The Lily and the Rose

by Jackie French

  She stood. ‘I can offer you a salary of a hundred pounds a year, to be reviewed after three months. Could you move into the Ritz tonight? I will inform them I need another room. Ask for me — there is no need to give your own name. In fact when we begin our journey perhaps it will be best if you assume another name. Smith would be adequate but possibly too common to avoid suspicion. You could be Mrs Wattle, perhaps.’

  ‘Wattle?’ Georgina sounded dazed, the first emotion she had shown.

  ‘An Australian flower. There is no reason your husband should ever discover that a Mrs Wattle in Australia is Lady Georgina FitzWilliam.’ Sophie would hire two rooms at the Ritz tonight, one in the name of Mrs Wattle, that Georgiana would most definitely not occupy. But the misleading name might divert Emily’s bloodhound instincts until they had left England.

  She scribbled a second name on Mr Slithersole’s card and handed it to Georgina. ‘Here is your new name, in case you forget it. Telephone Mr Slithersole from the hotel. I will leave it for you and Mr Slithersole to finalise the business contacts we need to make in France, Belgium and then hopefully in Germany.’

  ‘You’re not put off by my notoriety?’

  ‘On the contrary. It demonstrates you are determined, capable, can be discreet where possible but do not value discretion above love, and have every reason to stay in my employ. And no scandal is attached to Mrs Wattle in Australia, so you will not embarrass me or the firm of Higgs’s Corned Beef. I may be back late tonight. We will meet for breakfast in my suite at eight am.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Higgs.’ Was that a smile?

  Sophie stood. ‘I had better see about getting that maid. Thank you for your help, Emily. You have been magnificent, as always.’

  Emily gave her the smile that said, Miss Lily taught me too to use praise as manipulation. But she seemed sincere when she said, ‘Give Hannelore . . . my best wishes.’

  Chapter 4

  A man dresses to impress others, or please himself, or simply to stay sufficiently warm and decent. A woman should dress to give others pleasure in her company. Never dress to intimidate, to say, ‘See, my wealth and diamonds are greater than yours.’ Your companions should be slightly happier each time they look at you.

  Miss Lily, 1914

  Sophie drove herself back to the Ritz — a failing the doorman forgave when she pressed a half-guinea into his hand and asked him to park the car for her. She had learned to drive competently in Belgium, but navigating through a foggy London night would tax a far more experienced driver.

  She was so tired of the grey of London days, the evening snuffle of the yellow fog, the river stench suddenly shivering its varied smells into unexpected places, so a dining room might smell of river mud, or a flower seller’s basket of dead eels. She had exchanged the smoke-tinged sky of war and Belgium for low grey cloud, coal smoke and the chattering of shattered people trying to forget.

  No, this was not yet peace. But it was time that she went home.

  She telephoned Shillings from her suite. To her relief Jones answered.

  ‘Shillings, his lordship’s residence.’

  ‘Jones, it’s Sophie.’ Jones would not use her Christian name, but nor would she call herself Miss Higgs to him.

  ‘I thought you had left for Australia, Miss Higgs.’ It was good to hear his voice.

  ‘I was delayed. How is Nigel?’

  ‘His lordship is at the Home Farm. I will ask him to call you —’

  Which was not what she had asked. But she did not have time to press Jones to give more details now. ‘Jones, forgive my urgency. I need a maid, preferably by tomorrow. I have had a letter saying that Hannelore, the Prinzessin, is in trouble.’

  Jones knew Hannelore well, from her time in Miss Lily’s care at Shillings, when Jones was butler there, and not Nigel’s secretary. ‘I’m going to Germany to try to find her before I go home. I wondered if Green . . .’ Her voice faltered.

  Green had not been needed as a maid since Miss Lily’s disappearance. ‘Does Miss Green still work at Shillings?’ she asked cautiously.

  ‘Miss Green took up . . . war work. She is now employed in a London household, but I believe the position is not congenial to her. May I ascertain her wishes and telephone you back?’

  ‘You may, Jones,’ she said gratefully. ‘It’s the Ritz.’

  ‘Of course it is, miss,’ he said, in tones that were almost accurate for the perfect butler.

  ‘I don’t suppose you know a chauffeur too, who might take us to Germany? Preferably one who won’t make anti-German comments and who will be polite, who can use a pistol and his fists, and might pass at a pinch for German even if he doesn’t speak the language.’ Most Tommies had picked up a few words of German in the trenches, as the enemy had learned a little English too. ‘The job will only be for two or three weeks, but I will pay well.’

  ‘I will ascertain, Miss Higgs.’

  She changed into evening dress as she waited for the call to be returned. Claret silk, low necked — James might ask her to dine after their discussion. A dinner that would have been impossible for a single woman and a widowed man before the war was now not even mildly scandalous. The hotel maid had arranged her stockings but included one with a ladder, and the colours did not quite match, which would be noticeable with the shorter hems worn since the war. She scrabbled among the silks trying to find a pair that matched.

  The telephone jangled. ‘A call for you, madam,’ said the woman at the switchboard.

  ‘Jones?’

  ‘Miss Green will be with you this evening, Miss Higgs. I believe his lordship can provide the driver that you need too. I hope you do not mind my informing his lordship when he returns.’

  ‘Of course not. But I have to leave for an appointment. If his lordship would like to telephone me, it needs to be later tonight . . . No, please tell him I will call him at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Would that be suitable?’

  ‘I believe so, miss.’

  There was no one to hear her, except the switchboard operator, who might be listening in. And the operator at the Shillings exchange too, who almost certainly was listening and would pass on any drops of gossip from this call. But nonetheless she said, ‘I won’t have time to return to Shillings before I leave for Germany. Give Nigel my love. And my love to you too, Jones.’

  Could a blush be felt across telephone lines? But his voice held no embarrassment as he said, ‘I wish it were not Germany, Miss Higgs. I am sure his lordship will feel the same. May I wish you Godspeed?’

  ‘You may. Thank you, Jones. For . . . for everything. Look after Nigel.’

  ‘I will, miss. Take care.’

  It seemed Jones too felt on this occasion they might forget about who might be listening. Two such loving men, Jones and Nigel. It would be so easy to marry one, to be cared for by the other. She might even have the company of Miss Lily again sometimes, despite Nigel’s assurance Miss Lily would never hold her ‘classes’ for young ladies of political promise again. To live among quiet English fields . . . and perhaps play a part in the challenge of world affairs too, performed on a stage far away from Sydney, for surely Nigel must now take up his seat in the House of Lords. No man with his sense of duty could confine his interests to his estates.

  But England did not have gum trees. Nor did it have her father and Miss Thwaites and Thuringa, nor blue hills nor eagles balanced on the wind’s hot breath. Nigel was as bound to Shillings and England as she was to her own country. Love for Nigel was complicated, and always would be. Sophie Higgs could manage hospitals and refugee centres, but she was not sure she could cope with such complicated love. Not now, when so much emotion had been leached by war. Possibly not ever. And marriage, as poor Lady Georgina had found, was a bond for life.

  She found she was crying as she put the receiver down.

  Chapter 5

  The human body can survive a surprising time with no food. But without love we are not truly human.

  Miss Lily, 1914

 
THE BAVARIAN SOVIET REPUBLIC, 1 MAY 1919

  HANNELORE

  She was not dead.

  Her body hurt, so this was not Heaven. Nor was it constant agony, so it could not be Hell. Her body existed mostly as a problem: try to will away the pain with unconsciousness or sleep.

  Her body was in a bed (small, hard), on a mattress stained by body fluids, most of them — probably — hers, under a duvet of feathers stuffed into sacking. The rough hands that intermittently tended her were male, shoving a salty liquid into her mouth or changing bandages that were stuck to her wounds so clumsily that she, thankfully, fainted again while they worked.

  The male hands meant that she was — probably — captive. So the revolutionaries did not want her dead, though this was not through any compassion or charity or there would have been women’s hands to help. They had raped her, after all, if a bayonet counted as rape, the perpetrator laughing that he was ensuring no little aristocrats would ever be bred from this one. But after that they seemed to have made some effort to keep her alive. Even the pads they placed between her legs were almost blood free, now. She had to force herself to look at them each day, to assess her health, her chances of survival. But she had nursed enough Belgian refugee women to know that while such injuries healed surprisingly often, it was unlikely now that she could ever have a child.

  She had never particularly wanted children, just accepted with some degree of happiness that they would be part of her life. The knowledge that children were now an impossibility was too great an agony to dwell on.

  She had to think of now, not of what might have been. She HAD to think, or she would not survive.

  Was she being held as a hostage, to exchange for socialist prisoners? Or till she was strong enough to stand and be publicly executed? The latter was more probable.

  But it was so hard to think.

  Mostly she did not care. Why should she?

  It would not matter to anyone in particular if she died. Dolphie had affection for her, she knew, but she was also a problem for him. She was, after all, a traitor to her country, though that was probably not widely known.

  The prinzessin had once had many friends. Hannelore had known only two. Her first had been Emily Carlyle, who she had met at school in Switzerland, and stayed with at Miss Lily’s very different kind of school at Shillings. Emily had dropped her acquaintanceship the very minute intimacy with a German became embarrassing.

  Which left Sophie. Toasting crumpets with Sophie, Alison, Emily and Miss Lily at Shillings, and spreading them with honey. Pretending with Sophie that one day she might escape to the sunlit land with kangaroos called Australia.

  Australia so wonderfully did not matter — except as a source of raw materials, wool, wheat, men — to England. It was almost a play place, with its hopping animals and trees that Sophie said looked blue from a distance. If she had visited there, she might have been, just for a little, only Hannelore, with no duty to follow.

  Was Sophie there now, among the kangaroos? With children, perhaps? Sophie and her happy family. Something to dream about as Hannelore’s life faded with the light. Something, at least, that was good.

  Kangaroos and crumpets . . .

  Chapter 6

  Dusk is the time of most potential. Life changes at dusk, just like the light. A work-worn woman becomes glamorous, a tired man eager for what the night may bring. Every dusk may be adventure.

  Miss Lily, 1914

  1 MAY 1919

  SOPHIE

  James Lorrimer had responded to her request to meet him with an invitation to his London house at five pm, too late for afternoon tea, too early to dine.

  Sophie had never been to his house, not even in her debutante year when James had courted her because, as a widower, he did not entertain. Since then their wars had been spent mostly on different continents, as James did his best to urge the USA to join the Allies, and then to negotiate the even greater diplomatic problems when it did.

  A good house — a plain Georgian façade opening onto a street, a gated park opposite, for the use of the street’s inhabitants only.

  She knocked. James opened the door himself, though a butler hovered behind, retreating as James took her hands in greeting as she smiled up at him. ‘Sophie, it’s an unexpected pleasure. I didn’t hope to see you again for years.’

  Or ever, possibly. Less than two months earlier she had refused his offer of marriage and declared her need to return home. There was little chance that James Lorrimer, His Majesty’s dutiful public servant and guardian of His Empire, would ever go to Australia, even if the Prince of Wales was soon to make a ceremonial visit.

  ‘Come into the study. Sherry? You said you needed my help.’

  ‘Sherry is perfect at this time of the day, isn’t it?’ The first two rules of manipulation, Miss Lily had taught her and the other girls, before the war. Smile, so they smile back at you, and then make your companion agree with you.

  ‘Exactly.’ He handed her a small glass of the pale liquid.

  ‘What kind is it? I am astonishingly ignorant about sherry.’

  Rule three. Ask a question they can answer.

  ‘Amontillado.’

  She smiled at him again over the rim of her dainty glass. ‘It’s wonderful. Thank you. Sherry, all this . . .’ she gestured at the fire (expensive wood, from his country estate, not coal), the book-lined walls, the heavy velvet curtains ‘. . . it is so peaceful after the world of war.’

  She sat, in a deep leather chair.

  He sat opposite, studying her as she sipped her sherry. ‘I think perhaps you had a harder war than I did,’ he said at last.

  Perceptive. Few men, even now, would admit that without the work of women, the war would have been lost by that first Christmas. She would reply in kind. James responded best to honesty.

  ‘I don’t think it is possible to measure that. I . . . I’ve come away unscarred, mostly. And much of it was challenging. I enjoyed the challenges, even if not the circumstances that made them necessary. I feel a little guilty about that. How much I relished challenge. How comfortable my life is now.’

  He smiled at that. ‘I feel the same.’

  ‘If I am to be truly honest — for some reason I am honest with you — what angers me most about the war isn’t the loss, or the tragedy. It was the sheer inefficiency. Twenty thousand men sacrificed for a single hill. An entire campaign like Gallipoli ordered with no thought about how to supply an army with water on a dry peninsula. If those men had had a proper water supply, they might have taken Constantinople and the war would have been almost won. If my father ran his factories like our leaders muddled the war, he’d never have made his first sixpence. And I am being deeply insulting,’ she added ruefully, ‘as you are one of those leaders, and an extremely able one.’

  ‘Which means I agree with you, but can never say it beyond this room. Sophie, how can I help? I presume you do need help?’

  She had prepared what she had to say — and what she needed to leave out — carefully. ‘You remember my friend Hannelore, the Prinzessin von Arnenberg? She was at the Carlyles’ country house the day we met.’

  ‘I remember her well. And her young uncle, the count.’ Within an hour of their first meeting James had asked her to discover whether either Hannelore or Dolphie knew the route Germany planned to take to attack France. If either knew, Sophie had not found out. Hannelore had seen through her attempts at once.

  ‘I’ve had a letter. She’s in trouble. We were very close, in that summer before the war when I needed help to be accepted in society. Now it is my turn to help her. I plan to motor to Germany, using the excuse of . . .’ she smiled at him ‘. . . corned beef. My father’s English agent is arranging meetings with businesses that might take out new contracts in France and Belgium. Hopefully one of them may have a contact that will give me an excuse to go to Munich.’

  ‘Munich! Sophie, are you insane? There is a revolution there. They’ve proclaimed a Munich Soviet. Every car has been comman
deered, the houses and property of the well-to-do confiscated, profiteers shot. You have no idea what you are getting in to.’

  ‘James, I have just spent two years in a war zone.’

  ‘War is more predictable than revolution. War is mainly directed at soldiers. Revolution affects everyone. Possibly particularly corned-beef capitalists in expensive cars. Does your father approve of this?’

  ‘Of course he wouldn’t. He doesn’t know about it.’ She thought of the starving, empty-eyed refugees she had worked with, the homes that were rubble, the farms turned to mud. Only a man who had spent most of the war in boardrooms and committee meetings could think war affected mostly only soldiers.

  But she felt reasonably sure she — and her companions — would survive a few days in Germany. Miss Lily had taught her how to be noticed, socially and politically. War had shown her when, and how, to be inconspicuous — and how those with access to almost unlimited corned beef might be very valuable to both sides in a conflict.

  James gazed at her. ‘You must have been very . . . persuasive . . . with Higgs’s English agent for him to follow your orders, and not ask permission from your father.’

  ‘We know each other well by now. Mr Slithersole was invaluable through the war and my father is not well. Mr Slithersole agreed we should not worry him. I hope to be out of Europe and on a ship to Australia with Hannelore within three weeks.’ Once again she did not mention her hope that, just possibly, an Australian corned-beef heiress and a German count might make a life together in Australia.

  James sat back in his leather chair. ‘You still will not marry me, Sophie?’