How much loss had this woman borne? ‘I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine how terrible that must have been. Where did you go when your parents died?’
‘I was in my forties, far beyond an age when I might hope for marriage. I became a governess — more a nursery maid, really. Quite nice children, four and six. I was lucky, though I didn’t think it then. But that was how I met Lily, of course.’
‘Miss Lily?’ Sophie had grown so used to not saying the name. But of course there was no one now except Nanny to hear.
The duchess laughed. ‘She does make such a fuss, insisting we don’t talk about her. Sensible, but quite unnecessary between ourselves. She and I write to each other, of course. She asks after you in all her letters. I had one from her last week.’
Sophie tried to quell the jealousy. ‘Of course, you are old friends.’
‘Old, old friends.’
‘How did you meet?’
The duchess laughed. She seemed to be enjoying herself. ‘Oh, it was scandalous. Wonderfully, terribly scandalous. We met on the ferry from Brindisi to Greece. The family I worked for were prostrate with seasickness down below. I had come up to empty the chamber pot; the stewardess was rushed off her feet. And Lily was in the lounge, so glamorous. Make-up, of course, so shocking, except you would never have guessed it, and every gesture so graceful. Every man on the ship watched her. She saw me looking at her too, and beckoned me over, chamber pot and all — thank goodness it was at least empty by then — and we began to talk.’
‘Go on.’ Sophie felt breathless.
‘By the time the ferry docked she had invited me to Shillings. Lily took on the challenge of making me beautiful. I was a carthorse then, just as I am the size of a battleship now, and middle-aged to boot. But Lily insisted. She had known an elderly Japanese woman, bent and grey-haired, who still held the attention of every man when she walked into a room. Lily said beauty was as much grace and belief as body. We had nothing in common, Lily and I, and at the same time everything, including a desire to free women from what are often intolerable situations, although, of course, they must continue to be tolerated.’
‘You were the first of the “lovely ladies”?’
Her Grace laughed. ‘Scarcely lovely, and much older than Lily. His lordship held a house party for me, a year after I came to Shillings, and that was where I met and attracted the man who would be my husband.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘Not, I think, because I had acquired much of Lily’s ability to charm, but because Horace needed someone to take charge of his life. He was a widower, with a young son. Who more appropriate to acquire as stepmother than an ex-governess? I met a young woman that year whom I thought Lily might enjoy transforming, though she needed far less than I had. And she met others, and so the tradition began.’ Her gaze was far away. ‘It was a happy marriage, till Arthur — that was my stepson, Alison’s father — died. But I was lucky. Darling Arthur was not. He married against my advice. But a stepmother is perhaps the worst person to advise her stepson on love.’
‘Alison told me her parents weren’t … happy.’
The duchess nodded. ‘A tragedy. Many tragedies, and then their deaths. It shouldn’t be more tragic when a son dies than a daughter, but of course it is, when it means the succession moves from the direct line. You never recover from the loss of a child, or grandchild. You pretend to, of course, but the pain is always there. I loved him as my own, right from the first, as Horace had known I would, and Lily. Alison was such a comfort …’ She gazed into the fire, then back at Sophie. ‘I should have done a better job of caring for her. And for you.’
‘You gave Alison happiness. And you’ve been a fairy godmother to me.’
‘Fairy godmothers do not get arthritis. I believe,’ she added, ‘that you need a change.’
‘What kind of change, Your Grace?’
‘Sea air. A friend of mine wishes to turn her house into a convalescent home, much as we have here. She is rather at a loss just now. Her husband and both sons were killed at the Somme with Allenby last year, so she is alone and her life empty. I think you would be good for her. She can wait awhile, though, for you to organise the new gels here into the correct routines.’
The dowager raised an eyebrow, startlingly like Miss Lily for a second despite the horse face and the wrinkled jowls. ‘I think the challenge will be good for you. Other gels would enjoy promenading on the sea walk, but you, I suspect, will do better getting something done.’
‘My lack of breeding, Your Grace?’ Sophie said lightly.
‘Shall we say your extremely good breeding, Miss Higgs. Racehorses are bred to race, and do it well. Some women are bred to do their duty, and you and I are two of them. Sometimes I think that if one’s duty evaporated there would be nothing left. I … I do not think I could have survived Alison’s death if it were not for my duty here. Duty dulls the pain, Miss Higgs, even when you tire of it. It even at times leaves a little happiness in its wake. But you,’ the old woman shook her head, ‘you, my dear, have been bred to manage empires, not tend the sick. Why don’t men like your father see that their daughters can inherit their genius, as much as their sons?’ She stood, her hands trembling on her stick. ‘If you would be so kind as to see me back to bed? I hesitate to ring — the staff are so busy these days.’
‘Of course, Your Grace.’ The dowager seemed too light for her large frame.
‘Good night, Nanny,’ said Her Grace.
Nanny nodded and gazed peacefully at the fire.
Chapter 48
You think you have achieved exactly what you need in life, and then life catches you and throws you elsewhere. Duty, of course, is the greatest snare of all.
Miss Lily, 1916
APRIL 1916
Sophie had expected an ancient stone mansion, mellowed by sea winds. Instead she found red brick, as though a bungalow had blown up to fifty times its normal size and a crazed cook had added turrets and crenellations like icing on a cake. Only the view was beautiful: white-tipped waves and white cliffs, sparkling in the spring air.
In a few months the war would be two years old. Only two years, though it felt like two centuries.
A maid answered the door, showing her into a room with bright green-papered walls, covered with paintings of wet animals: a wet deer under sodden trees, a basket of sodden kittens, a sodden dog retrieving a duck from a lake with a hunter in a rainproof cloak. Sophie was wondering at the desire to have extra moisture depicted on the walls, given the English climate, when a black-clad woman who must be her hostess hurried down the stairs.
‘Miss Higgs? Hideous paintings, aren’t they? But my husband was stationed in the Kalahari for ten years — I met him in Africa; my parents were missionaries — and he said it gave him a longing for good English damp, though the drains here, thank goodness, are excellent. Tea, Mavis, in the morning room. I hope you will forgive the morning room, Miss Higgs. I haven’t been able to face the drawing room or dining room since … since it happened. It is one of the reasons I wish to change the house completely. My men’s place is in my heart, Miss Higgs, not as ghosts on their chairs. But the morning room was really my room.’ She opened the door. ‘Please do sit down.’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Fitzhubert, I don’t understand.’
‘I shall take a flat, and Mavis, and the paintings, and my memories, and know that I am doing my bit as they would want me to …’ The flow of words stopped, like a rock had dammed a creek. The silence grew.
What would a ghost woman need? Sophie thought. Miss Lily’s step two: boost Mrs Fitzhubert’s confidence with something she could agree with, a question that would bring her at least partly back to this sitting room, away from the long-imagined gunfire of the Somme.
‘Do you know how many beds you have, Mrs Fitzhubert?’
Mrs Fitzhubert looked bewildered. ‘Yes, of course, Miss Higgs. Eighteen in the house, if you count the servants’ quarters.’
‘How many do you think the house can accommodate?’
; Mrs Fitzhubert’s voice was already stronger. ‘I thought about seventy, if the men don’t mind sharing their rooms.’
‘They are used to it. I do so admire you, Mrs Fitzhubert. You have obviously given this so much thought. Not one woman in ten thousand would have the courage to do what you are doing, after you have lost so much.’
The too-white face flushed slightly pink. Mavis entered with the tea.
‘Tea, lovely, I’m parched. And teacake — I haven’t seen that in an age. You have a treasure in Mavis, Mrs Fitzhubert.’
‘She has been with me since my marriage, Miss Higgs. I … I’m not sure what I would have done without Mavis.’
And this is the first time you’ve told her that, thought Sophie.
Tears stood in Mavis’s eyes. ‘It’s been my pleasure, ma’am. I know how hard it’s been for you.’
Some of the house’s depth of silence — which had not been broken by her hostess’s rushes of words — lightened.
Sophie smiled. ‘Shall we have tea and begin? And Mrs Fitzhubert, would you mind if Mavis joined us? I am sure she will have valuable insights.’
It took three weeks to arrange what would have taken a year, perhaps, before the war and Sophie’s newfound confidence in organising and giving the kind of orders that had been the prerogative of men, and without the assistance of Mr Slithersole. Sophie suspected Mr Slithersole now had a small office dedicated to the instructions of his employer’s daughter. She also suspected that he had long since stopped checking her requests with her father — that both men were according her a respect now that perhaps neither was even aware of, but which was real, nonetheless.
Mrs Fitzhubert was installed in a serviced apartment in a red-brick, centrally heated building overlooking the bay. Mavis would be her personal maid and companion, and they would fill their days with bandage-rolling and Comforts for Soldiers committees in this strange new society where maid and mistress could sit and knit side by side as long as it was for The Cause.
Sophie’s job was done. Her Grace had been correct. She had enjoyed it deeply, had liked helping Mrs Fitzhubert arrange her new life too.
‘We must celebrate,’ said Mrs Fitzhubert, the night before the first convalescents were due to arrive.
‘Champagne?’
‘I thought we might go to an enlistment rally at the pier tonight.’ Mrs Fitzhubert made it sound like a night at the music hall, with a lobster and caviar supper thrown in. But at least she was back from the imagined mud and anguish of the Somme now. ‘The speaker will be Captain Angus McIntyre. You must have heard of him, Miss Higgs? He won the Victoria Cross at Ypres. When they took the hill he crawled out under heavy fire to bring back his lieutenant, and then returned twice to get more of his men.’
Insane, brave or innocent? thought Sophie, thinking of Malcolm. His letters still spoke of giving the Hun what-for …
‘What fun,’ she said, wondering if she could slip off and walk along the cliffs instead. But Mrs Fitzhubert might stay at home without the excuse of ‘May I introduce dear Miss Higgs from Australia?’
The dusk was faintly orange from the smoke across the Channel, and the crowd was thick when they arrived. The amusement arcade was closed for the war, the painted walls of clowns’ faces already battered by windblown sand. But tonight the gaslights were lit against the growing shadows; bunting hung from every possible surface, with posters plastered over what had once been a dance room — Your country needs You!
‘Mrs Colonel Sevenoaks organises everything so perfectly,’ said Mrs Fitzhubert, just as Sophie said, ‘Emily!’
Emily approached, two older men and one young man trailing behind her. She wore dark green, a feather in her hat.
The young man was another feather. He looked insubstantial, as though his body were there but his reality elsewhere, his good manners tethering him to them as he answered Emily’s remarks obediently and politely. His eyes were shadowed in the way Sophie had seen in patients with blood loss. He had a mostly healed scar on his forehead that she suspected went deep into his hairline. He walked with hesitation, as though he had recently stopped limping. Youngish, thirty perhaps, sun-browned skin, a touch of blond in the brown hair.
How had Emily acquired him? Charmed him like Mr Porton?
‘Miss Higgs, how lovely to see you,’ said Emily.
Ah, thought Sophie. I am ‘Miss Higgs’ now.
‘Captain McIntyre, may I present Miss Sophie Higgs, from Australia.’
‘The place with the kangaroos,’ said Sophie, and was glad to see a flicker of amusement light up Captain McIntyre’s tired eyes for a brief second. ‘Mrs Fitzhubert, I believe you know Mrs Colonel Sevenoaks? She and I were presented in the season before the war.’
And I married at the end of it, and you did not, said Emily’s smug smile. I have a war hero at my side and a husband waiting for me on the podium, while you are a spinster, with a father in trade.
‘We must go,’ said Emily, ushering Captain McIntyre towards the stage. ‘Do stay for tea afterwards, Mrs Fitzhubert, Miss Higgs. I believe there will be buns.’
‘Buns. Delightful,’ said Sophie.
They sat. Colonel Sevenoaks gave the introduction. He spoke well, his voice reaching even to the end of the pier, and clearly enjoyed it. Definitely a political candidate if the war ever ends, thought Sophie. If he hadn’t considered it before, she was sure he had now. And his wife was evidently charming his way to future power.
‘And I say this to every boy and man here today, to every mother of every son, to every wife and sweetheart. Our boys are dying for each and every one of us over there, and without more men to back them up they will continue to die. If there is a man here with iron in his backbone, if there is a woman here with the courage to tell her men to do their duty by their nation, then England’s green and pleasant land can never be conquered. Not while Englishmen live and breathe and serve her!’
He waited while Emily began the applause. A well-dressed man in the bowler hat of a butler in mufti — clearly a plant — yelled ‘Hear hear!’, promoting more cheers from the audience.
The colonel beamed. ‘And now I have the honour of presenting one of England’s finest, the hero of Ypres, winner of no less than the Victoria Cross. I had the privilege of being there when His Majesty himself pinned the medal to this great man.’
Though I bet you weren’t there to receive a medal, thought Sophie. Colonel Sevenoaks had the easy look of a man who had never faced an enemy, except perhaps those armed with spears in North Africa two decades before. Despite his rank, he had clearly not elected to join a regiment overseas.
‘Let me tell you what His Majesty said. “Give me ten Englishmen like Captain McIntyre and the war will be over by Christmas.”’
Which Christmas? thought Sophie as the colonel at last sat down.
The cheering didn’t have to be prompted this time.
Captain McInytre faced the audience. He looked so tired; it was a curiously dead look. Sophie had seen it too often at Wooten — men who had given up, who would die of wounds where another man might live.
The silence grew. Emily made a restive gesture towards her husband on the platform.
And then the young man spoke. ‘Actually, I’m a Scot.’
The crowd’s laughter was as much relief as amusement. Someone yelled, ‘Show us yer kilt, then!’, but it was good-humoured.
‘I’m afraid it got a bit muddy at Ypres.’ He pronounced it correctly, not ‘Wipers’, as most of the troops had renamed the Flemish hill. Nor did he have a Scottish accent. English boarding school, thought Sophie.
‘Had to leave my kilt behind. But I did bring what I am going to tell you home with me.’ He shut his eyes for a second. He is going to tell the truth, thought Sophie, not say what Emily wants him to. ‘I left good men behind me too. Men who need help, if we are to win this war. I’ll tell you who the real heroes of this war are. The men who are there, because, by heaven, it is so very easy not to be there.’ The words seemed to have s
topped. He looked almost confused for a moment, nodded abruptly and said, ‘Thank you’, then sat down.
Emily stood, smiling as though she had expected this ten-second speech, instead of a ten-minute one, charming the entire audience, as Miss Lily had taught them to charm a dinner table, meeting the eyes of every person on the pier briefly, intimately. ‘Thank you, Captain McIntyre, for that wonderful lesson in why every man and boy here is needed at the front, why every single woman here tonight must urge the men of her family, her neighbours, even on the street if she must, to support our heroes overseas. And now tea will be served by the St Anne’s Ladies’ Guild and War Widows’ Society, new members always welcome. And if there is any man here who has heard the call of his country …’ Emily’s eyes swept the audience ‘… Sergeant Harrow here will take his details and give him his shilling, and Captain McIntyre will shake his hand.’
‘Three cheers for the captain!’ It was the butler in disguise again. But once more the cheers were real. The young man sat awkwardly, then followed Emily obediently down onto the pier, like a dog, thought Sophie, not a lover. This man was in the shadow world, neither back in the trenches nor quite here.
Back on the stage, a choir, not quite in tune, broke into ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, their singing almost overwhelmed by the clink of teacups.
Sophie fetched Mrs Fitzhubert a cup of tea and left her with the St Anne’s Ladies’ Guild, to offer her services, find yet another place of fellowship for the days and years to come. Sophie took her own tea to the edge of the group around Emily, her husband, the local vicar, and the captain.
Suddenly the captain put down his tea. He muttered a brief excuse and made his way through the crowd, stopping only to shake the hands of men who pressed theirs into his.
Sophie waited till he had reached the edge of the pier, then strolled after him. Steps one and two — from compassion, not because she wanted anything from this shadowed man. Smile then make him say ‘Yes’. ‘Captain McIntyre? If you are looking for the facilities, they have been closed for the duration.’
Miss Lily’s Lovely Ladies Page 36
