The Lily and the Rose

by Jackie French

  ‘How much danger are you in?’

  ‘And you, from being here? I do not know. A week ago, much danger from the soviets, but now the city is under Freikorps’ control the only danger comes from rebels who have not yet been rounded up, and deserters from the army. But there are still many of both, I am thinking.’ He fed Hannelore another spoonful.

  Sophie thought of the men and the women killed by the firing squad in the street. Perhaps they had been the ones who had captured Hannelore . . .

  But she also suspected they had died without trial. As James had said, revolutions were not . . . tidy, with the two sides carefully demarcated by uniforms.

  ‘You must know this land well,’ she said, thinking of trapping deer and rabbits. Once, in that far-off land of Before the War, he had wanted to show her the forests he loved.

  ‘Hardly at all, or at least that was the case two weeks ago. My other properties, the estate I grew up on,’ he raised his hands, ‘were captured by the Russians. Hannelore’s inheritance is in Russian hands too. This place was my mother’s brother’s — my mother was from Bavaria. We came here a few times when I was a child. The woods belong to the estate, for hunting, and the farm to supply the lodge. Now it is all I have.’

  A large house, and a farm that could one day be good, that was probably several hundred acres, even more, and woods for hunting. Many would have thought it a fortune. But not for a count and a prinzessin.

  She put her empty bowl on the table and glanced outside. The shadows were growing longer. The swans had vanished, the water a dark reflection of the trees.

  ‘Sleep, Hannelore,’ said Dolphie gently. He turned to Sophie. ‘Helga will make you up a bed here. That is, if you are staying?’

  ‘I am staying.’

  ‘I thought perhaps you would. Helga will keep the fire lit. I have asked Helmut, her husband, to light a fire in the hall too, just for tonight. We must celebrate your arrival, liebe Sophie.’

  ‘I need to send a message to my friends.’ Jones and Green might already have picked up her tufts of wool, she thought. Should she tell Dolphie they almost certainly knew where she was? She was about to speak when he added:

  ‘Helmut has sent a message to say you are safe, and will send them a note in your own hand tomorrow.’

  She bit back the words. Dolphie should have told her about the message before he sent it; given her a chance to send a message too. Now, and not tomorrow. Was he simply used to taking charge, or was there a reason he wanted her alone, tonight? It was true; she did not really know him. And yet, in a way, she felt she always had.

  Dolphie bent and kissed Hannelore’s cheek. ‘I will come in to say good night, and to deliver Sophie to you. And I will take most good care of her now.’

  Hannelore met his eyes in an unspoken communication. ‘I am glad,’ she said as she curled onto her good side to sleep.

  Sophie followed Dolphie out into the hall. The fire had been blazing for some time, for already coals glowed in the hearth. The hall was almost warm, and it was actually hot at the table to which Dolphie led her. A bottle and two glasses sat there, and a plate with eight woodland strawberries on it.

  ‘The best we have to offer,’ said Dolphie, with his first trace of bitterness.

  ‘You should give the berries to Hannelore.’

  ‘She had a bowlful earlier. These are my small share.’

  ‘Then thank you.’ They were richer in flavour than any she’d known, and welcome to take away the slightly rancid taste of the soup.

  ‘To the future, to the magnificent Sophie . . . and to no more misunderstandings.’

  She smiled, despite the strangeness. Dolphie could always make her smile. ‘No more misunderstandings. Dolphie, you were right when you said you and I have never really understood each other. We need to put that right. We need to . . .’

  ‘Shh.’ He put his fingers lightly on her lips. ‘Let us not talk of the past. We have the present, and the future.’

  She nodded, unwilling to spoil the moment, and sipped her wine. It tasted of flowers, and was stronger than the wines she’d become used to. Her head swam after only a few sips.

  He took her hand again and kissed it, first the palm, and then her bare ring finger. ‘I thought you would be married. Engaged at least.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But men asked?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said honestly. ‘Men I liked, even loved. But I’m not the girl I was in 1914, content to share a man’s life. I need my own challenges.’

  ‘So I saw, at Ypres.’

  ‘Dolphie, I am so sorry,’ she repeated. ‘What happened to you, after I left you?’

  ‘A party of our troops came soon afterwards. They missed you by perhaps ten minutes. I was the highest-ranking officer, so there were no questions. I think the men were glad to have a commander again. I was recalled to Berlin soon afterwards, to help try to persuade the Kaiser to abdicate.’

  Dolphie shook his head. ‘He was so very much out of touch, so dangerous to the future of Germany. But he could not see it. To him it was God who had put him on the throne. He did not see he had a duty to keep that throne safe for future generations.’

  ‘And now he has gone.’ She thought of her promise to James. ‘Will the Kaiser return?’

  ‘No. Oh, he wants to, will try to, I am having no doubt. But he has no support, not even from the Junker class — the true aristocrats. The people, they blame him for the surrender and their pain and poverty, and they are right to do so, to have been so taken in by President Wilson that he accepted a truce without truly reading its terms. We agreed to a ceasefire, then found ourselves betrayed. But enough politics. What happened to you after you left me that day?’

  ‘I arrived too late to warn anyone that the mustard gas would be used. It was . . . bad. I stayed, helped the women in the ambulances for a few days, then found a building that was not too badly damaged and opened a hospital, then later on two more, and then places where refugees might spend a night or two and be fed and rested on their way home, or as they travelled to Red Cross camps.’

  ‘And now, as soon as the British blockade has ended, you are selling us your corned beef.’

  ‘How did you hear that?’

  He looked at her seriously. ‘I am isolated here for Hannelore’s sake, till she is stronger. But I have friends in Munich who know what is happening and who send news to me.’ He shrugged. ‘There are many counts, but few prinzessins. I am afraid, also, that those Hannelore can identify may try to silence her if they know she is alive. But each day makes that less likely.’

  Sophie thought again of the execution on the street.

  He lifted her hand to his lips again. ‘No more sad stories. Drink your wine. There is something I have wanted since the first evening I met you, at your debutante dance.’

  Suddenly she was back at Wooten House, 1914, trembling with joy and anticipation. Alison, she thought, darling Mouse who had shared that party with her, who had been her dearest friend, who had died as much from the war as childbirth.

  And then, coming back suddenly to the present . . . does Dolphie mean he wishes to sleep with me? Before the war that would have been impossible, but here, and in this lonely place . . .

  Instead Dolphie stepped over to a table. He turned a handle round and round. Suddenly music crackled from an elderly phonogram, filling the room with the Blue Danube Waltz.

  Dolphie bowed. ‘Miss Sophie Higgs, will you waltz with me?’

  The music filled the room. ‘With all my heart, Dolphie.’

  ‘And my heart is yours.’

  His hands touched her lightly, one on her waist, his other hand in hers. He had worn gloves when he had danced with her in England, she remembered. His bare flesh was warm. Instead of the small steps of the modern waltz he drew her into an old-fashioned one, whirling in a vast oval about the hall, as if a hundred dancers were there with them. The music, rough and hiccupping, still swooped and soared.

  Sophie laughed with the sheer joy
, the giddy unexpectedness of it. She could have been in a ball gown and Dolphie in evening dress. Behind them there was a banquet laid out with pheasant in aspic and meringues . . .

  The phonogram music ground to a halt. Dolphie swung her around one last time, but did not release his hold. ‘Sophie Higgs,’ he whispered, ‘will you do me the honour of being my earthly joy? Will you become my wife?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sophie. She smiled at him, trembling slightly. ‘I should have prepared poetic words too.’

  ‘That one word is all that you must say. Always, always yes.’ He kissed her again, more gently this time.

  We have our whole lives to talk together now, thought Sophie, and then was lost in the feel of him, the heat of him.

  Once more it was he who broke away. He shook his head, as if to clear it, then laughed. ‘We must tell Hannelore. She has longed for this. Before the war, as well. But she agreed it could not be, not when our countries were enemies.’

  He took her hand, and led her down the corridor again, then opened the door quietly. The room was now lit by a single candle that smelled of fat, not wax. Helga sat on a corner of the bed sewing. Hannelore nodded to Helga to leave. She waited till the door was shut, then smiled at them, her eyes sparkling. ‘Do not tell me. You have asked her and she has said yes.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sophie.

  ‘I . . . I am so happy. All was grey and then Sophie appears and now there will be sunlight.’

  ‘Hannelore, darling, don’t cry.’

  ‘I have not cried enough. Now I can, because I know there will be happiness. Dolphie, give me your handkerchief.’ He handed it to her; she wiped her eyes, then blew her nose. ‘I will cry again at your wedding, but that will be of happiness too. Your marriage must be soon.’

  ‘It had better be,’ said Sophie, thinking of the way her body responded to Dolphie’s kisses. ‘We can honeymoon on the ship.’

  Dolphie smiled at her. ‘I do not think this is the time for a honeymoon cruise. On our fifth anniversary, I promise you, we will sail down the Danube.’

  There was a moment of silence. Sophie looked at him, puzzled. ‘The ship to Australia,’ she finally said. ‘Dolphie, your letter asked me to take Hannelore to Australia.’

  He nodded. ‘But there is no need now. You are here, and the communists have been defeated.’

  He put his arms around her shoulders and looked deeply into her eyes. ‘You will have all the challenges here you have ever needed, Sophie. You can trust that I am not a husband who expects only Kinder, Küche, Kirche from his wife. Germany needs a Sophie Higgs.’ He smiled. ‘Or a Countess von Hoffenhausen. Build us your factories, establish hospitals.’

  She stepped back. ‘Here? Dolphie, your country hasn’t even begun to pay war reparations yet. Surely you can see things here will get far worse long before they start to improve?’

  He straightened, soldier-like, and stared at her. ‘And because of that we must leave?’

  ‘I . . . I thought that was what you wanted. That you might come to Australia —’

  ‘And run a corned-beef empire?’ She was startled at the incredulity in his voice.

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said quietly. ‘I happen to believe that producing corned beef is better for the world than Krupp armaments. But there is the Thuringa estate to manage. Other challenges a man like you might create.’

  ‘The world needs both corned beef and armaments,’ put in Hannelore diplomatically.

  ‘Perhaps.’ Dolphie did not look at her. He took Sophie’s hand again. ‘You do not understand. The more my country needs me, the more I must stay here. And Hannelore too.’

  ‘But you asked me to take her to Australia!’

  ‘For a time only. Until the world settled, until she could be safe.’ He met Sophie’s eyes. ‘And to come back when she was needed by her country again.’ His voice rose. ‘Germany has not been defeated. No enemy army even set foot on German soil!’

  Except the Russians who took your estates, she thought. ‘There is no need to lecture me —’

  ‘Is there not? You do not understand, I think. How could you? I am sure your government does not tell its people the truth.’

  ‘I know that.’ She thought of James Lorrimer, the secret British soviets that had been destroyed. ‘I know more than you think.’

  ‘Do you know that our armies still outnumber yours, and all of America’s too? Your empire did not win the war. We were betrayed into a false armistice, by the lies of Woodrow Wilson’s so-kind list of fourteen conditions. By the time the true terms had been drawn up . . . such a coincidence . . . it had all changed. Germany must give up our lands, our money, disarm. And by then our army had been disbanded and your blockade was starving us.’

  ‘Dolphie . . .’ She held up her hand to stop the flow. ‘I agree the terms are not fair. England thinks so too, but Clemenceau insisted. England owes war debts to the Americans too. Seven and a half billion pounds.’

  ‘And we must pay ten times that!’

  Sophie bit back the childish phrase, You started it. You destroyed other people’s countries. You are even proud that none of the fighting damaged your own. She forced herself to sound calm, ‘I don’t want to live in Germany, Dolphie. Or England, for that matter. I don’t even want to live the life of a Countess von Hoffenhausen. I hoped we might build lives of our own, with Hannelore.’

  ‘In Australia?’ Dolphie made it sound as if she had suggested housekeeping on an iceberg. One infested by cockroaches, thought Sophie.

  ‘A land of convicts and savages —’

  ‘Don’t forget the kangaroos,’ said Sophie bitterly. ‘Dolphie, I’m sorry. I can’t marry you. We have . . . misunderstood . . . each other again.’

  ‘No!’ said Hannelore desperately. ‘Sophie, you do not know us. Truly. When you have spent a few days here, seen the flowers in the meadows, walked the woods, you will feel differently. This is very much an easy country to love.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Sophie gently. ‘I know it’s beautiful. I’m sure I could learn to love this lake, your forests, just as I learned to love those in England. But it still wouldn’t matter. My country is Australia.’

  ‘As mine is Germany,’ said Dolphie.

  Sophie nodded. ‘I thought that when you gave the formula for mustard gas to Hannelore, the date and place it would be used, it was because you put humanity above nationalism. You risked your life to stop that gas being deployed. But we are still of our own nations, aren’t we? Germany and Australia.’

  Dolphie stared at her, his body motionless. At last he turned to Hannelore. Once again Sophie had the feeling that they communicated without words.

  At last Dolphie said stiffly, ‘You are mistaken. I am sorry, Sophie. Your coming here, it was in error. You took me for a traitor. Fell in love with me, perhaps, because you thought I was a traitor. But I love my country.’

  ‘But you were going to Ypres —’

  ‘To see the effect of the gas. Not to stop its use, or to warn the enemy. I and my men were to make notes about how well it spread under battle conditions. Sophie, our men had been waiting with the gas for three weeks for the perfect day to use it, one with no wind to blow it back on them, enough breeze to carry it to enemy lines.’

  ‘And yet on that day when the order finally came for it to be released, the gas hardly travelled at all,’ she said steadily. ‘That attack failed.’ At least as an effective weapon of war: it had destroyed men, lives, dreams, families, most efficiently. It had even warned the Allies of what was to come even more efficiently than she might have done . . .

  It had been, perhaps, the worst possible day to launch the new attack. Why release it on that particular day? Accidental? Deliberate semi-sabotage? And if the sabotage deliberate, by whom, and why . . .?

  ‘I . . . I don’t believe you were there just to gather information.’ She had been sure, back then at Ypres, that she had seen sorrow and compassion and desperation in his face.

  She turned to Hannelore. ‘Dolphi
e wouldn’t have given you the coordinates and formula to give to me if he didn’t want to stop their use.’

  ‘That is not so.’ Hannelore’s voice was cool and precise, though she did not meet Sophie’s eyes. ‘Dolphie could not know you had a way to understand the formula, much less know what it would do. A debutante, knowing that much chemistry? It was meant as a taunt, once the gas had been released. The English would soon have worked out the formula themselves once it had been used.’

  It did not quite fit. Almost . . . but if she was not supposed to have found a way to decipher the formula, how could it have been used as a taunt? And she had not mistaken the nuances of Dolphie’s letter, hoping she would come in person to Germany. She did not think she had misunderstood Hannelore’s wartime letter either, nor Dolphie’s mission at Ypres.

  But she did understand this: that if she would not agree to marry Dolphie, to stay in Germany, she could not be trusted with the knowledge of what they might have done during the war. Just as they had not entirely trusted her with this location.

  Dolphie had once accused her of not understanding him, but he had also said, ‘But I made sure that you did not.’ He had played the aristocratic playboy, before the war, hiding what had almost certainly been a diplomatic or espionage mission to England. She wondered what role he played in Germany now. What was his standing in the Freikorps that had rescued Hannelore?

  What standing might he hope to have in the new government, with the Higgs fortune behind him?

  ‘Hannelore, will you at least come home with me? Just for a few months, or a year? Till you are strong again.’

  Hannelore shook her head. ‘I would love to. But now the revolution has been suppressed my duty is here too.’

  ‘I see. I’m sorry. More than sorry. Dolphie, will you have the cart brought round? There is no point my staying longer.’

  He shook his head. ‘It is too dark for the horse to find its way without a lantern. And a lantern might be seen. There are not just soviets wandering around in the woods, but stragglers from the army. It is not safe to go tonight.’