Miss Lily’s Lovely Ladies

by Jackie French

  ‘But you’re part of it.’

  ‘Because to do nothing would be worse.’ He shut his eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry. I should have talked about other things.’

  ‘No. You’ve made the last nine days worth living.’

  She wanted him to kiss her. Needed his warmth against her. Should she subtly move closer, to make a kiss almost inevitable? But a kiss, here, in the gathering dusk, would mean more than the farewell kiss to Malcolm.

  This man was too fragile to be allowed to make a commitment. And she did not want commitment even now — the war had not changed that. Marriage meant taking on your husband’s life. Who would she even be when all this ended? James Lorrimer saw that, and would not ask. And Dolphie too.

  Suddenly Angus moved beside her, but not to kiss her. ‘Shh,’ he breathed.

  Something moved in the growing dusk beyond the apple trees. Black, with a hint of white, a long nose at first and then the whole creature, not wombat-like at all, unless a wombat had bred with a wolf. All at once the badger darted back into its hole. Perhaps it had smelled them.

  Then it was back again, pushing and pulling at what looked like a ball of dried bracken.

  The shadows were thickening into dimness. Another form appeared, and then another, both smaller, darker. One lunged towards the other, then they were rolling, snapping, bouncing while the large shape went back and forth, cleaning out the bracken.

  A mother and her cubs. It was a miracle: two hundred maimed men up at the Abbey, the battlefront so close across the Channel, the anguish of the past two years. Yet here were these animals, untouched by it all. It was so domestic.

  ‘I’ve never seen it,’ he whispered. ‘I’ve watched badgers night upon night, but never seen a mother clean out a burrow or the young ones play like this. You could watch for a hundred years …’

  She glanced at him, saw him watching her, not the badgers. ‘Sophie, I don’t know how I’ll end up in this war. Dead’s not the worst of it. I’ve seen fellows blind, screaming, armless and legless both. I wouldn’t ask a woman to share that. I couldn’t. But … when all this is over … will you share a picnic basket with me again?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sophie.

  Chapter 52

  I learned many years ago never to make a life decision in times of danger. Your mind and body are so keyed up to ‘do what must be done now’ that you lack the mental quiet necessary for the choice you need to make.

  Sophie, 1958

  Angus left. At the high Wooten doorway he hesitated, then kissed Sophie’s cheek. She touched her cheek with her fingers absently, feeling the kiss again, for weeks after he left.

  She did not write to James of his visit. Her relationship to either man had never been clearly stated. Two years before she had felt too young to make a choice regarding marriage. These days the world was too complex to be able to make a choice.

  She still wrote to him, and to Malcolm, and also to Miss Lily, although there had been no more letters from her, nor to the duchess, when Sophie had bluntly asked.

  She sent both Angus and Malcolm cakes baked in the Abbey kitchens, socks knitted by Doris that she hoped they’d think had been knitted by her, she told them about the potatoes growing in what had been the lawn, how Her Grace had ordered the longer-haired dogs shorn and the hair spun.

  She didn’t add that the cloth would make light bandages for the worst of the burns patients, the men who screamed when anything was laid upon their ulcerated flesh. Instead she talked about the two spaniels, suddenly dramatically bare, how one went leaping like a puppy and how the other stalked over to the fire and refused to budge for three days, so that Blaise had to bring its food and serve it in state, and one of the maids had to gather up its ‘business’ too.

  The war went on. The management of Wooten was out of Sophie’s hands now, but there was still plenty to do. Women’s work. Boring work. She tried to thrust the concept from her mind.

  In May German and British fleets met, fought, sank, with both sides claiming the victory that only the sea won. Irish rebels were executed, the rebellion quashed. The Germans had begun a new push at Verdun; the Russian army won a victory at Sokal on the River Styr, a hundred trains of German troops diverted to the Russian front from the trenches of France and Belgium.

  Mid-summer brought another battle on the Somme, the great push for victory that gained a few miles — and almost one hundred thousand dead. Sixty per cent of junior officers died …

  And suddenly there was a new Allied weapon, codenamed a ‘tank’, rolling over the German line and crushing men and trenches.

  Sophie held the newspaper with trembling fingers, her tea and porridge forgotten. Was this the weapon Miss Lily had spoken about, so long ago, the one that was so terrible it would change warfare forever? There were only twelve of them, most disabled now, but more would be built and used …

  But she didn’t believe in a miracle weapon to end the war any more. The Allies had their tanks; the Germans had the manpower, conscripting Poles and Belgians to do the work back home to free their own men to be soldiers.

  That year alone perhaps seven hundred thousand Allies had died at Verdun, and almost as many on the Somme, according to the pamphlets put out by the pacifists, but anyone who could count the casualty lists could work it out. The pacifist lists were right. But their cause? How could you not fight for others when they were being attacked? For yourself? ‘Let any man who has not a sword sell his cloak to buy one,’ the vicar quoted in a Sunday sermon.

  Doris left, taking baby Sophie to live with Alison’s cousin Mary and her children, to be part of a normal family — as much as anything could be normal in this land of war. Mary’s husband had been repatriated with one eye lost, a ‘Blighty one’ that would keep him safe in England — as much as England herself was safe.

  The little girl was toddling. Sophie held her namesake’s hands one last time as she waddled across the nursery, then stood with the impassively weeping dowager as they watched Doris hold the child’s hand up to wave goodbye and the car rattled down the driveway.

  She would miss them desperately. But Alison’s daughter needed a proper home, not a hospital. She needed a permanent mother and father.

  And Sophie no longer needed a maid, even if her conscience would spare a woman from the hospital to attend her. She could lace her own much looser stays, put her own washing out for the maids, dress her own hair in the simple style needed for a much simpler life.

  The dowager still staggered from her bed to wave each busload of men goodbye. ‘Miss Higgs? She’s the duchess’s companion,’ Sophie heard one of the VADs tell a newcomer. ‘A good sort. You’ll like her.’

  That was her. Sophie Higgs, a good sort. An old lady’s companion.

  Only letters gave a glimpse of the world outside.

  1 September 1916

  Dear Soapy,

  How are you, old thing? This is just to let you know that I’m moving on from Lady Mary’s lot — she had the hide to object to my wearing trousers one evening at dinner. I’d taken the bike out for a spin and come back just as the gong went. Well, anyhow, we’ve had words.

  No matter, I’m fixed up even better now with Blinkers and Swatt. They were good chums of mine at school. They brought a van over — used to be a baker’s van but they’ve had it fixed up with stretchers in the back and painted it white with a red cross on it. All unofficial, of course, but no one cares about that over here. We’re billeted at a chattow (I still can’t spell that) with a nice old duck near Ypres. Her husband and three sons are in the French army. She treats us jolly well. We take turns going out to wherever the shelling has been worst, loading the wounded up and taking them to the first-aid posts.

  Two of us take the van out, and the other has a kip back here if possible. We’re pretty close to the shelling: just noise and smoke during the day but you should see the sky at night. Like Guy Fawkes — fireworks to the left of us, fireworks to the right of us, into the valley of death rode, well, a
collection of carts and vans and ambulances, and even then we are only half enough, or not even that. Most of the poor blighters have to hoof it — carrying their mates or leading them, if they can still walk, five miles or more sometimes, just to get to an aid post or a casualty clearing station, and then sometimes there’s a three-day wait before anyone can really check them over.

  I picked up one blighter on the bike the other day. He was just wandering down the lane, blood all over his face, no idea where he was going. I cleaned the muck off with my scarf then tied up the wound — shrapnel I think, into his head just above his eye. You wouldn’t think anyone could survive that, but I reckon if he was able to get that far on his own two feet he’s the sort who’ll make it through. Didn’t know where he was or who I was, but when I said ‘Hold on behind’ he did like a good ’un. Took him straight to the Base Hospital — even I could see he needed surgery — which meant I had to ride back by moonlight. Ran over a hare on the way back, which our old duck was VERY pleased about, as we shall have it for dinner. She was even up waiting for me with a log on the fire in her drawing room and a hot brick in my bed, and her maid to bring me potato soup. A real old darling.

  Don’t think I’ve ever written as much as this before to anyone, even when I was at school. Give my regards to Her Grace. I almost know her from your letters by now.

  Cheers, old girl, and love too,

  Dodders

  Men came; men left. Two-thirds, perhaps, went back to fight. When had those who were blinded, crippled begun to say they were the lucky ones? A wound that left you lame, with sight lost in only one eye not two, the fingers on one hand blown away — these days they meant only that you would survive.

  The local women’s group no longer made gas pads. It seemed that too many men had suffocated behind them as they tried to save their lungs from gas. The soldiers now wore flannel bags soaked in chemicals over their heads, with a celluloid panel so that they could see. At least there was enough air in the bags for them to escape the poisonous green clouds, though despite this ever more men were arriving blinded or gasping from gas attacks. There were rumours that clouds of British gas meant for the enemy had blown back on their own men.

  But what foundation was there in rumours from men too weak to leave their beds? Nightmares, perhaps; tales strung together from memory and fear.

  Sydney

  September 1916

  My dearest Sophie,

  It is so good to get your letters. Your father worries every time a week passes and we do not receive one, but I tell him that mail must be irregular in wartime. We dearly wish you back at home, but with the submarine menace and so many ships sunk, there can be no thought of it.

  It has been difficult with Oswald away fighting — we heard from him last week, by the way, from Palestine, and he sent you his best regards. Who would have known that he would become such an accomplished horseman? But your father says that he and his brothers were all grooms, as were Oswald’s father and grandfather, so perhaps it is not strange at all. This war has shown us sides of ourselves that we might never have imagined.

  I have now taken on much of Oswald’s work in an attempt to lessen the burden on your father. I have always enjoyed ‘figures’ and am finding it strangely enjoyable to work with ‘real’ sums instead of problems in a textbook. Rosalind Millbanks, whom you may remember as our second housemaid, assists me with the work. She is an intelligent and capable girl and makes an excellent assistant. Her ‘young man’ is in Flanders, and she is glad of the increased wages to save for the day when this war is over and our heroes return and the two of them can be married.

  I must now tell you that your father had a small ‘turn’ at the factory last week. Miss Millbanks found him unconscious at his desk. Dr Weaver says his heart is strong, and that he fainted from heat and overwork, and a man of his age needs to take it a little more easily. You can trust me when I say I will make sure that he does. Please do not worry about your father — it would worry him far more to know that you were worried! I will make sure he rests each afternoon and does exactly as Dr Weaver tells him to.

  He sends his love — and does not know I have told you about his ‘turn’ — and love always from,

  Maria Thwaites

  30 September 1916

  Dear Soapy,

  Damn, damn and triple damn: Swatt caught it. A stupid, stupid accident — we had the men packed tight as sardines in the ambulance. I was sure that the weapons were all unloaded but there must have been one I missed. A bump in the road and it went off, took off the back of her head. Sorry, I shouldn’t be writing this but if I don’t tell someone I’ll go mad. Can’t tell her parents, not that she died like that.

  It’s my fault, all my fault, and don’t say it isn’t, because I know it isn’t too. It’s the bally Kaiser’s fault. It’s because we’d been on the road for a day and a night without sleep. It was because — well, never mind the becauses. She is dead and I had to tell someone, and you are far enough away not to howl when you read this. Maybe just a small howl. She was a brick, Soapy. A right good ’un. She deserves some howling. Maybe howl for me while you’re at it, if you have the time.

  Thank you for listening, old thing. It did help to write this, you know.

  Love,

  Dodders

  10 October 1916

  Dear Sophie,

  This is just to say that I am safe, and thinking of you, and to thank you for the fruitcake that arrives every week, and for your letters. I am glad you saw the badger again. It seems so far away now.

  I hoped I might get some leave at Christmas, but it will only be two days, not long enough to cross the Channel. May you have a Merry Christmas anyway.

  Yours always,

  Angus

  No words of love, not even memories of apple blossom. But he wrote to her every week, on clean, good-quality paper, and that told her he was away from the front line, most of the time at least. She wrote back, trying, as she imagined his mother doing, to find things unstained by war to write about. The spaniel had had puppies by the great Dane: a terrible misalliance but so sweet. She had managed to knit bedsocks — so much easier when you didn’t have to turn a heel, and would he like a pair? Nothing things, on either side, that said only ‘I am here, and you are there.’

  She wrote to Sergeant Brandon at the factory too — he sometimes dictated a letter to his female assistant to send to her; and to James Lorrimer, the only letters in which she included opinions, though never queries.

  She wrote to her father and Miss Thwaites, helplessly wishing she could take some of the business load herself, despite trusting Miss Thwaites’s capability to care for both factory management and her father. Passage to Australia now was almost impossible for civilians.

  At two am, waking at a patient’s scream in the rooms above her, she longed to write to Dolphie, to ask more about the ancient forests that he loved; and to find out, perhaps, who he truly was. In daylight she knew that it only mattered that he was the enemy. As Hannelore had said, as the horrors in Belgium showed, losing a war was even worse than fighting one.

  Most of all, she longed to write to Hannelore, or Miss Lily. They were the only ones left who might understand how she felt her life had vanished, just as she had begun to understand who she might be.

  Chapter 53

  December 1916

  Dear Sophie,

  I write this just so you do not forget who I am; so that I don’t forget who I am, perhaps, in what might only diplomatically be called the ‘diplomacy’ of this war. Privately, I sometimes find our enemies easier to deal with than our allies.

  I have not said this, of course, to you or anyone else. But you will know the esteem in which I hold you from the fact that you are someone I have not told it to.

  I remain, yours always,

  James

  The card sat on a silver salver. Miss Ethel Carryman, with a Yorkshire address. Sophie glanced up at the boy in his taken-in footman’s attire. ‘She wishes to see me,
Jeremy?’

  ‘Yes, miss.’ The boy hesitated. ‘She’s … she’s sort of a lady, miss. But she came in an army car, with a soldier driver. Will you see her, miss?’

  A proper footman would have been more reticent. ‘Of course. Please, could you bring tea too?’ Even if Miss Carryman had only come from the village, she’d need a cup of restoring tea.

  Sophie folded the letter she had been writing, then stood as the ‘sort of a lady’ was ushered in.

  Tall as a man, broader shoulders than a shearer, a square, almost ugly face. A red ungloved hand thrust towards her, a hand that looked like it scrubbed floors. Of course, many ladies’ hands looked like that now, and the suit was well tailored.

  The accent was not.

  ‘Miss Higgs?’ Pure Yorkshire. No, not pure. Someone had done their best to graft a good accent onto this young woman but had done a far worse job than Miss Lily would have. ‘I’m after your corned beef.’

  Sophie collapsed back into her chair in laughter. Impossible not to. All her life everyone had been so … tactful … about corned beef. Now this. ‘You don’t beat about the bush, Miss Carryman.’

  Miss Carryman grinned. ‘Not in wartime, Miss Higgs.’

  ‘Call me Sophie,’ said Sophie.

  ‘Well, then, I’m Ethel. But I didn’t expect someone who lives in a place like this to be so chummy.’

  ‘My dear Miss — I mean, Ethel, you are the first person in my life who has spoken frankly to me about what is the only truly interesting thing about me. Now, tell me why you want it. I presume you don’t just want a few cans for a jumble sale? Thank you, Higgins,’ she said as the maid put down the tea tray. ‘Milk, Miss — Ethel?’

  ‘Please. And make it three sugars.’

  ‘You must help yourself to teacake.’

  The big woman took two large bites — hungry bites, not just bad manners. She swallowed, then said, ‘I need enough corned beef to feed ten thousand men a night. We had a year’s contract with your pa’s company, but when that came to an end his agent told us that our corned beef was going to the army now.’