‘And so it should,’ said Sophie.
‘Yes. Well. Except our canteen feeds soldiers who need it just as much as them in the trenches. We’re on a main route to the battlefields for fresh British troops, the last one they see before Blighty if they’re being sent home. Which means they’ve been shot up, and probably going to —’
‘I know what a Blighty one is,’ said Sophie. ‘We are a convalescent home.’
‘You see them convalescing,’ said Ethel bluntly. ‘I see them with their legs bleeding stumps, or their faces so smashed it takes three hours to spoon a mug of cocoa down them. But if they don’t get that cocoa, they’ll die all the sooner. We give every man jack of ’em a corned-beef sandwich, a mug of cocoa and two cigarettes. Cocoa is no problem — my dad and brother are Carryman’s Cocoa, and with all the white feathers my brother’s collected he could cover a whole hen run. Quaker,’ she added. ‘Not coward. He believes you shouldn’t kill another human being.’
‘And you?’
Ethel met her eyes. ‘And I agree with him. But when a Hun buries a bayonet in a baby I reckon we need to do summat more than pray for his little soul. Cocoa and corned beef save people, they don’t kill ’em. If we can get that corned beef.’
‘Ethel, I’ll be frank. I’ve never had much to do with my father’s business. If he could have managed it, Dad would have had me grow up without even knowing the words “corned beef”. But I do know that corned beef comes from cattle, and is processed in factories, and I do know my father. If it were possible for him to be producing more corned beef, he’d be doing it. Asking him to find extra cans to feed your ten thousand men a day won’t do any good at all. Even he can’t magic up more cattle and factories that quickly. Is it really ten thousand?’
‘Only on a good day. Or should I say a bad one, after a stoush. On other days we cope with maybe a couple o’ hundred.’
‘Who is we?’
‘Schoolfriends of mine.’ The grin again. ‘We decided running the canteen was more important than French irregular verbs. Though I reckon some of the verbs we’ve heard in the last couple o’ years aren’t especially regular. Midge McPherson, she’s a New Zealander. Brother caught it at Gallipoli. Anne is an honourable.’
‘Just the three of you?’
‘And the young women who used to be our maids. We manage,’ said Ethel calmly. ‘But not without corned beef.’
‘I’m sorry. I —’
‘Nay, lass, I didn’t come here to ask you to magic that corned beef out of the air. Because I’ve found the corned beef we need. Only problem is, your pa’s sellin’ it to someone else. Worthy’s Teahouses.’
Worthy’s were one of the largest teahouse chains in Britain. ‘You want me to ask Dad to divert the corned beef bound for Worthy’s to your canteen?’
‘You ask that, and your pa will tell you the same thing his agent told Lady George — that’s Anne’s mother. Thought your pa’d be more willing to go the extra mile for her than me. Your pa’s Mr Slithersole says a contract is a contract, and he’s right. Even if your pa gave us that corned beef, old Worthy could get the law on him to get it back.’
‘Then what would you like me to do?’
‘Ask your pa to offer Worthy’s summat that’ll change their minds. Like cheap corned beef for ten years after the war. Because I’m not feeding my lads fish-paste sandwiches, not after what they’ve been through.’
‘I can do that,’ said Sophie.
‘There speaks a lass whose pa has always given her her every wish,’ said Ethel.
Sophie flushed. Yet it was true. ‘I’ll send the cable now.’
The reply sat at the breakfast table. Only Sophie and Ethel, who had stayed the night, were breakfasting downstairs, Ethel’s chauffeur having headed to the barracks side of the Abbey for more official accommodation. The breakfast salvers contained only porridge these days, the de rigueur sugar on the table, despite rationing but, tactfully, never touched.
Except this morning, by Ethel, who ladled it onto her nearly full bowl. She caught Sophie’s stare. ‘Sorry, I forget sugar’s rationed over here. Back in France we get used to fuelling up.’ She nodded at the yellow cable envelope. ‘Going to open it?’
‘Of course,’ said Sophie, a little stunned by so much forthrightness after years of excellent manners. She slid the cable out of its envelope.
‘Dearest Sophie tried but Worthy is not having any stop,’ she read out. ‘Would if I could stop who has been pestering you about the business anyway question mark Her Grace should be looking after you better stop Miss Thwaites sends her love your loving father Jeremiah Higgs stop.’
She looked over at Ethel. ‘No go. Sorry.’ She watched Ethel spooning up her porridge like a small conveyor belt. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘About how to turn every cow I’ve seen in the last two days into corned beef. But then there’d be no cheese or milk, and we need that too.’
Sophie smiled as she helped herself to a much smaller bowl of porridge, sugarless. Excitement trickled like honey. ‘Then we’ll have to try another weapon.’
‘And what’s that? One bloke did give me a German Luger, but I left it behind in France.’
‘Charm,’ said Sophie.
The head office of Worthy’s Teahouses was curiously inhospitable: men at desks with ledgers on the ground floor; men and a scattering of women with more ledgers on the second, where a middle-aged woman in severe serge led them to an office as severe as her costume.
Mr Worthy held Sophie’s card by one corner, peering at it through his glasses, though the appointment had been made by his secretary.
No tea tray ready to offer us, noted Sophie. ‘Stand back and be quiet,’ she muttered to Ethel.
The large woman glanced at her from under the brim of her sensible hat, her mouth quirked in a half-smile.
Sophie held out both gloved hands to Mr Worthy, forcing him to stand, which he had clearly not intended to do, and take her hands in a gesture of intimacy. ‘Mr Worthy?’
‘Yes.’
‘Mr Worthy, how truly good of you to give us five minutes of your valuable time. But I knew you would. All England knows how much you do for your nation, Mr Worthy.’ She fluttered her eyelashes up at him.
A smile, slightly like Ethel’s, quirked his lips. ‘Thank you, Miss Higgs. But you are still not getting my corned beef.’
Sophie blinked. A man was supposed to give sufficient time for charm to work …
Ethel chuckled behind her.
‘You may as well sit down,’ said Mr Worthy, ‘as I doubt I will be able to convince you for at least ten minutes, which is all I can afford in times like these.’
Sophie sat; Ethel sat beside her.
‘In ten minutes, then,’ she said. ‘You won’t give the beef for your country, then, Mr Worthy?’
‘I am giving my country corned beef,’ said Mr Worthy. ‘Corned beef for men and women in the factories, office girls — they’re the ones who eat at Worthy’s. Those men and girls keep the war effort going, same as the boys in the trenches. And there’s no amount of money your father can offer me that will make me take it from them.’
‘Cheese and pickle,’ said Sophie. ‘We still have eight minutes.’
He pushed his glasses up to stare at her. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Mr Worthy, I will give you my word that my father will provide you with as much cheese as corned beef. Very nutritious, cheese and pickle.’ Actually, it had been a later cable from Miss Thwaites that had suggested cheese, and Sophie who had added the pickles and worked out how to organise them. ‘The pickles will be made in England by our women volunteers, with Australian sugar and vinegar sent by my father.’
Mr Worthy paused at that, actually considering. ‘Already offer cheese and pickle. A mixed assortment is a mixed assortment.’
Sophie tried to find an answer.
‘Cut the meat thinner,’ said Ethel suddenly. She met Mr Worthy’s eye. ‘I’ll do you a deal.’
‘
Will you, now?’ But he stopped fiddling with his watch, and gazed at Ethel intently. Perhaps there were forms of flirtation beyond Miss Lily’s ken …
‘You cut your corned beef thinner, and so will I. We’ll go halves in the corned beef. You can put a sign on every plate saying Half your beef is going to our Tommies in the trenches. You’ll get your extra cheese and pickle, and I’ll cut you in on the tomatoes from Lady George and her posh friends’ greenhouses. She’s a patron of ours and eager to help. Tomato sandwiches will be a treat your customers can’t get anywhere else. Four months of them, every summer. Mayhap you can even put the family crest on your pats of margarine.’
‘Butter,’ said Mr Worthy, meeting Ethel’s gaze.
‘Butter,’ Ethel agreed, with the grin of one who knew it wasn’t.
‘And the price of the corned beef I don’t get …’
‘Will be your donation to our boys,’ said Sophie, feeling it was time she put in something useful, beyond getting Ethel the entrée here today through her father’s name.
‘Done.’ Mr Worthy stood again, putting his hand out to shake, realising he was handing it to a woman at the same time as Ethel shook it, hard, then let Sophie grab it too.
‘Thanks for your ten minutes,’ said Ethel.
Mr Worthy looked at Ethel for a moment. ‘If you were a man, I’d offer you a job.’
‘Thanks. But I’ve got one,’ said Ethel cheerfully.
I don’t, thought Sophie. Would Ethel accept her as a volunteer at her canteen? And yet mixing cocoa and slicing bread would be much like the soup kitchen, if larger and more agonising. Good work, but work anyone could do.
I should be thinking of what needs to be done, she thought. Yet who has the luxury of doing what fulfils them most? I’ve had my head filled with nonsense by Miss Lily, who is probably right now doing …
What? Her duty, as a VAD? Spying on the German high command, or urging peace?
‘Lunch?’ asked Mr Worthy, signalling to his secretary.
Ethel beamed. ‘I’m right fond of a good cheese sandwich.’
‘I’m sure you are,’ said Mr Worthy.
Chapter 54
I’ve just discovered the perfect cure for an overloaded heart: a motorbike. When your heart feels like you can take no more the engine keeps on beating, and the wind in your face hardly smells of guns or blood at all.
Dodders to Soapy, 1917
A flurry of sleet ushered in 1917, sending several men screaming as it rattled on the windows like shrapnel. By March there was a revolt in Russia — two million Russians dead, millions more starving after the Tsar was deposed. Once this would have seemed like a world upended, but the world had been topsy-turvy for so long now.
And the United States entered the war. How much had James Lorrimer helped with this? Perhaps even he did not know the answer, nor could it be asked by mail. ‘The world must be made safe for democracy,’ said President Woodrow Wilson, though the only woman in Congress had wiped away tears as she said, ‘I want to stand by my country but I cannot vote for war.’
But war exists, thought Sophie. Your voting for or against it will make no difference. While men are still willing to fight and to order others to fight, it will go on.
Would the United States army make any real difference? Their entire armed forces were just over one hundred thousand men. A hundred thousand men were hardly more than the losses already incurred on only one of the major battlefields, although hundreds of thousands more men were being mobilised, that useful word that meant tearing a man from one life and thrusting him into uniform in another. And how could they cross an ocean with submarines lurking below?
Perhaps she had given up hope that war would end now. We all have, she thought. Maybe that is why it goes on. We imagined war and got it. We can’t imagine peace, and so it vanishes.
James Lorrimer was still in the United States, presumably helping coordinate this new joint war, one country’s experience matched with another’s energy, and still mobilising resources and securing the major loans the United States government had made to the British, and the fighter aircraft from their vast steel factories.
King George asked his subjects to eat less bread — a quarter less — to aid the war. Even the royal household was on rations now. Potatoes had vanished from the shops. People ate swedes instead, cattle food, and children foraged in the lanes for extra food for cows. Wooten still had potatoes from its home farm, but even now in mid-summer, with the first vegetable crops of the year, it was a stretch to feed the men. At least there was still porridge, and the table still set precisely so; letters were still there no matter what time you managed to stagger down to breakfast.
Including this letter, lying so innocently on the table.
She glanced at the handwriting — unknown — and the postmark — Switzerland — then looked at it more closely.
She took the letter-opener and ripped the envelope. The paper inside was good quality, pre-war. She opened it and stared.
20 June 1917
My dear Sophie,
I am sending this to a friend who will see it reaches you. I sent one similar to Miss Lily also, but have had no reply. Perhaps she is no longer at Shillings, or they no longer forward her mail. I hope only that this one will reach you.
The letters at the bottom of this page are important. I hope you will know who should see them. You will understand why I do not tell you more.
I hope truly that you are well and happy and married perhaps to a very nice man, and that you and he are both safe in all that is happening. I hope too that Alison and her husband are safe. Please give her my love, but it would be best if you do not tell anyone else that you have heard from me, not good for either of us I am thinking.
As for me, I am well, not married, and busy, as we all must be, I think. I hope to tell you one day. One day we will have teatime together once again.
I am your friend, always.
H
Hannelore was still safe! The first thought overwhelmed all else. And then: I have a letter from the enemy. And after that: Her English sounds so stilted. Is she all right? The newspapers had said Germany was starving, but surely a prinzessin wouldn’t starve. Hannelore, she thought. My friend.
It was only then that she looked at the bottom of the page.
At first glance it looked like an inkblot, but she found a magnifying glass in the nurses’ closet, then stared at the blot again.
Not just letters, but symbols too. And then a date, and a place. 13 July. Ypres.
Chemistry, she thought. The symbols look like chemistry. What did they call it? A formula.
What did Hannelore expect her to do with this? Take it to someone who knew chemistry? But there was no one here — or if there was, she couldn’t take it from officer to officer among the patients, asking if any understood it.
Nor did she have Miss Lily’s contacts — contacts that might also have been hers, if war had not intervened. If Alison’s Philip had been alive, if she had married James, as Hannelore perhaps presumed she had, or if there had still been dinners here at Wooten, something might have been possible. Not now. Nor could she involve Her Grace in this. She could cable James in America, but what could she say, when so many eyes would see her words, and his reply?
This is from the enemy, she thought. If anyone knows I’ve got it, they will think I’m a spy. I might even be arrested, imprisoned. Someone might even link me to Miss Lily and what must now be thought of as traitorous ideals. If any German spy knows I have this letter, Hannelore might be arrested too.
13 July was just over a week away. If this was to be used, it must be seen, urgently. She should be delicately weeping at the lack of male hands to give it to. Instead she felt life springing up in her veins again, a crack in the closed-in world the war had condemned her to.
Chemistry, she thought.
She found him at Cambridge. It had been surprisingly easy to get there: a lie to Her Grace. ‘Dodders is coming over for a few weeks’ leave with
her parents. I said I’d stay with her.’
Guilt, just a little, at how easily the dowager accepted it. ‘Of course, my dear. You have been working so hard. A break will do you good.’
A train, filled with men coming back from leave, or absurdly young new recruits. One gave up his seat for her. She felt even guiltier, sitting when the corridor was crowded with tired soldiers.
Another train and then another. Strange to travel by herself; unthinkable just three years before.
She took a taxicab to his address. It was a hotel, thank goodness, not lodgings. Even under the unwritten social rules of war she’d have hesitated to visit a young man’s lodgings.
The waiter showed her to a sitting room, then offered her tea. She accepted just as she heard his footsteps on the stairs.
‘Miss Higgs! What are you doing here? Have you heard from Malcolm?’
He wore a uniform, but with a shapeless blue sweater over it. She forced herself not even to glance at his mutilated hand.
‘Not since last March. He was well then. Lieutenant Armitage, I know this sounds silly, but I need your help.’
‘Of course, Miss Higgs. Anything.’ He thinks I’m organising a jumble sale, she realised. Or in need of an escort to the train. She handed him a piece of paper with the mysterious formula freshly written out. ‘I received this. I don’t know what it means, but it might be important.’
He glanced down at it, then stared. ‘It’s a formula. A gas, I think …’ His expression changed. He is familiar with this, she thought. Very familiar. ‘Miss Higgs, how did you get this?’
No one would believe this was important if she lied. This risk was inevitable. ‘A friend sent it to me. A German friend.’
‘A Hun? How do you know a Hun?’
‘I met several Germans during my season, at parties, even at Windsor Castle. Remember, Their Majesties are of German origin too. A German girl was a visitor at the Earl of Shillings’s home while I was a guest there as well.’
Miss Lily’s Lovely Ladies Page 40
