The Lily and the Rose

by Jackie French

  She blinked at the change of subject. ‘No. I’m sorry, James —’

  ‘Then perhaps we might start our relationship on another footing,’ he said softly.

  She looked at him, startled. ‘What do you mean?’

  He lifted a folder from the table by his chair, and opened it. She hadn’t noticed it until this moment. He smiled at her, a very different smile from one she had ever seen him give, glanced at the words in front of him, then back at her. Suddenly she saw the core of duty and capability she had only glimpsed in him before.

  ‘In May 1917 a Miss Sophie Higgs arrived at Cambridge with an enigmatic note she claimed had been sent by a German acquaintance,’ he said quietly. ‘It contained a formula for mustard gas and the date and place where it would be first used by the Germans on our troops at Ypres. Miss Higgs was instructed by the officer in charge to keep the matter secret and return at once to Wooten Abbey. Miss Higgs agreed to do so, but did not. Her disobedience might have resulted in criminal charges being laid. For . . . various reasons including her social and family connections, they were not.’

  Sophie watched him, silent.

  James’s eyes evaluated her calmly as he continued. ‘Instead, Miss Higgs travelled to France. She somehow enlisted the help of a French Général, now deceased, and a Captain Angus McIntyre. Her intention appears to have been to inform the British troops at Ypres of the impending attack —’

  ‘Which the British High Command would not do, as they intended using the formula themselves.’ Sophie’s voice was as quiet as his.

  ‘Decisions of that kind must be made in wartime.’ James looked at her steadily. ‘No one seems to know what happened after Miss Higgs left with Captain McIntyre. The Captain was severely injured soon after his return to his duties and claims to have no memory of the events preceding it.’

  Thank you, Angus, thought Sophie. Though she wished he had told her he’d been questioned by Army Intelligence. But Angus also thought she was immediately going back to Australia — he probably assumed there would never be any repercussions, once she was leaving England.

  James Lorrimer still spoke quietly. ‘Miss Higgs was next observed a month later . . .’ by whom, she wondered ‘. . . running a hospital near Ypres. Her work expanded into three hospitals, specialising in what is popularly known as shell shock, as well as a chain of refugee shelters. Have I left out anything pertinent, Sophie?’

  That I killed a man and severely wounded another, and that still haunts me. That I left Dolphie wounded and helpless in No Man’s Land, when he too was trying to stop the atrocity or warn those who would be gassed. That my warning came too late, and men died in agony. That those who survived that gas attack and others, German and British, are still in agony — blinded, voiceless — will be all their shortened lives.

  ‘I think that is a concise summary,’ she said.

  ‘Did the information about the mustard gas come from the prinzessin?’ asked James.

  ‘Yes. England owes her for that.’ Though it had not proved the decisive weapon both sides had hoped it might be. Mustard gas was agony for those who touched or breathed it, but it could too easily blow back on those who had released it, and it pooled into hollows, where the sharp eyed — or lucky — might avoid it.

  ‘And yet at the Carlyles the prinzessin seemed extremely loyal to her country. Was she a traitor?’

  Again, honesty would work best. ‘I think she truly was loyal. But that weapon . . . I saw it used, James. Mustard gas did not shorten the war. It simply made it more barbaric, and the weapons of any future war will rise from the shoulders of that barbarism. That is what I wanted to stop. I think Hannelore did too.’

  ‘Do you too put your loyalty to humanity above loyalty to your country?’ His voice sounded merely curious. She was aware, however, that her words might be enough to convict her as a traitor. Traitors were shot, though possibly not if their fathers provided most of England’s corned beef.

  And if words in this room were not repeated.

  ‘No,’ she answered truthfully. ‘But true loyalty to my country — which, after all, is Australia, though I am loyal to the Empire too — means I do not want it to be barbaric.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘a good answer. What do you want from me, Sophie?’

  ‘Information. The safest route to Munich, to keep away from the areas of revolt — I’m not stupid, James. I know how dangerous and unpredictable revolution is. I need to know what train systems are working. Can I get a train to Munich? Is train travel through the rest of Europe safe? Can a car or horse and carriage be hired in Munich? Yes, I already knew that any private car would be confiscated by the Soviet government there. What would be the safest route from Munich to the best port to board a ship for home?’

  He looked at her, this new James who was, somehow, even more himself than the James she had known. This was the professional, not the social man. ‘That information might take some time to assemble.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Overnight, if I ask the right people for it. Months, or never, if you do not know exactly who to ask.’

  ‘Will you ask the right people?’

  ‘Will you show me the letter? Not the one about Ypres, the one asking for help.’

  ‘It is personal.’

  ‘It might also,’ he said, ‘be a trap. Have you considered that? Revolutions need money. Kidnapping an Australian heiress for ransom might buy a lot of weaponry.’

  ‘And corned beef? Germany is said to be starving.’

  ‘Northern Germany supplies the rest of the country adequately. Or almost adequately. Yes, there’s hunger, but no more than in England. Belgium and France are suffering far more. After all, they were the battlefields. It was their farms that were turned to mud and rubble not Germany’s.’

  ‘I imagine it is even more difficult to distribute food in times of revolution than during a war, when one knows more or less where the front lines are,’ Sophie said dryly. ‘It’s possible there’s far more suffering in Germany than you are aware of. I have probably seen far more of . . . disrupted society than you.’

  ‘An excellent observation. I have always admired your ability to observe, and to analyse. May I offer a partnership, Sophie? I will give you the information you need in exchange for your . . . observations . . . while you are there.’

  ‘You want me to spy for you?’ she asked slowly. ‘James, I am carefully assembling a corned-beef mission through war-torn Europe so I will not be taken for a spy. Now you want me to become one.’

  His smile appeared again. ‘No. A spy is covert. You will be extremely obvious and your telegrams and letters will almost certainly be read by others before they reach me. We cannot risk anything that hints of covert communication. There will be a need for code words for certain issues of . . . interest.’

  ‘What issues are those?’

  ‘The Kaiser, to begin with. I know he wishes to return to Germany from Holland. King George has refused him the refuge he demanded in England, but he still plans to try to return to power. Is there any support for him among the officer class?’

  ‘If the revolution spreads beyond Bavaria, the officer class won’t have the power to give the Kaiser back his throne.’

  ‘I believe there may be news about that revolution tomorrow.’ James smiled at her surprise. ‘I do have extremely good contacts already, Sophie. According to my informants, the Freikorps plan to attack the Munich Soviet tomorrow, in large numbers. The Freikorps are well funded and are expected to be . . . savage. By the end of the week the Munich Soviet rebellion will officially be over. By the end of the month it probably will actually be over — it will take time to mop up the remaining rebels.’

  Sophie stared at him. ‘Your sources of information must be very good indeed.’

  ‘They will be even better if you join them. You will meet people my contacts have no access to. You also have the commercial experience they lack. I need to know how the businessmen of Germany see the future. Businessme
n are often better judges of political stability than politicians, who tend to believe their own propaganda. A good businessman cannot afford the luxury of illusion. Any businesses that have survived the last few years are undoubtedly run by extremely capable men. I also need to know what links the German soviet movement has to Russia, or to England,’ he added. ‘But unless you happen to be in conversation with German revolutionaries, which I profoundly hope you won’t be, I don’t expect you will learn that. But you might perhaps hear something about Bolshevik sympathisers here in England.’

  ‘England? Surely not.’ She suddenly remembered Lady Mary, and the Workmen’s Friendship Club she joined just before the war, feeding the unemployed in the East End. Surely that was noblesse oblige, Fabian socialism, not Bolshevism and revolution. And yet there were a million unemployed people in England, and more troops still to be demobilised, hunger, even starvation, and desperate powerlessness, the fodder on which revolution had grown so swiftly in Russia.

  Did the Workmen’s Friendship Club offer revolutionary propaganda now, as well as bread and stew?

  James still watched her. Yes, she thought, he knows that I visited the Workmen’s Friendship Club. That was where she had met Dodders, who had later become an ambulance driver on the front lines, and then a nurse who had learned her skills on the wards, because there was no one else to do the job. Darling Dodders, dead now, like so many other friends, in Belgium.

  ‘Sophie, I am going to trust you with information that has not been made public, under the Defence of the Realm Act. It must not be made public. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He smiled once more at the promptness of her reply. ‘And do you agree to keep it secret?’

  ‘Yes.’ Don’t trust me, James, she thought. I lie. We may both be loyal to our countries, but my idea of where that duty takes me may be different from yours.

  Except, of course, James Lorrimer knew that already.

  He smiled at her, as if he had guessed her thoughts. ‘Very well. In January more than two thousand British infantry at Calais formed a soviet modelled on the Russian ones.’

  ‘British soldiers?!’ She knew there was deep discontent. But not a British soviet!

  He nodded. ‘It has been kept from the public, of course. The men refused to work, or take orders. Their so-called revolution was settled without bloodshed — mostly the men just wanted to be demobilised and sent home. But only two months ago an English soviet was proclaimed by five Guards units in Sussex, with over two thousand men. They marched into town where they were greeted with cheers by the watching crowds. Luckily the mayor acted swiftly and sympathetically. That revolution too was put down before it could grow larger, the men separated and demobilised.’

  ‘I had no idea,’ Sophie said quietly.

  ‘Few people have. Nor can this be made public. Once the British people believe revolution is possible, they may act on the idea. Especially if they are cold and hungry and hopeless, and have had their normal social patterns disrupted by a war.’

  ‘Disrupted’ was such an inadequate word for the millions of family tragedies across the world, but she did not correct him. ‘Do you really think England is in danger of a revolution, like the Russian one?’ It was impossible to think of the English executing the extremely likeable King George and Queen Mary, much less dispossessing aristocratic landowners like Nigel. Yet the Tsar and his family were likeable, and had been executed in Russia. Germany had thrown out the Kaiser, though few seemed to mourn his loss as they did the Tsar and his family.

  ‘I think we can keep England free of revolution, but only if we can keep all possibility of bolshevism out of the press for the next six months or so, until the army is demobilised and food and coal production begin to be stable again. And to do that we need to know who might be the leaders of revolution here, particularly those with wealth and connections to the press and sympathetic politicians. I think the British troops would prefer jobs and family life to soviet rebellion. The English working class has opportunities now they could not have dreamed of in Marx’s time. I suspect we may even see a Labour government within the next decade. As far as I know, the communists in Britain could hardly rustle up a party of three balloons and a cake right now, much less a soviet state. But more information on their activities would be useful.’

  ‘I can see that,’ she said slowly. What was Lady Mary doing now? She might be able to find that out, at least, before she left for Europe.

  He looked at her keenly. ‘There may not be any real immediate danger of revolution in England now. But there would be if the soviet movement spreads in Europe, even just in Germany. A communist Germany allied to a communist Russia would be dangerous, not militarily — they are too busy fighting among themselves — but socially. Communist sympathy in England would encourage more strikes, especially among the coal miners, just when we need that coal to get British industry back on its feet and men employed in it, and more trade unionism, which would be unsettling too.’

  She raised an eyebrow perfectly. Miss Lily would have approved. ‘We’ve never had a strike at a Higgs factory. If you pay decent wages, and give good working conditions, there is no need for any of your employees to strike.’ Though one of the first things she must convince her father to accept when she returned home was to increase wages even further, which her father had always been reluctant to do in case the other factory owners retaliated. But since the war Higgs’s Corned Beef industries could surely ignore the great fraternity of factory owners and their determination to keep wages at near starvation level.

  James did not seem to be interested in the connection between wages, starvation and strikes. ‘Sophie, we need to know just how powerful the soviet movement is in Germany, what the local people — the workers, the business people — think about it.’

  ‘I have a feeling that your work in the past few years may have had a little more to it than you mentioned in your letters. James, I’m not cut out to be a spy.’

  ‘On the contrary, you are ideal.’

  ‘No. I’m like millions of other women. And men too. I want to leave the war behind. Enjoy the peace, and find my life again.’

  ‘You will. Once you return to Australia you will be of no more use to my . . . networks.’

  She should be insulted by the implication that her country was useful for providing only food, troops and cricketers. But she accepted his assessment. Despite the sacrifice of sixty thousand Australian soldiers, her country had little say in the affairs of the world.

  ‘All I am asking for is a few discreet letters and telegrams in return for the information that you will certainly need. Now, may I see that letter?’

  She hesitated again. But she did need the information, even more than she had realised when she’d arrived. She pulled it from her handbag. He read it, not even raising an eyebrow at the opening line.

  Liebe Sophie,

  I write to you for Hannelore, who will not write. Do not worry.

  She is safe and well, or safe for a time and well enough, though far too thin. But then I do not think there is a person of plumpness in the whole of Germany.

  Hannelore’s estates are in Russian hands now, as are mine. I cannot help her, as I would wish to do, not just because of the loss of fortune, but because of other matters of which I may not write but which, perhaps, you will understand.

  I write to you as her friend, knowing that you will still be her friend, and not her enemy, and can offer her a home, a future, in Australia and its sunshine perhaps, as you once promised, far from the starvation and misery of Germany. You may start with the address on this envelope. She is not there, but the people will know where she can be found.

  I remain yours faithfully, as I always have been, and will always be,

  D

  ‘So,’ he said, looking up. ‘It is the count who asks, not your friend?’

  ‘Yes,’ she admitted, flushing.

  ‘Sophie, I am speaking as your friend now. The friend I hope I
will always be, no matter what other paths we take in our lives. You seem to have read this letter as an appeal to gallop across to Germany and save your friend.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Possibly. It could also just be a . . . tactful . . . request for money, for both the count and his niece, accompanied by a letter of invitation to her to join you in Australia.’ James smiled once more at her expression. ‘You really didn’t see that, did you? You are the Sophie Higgs who dashed into a war zone to save ten thousand British troops from mustard gas. The count would not expect you to go to Germany. No man would expect a woman to risk herself like that.’

  There was no reason not to tell him now. ‘Dolphie . . . the count . . . would expect me to do just that. I met him on the way to Ypres. He was the one who gave the information to Hannelore. He was trying to stop the gas attack too.’

  ‘What? Impossible.’

  ‘Well, warn the British then.’

  ‘A German officer warning the British? Sophie, are you sure of this?’

  ‘Yes. No.’ Dolphie had never actually said that was why he was so near to Ypres. But why else would he have been there, with so few men? How else had Hannelore got the information to pass to her?

  ‘I think Dolphie may value humanity above patriotism too,’ she said.

  James glanced at the letter again, then handed it back to her. ‘You may have a chance to find out. Sophie, as your friend, I advise you to send them money, and tickets to Australia. Sail home and forget the war and live your life.’

  ‘Only after I know Hannelore is safe. And have seen her, in Germany.’

  Yes, this was the James Lorrimer she liked, could even — almost — have married. Because he did not argue with her. Instead he said, ‘Very well. I’ll have the information for you tomorrow. I will make the phone calls now.’

  ‘Thank you. And I will ask your questions, and send you as much information as I can.’

  He nodded his acceptance of their contract. ‘Will you stay to dine?’

  She must have looked surprised. She had thought they might dine together, but not at his house, unchaperoned.