Miss Lily’s Lovely Ladies

by Jackie French

  Sophie looked at the girls in the room. It had worked. She no longer resented Lady Alison; a few minutes before she had wanted to protect her, as she would a lamb circled by crows. She respected Emily, and Hannelore she simply liked.

  ‘Shall we run through the steps again? Miss Higgs?’

  ‘Smile,’ said Sophie. ‘Make them agree. Ask a question they can answer. Praise them. Praise another.’

  ‘Excellent. We will practise each of the steps again each night. Once you can do these without even thinking, whether to a colonel in the Guards or a dowager, a maiden aunt or an eligible young man, you will be noticed, approved of, and, more importantly, liked.’

  Sophie knocked tentatively on Lady Alison’s door. There was no answer. She knocked again, then said softly, ‘May I come in?’

  Still no reply. She opened the door and looked in. Lady Alison was huddled on the window seat, holding her legs, staring out the window. She glanced at Sophie, then looked back at whatever she had been gazing at. Sophie doubted it was the grass below.

  ‘That book … it was a shock, wasn’t it?’ Sophie said.

  ‘I knew it was coming.’ Lady Alison still stared out the window.

  ‘But not like that?’

  ‘Exactly like that.’ Lady Alison looked at her. Perhaps this is the first time she has really seen me, thought Sophie. Lady Alison took a breath. ‘My grandmother made what is known as a good marriage.’ There was the echo of a smile now. ‘Grandmama was only the daughter of a country doctor, and in her forties too, when she met Miss Lily. They became close friends, despite the difference in their ages. Grandmama looked like a horse in a good light, all chin and nose, and about as wide too. But she had — has — charm. She told me that is what Miss Lily taught her: the charm and grace to catch a duke who sat in the House of Lords.

  ‘I said I don’t want to get married, but I know I need to. I don’t want to have to work as some old lady’s paid companion, as a telegraph operator, a nurse or a governess. What else is there? But it’s not just for financial security.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Sophie.

  Once again she had the feeling that Lady Alison was really looking at her. ‘Perhaps you do. Women who don’t marry are always standing outside the rest of the world. Allowed to visit, perhaps, to make an even number at table. Allowed to serve the ones who matter, as servants or governesses or companions or maiden aunts. I don’t want that. I want my own life.’ Her voice was fierce now. ‘Not a big life, perhaps, but one of my own.’

  ‘But you don’t want … a man,’ said Sophie slowly.

  Lady Alison stared out the window, her face red. ‘Is it so obvious?’

  ‘Maybe when you love someone it will be different.’ Sophie thought of camellias and Malcolm.

  ‘I don’t like being touched. Or touching,’ said Lady Alison flatly. ‘Except babies, maybe. And dogs.’ She looked at Sophie, then added suddenly, ‘My parents’ marriage was … unspeakable. Literally. One does not speak of things like that. An alliance — a title on his side, money on hers. But the money vanished in the crash of the nineties. My father never forgave her, not just for that, but also for her inability to give him a male heir. She never forgave him for his contempt. Two people joined together for life, forced to smile together in public, can inflict extraordinary cruelty on each other in private. Neither of my parents forgave me either, for being a girl, for witnessing the humiliations they inflicted on each other.’

  ‘I … I am so very sorry. But all marriages aren’t like that,’ said Sophie.

  ‘How do you know what happens behind the drapes? Once a woman is married she must endure in silence. There is no escape. If she tries to leave, legally she can be brought back. But if I want a baby — or a life — I know I have to learn to touch a man, and make him think I like it.’

  ‘I’m sure it won’t be so bad.’ But what did she really know of marriage? She knew little of the Underhills’ unhappy partnership, nor did she know enough of the Suitable Friends’ parents’ lives. ‘Forgive me for being blunt,’ she added, trying, somehow, to help. ‘But you’re not rich. Not titled. The man you marry must truly love you, value you. There are kind men in the world. My father is kind.’

  But was Malcolm? She suddenly remembered the chains on the men at Warildra.

  Lady Alison looked remote again. ‘Would even a kind man accept a wife who hates to be touched?’

  I haven’t tried to understand her, thought Sophie. What must it feel like to be so afraid of touch? ‘Alison —’ suddenly the ‘Lady’ seemed irrelevant ‘— did you play lacrosse?’

  The remote look vanished. ‘At school. What has that to do with anything?’

  ‘Did you, er, love your lacrosse stick?’

  ‘What an extraordinary thing to ask. Of course not.’

  ‘But you still played the game?’

  ‘Yes. But —’ Alison stopped. ‘You mean that … that being with a husband could just be a game too?’

  Sophie shrugged. ‘I don’t see why not.’

  ‘But a husband will expect …?’

  ‘It doesn’t last long,’ said Sophie, drawing on her bull and cow expertise. ‘Just a few seconds, I think.’ She wondered if men bellowed like bulls.

  ‘Like being hit on the shins with a lacrosse stick?’

  Sophie grinned. ‘If you like.’

  Alison watched her for a moment. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘There’s no need to thank me.’

  ‘There is, you know. For understanding. Though it’s possible you’ve put me off lacrosse for life.’ She gave an almost-grin. ‘Don’t worry. I never liked it much anyway. But I do want to thank you for the money …’ She paused. ‘I’d have had a season anyway. Staying with my aunt, no ball of my own. But it will make a difference, not looking like a church mouse.’ She tried to smile. ‘My cousins call me Mouse. I suppose it fits.’

  ‘I always thought a church mouse would live quite well. All those holy candles to eat. No cats.’

  ‘There’ll be cats in London,’ said Alison dryly. ‘All peering at us, hoping for evident flaws. There’s nothing more savage than a mama on the hunt on behalf of her daughter.’

  ‘Then we’ll have to protect each other.’

  ‘I suppose we will,’ said Alison slowly. ‘They’ll want to gossip about …’ She stopped, as though unwilling to say the words.

  ‘Corned beef,’ supplied Sophie.

  ‘Well, yes.’ She bit her lip. ‘Thank you. I … I think, with a friend, I can get through a season. Maybe that is partly why Grandmama sent me here.’ She managed a smile. ‘And with a friend to confide in, I might even find the courage to … play lacrosse.’ She was speaking to herself as well. ‘And, as you say, it won’t be for long.’

  ‘You just need a man who doesn’t want, er, to play lacrosse very often.’

  Sophie hesitated, then kissed Alison on the cheek. She was glad that Alison didn’t flinch at the contact, either with her or the corned beef.

  Alison looked curiously at Sophie. ‘Miss Lily says you have an understanding with a young man in Australia.’

  Sophie nodded. ‘Malcolm Overhill. His father is MP for our district. His grandfather was too.’

  ‘So your Malcolm is the next one?’

  ‘I don’t think he wants to be. It all seems such a long way from here.’

  ‘Everything is a long way from here. That’s how Miss Lily wants it.’ She flushed. ‘I wonder if you’d like to call me Mouse, like my cousins do. You know, I’ve never had a friend before. I … I didn’t like school. Grandmama brought me home after two months. And my cousins are so much older. Some of the other families we dine with have daughters, but somehow … maybe I’m not good at friendship. Or at much else.’

  ‘I’ve never had a real friend either. It’s my own fault, I think. Friends, then?’

  ‘Friends,’ said Alison.

  The days formed a pattern surprisingly quickly. Mornings meant breakfast at the long, dark table, discussing the pr
evious day’s newspapers, then political discussions and luncheon with Miss Lily. The footmen and Jones withdrew, leaving the food on hot chafing dishes on the sideboard. Then the afternoons were theirs, to do with as they wished.

  ‘Do you think Miss Lily might be an … an illegitimate sister of the earl’s?’ Sophie asked Alison one afternoon as they walked along one of the muddy lanes in the grounds. On one side of the lane, sheep nosed doubtfully at a rack of hay. On the other, the Shillings glasshouses gleamed, even the top panes dust-free and the autumn leaves cleaned from the roof. Hannelore and Emily were writing to their families, back at the house.

  A few weeks earlier Sophie would never have used the word ‘illegitimate’; she still wouldn’t, except to very particular friends.

  Mouse had become such a friend.

  ‘Why do you think so?’ Alison asked.

  ‘No Miss Lily in Debrett’s or Landed Families. Nor anyone who might be her.’

  Alison nodded. ‘It’s possible. It may be why she’s here when he’s travelling in the East: so he doesn’t have to publicly accept her.’

  ‘But he admits her here …’

  Alison shrugged. ‘If the tenants gossip, they’ll be thrown off the estate. Lose their jobs, their homes, their families.’

  ‘But Mouse … that’s terrible.’

  Alison looked at her curiously. ‘If one of your workers at Thuringa offends the family, doesn’t your father send him or her packing?’

  ‘He has sacked people, of course. Mostly for drunkenness,’ she added. ‘But I don’t think Dad would ever kick a man’s family out of their home; he’d let them live there till the man found another job.’

  ‘Is that how it’s done in Australia?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Sophie slowly. She looked at a man, puffing past them with a barrow of steaming manure. ‘Mushrooms and asparagus,’ she added.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  Sophie nodded at the glasshouse. ‘They have great pits for manure to make the garden beds inside hot. I looked them over when I first came here. That’s how we get the mushrooms, asparagus and rhubarb, even now in the cold. That’s why they’re called “succession houses”. That one over there has pineapples and peaches.’

  Alison laughed. ‘You are impossible.’

  ‘Because I’m interested in succession houses?’

  ‘Because you investigate barrow-loads of manure.’

  ‘A sign of my ignoble upbringing,’ said Sophie lightly.

  ‘No. Just you being Sophie. You could have been brought up in Windsor Castle and you’d still have poked your nose into succession houses.’

  ‘Does your home have succession houses?’

  ‘Wooten Abbey? Yes. But I’ve never been in one.’ Alison grinned. ‘Maybe we can explore them together after the season.’

  Mr Jeremiah Higgs had bought Alison’s companionship for the season. But not afterwards …

  Sophie smiled and nodded.

  There were lessons in keeping skin white with rice flour and cucumber juice; on keeping it soft with lemon peel and jasmine oil; on mixing scents so each of the girls had a perfume all her own, Sophie’s rose and lavender and lemon; on how to use a sugar toffee every month to make sure the face was free of tiny hairs, or a moustache as one grew older, and the legs and arms were hair-free as well.

  Impossible to think they would one day be old enough to grow a moustache.

  For Sophie, this was a time to learn more subtle things too, by watching the manners of the other girls, imitating them — Alison’s accent, Emily’s ease of conversation.

  To her surprise, she found Hannelore studying Alison’s and Emily’s ways too.

  ‘I am thinking I may marry an Englishman,’ Hannelore explained one day at luncheon.

  ‘What’s his name?’ Emily gazed at a dish of winter pears, selected one, placed it on her fruit plate and cut a slice with her silver fruit knife.

  ‘I do not know,’ said Hannelore calmly.

  ‘Your family is arranging it?’

  ‘My family will arrange a marriage to one of their allies. This year it might be an Englishman. I have no money.’ Unless you count a fortune in jewels, thought Sophie. ‘So I must sound as though I would be happy to have England as my home. It is a pity,’ she added, ‘that your princes are too young still to marry me. A German and English alliance is good for both nations now, I think.’

  ‘You like England?’ asked Emily.

  Hannelore shrugged, and pulled her silk wrap higher on her shoulders. ‘It is cold in England, also. Englishmen are not enough serious. They will be shooting and playing cricket. But when there is war I think it is better to live on an island like England. It is difficult for an army to cover … what is the word I want?’

  ‘Cross the Channel,’ said Emily.

  ‘Yes, that is it. It is difficult for an army to cross over so much water. So I will be better here, if my family can find a suitable alliance.’

  ‘Do you think the wars in the Balkans will get worse?’ asked Sophie.

  Hannelore looked at her tolerantly. ‘One country falls, the others go down, boom, boom, boom, like toy soldiers. You push one, then all the others fall.’

  ‘Why not live in the south of France?’ asked Alison lightly. ‘It’s warm there. And Frenchmen don’t play cricket.’

  Hannelore snipped off a cluster of grapes from the pile on the epergne in the centre of the table. ‘France and Germany will fight. It is what they do, they fight each other. One day soon they will again. Your Lloyd George has called the build-up of arms “organised insanity”. Every country in Europe I think is a little insane right now. No, I am good here …’

  ‘Better here,’ corrected Emily.

  ‘Thank you. Better here. Your royal family, they are German too.’

  ‘The House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha,’ said Emily.

  ‘And they are my cousins.’

  ‘The royal family are your cousins!’ Sophie had found it didn’t matter showing shock at things like that now.

  ‘King George is my cousin, I think, two times removed. There are more grapes, please?’ She turned to Jones, silent behind them.

  ‘Certainly, Your Highness.’

  I’m sitting with a cousin of the King, thought Sophie. If Mrs Overhill could see me now.

  Chapter 25

  It is a sad fact of life that the more social power a man wields as he gets older, usually the less … personal … power remains to him. A successful man needs to seem successful in all areas. Remember this. A beautiful woman on his arm implies virility. And if he is not virile, then he is especially indebted to her, for adding that final polish to his success.

  Miss Lily, 1914

  A lesson. Miss Lily’s drawing room, with its parchment silk walls. Miss Lily in grey silk, with grey lace at her wrists and neck. The silk crinkled as she moved. Three girls were arranged in chairs around her, the pastels of their dresses bird-like against Miss Lily’s drab.

  ‘I’m so sorry I’m late.’ Sophie closed the door behind her and fell into a fourth chair. ‘The earl has a mechanical ditch-digger. It’s very efficient …’ Sophie broke off as the others looked at her, and laughed. ‘Shall I count what I’ve done wrong? I’m late, I’m discourteous to my hostess and my friends, I forgot to be a swan, and mechanical ditch-diggers are not a proper topic for a debutante.’

  ‘Unless your companion is fascinated by mechanical ditch-diggers too. My cousin would be enthralled.’ Miss Lily inspected her. ‘No leaf mould on your shoes. You have changed. Good. Now, shall I show you how all of those faults can be erased?’ Miss Lily nodded at Sophie again. ‘If you wouldn’t mind going back into the hall. Now, when you come into the room again, pause for a count of four, then dip your chin towards your neck and lift your eyes to look straight into the eyes of each person here for a count of two, no more.

  ‘If they are a friend, or a potential friend, smile. If they are a man, or someone to whom you owe deference — your hostess or any o
ther older woman — drop your eyes and face, and give a smaller smile. If it is a child, smile too. But no matter how many are in the room, make that contact before you take a step.’

  Sophie stood outside the door. Stupid, to be late; embarrassing to be caught being late; boring to learn yet another piece of meaningless etiquette, like placing your hands cupped and motionless on the dining table.

  She opened the door. Caught Hannelore’s eyes: a smile, immediately reciprocated. Caught Alison’s, Emily’s, Miss Lily’s, gave a dip of deference. She began to step towards the chairs.

  And felt … different. ‘It’s not just manners, is it?’ she said, sitting — swan-like this time.

  ‘No. That meeting of the eyes is saying, “I like you. I am interested in you.” Even the most formidable of matrons wishes to be found interesting, even by the most insignificant of debutantes. It is an opportunity and a beginning. It is the same when you are speaking to any other person, in company or not. Meet their eyes, smile.’

  ‘No matter how boring they are,’ said Emily.

  ‘Especially if they are boring. Others will admire your poise or your charity. And if you must be bored, then you may as well make at least one other person happy by appearing to be fascinated.

  ‘Miss Carlyle, if you would try it now. Enter, look, and sit …’

  The others were sitting now, swan-like, their backs only just touching their chairs, their hands in the ‘sleeping crane’ position Miss Lily had taught them, practised and practised until it was almost second nature to sit like that now.

  In a year or two, thought Sophie, I will sit like this all the time. Unless I consciously decide I won’t …

  Chapter 26

  Nothing is ever ‘just a …’. Whenever you are starting to use the phrase ‘just a …’, think again.

  Miss Lily, 1914

  ‘Tea,’ said Miss Lily, lifting the silver pot, ‘is a meal that requires care. A man requires an excellent dinner, a perfect breakfast. Tea is a woman’s meal — not that men don’t enjoy it. But while you can make breakfast or dinner as elaborate as you like, too much display at tea, especially of sweet things, makes a man uneasy. It is as though the woman is laying claim to her own world, instead of fitting into his.