The Lily and the Rose

by Jackie French

  The other boy in first class was travelling with his grandmother. His father had died two days before the ceasefire; his mother died in the influenza epidemic. His mother’s mother, an Australian, had come to fetch the boy to his new home. His face still had the hollowness of shock, despite his laughter as they played table tennis or quoits on deck if it was not raining, or skittles and word games in one of the cabins if it was too wet or windy on board.

  The other children were in second class, but Georgina and Sophie persuaded the captain — who in truth cared little either way — that the best way of keeping the youngsters from annoying the older passengers was to let them play together, despite the differences in class, and use the lower deck both for games and the basic lessons Georgina gave them in reading and copperplate handwriting in the early afternoon. Green even joined them to teach geography lessons sometimes, not just about the places the ship would pass, but fascinating lands like Mongolia with its shaggy ponies, and South America where boa constrictors could eat a man.

  The children might yawn at writing ‘See Spot run’, but by the end of the first week even the four-year-olds could draw a ‘boa constrictor’.

  And every evening, at dinner, Georgina’s face grew gentler and happier, as the distance between the danger and herself and her son grew further

  Sophie and Green’s only companion up on deck was Mrs Falteringham, the elderly widow of the Reverend Falteringham, who had left retirement to be an army chaplain, lying about his age as so many had to do their duty to their country or their fellow man. The Falteringhams had been once to Australia on their honeymoon ‘. . . such an interesting country, my dears. Albert always watched when the Australians played cricket at Lords. And the kangaroos!’

  Mrs Falteringham believed she sailed in grief and fortitude, to fill her remaining years with memories of her husband, but with every day of the voyage she seemed to grow younger and gayer. Sophie suspected she would live at least another thirty years, freed from the constraints of being a clergyman’s wife.

  She sipped whisky, strictly on doctor’s orders, until dinner (‘For my heart, you know, my dears.’) and the best of port after it, again medicinally, for only the lower class of woman ever drank port and that diluted with lemonade. During meals she did not drink at all, for the reverend had been a teetotaller, as his widow maintained she still was, except as pertaining to those doctor’s orders.

  Instead, she ate, steadily and profoundly, perhaps from subconscious joy at an abundance of food she had to neither cook nor serve. Eggnog with the tea and biscuits brought to her cabin at daybreak; a breakfast of porridge, with cream and sugar (‘The doctor has ordered me to build myself up.’), kidneys and bacon with scrambled egg; and toast, stewed fruit, more toast, fresh fruit carefully peeled with a small silver knife. This lasted her till it was time for morning tea, coffee or bouillon, with a small amount of whisky added to whichever of these she chose, and the small cakes and the sandwiches that kept the passengers entertained till luncheon.

  It was the longest time Sophie had ever spent relaxing. She had been too young and too excited on her voyage to England in 1913 to even understand the concept of relaxation. But there, watching waves and clouds and the strange flying fish, whole hours could go by without exchanging a word.

  It was almost as if in the quiet of the sea, the predictability of ship and sky and white frothed waves, she found the core of herself again. And with that strength, she found she could talk to Green.

  It was their sixth day on board. They sat on the side of the deck sheltered from the wind, wrapped in coats, and blankets over their knees, cups of steaming bouillon in their hands, a plate of small crustless sandwiches on the table between them: chicken and watercress, lobster butter, cucumber and cream cheese.

  Sophie sipped her bouillon. It was beef today, very clear and very good. ‘You travelled a lot with Miss Lily?’

  Green nodded, raising an eyebrow in a gesture that was suddenly so reminiscent of Miss Lily that Sophie felt once again the pang of loss.

  ‘Where did you go?’

  Green sat back, ready for the interrogation she must have known was coming eventually. ‘Japan was the first place. Her ladyship had died, and Nigel had inherited the title then. His lordship sent me a telegram saying that a position as lady’s maid had become available and the Shillings agent would arrange all the details. My mother got it into her head that Japanese were cannibals. You should have heard her wailing! But of course we couldn’t refuse his lordship. I travelled all by myself, that time, terrified and too scared to let on I was terrified. It hadn’t occurred to the agent that even though I’d travelled with the countess I’d never been further than the South of France before, and that with a retinue of other servants.’

  ‘What was Miss Lily doing in Japan?’

  ‘She had made a friend, a Miss Misako. Miss Misako had been one of those Geisha women, a famous one.’

  Sophie remembered the highly erotic books they had studied back at Shillings, and Alison’s horror at the sight of them. Darling Mouse, dead for years now. They must have come from Miss Misako.

  ‘At first I thought I was supposed to be Miss Misako’s maid. I suppose I should have been shocked when I found out I was there for Nigel, and that Nigel was now “Lily”. But I’d known her all my life,’ said Green simply. ‘It just seemed right. Maybe being in a foreign country made the strangeness more natural too.

  ‘Miss Misako had already taught Lily how to move her hands, her neck, her body in graceful ways. That’s really how most people tell a man and a woman apart, you know, the way they move, or sit. But Lily needed me to show her how a European lady dressed and did her hair. She couldn’t very well come back to England in a kimono.’

  Sophie grinned. ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘But even after we came back to England we’d only spend part of the winter at Shillings, me and Lily and Jones, then we’d travel again. Jones and Nigel would return, just the two of them, for a few weeks to check on the estate. I took a holiday when Nigel was at Shillings, but never very far away, in case Lily needed me in a hurry and we had to set off again.

  ‘Had to?’ asked Sophie carefully. ‘The three of you didn’t just travel for pleasure?’

  ‘Sometimes we did. Like the time we spent autumn in Venice — it smells something horrid, but, oh, the light is lovely. Mostly though,’ she cast Sophie a brief look, ‘we travelled as a favour for people Lily knew in government. Egypt, Palestine, Russia, almost everywhere, except India or the North West Frontier. His lordship wouldn’t go back there.’

  Once again Green seemed to find nothing strange in talking about the one person who was two, Miss Lily and the young man assaulted and left for dead as a novice lieutenant. ‘We were useful, you see. Men are always suspected of being spies. But the charming Miss Lily, with her maid and chauffeur? Miss Lily was more likely to be invited to dine than have her room searched. And Lily could persuade the man in the moon to confess how he keeps the stars in the sky.’

  Was that how Miss Lily knew James Lorrimer? Had they worked for him, or just had a similar passion to stop devastating war between England and Germany, a war that would destabilise the Middle East and even India, Africa, China and Japan, and so many other countries who might see that the colonial empire builders were not just vulnerable, but might even be defeated.

  Should she ask? She had no real reason to know, especially now she was travelling beyond the world of wars and espionage. She forced herself to change the subject.

  ‘So it was always you, Jones and Lily, or Jones and Nigel?’

  ‘Sometimes if Nigel was with us, I’d travel as Jones’s wife. But yes, the three of us working and travelling together, for all those years,’ said Green.

  ‘Please, tell me to mind my own business if you want to. But why didn’t you go back to Shillings after the war?’

  ‘Jones,’ said Green.

  ‘But you . . . he . . .’ Sophie tried to find the words.

  �
�Don’t get the wrong idea about Jones, just because he . . . understands . . . about Miss Lily. Jones likes things nice and proper. He asked me to marry him the third week in Japan. I said no then. He asked me twice more in the next few years. I kept saying no, and he married someone else. A nice proper girl, Edna. It was hard for him when she died.’

  ‘But you are . . . were . . . lovers again?’

  Green nodded. ‘I like men,’ she said simply. ‘I like Jones. Love him, even, maybe.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you marry him?’

  ‘Because I’d have been a wife. No more travelling in the east with a couple of children at my skirt. I’d have had to wait out the war at Shillings, like so many other women waited. I want my own life, not a slice of Jones’s.’ She gave a grin that did not quite work. ‘Jones knows who I am. He accepts it. Not that he has a choice.’

  ‘But surely Nigel could have got you a better job than the one you had. Or given you a pension and a cottage at Shillings . . .’

  ‘No,’ said Green.

  ‘No, he didn’t offer?’ Surely both duty and friendship would have meant Nigel would have offered Green far more than just a good reference as a lady’s maid.

  ‘No, I didn’t want to live at Shillings. I did find out during the war that Nigel had settled an annuity on me. I don’t have to work if I don’t want to. But . . .’ she met Sophie’s eyes, ‘things happen in wartime. Things you don’t expect. I couldn’t go back to a cottage in an English estate. I needed a new life. I admit my first attempt with Miss Pokeme wasn’t the best of choices.’

  ‘Miss Pokeme? You’re joking.’

  Green shook her head.

  ‘Poor girl.’

  ‘Ha!’ said Green. ‘You try getting up at two in the morning because she wants her chocolate creams from the library. Or did she leave them in the car . . .’

  ‘Greenie, excuse my asking this. Has Nigel —?’ The words would not form themselves.

  Green looked at her shrewdly. ‘Has Nigel had affairs with women? Yes, a few over the years. But he’s never had a woman he’s loved in England — I’d have known if there were. Nor has he had any love affair that’s lasted more than a few months, and never with a woman who knew about Lily, except Miss Misako. He’s never asked anyone to marry him before you either. Lily had made a life she was happy with.’ The words ‘and now Nigel will need to do the same’ floated unsaid across the waves.

  ‘Are you going to tell me more about why you didn’t go back to Shillings after Belgium, if I ask you very, very tactfully?’

  ‘Not even if you ask every day from here to Sydney.’

  ‘Then I won’t waste our time.’

  They sipped their cooling bouillon. ‘Does Miss Lily know James Lorrimer?’ Sophie asked finally. She had often wondered whether these two very different but highly significant people in her life knew each other.

  Green said nothing. Sophie laughed. ‘You’ve just answered me. You’d have said no if they didn’t know each other. So Miss Lily . . . investigated . . . for James Lorrimer.’

  Again Green said nothing. But this time she smiled.

  She owed James a letter. And Nigel too. There was no hurry, for they could not be mailed till they arrived at Cape Town — the ship could send a wire in an emergency, but not a confidential letter. She wanted both written while the events and emotions were fresh in her mind, though, and once written those memories and emotions could be left behind.

  She went to her cabin after luncheon, having watched with admiration as Mrs Falteringham ate smoked salmon on brown bread, cock-a-leekie soup, fillets of brill; quails à la financière; roast pork (the chef seemed to believe the human body needed pig at least three times a day), asparagus, prunes in bacon, cherry pudding and cheese. Sophie herself had eaten well, but the salmon, quails, pudding and cheese had been more than adequate. She was plumping out, as Green had clearly intuited she would: her dresses no longer hung loosely.

  She nodded politely to the captain as they passed in the corridor. He had made it tactfully clear that while he respected her wish to eat privately and not at his table, he knew who she was and, more importantly, who her father was and what place his corned-beef empire played in the prosperity of the shipping line that owned the ship he captained.

  The steward had made her bed and tidied the room, and left fresh biscuits in the jar by the bed. She missed the flowers and chocolates that had filled the cabin on her voyage to England, but of course there would not have been time to have them ordered for her. Nor did anyone, except Mr Slithersole perhaps, know when she was sailing, until Jones had sent the telegram to say she had left.

  She sat at the small writing desk, took a sheet of the ship’s fine linen paper and dipped her pen in the ink well.

  Dear James,

  I am writing this at sea, so it will be a month or possibly much more before you receive it, but I do not think there is anything of great urgency in what I have to tell you.

  To begin with: I am well, safe and undamaged, as are all who travelled with me. We saw violence, but no more than one might expect at such times. The innkeeper and my business colleagues believe the violence will decline and orderly government will prevail, though they may have been over-optimistic, as peace would mean prosperity for them.

  I think they are also too optimistic about how long it will be for Germany to settle. There is enormous bitterness, not just in the aristocratic class but in everyone I spoke to, about the ‘betrayal’ of Woodrow Wilson’s ceasefire agreement and Clemenceau’s ruinous demands when it came to the Treaty.

  There are too many competing factions in Germany for a settled government to come easily, I think. But I am also reasonably sure that whatever comes next will not be more soviets. Like the English, the people of Germany want food, jobs and security. Politics is only relevant when it helps them achieve these.

  I fear the most unsettling element in Germany’s future will not be a return of Uncle Alec, which no one seems interested in, much less to want, but the economic repercussions when Germany begins to pay the wartime reparations to France. That is going to make a hard situation desperate and hunger will turn to starvation. But, even then, I think Germany will turn to the military, not to the Bolsheviks, for leadership.

  I also have the feeling, as a businesswoman — please excuse the indelicacy of my describing myself in those terms, but it seems I truly am one — that whatever happens politically will not impede Germany’s economic recovery. As Napoleon said of the English, they are shopkeepers at heart, or possibly factory owners, like me. Both Germans and the English like to believe that forest and green fields are at their heart, but in reality, it is their factories.

  I did try to find Lady Mary the day before I left, but she is on a ‘friendship tour’ to Russia. That in itself is telling, but it is also something you probably already knew. The Worker’s Friendship Club she introduced me to before the war became a refugee relief station, and still is. I didn’t find anyone I knew there, and the few who ever worked there that I still know are doing other innocuous things, like studying economics at Oxford.

  That is all I can think to say. If you have more questions, I would be happy to answer them, and not just because I too would enjoy our continued correspondence. If you wish, I will continue to write to Lady Mary, but I would be uncomfortable pretending any enthusiasms for bolshevism, and she is unlikely to bother with me unless I do. I am not quite sure how a factory owner’s daughter can play at being a Bolshevik without giving the factories to the workers. Somehow I don’t see my father countenancing that. I would, in fact, like to leave war, soviets and many of my memories behind, and with every league we sail I feel them further away both physically and from my life.

  In fact, I am happy. I am going home and, yes, I know that home too will have changed, as I have changed, but I still do not think that my feeling is an illusion. I have a most unladylike eagerness to persuade my father to let me take a position in Higgs’s Corned Beef and I still feel that corne
d beef — and its potential new canned companions — contribute much to the happiness and security of the world. It is of course impossible to weigh up the relative contributions of war and espionage on one hand, and corned beef on the other, but at the very least, believe corned beef can hold its own when the good of the world is finally accounted.

  Thank you for trusting my opinions enough to ask for them, James. It means more to me than you can know.

  I remain yours always,

  Sophie

  She studied the letter, blotted it then slipped it in an envelope. There was nothing she felt she could add. If anything did occur to her, another letter could be sent with the first. She would probably write to James again anyway, about the adventure of seeing Cape Town, and perhaps observations on the passengers that he would enjoy. An innocuous letter. One from a friend.

  Time for the next letter.

  Dearest Nigel,

  You were right and I was wrong. James was wrong too, if that gives you any comfort. Dolphie did write that letter to bring me to Germany, and he did wish me to be his wife, bringing the Higgs fortune with me. Though, to do him justice, I don’t think that my fortune was his sole motivation. If he had agreed to live in Australia, I would have said yes. I hope I do not shock you or hurt you by saying this for, after all, you too found the concept of living in Australia impossible to consider.

  I am writing this, as I am sure Jones has already told you, on board ship with Georgina, who I have come to like very much indeed and is now reunited with her little boy, and Green, who is now ‘Greenie’ to me too, and we do have the most delightful chats about Miss Lily. Do not blame us. We both love her very much indeed and, apart from Jones, there is no one else we can talk to about her.

  I wish I could say I miss England. But every mile . . . or is it league or knot . . . that we travel sees me closer to home, to the scent of gum trees and a horizon lit by sunset hills. Greenie mentioned you had been to Australia, by the way, though she has not yet told me any details. Perhaps I will leave that tale for you to tell, because I miss you and must see you again sometime, even if my life must be across the world from yours.