Lord William moved towards Green, careless of his nakedness. ‘Get out of my wife’s room, you —’
Sophie screamed again. William stopped, and turned to look at her properly. ‘What the . . .?’ he swore.
‘Get out! Get out! Help! Help!’ shrieked Sophie, carefully channelling terror.
‘Murder!’ screamed Green. ‘He’s murdering her! Help us someone, please!’
She stepped calmly between the naked William and the doorway, as he tried to fling himself out, then kicked him carefully between the legs, then once in each kidney as he fell. He screamed. ‘Lily taught me that,’ she added to Sophie. ‘Won’t even show a bruise tomorrow morning.’ She grinned, excitement gleaming, then cried out along the passageway again. ‘Please, please, someone help us!
The purser flung open the door, the captain behind him. ‘Miss Higgs! What has happened?’
‘That man,’ sobbed Sophie, carefully letting her bloody neck and shoulder show as her nightdress slipped off her shoulder. ‘I was asleep. He attacked me. Tried to kill me!’
‘I did no such thing,’ blustered William, suddenly aware that he was naked. ‘Pass me my clothes, damn you!’ He scrambled up, attempting dignity while holding his hands cupped over his genitals. The whip lay, like a bloodied black snake, on the floor next to him. ‘I am Lord William FitzWilliam, only son of Baron Lynley. I believed this was the stateroom of my wife.’
‘There is no Lady FitzWilliam on board,’ said the captain coldly. ‘This is Miss Higgs’ cabin!’
‘I tell you I saw her! I am not in the habit of lying, man.’
‘Fetch the men,’ said the captain quietly. ‘Try to make as little further disturbance as you can.’ He looked William up and down, then said, ‘With your permission, Miss Higgs?’ as he removed the spare blanket from the chair, and tossed it to William to cover himself. He gestured to the bloody whip on the floor. ‘This is the way you usually greet your wife?’
‘What happens between a man and his wife is no business of anyone else,’ said William.
‘But this lady is not your wife, and this is my ship.’
‘He tried to suffocate me. He tried to kill me!’ sobbed Sophie, glad that four years of tragedy meant tears could be called upon at very little provocation.
‘Murderer!’ cried Green.
‘A murderer on my ship,’ said the captain. ‘Miss Higgs, I will send the doctor to you.’
‘Thank you,’ said Sophie, hiccupping a little. Green moved to her and put her arm around her, avoiding the wounds.
William seemed to have found himself again. ‘There is no proof of any of this. If you try to take this further, who will a magistrate or jury believe? Two hysterical women and the captain of a small unimportant ship? Or a peer of the realm?’
‘They will believe the photographs,’ said Green, still holding the sobbing Sophie. Damn, it felt good to sob, and not just because the red weals from her beating hurt.
‘What photographs?’ demanded Lord William.
Green picked up her camera, then moved carefully out of his reach. ‘Photography is my hobby. I was trying to see if I could capture the lights of the port from the deck when I heard Miss Higgs scream. I must have kept pressing the button automatically,’ she glanced at the dials, ‘as it seems all the film has been used up. It was a new roll too.’
‘Photographs?’ said Lord William incredulously.
‘Photographs,’ said the captain thoughtfully, glancing at the whip and then at Sophie, and realising, perhaps, that the third of their usual party of three was not in evidence.
‘I have a feeling they are not the kind of photos most people are used to. You were quite . . . excited,’ said Green calmly. ‘I got at least a dozen good shots of you with the whip. The newspapers will be interested. Especially because you are a peer of the realm. Though I expect parts will need to be blacked out for the front pages and for the more sensitive members of the jury.’
Lord William stared at her, all expression gone, at Sophie, the blood running down her arm, as she met his eyes, at the captain, who seemed even angrier at the possible bad publicity for his ship.
Two hefty sailors emerged from the dimness of the passageway.
‘Take him to the brig . . .’ began the captain.
Lord William suddenly brushed past him, dropping the blanket. I hope they burn it, thought Sophie with a shudder, after it has touched his skin.
‘Do not worry. He cannot escape —’ The captain’s words were cut off by a yell: ‘Man overboard!’
‘Excuse me.’ The captain ran into the night. Sophie heard the click as the life buoy was unhitched, a faint splash as it hit the water, ropes scratching as the ship’s boat was lowered.
Sophie clutched the sheet around her, wincing as it touched her skin. She had not expected this. Ridicule, possibly a short time in the brig or prison before influence got him released, then blackmail — a promise to leave Georgina and Timothy alone until Timothy was twenty-one, or the photos would be copied for the English press, and the American, which was keen on the peccadilloes of English aristocrats. She had not planned Lord William’s suicide.
But it would do. Just one more life, after so many millions lost . . .
I should feel more, she thought. She didn’t.
The doctor arrived, with antiseptic, bandages, brandy and discretion. The ship’s boat returned. But they brought no man with them, nor a body.
Chapter 28
Always breakfast well. If each day is an adventure, you need to be fortified. If it is not going to be an adventure, at least a boring day will have begun enjoyably.
Miss Lily, 1914
‘What now?’ asked Georgina, her voice still blank with shock but her body absorbing the scrambled eggs and bacon and a serving of the potato and cabbage slice included at each breakfast since they changed chefs at Cape Town, as well as croissants with guava jam and several cups of extremely hot coffee. ‘Are we really safe?’
‘Leave it all to the ship’s authorities to inform whoever needs to know of his death and how it happened. I am sure they will try to keep any scandal out of it. Emily will, as well, in case it touches her husband’s career. An accident, no more.’
The captain had already outlined that approach to her, avoiding publicity both for his ship and Sophie Higgs.
‘But his parents . . .’
‘Are a long way away, and can prove nothing, not with the captain himself as a witness.’ She took Georgina’s hand. ‘You were not here, were never here. Mrs Wattle has no connection to Lady Georgina, nor has Timothy Brown and his mother. In three months’ time you will write a short, formal letter of condolence to his parents, assuring them that you and your son are well and hope to see them in the near future. I will arrange for it to be posted from New York, just to add to any confusion.’
‘But I don’t want to see —’ began Georgina.
Sophie held up a hand. ‘“Near” may mean six months or sixteen years, when Timothy has taken his majority and is off to Oxford . . . unless by then he wishes to have an elephant ranch in Australia. But there is nothing his grandparents can do to take his title away from him.’
‘The estate is entailed.’
‘Then Timothy inherits that too after his grandfather’s death,’ said Sophie. ‘And there is nothing they can do to change that without the heir’s agreement and Timothy, of course, is too young to even begin to break the entail.’
‘What if they try to get custody?’
‘It will probably take them some time to find out you are not in America. William’s family can hunt for you there, if they wish. If they do discover you have come to Australia with me — though I doubt either Emily or their son would have told them that, as they’d need to have given a reason for you fleeing across the world a second time rather than meet him — then by the time they begin legal proceedings you will be living with the most respectable Jeremiah Higgs and his daughter — no need for the Melbourne hidey-hole now — and on excellent
terms with the chief justice, who comes to dinner on Fridays.’
‘Does he really?’ asked Green.
‘Not yet,’ said Sophie. ‘I will think of some other . . . suitable friends . . . we will acquire too.’
She’d had ‘suitable friends’ procured for her since childhood: not true friends, but arranged by her father. Possibly they might still be suitable. Probably most were married. Or widowed. It was even possible, as Miss Lily had once tactfully suggested, that once her prejudice against them was put behind her, some might indeed become true friends. ‘But Giggs, I think . . . if William’s parents prove to be good eggs and don’t hound you, you need to let them meet Timothy one day. They have lost their only child, you know. Beast or not, he was all they had.’
‘They hardly knew him, I think,’ said Georgina quietly. ‘He was sent to boarding school from six years old, then university and then Ceylon. I think he was just the perfect son they imagined.’
‘Then let them continue to think so. Let them believe he stumbled overboard in a tragic accident, that you came to Australia to keep me company after my, er, health broke down after the rigours of war.’
‘You’re as healthy as a hunter fed on oats,’ said Green, neatly eating asparagus omelette.
Canned asparagus, thought Sophie. Interesting. How much profit would there be in canned asparagus. Possibly a lot . . . ‘William’s parents don’t know that. But they deserve to know their grandchild . . . if they don’t try to take you over, or him. And if they are good people, he deserves them too.’
Georgina nodded, whether in agreement or to change the subject Sophie didn’t know. ‘I have a life,’ she said wonderingly. ‘I can make a life. For both of us.’
‘You have indeed and you will,’ said Sophie, wondering what she would make of it. Georgina and millions of other women, widowed and needing to make their own lives, instead of supporting their husbands. Women who had children to feed and clothe, and no pension or husband to help them, their husbands lost to the ‘shell shock’ and other mental problems that were not officially war injuries so not entitled to a pension. Other women, who suddenly might get degrees, and even enter a few of the professions, teachers, scientists, doctors, librarians, lawyers. Women who might be more than mothers, daughters, wives.
And manufacturers of more than corned beef. But she had to convince her father of that.
Five more days, she thought. I will see him and Miss Thwaites in five more days.
Chapter 29
I prefer the old-fashioned ‘farewell’ to ‘goodbye’; the latter is too final. Fare ye well . . .
Miss Lily, 1914
JULY 1919
She stood on the deck, letting the southerly wind whip her hair into tangles. She knew the scent of that wind! The metallic scent of the Southern Ocean, bringing cold even up here; the perfume of sun-drenched gum trees and hot rocks — even the waves here had a known pattern and the sky a blue found nowhere else.
It is the sky that tells us we are home, she thought. The way the clouds flow, the smell of wind, the colours of the sea.
She had dressed carefully for her arrival: nothing too formal or too French, but stylish enough so that Jeremiah Higgs knew he’d received value for his money, that his daughter was returning a lady. Wouldn’t he love Georgina’s title? And Timothy, who was a viscount now. Her father would dine out on it for weeks . . . my daughter’s friend, Lady Georgina . . . I took my daughter’s friend and her son out to the headland to fly kites. That little viscount . . . do you know he’d never flown a kite before in his life . . .
At first the land was too far away to make out details without binoculars. They only came closer to shore as they neared Sydney Harbour. Suddenly, there were the Heads, high and protective, the gap between them looking too small for a ship to fit through. And yet she did, and the pilot boat that had appeared too.
She resisted the urge to yell to Georgina and Green and Timothy and the unflappable Mrs Brown, who had heard of their change of circumstances with scarcely a smile or look of surprise as if she had always expected the gentry to manage their own affairs in the end. ‘Look!’ she wanted to say. ‘That’s Manly Pier! And the ferries! And that’s the island with the cannons in case the French or Russians invade!’
Except of course the French and Russians had been allies in the last war, not enemy nations as they had been in colonial times. She settled for, ‘Timothy, over there! Pelicans! A wondrous beast is the pelican. His beak holds more than his belly can.’
‘Sophie!’ protested Georgina, laughing. ‘That is . . . indelicate.’
‘I am indelicate!’ They passed the quay, the ferries docking. A tug helped them turn into the pier. She stood by the rail and hunted among the waiting crowds. Too tall, no, too fat, no, not the right shape at all . . .
And there she was — Miss Thwaites, looking totally gloriously Miss Thwaitish, grey-and-white haired, her dress shorter and a new coat . . . or new since 1913.
But where was her father? Had he gone to buy her flowers or to make sure the motor car was waiting? Miss Thwaites had written he had finally agreed to buy one. Next to her was a young man with one arm, waving, waving, waving with the other at a girl further down the deck who must be his English bride. On Miss Thwaites’s other side an elderly man slumped in a wheelchair, hardly visible under a blanket.
Her father.
Sophie stood still, glad he could not see her face. Miss Thwaites had said he’d had a stroke, but ‘only a small one’. She’d written ‘. . . his heart is troubling him’ but not how much. She had said he was tired and missing her . . .
And Sophie had not listened. She, who had been so proud of finding out who she was and what she wanted, had not cared to truly think of those she loved most. They had always been there, everlasting, ever stable, and would be whenever she was ready to come home. But they were not. Miss Thwaites was growing old. Her father, possibly, no, probably, was dying.
The ship neared the pier. She forced herself to smile, to wave, saw the moment Miss Thwaites saw her, smiled too, touched her father’s arm with so much love that Sophie sobbed, then choked it back. At least he’d had Miss Thwaites with him, to love him.
He waved back, for a second the vigorous man that she had known, his face glowing as if suffused with electric light.
‘Your father?’ asked Georgina gently.
‘My father,’ agreed Sophie, scrubbing her eyes ruthlessly with her handkerchief.
Georgina gazed at the crumpled man in the wheelchair. ‘It is good you have come home.’ She put her arm around Sophie’s shoulders and kissed her cheek. ‘Life goes on, Soapy,’ she said softly. ‘Both good and bad. Everything changes.’
‘I . . . I know.’
Next to her Green, back in servant mode, surreptitiously squeezed Sophie’s gloved hand.
Chapter 30
Bread and milk, for invalids
Make this in the bedchamber in a silver chafing dish by the fire so the scents tempt the appetite.
1 glass milk, with the cream not removed or, if necessary, added again
1 tbsp sweet butter
2 slices bread
Heat the milk on the hearth. Then toast the bread on the flames till golden on each side; butter, and cut off the crusts. Slice into small squares.
Place the toast in the warmed chafing dish; pour on the milk, and serve at once, smiling. A little sugar, pale honey, or cinnamon or nutmeg can be added.
Miss Lily, 1914
Sophie sat beside the bed, her father’s hand in hers. Papery, rabbit boned, the veins too prominent. The room smelled of lavender and carefully aired sheets and cigars. The latter worried her most. Her father had only smoked in the library or dining room before.
‘Cousin Oswald is doing well?’ She had tried to get her father to take a nap, but he wanted to keep talking, her hand in his, whispering out all of the last five years’ news for his daughter that he could cram into an afternoon. He knows how little time he has left, she thought. How
much time I have wasted.
No. Her life in the past five years had not been wasted. Jeremiah Higgs had invested both time and money well when he sent his daughter to England. And he was carefully calculating the return on that investment now.
‘Oswald’s a good boy.’ The words were faintly slurred. Spittle gathered at the edges of his mouth, impatiently brushed away. But although softer his voice was surprisingly firm. ‘Works well with Maria now he’s back again.’
Miss Thwaites had written that she had taken over much of the responsibility from her father, with Cousin Oswald in the army overseas. Sophie had not realised quite how much authority her former governess was still wielding.
‘Miss Thwaites is the manager of Higgs’s now?’ she asked tentatively.
A smile, such a familiar one she could have wept, except that joy in seeing him still outweighed the shock that this man must have such a short time still to live. ‘Maria holds my proxy as chairman of the board. A manager looks after day-to-day decisions. That’s Oswald, since he’s been demobbed. The chairman . . .’
‘Dad, I know what managers do,’ she said gently. ‘And chairmen and boards. I set up hospitals and ran them, remember?’
‘Properly?’
‘Very properly. They are still operating. You taught me well.’
A faint laugh. ‘Didn’t mean to.’
‘I’m your daughter,’ she said lightly. ‘Dad, I want to run Higgs’s Corned Beef. If I’d come back with a husband, you’d have offered it to him.’
‘Ha. Only to a good one. Not that Overhill fellow.’
She had almost forgotten Malcolm, the boy she had thought she loved, wanted to marry. ‘The only men I have considered marrying in the last two years would have been excellent managers. But I will be a better one.’
A gleam in his eyes. ‘You’re very sure of yourself, miss.’
The Lily and the Rose Page 16
