The Lily and the Rose

by Jackie French

  Sophie grinned as her companion translated the telegram. Georgina grinned back, before she remembered to hide her expression once more.

  Sophie had her Munich contact.

  Impulsively — for she had sworn to herself she would leave her own land of war behind, and now that she had the contact she needed in Munich there was no excuse for delay — she asked Jones at dinner that night if he would mind hiring a car for the afternoon, and driving her back to the village she had made her headquarters during the war and where she had established her first hospital.

  He looked up from his potage bonne femme with the eyes of one who had an excellent idea of what those years had been like for her. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Do you wish me to accompany you, Miss Sophie?’ asked Green. She added hesitantly, ‘I have . . . a place . . . in Brussels I would like to visit.’

  Sophie restrained her curiosity ‘Of course, please do take the day off.’

  ‘May I accompany you instead?’ asked Georgina.

  Sophie looked at her in surprise. ‘Of course,’ she repeated.

  The journey was as emotional as she had expected, daggers piercing her with each vista. Even the picnic basket in the back reminded her of the desperate journey with Angus, skirting the front lines all the way to Ypres.

  She hoped Angus was happy and would soon be settled enough to ask that admirable young lady to marry him, a woman who would never demand he risk his life to save men from a poisonous gas attack, who would never shoot a partridge, much less a man.

  The land was so strangely familiar, yet so altered already too. Surely that vineyard over there had been the mud of No Man’s Land. She’d known the skeleton of that tree, now sprigged with green. And the vines must have grown back up from their stumps. Such hardy beings, grapevines. She hoped those who tended them had fared as well.

  They stopped twice to give part of the contents of their basket and some money to families sitting vacantly on the roadside as if they had no will or strength or purpose to go further. But the village, at least, had no women clutching babies, begging from shop to shop, holding out translucent hands while their infants tried to find the energy to whimper. The main street smelled of baking bread, though that bread was probably still mostly potato or acorn flour and sawdust. It even had a café now, where there had been ruined walls only months before. Old men with pipes and glasses of wine sat outside.

  Here, at least, and partly with her help, both financial and organisational, mud had become farms, fields green with cabbages, leeks, potato plants and trellises of peas. Tethered oxen munching the roadside grass glanced suspiciously as their vehicle approached, wondering if these humans expected them to leave their well-earned leisure to plough, then bent their heads again as the car passed on.

  Her hospital had a new rose garden out the front, planted, she suspected, by Madame Printemps, whose menfolk bred roses and who had protected cuttings in her cellar when the shelling was bad, and collected rose seeds from briars so that the family business might survive when her men came back from war. Sophie did not call in at the hospital, although she longed to, in case the sisters who ran it now felt that she had come on a mission of inspection.

  Instead she had Jones drive to the farm of her small helper, Jean-Marie. He had grown a foot taller and sported a crop of pimples and a grin. She missed the small boy he had been; she was glad of the young man he was becoming. His relations with the papa he had not seen for most of his life were now affectionate and casual.

  Charlie bounded joyfully around her. He had become a father of six multi-coloured and multi-breed puppies, their mother being a miniature poodle belonging to Madame of the bakery. Jean-Marie’s parents insisted on feeding Sophie and her two companions a late afternoon meal of roast chicken, from the brood that pecked outside the new back door, with home-grown potatoes and peas followed by apple tart. It was the first meal Sophie had truly enjoyed since the crumpets at the London Ritz with Miss Lily.

  They were finishing their chicory and roasted acorn coffee when Jean-Marie ran to answer a knock at the door. Strange, thought Sophie, seeing Charlie snooze unconcerned before the fireplace, to be in a France where one no longer had to fear a knock at the door, or those who arrived and failed to knock.

  ‘Sœur Claire et Sœur Anne-Marie, mademoiselle,’ Jean-Marie announced, ducking his strangely long new body under the low lintel.

  Sophie stood to greet them. ‘Mes bonnes sœurs! I must apologise for not calling on you at the hospital this afternoon.’

  Sœur Claire smiled, her withered apple face falling into wrinkled pleats, as Sophie introduced ‘Madame Wattle’ — Jones had tactfully retreated to the kitchen — and Jean-Marie’s mother left hurriedly to put on more ‘coffee’ for the honoured visitors, and to bake a fast batch of crisp ‘chat’s tongues’.

  ‘News of your arrival spread within five minutes, my dear Sophie,’ said Sœur Claire, spreading her dark skirts as she sat. ‘But we have come to ask for assistance.’

  ‘But of course.’ Sophie reached for the chequebook she had secured from a bank in Brussels. Higgs Industries already sent the hospital a monthly stipend, but she could well imagine there had been unexpected expenses. The guns might have stopped firing, but the war would not truly be over till millions of displaced persons had lives and homes and food.

  Sœur Claire waved the chequebook away with a cracked and reddened hand. ‘It is advice we want.’ She glanced at her companion.

  ‘We wish to build a factory,’ said Sœur Anne-Marie, as calmly as if she had said they wanted to wash the linen. She had been the youngest of the sisters, widowed in the first month of war, still a novice when Sophie had met her. Sophie had wondered if she might regret abandoning the world for the cloister as her grief faded. But it seemed from the dark habit that Sœur Anne-Marie had not only taken full vows, but was solving the problems of the world too, or at least the world that touched the sisters’ lives.

  ‘A corned -beef factory? Here?’

  Sœur Anne-Marie laughed. It was so good to see her laugh. ‘I do not think the local farmers would care to give up their precious oxen for corned beef. And one needs good teeth to eat an ox at the end of its working life. No, we wish to can soup. Potato and leek to begin with, but perhaps wild mushroom, or mushroom and barley. Am I right in thinking the process is much the same, no matter what one cans?’

  Sophie nodded. ‘Basically you prepare the product, then place it in the cans. The sealing is the most complicated part, and then the cans must be boiled, which takes time and fuel. I don’t know how long different soups would need to be boiled to make them safe to store, but it should be easy to find out.’

  ‘A cannery would not just provide funds for the hospital,’ said Sœur Claire, ‘but security for the farm families. We could offer guaranteed prices for their crops. And if there is a wet summer and the potatoes fail,’ she shrugged, ‘then there will be wild mushrooms.’

  ‘You need a building.’

  ‘We have volunteers enough to build one, and landowners who will donate the wood to boil the cans. We thought each family might lend its copper, except on wash days, for the boiling. But we need to know about the canning machinery needed and where to buy it, how to install it and agents perhaps to buy what we produce.’

  ‘Of course.’ Sophie felt slightly stunned by their industry. But they were correct in all their assumptions. ‘Madame Wattle, could you write to Mr Slithersole? I think perhaps this is a project his son would love to supervise. Higgs’s Corned Beef will of course cover all costs,’ she added to the sisters.

  ‘You are too generous. But we have most excellent engineers back among us now. I hope the cost will not be too onerous. And the recompense for our community will be great.’

  ‘It is an honour to help,’ said Sophie. She found Georgina looking at her strangely. Was she worried about getting to the train station in the dark? The car’s battery was possibly not reliable enough for headlights.

  She glanced at her
watch and stood, suddenly reluctant to leave. This village — or its battle-worn skeleton — had been her home for eighteen months. This had been her community, the exigencies of war bringing them closer than any she had known in times of peace.

  But duty — and life, she reminded herself, weariness descending again — lay in front of her now. She began the farewell embraces.

  It was late by the time they reached the hotel. Georgina had been quiet the whole journey. Even her ‘Good night’ was soft on the stairs.

  Sophie opened her bedroom door. Green sat by the fire, knitting the dull brown wool with the needles Jones had found for her, but she stood as Sophie entered. Sophie took in her nightdress warming on the rack by the fire; the bulge of the warming pan in her bed; and the faint, already familiar scent of roses: Green must throw a little pot pourri on the coals to scent her bedrooms. ‘Thank you, Green. I hope you had a good day.’

  ‘It was . . . satisfying, thank you, Miss Sophie.’

  ‘What are you knitting?’

  ‘Memories,’ said Green briefly. It was clear she wished to say no more.

  ‘Did you visit friends? Are they . . . well?’ It occurred to her that perhaps any friends might need assistance in this world where war’s breath lingered.

  Green smiled grimly. ‘As well as can be expected. I visited their graves, Miss Sophie. But they are well tended.’

  ‘I . . . I’m sorry.’

  ‘So am I, Miss Sophie,’ said Green, in the tone of one who does not want to answer questions.

  Green’s wool. Her knitting. Suddenly Sophie remembered the elderly refugee patient last Christmas Eve, who had died as Sophie kept her company by her bedside. The old woman had knitted, knitted, knitted, her fingers growing more and more feeble as the scarf grew. The knitting had held messages that must be sent to her family and colleagues. Spies, as that old woman had been, the knitting a code used to transmit information across occupied Europe.

  Sophie had not known the code; had not even known till that night that such a knitted code existed, or of a resistance movement that covered all of occupied Europe. La Dame Blanche, mostly old or very young. An old woman and her grandchild could blow up a railway then look innocent when the Germans arrived, and say, ‘We saw nothing,’ and be believed, for what soldier would suspect an old woman or a girl could blow up a railway?

  Nominally under British control — or at least the British sometimes believed it was — La Dame Blanche had many rules, but one unbreakable code. Courage under fire or torture till death, and a total refusal to betray their friends.

  Sophie had made sure the scarf was delivered to the right person that Christmas. Her world view had changed a little that night. Miss Lily had taught her the political and social skills that upper-class women might wield. But here were women, unknown, anonymous, providing almost all the intelligence that gave the Allies the chance to defeat Germany.

  And never once had they publicly been given credit, just as the majority of female-run hospitals like her own, as well as ambulances and medical teams operated or organised by women, were ignored in official reports. Even the Red Cross did not officially acknowledge them.

  Sophie sat on the edge of the bed and stared at her quiet, wiry maid. ‘I have heard of La Dame Blanche,’ Sophie said softly.

  Green looked up at Sophie in shock. ‘An old woman in one of my hospitals knitted as you’re doing. She died,’ added Sophie briefly. ‘An intelligence officer explained the code to me. How did . . .’ She stopped. Those questions were for another time — and only if Green chose to talk about them.

  But Green answered anyway, ‘Two Belgian refugees, sisters, were billeted in Shillings village at the start of the war. They returned to their own country to fight the invader two years later. I joined them, later,’ said Green simply. ‘The English needed liaison with the Belgian women — it all began here in Brussels, you know. The English men liked to think they were in control, but actually they knew little of what was really going on. Finally someone in authority had the sense to send a woman over, not a man.’

  ‘Not James Lorrimer, by any chance?’ asked Sophie.

  ‘I have no idea. I was asked to visit a small shop in London. I did . . . and ended up here in Brussels.’ She smiled reminiscently. ‘The other woman began to trust me soon enough. Within months we had a woman knitting on every railway platform. So much information in every scarf, or pair of socks. So many knots, or a slipped stitch, or a twist in the wool — they told which were army trains, troop numbers, armaments. Most of us survived, you know. Men so rarely truly look at women. But today I wanted to farewell those who did not.’

  ‘You were amazing,’ said Sophie softly. ‘But no one even mentioned La Dame Blanche.’

  ‘I expect when they write the histories of the war they won’t mention your hospitals either,’ said Green dryly. ‘Nor the girls in their home-made ambulances. We won the war for them. But wars are supposed to be won by men in uniform, with a few lasses in uniform helping now and then. We did too much, that was our trouble. Now they need to forget us.’ She considered. ‘And maybe a good thing too.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Sophie.

  ‘This isn’t the end of the war. Even signing the Treaty won’t be the end. It’s just a pause . . . till both sides have enough energy to be at it again. Best La Dame Blanche and our codes are forgotten, till we are needed again.’ She looked consideringly at Sophie. ‘I’ll teach you, if you like.’

  ‘I’ve always been a terrible knitter. I suspect you need to be a good one to deliberately make mistakes.’

  Green smiled. ‘We’ll see. It may be useful.’

  ‘Your friends.’ There was no tactful way to ask this, thought Sophie, thinking of the graves Green had mentioned. ‘The ones you met at Shillings. Did they survive?’

  ‘No,’ said Green, almost, but not quite, matter-of-factly. ‘Five of us were captured. The others were executed, but I was kept because I was English, and so might be valuable in an exchange of prisoners. His lordship used his influence . . . It is good to work with a woman again, a woman who does things, who chooses her own path in life. I am proud to work with you, Miss Higgs.’

  ‘I am proud to work with you, Miss Green of La Dame Blanche.’

  Green reached to slip off Sophie’s coat, once more a lady’s maid.

  Sophie let herself be tended, saying nothing. For what more was there she could say?

  Chapter 13

  All life is a journey. If one is lucky, determined and skilled, one may even choose the destination. Whenever possible, enjoy the view.

  Miss Lily, 1914

  The train journey from Stuttgart was indeed ‘almost reliable’. The revolutionaries had melted like the winter snow. Spring had budded the trees lime green, though the firs wore their usual dark frown. Children looked ragged; groups of men wearing part uniform, part civilian clothes muttered at the edges of the railway stations.

  The first-class carriage was comfortable, even if the leather seats were worn. A dining car held customers of comfortable build too, and elegant or even opulent dress, and offered a menu of almost pre-war choice, pheasant, venison, choucroute, and an astounding range of tortes of elaborate colours and construction. Sophie remembered Dolphie’s remark about his sister-in-law, the Krupp heiress, and her moustache, but none of the women tucking into three-layer chocolate cakes ‘mit Sahne’, apple Zwieback torte, Pflaumenkuchen or sugar-coated Springerle seemed particularly hirsute.

  They sat together, this time. Security was more important, with revolution in the dark woods and dappled fields around them, than ‘social convention’. Green taught Sophie the knitting code, in between glances at the scenery, making it seem that she was merely showing the younger woman how to improve and vary her stitch. Sophie doubted she would ever use it. But it linked her to thousands of women resistance workers, as well as that lonely figure in her hospital last Christmas, a link to all the ‘roses of No Man’s Land’, who must be so carefully forgotten now the firin
g had ceased. And perhaps Green was right. If ‘normal’ was to begin again, women must go back to the kitchens, and tending children, and the myth that this was all that fate ever intended them to do.

  The air as they stepped from the train onto the station platform smelled, like every railway station’s air, of coal and steam and travel-worn clothes, but above that was the cold tin of melted snow and pine forests. The meadows they had passed had been lit with alpine flowers and the flash of red deer.

  On Herr Feinberg’s advice they stayed at the Bayerischer Hof on the outskirts of the financial district; the hotel was now under new management and awaiting refurbishment and extension, but those elite customers recommended by Herr Feinberg were still welcomed. It was comfortable, if not luxurious, although Herr Süss promised that when they next returned his hotel would be opulent once more. They stayed in adjoining rooms, and ate together too. This seemed a world of peace, yet shadows twitched around each corner. There was reassurance in staying together, and if sometimes she heard Jones’s voice in Green’s room next door, it was no business of hers.

  She listened carefully, anyway, but heard too little to draw definite conclusions.

  Dinner was local trout ‘a bleu’, dropped into its poaching liquid at the moment of its death so it arrived still twisted from momentary agony, and sweetly succulent; roasted venison, with a sweet berry sauce; Schmandkuchen, a sour cream cake, and a choice of local beer or a dusty bottle of wine from the cellar. Breakfast was extremely good coffee, not the acorn and chicory substitute she was used to in France, even in good hotels, though beer was offered too, and a selection of croissants, light and flaky, as well as the Bavarian almost black rye bread.