugged next to her in the sooty darkness. ‘Four years ago I didn’t believe in dying, at least I didn’t believe dying was for me. I’d been in my first trench for seven minutes when I suddenly realised: That could be me.’

  ‘What made you realise?’

  ‘A chap put his head up to investigate a noise. Suddenly there was no head. Just red a
nd white. Not even blood, just bits of brain and bone. And I thought, That will be me.’

  ‘Could be. Not will.’ She touched the dog’s head gently, for the comfort of its fur. ‘We should give it a name. Charlie.’

  ‘Why Charlie? He’s probably French.’

  ‘You said he was Spanish.’

  ‘Spain’s a long way from here. They have sheepdogs like this in France and Flanders too. Well, dog, what do you think of Charlie as a name?’

  The dog opened its eyes. It lifted its head hopefully, in case there was chicken.

  ‘See? He knows it’s his name now. Don’t you, Charlie?’

  ‘Ftth,’ said the dog.

  ‘The blood’s dry,’ said Sophie. ‘Maybe he was hit by a cart, not shot at all.’ She didn’t add, ‘Maybe he will live now.’ If they died tonight, Charlie might too.

  He scratched the dog’s ears automatically. ‘I’ve been thinking about what you said — that war is like a game of football. Would I kill the Kaiser?’

  ‘Would you?’

  He replied slowly, ‘Would it make any difference? One kaiser is replaced by another. One general by another too.’

  ‘So individuals don’t have power?’ asked Sophie flatly, still stroking Charlie. ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘No, of course they do. But sometimes things grow too large to be contained or even changed by any one person.’

  ‘The Kaiser could stop the war.’

  ‘Not,’ he said dryly, ‘if he were dead.’

  A mouse ran across the floor, hesitated as it smelled them, then darted back to its corner. Stupid mouse, thought Sophie. A war unlike any other is swooping across your world, and you are worried by the smell of two humans and a dog.

  ‘If the Kaiser tried to stop the war … if he said, “No more. Put down your guns”, it might mean even more killing. He might face a rebellion in his own country, like the rebellions in Russia. The Tsar lost his throne because of an army mutiny. Do you think the Kaiser’s generals would obey?’

  ‘They would have once,’ Sophie said slowly. ‘Now … I don’t know. But it would be worth trying. Anything would be worth trying to stop all this.’

  ‘You sound like a pacifist. Don’t you think this war is worth fighting? Do you think that every man out there,’ he nodded into the darkness, ‘has died for nothing?’

  She shivered at his bitterness. ‘I have a friend who says that the Kaiser might have stopped the war, way back at the beginning.’

  ‘The German friend who sends you letters in wartime, or the friend whose grandmother is a duchess?’

  ‘Friendship is friendship, despite boundaries,’ said Sophie. ‘Miss Lily taught me that.’

  Chapter 20

  Practise delight in small things. It disarms those who might otherwise worry that you may, indeed, understand what goes on around you, in spite of being a woman. But it will also make you happier. A woman’s life, at every station in society, involves long periods of boredom that we can rarely choose to temper. A delight in small things will make this easier.

  Miss Lily, 1914

  SHILLINGS HALL, 1914

  It snowed the night before Sophie was due to leave. She woke up to silence.

  No, not complete silence. Faintly she could hear the rustle of a maid’s apron in the hall, a voice from the kitchens. But all sounds from outside had vanished.

  Doris must have slipped in already. The fire glowed with fresh apple wood. The room was warm. She ran to the window and parted the curtains.

  The world was white, with strange mounds of green and brown.

  Snow. Just like on a Christmas card. Real snow, the first she had ever seen.

  Shillings had given her a present for her last day there. Who could have guessed white could be as bright as that?

  ‘Miss, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to be late.’

  Doris placed a cup of tea on the bedside table along with a plate of wheaten biscuits.

  ‘You’re not, I’m early. Doris, look, it’s snowed!’

  ‘Yes, miss. Horrid cold stuff it is too. Snow damp gets into everything, my mam says. I’ll bring your hot water up, miss.’

  ‘Not yet. Help me dress — something warm. I want to go out there. I’ll bathe when I get back.’

  ‘Into the snow, miss?’ Sophie might have suggested dancing naked in the lane. She realised Doris might be worried about packing damp clothes. There wouldn’t be time to dry anything before they had to leave for the midday train.

  ‘If I get my skirt damp, just put it in front of the fire here.’

  ‘Miss, I couldn’t! Miss Green would skin me if she saw that!’

  Strange to have to call your sister ‘Miss’, thought Sophie. But the servants’ hall had rules as rigid as any above stairs. ‘Why would she find out? Even if she does, you and I will be gone by tonight. She can’t give you a rollicking till we get back. And I’ve never seen snow. I’m going to make a snowman. Except I never have. How do you make a snowman?’

  ‘You roll up a big ball of snow,’ said Doris doubtfully. ‘Then roll a smaller one and put it on top of that, then another even smaller for the head. Me and my sisters used sticks for the arms, and a carrot for the nose.’ She grinned. ‘And me dad’s hat once. We got a belting for that.’

  ‘I need a carrot,’ said Sophie. ‘There must be one somewhere. Hurry, Doris! Just lay the clothes out and I’ll dress myself. Snow!’

  ‘Yes, miss,’ said Doris.

  The air outside smelled like cold tin. The snow crunched under her fur-trimmed boots. Who could have guessed that snow would crunch? Or that she owned fur-lined boots? She wondered briefly what other wonders her wardrobe had acquired.

  Doris had put out mittens, not gloves, and Sophie soon realised why. The separated fingers of gloves would have let in the cold more than the snug leather mittens did. She tried to gather snow between her hands and was surprised as it easily compressed.

  ‘What are you doing?’ It was Miss Carlyle, speaking through a chink in the breakfast-room window.

  ‘Making a snowman.’

  ‘A snowman? But —’

  ‘I’ve never seen snow before!’ yelled Sophie happily. ‘Real genuine snow!’

  Another face appeared at the window. The prinzessin stared at her, bewildered. ‘You are interesting in snow?’

  The prinzessin must have been told that it should be ‘interested’, thought Sophie. It’s an affectation. ‘I’ve got a carrot for its nose and everything.’

  ‘Ah.’ The prinzessin looked thoughtful. ‘A carrot. That is different. Who can resist a carrot?’ The window closed.

  Sophie concentrated on trying to cram more snow into a ball. It looked jagged and out of shape, not at all like the neat balls on Christmas cards. But children made snowmen. Surely it couldn’t be too difficult.

  ‘Not like that.’ The prinzessin clumped towards her, immaculate in blue velvet, with what looked like chevrons on the sleeves, and a large and floppy blue velvet hat trimmed with white and black fur. Her boots left deep holes in the snow. ‘You roll the snow. You see?’ She bent and demonstrated.

  ‘Hannelore, you are impossible! You hate snow!’ Miss Carlyle appeared behind the prinzessin, dressed in boots and mittens now too. She carried an elderly top hat. Had it once graced Jones? Her look held a moment’s calculation, as though she were weighing up the possible fun against the chances of getting cold and damp.

  ‘This is English snow.’ The prinzessin’s face looked up innocently. ‘I have never seen English snow before.’

  ‘You’ve been to England a score of times!’

  ‘But always in the summer. There is no snow in the summer. And I have never made an English snowman. We must give it a bowler hat.’

  Fun won. Miss Carlyle tromped towards them, heaving her boots with each step.

  ‘It’s a top hat, I’m afraid,’ apologised Sophie.

  The prinzessin waved her blue-mittened hand, then went back to rolling up her ball. It was as high as Sophie’s kn
ees now. ‘It is no matter. A top hat will do. And a pipe, Miss Lily!’ she called to the face at the breakfast-room window. ‘We need a pipe!’

  ‘I will send Jones out with one.’

  ‘No,’ called Sophie hurriedly, thinking of the poor man wading through the snow. Jones’s dignity would probably mean he wore his spats even out here. His toes would freeze — and remain frozen for most of the day. ‘I’ll come in and get it.’

  ‘It will be a most magnificent snowman,’ said the prinzessin. She grinned wickedly. ‘We need another carrot. To place here.’ She gestured lower down. Sophie blinked. Surely the prinzessin didn’t mean …

  ‘Hannelore, you are wicked,’ said Miss Carlyle, ‘and impossible. Truly impossible.’ But she was laughing too.

  The snowman stared at them — still with a single carrot — through the breakfast-room window. He is magnificent, thought Sophie, from his top hat to the muffler Miss Carlyle had wrapped around his neck, and the eyes and ‘buttons’ made of lumps of coal. He even had a smile — a red rag provided by the housekeeper, slightly fragrant with lavender polish.

  At least the snowman will stay for a little while when I am gone, thought Sophie. Miss Lily will have to remember me whenever she looks at him …

  She pulled herself up at the thought. Was she jealous of the others? Jealous that Miss Lily wanted them with her, and not Sophie? Of course I am, she thought. Anyone would be.

  But at least there was the snowman.

  She helped herself to grilled kidneys and a larger-than-usual helping of kedgeree at the sideboard, then sat at ‘her’ place at the table, opposite Miss Carlyle. The prinzessin sat at Miss Lily’s right, with Lady Alison on Miss Lily’s left.

  ‘I’m sorry you missed the fun,’ Sophie said to Lady Alison.

  Lady Alison stared at the blackberry jam on her toast. ‘I don’t care for snowmen.’

  Prig, thought Sophie.

  ‘German manufacture is always superior,’ said the prinzessin. A definite joke, Sophie decided.

  ‘Nonsense. You said it was an English snowman. It is an English top hat.’

  ‘The costume, it is English. The manufacture is German. Miss Carlyle and Miss Higgs merely helped.’