‘Because I am your daughter,’ she said again, grinning back at him.
‘What about Oswald? Can’t turf the man out of his job, not after serving his country. Besides, he’s done good work.’
‘I know. Cousin Oswald should stay as general manager. Dad, I want Higgs to mean more than corned beef. The market for that is still sound, but the army contracts are coming to an end and, as things settle down in Europe, there’ll be less of a demand for canned beef. There are even some men who say they’ll never open a can of it again after having little else in the trenches.’
‘Heresy,’ said the man who would not allow corned beef into his household. But he grinned weakly too. ‘So what do you want to do about it?’
‘We have the machinery, the market contacts. But people want luxury these days. Affordable luxury, something to confirm the war is past and life is good. I’d like to start with a canned fruit cup.’
‘What’s that when it’s at home?’
‘If you’re posh, it’s a fruit salad served in crystal glasses before the meal. If you’re not, then it’s just fruit salad with maybe a dollop of custard. But the good thing about canned fruit cup is we can put whatever fruit is cheapest at the time into it, as long as we keep it reasonably similar every time. It doesn’t need pre-cooking either, like jam would or soup, so we can pretty much use the same equipment. The fruit will cook inside the cans, like the beef does.’
‘And after your canned fruit salad, Puss?’
‘How did you know there’d be an after that?’
‘’Cause you’re my daughter.’
Why had she thought that this would be a battle? Jeremiah Higgs had obviously come right round to wanting this without her help. Miss Thwaites had shown him how well a lady managed not just a household but a business. Perhaps, too, he had accepted he would not get a son-in-law within his lifetime. And, possibly, he had learned to be proud of all his only child had achieved in England, France and Belgium, even if she had the misfortune to be female.
‘Tomatoes,’ said Sophie. ‘Miss Thwaites wrote to me about the soldier settlement blocks planned near Thuringa. But they sound too small to support a family decently, unless they can find a crop that brings in proper money. Tomatoes would do that. Again, they’d cook in the can.’
‘Tomatoes, eh?’ he looked thoughtful.
‘Maybe asparagus too, though you can get a tomato crop in the first year, but it takes four for asparagus. But asparagus would be worth planting, because soldier settlers will make more per acre from it — maybe ten or twenty times what they’d make from tomatoes. We’d make more per ton too. Might even pay us to give loans to put in asparagus, with a contract to buy the first five years’ crops. People will pay luxury prices to eat asparagus all year round, just like aristocrats can thanks to their hothouses.’
‘Sounds la-di-da to me. But people like la-di-da. Learned about asparagus in England, did you?’
Once more she saw the Shillings hothouse, saw Miss Lily show her how asparagus must be carefully picked up in the fingers. ‘Yes.’
He lay back, his hand suddenly limp in hers. She felt momentary fear, then realised he was simply tired. ‘Think I’ll have that nap now. Have a talk to Maria, Puss. You can work out things between you. Glad you are back . . .’ His eyes shut.
She waited till his breathing grew deep and even, just for the pleasure of seeing him. She knew now to store good memories while you could. His false leg stood where it always did, by his bed, even if he would not wear it again. Roses sat in a bowl on the bedside table. For her, knowing she would spend time in this room, or for him?
Miss Thwaites waited for her in the library, sitting at the desk. She stood as Sophie entered. ‘I apologise for appropriating your father’s seat. Of course it is your place now.’
‘Miss Thwaites, darling, that is still your desk. I’ll get another one.’ She stepped over to hug her ex-governess. The hug lingered.
Miss Thwaites moved to one of the chairs by the fire. Sophie had once thought her the most graceful woman in the world, before she met Miss Lily or, for that matter, Queen Mary. Sophie sat opposite her, warming her feet.
‘You’ve changed more than I thought you would have,’ said Miss Thwaites at last.
‘War tends to do that.’
‘Not just the war. You are . . . beautiful, Sophie.’
‘I was taught how to be.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I want to be part of the business, Miss Thwaites.’
‘Your father hoped you would.’ Miss Thwaites’s voice had suddenly lost all expression.
‘Do you want to retire from it?’ asked Sophie carefully. ‘If you’ve taken on the responsibility just because Dad was ill and Cousin Oswald away, you can give it up now, today. Or at least next month, when you’ve eased me into your role. But if you want to stay . . .’
Miss Thwaites met her eyes. ‘What else do I have? I’m not your governess any more. I am not your father’s wife, because even though he is free to divorce now, it would take three years, and he will be dead. And when he is dead I will have nothing.’
‘You have this house and Thuringa and me, for as long as you live, because you are my true mother, not the woman who bore me.’
Miss Thwaites put out a hand. ‘Sophie —’
Sophie grasped it. ‘I am certain my father has made sure you’ll be a wealthy woman after his death, though knowing Dad he has probably made it an annuity so your poor feeble female brain can’t waste it, despite your running the business for the last few years . . .’
Miss Thwaites laughed through her tears. ‘Yes. An annuity. But Sophie, my dear, I want to work. Not good deeds, though I hope I will keep doing those, but, well, I have found I enjoy the cut and thrust of business. I loved listening to your father talk about his triumphs. Now I have found how heady they are — but no one else would employ me, not a female and not at my age, and I only really know corned beef.’
Sophie widened her eyes in mock outrage. ‘Don’t you dare set up in competition to Higgs’s!’
‘I promise I will not set up a rival corned-beef operation.’ Miss Thwaites wiped her eyes. ‘It is so good to laugh again!’
‘Will you stay as chairman, with Oswald as general manager?’
‘But what about you?’
‘I will be president, which is a useful title that can mean anything we three wish it to be. To begin with, I’d like to use the surplus factories to can a luxury fruit cocktail, and then, well, we can discuss those later.’
‘How do you know we have surplus factories?’
‘Because the war is over, and demobilised men won’t want to be reminded of corned beef for a while.’
Miss Thwaites looked at her thoughtfully, then smiled. ‘I think we may enjoy this.’
‘It will be more fun than Latin verbs,’ said Sophie lightly. ‘Will you stay in this house? It truly is yours as much as mine. If my father had divorced my mother,’ that silly woman flirting her way across Paris, ‘you’d have married years ago.’
‘But he didn’t,’ said Miss Thwaites gently.
‘Only because he didn’t want the scandal to touch me. Or to confront the pain she caused him. Please, tell me truthfully. I need to stay here until . . . as long as my father needs me. But after that, would you like me to find another house in Sydney, and take my guests with me?’
‘Truthfully,’ said Miss Thwaites, smiling, ‘I would like this to be a home for both of us. You . . . I have also always thought of you . . . as my daughter.’
This time the hug had tears on both sides. ‘I didn’t realise I’d had a mother till I was in England. Such a wonderful mother,’ said Sophie, reaching for her handkerchief. ‘I wish I could call you “Mother”, but people would ask questions.’
‘Maria?’
‘May I? Really?’
‘Of course. After all, you are quite grown up now. You even cry beautifully,’ said Miss Thwaites.
‘A learned skill. There is so much to tell you.’ About Georgin
a, Nigel, Miss Lily, the Dowager. Everything, except how Nigel was actually also Miss Lily. That secret was not hers to share.
‘Do you think Cook could make us crumpets and honey?’ asked Sophie.
‘I think so.’
‘Then let’s eat them in here and talk.’
Chapter 31
DECEMBER 1919
Dearest Sophie,
I am so sorry about the severity of your father’s illness. Please give him my warmest wishes and tell him how grateful I am not just for the slow recovery of Shillings, thanks to my investment in his company and the wisdom of his daughter, but for his deep kindness when we met so many years ago. He is the best of men and has the best of daughters. If I thought it would comfort you, or please him, I would come out to Australia to say goodbye but, from what you say, there is little chance I would be there in time to say farewell.
Jones says he has received word from Green that she enjoys Australia and that you are well, and well dressed by an expert firm, ‘even here in the colonies’, though she assures him your undergarments and evening dresses are still ordered direct from Paris, as indeed they should be.
As for Shillings, we do well with the mechanical harvesters and tractors you purchased for us. The men compete happily for the chance to use them. I miss the horses lost to war, as well as the men who led them, as all of us at Shillings do. But this is a new world and we must accustom ourselves to it. Every decade brings a new world, of course. This one simply forced greater change on us than most.
I have made my first speech in the House of Lords, on the importance of the League of Nations, to thunderous indifference. I am not an able public speaker, I am afraid. The dinner table or drawing room is my métier, though the subject has not been to my listeners’ taste at dinner parties lately either. They would rather believe that the League will make war impossible, despite Germany not being part of it, it having no army to support it, nor even the United States of America as a member. Meanwhile fighting continues in Russia, in Africa, on the North West Frontier and strikes and rebellions simmer. Perhaps my speech at least allowed them to close their eyes and nap, for that is apparently what the House is truly good for.
I wish you were here, not just from selfishness, but so that when it snows you might make a snowman again, and eat cherry cake and experience what was not possible last time you had Christmas here nor during the war and its aftermath — a true country-house Christmas with Yule log and pantomime and charades and carol singing and feasting with friends. I miss you, Sophie, but believe your decision to return was a wise one.
Speaking of your home, and Higgs Industries, I enclose a letter, for its new president as Higgs’s major shareholder, or rather its major minor one. I have found it advisable to keep ammunition handy, no matter how remote the chance it will be needed.
Jones does not send his love, being Jones, but would if he did not feel it inappropriate.
From me, love always,
Nigel
Mr Jeremiah Higgs, founder and proprietor of Higgs’s Corned Beef, now officially Higgs Industries, died on 15 December 1919.
His funeral cortege stretched six city blocks, the horses in black plumes, his daughter, Miss Sophie Higgs, her companion, Lady Georgina FitzWilliam, her companion’s son, the Viscount Lord Timothy FitzWilliam, and Miss Maria Thwaites in the car behind. Mr Higgs’s friends spoke of his enterprise, forward thinking and kindness. The women in his life said nothing, as was appropriate at a funeral, and very few noticed Lady Georgina freshening their cups of tea with small nips from a silver flask.
Then it was over.
The cicadas sang as loudly as the choir as Jeremiah Higgs’s body was lowered into the earth. The sky shimmered with the heat haze and the faint tinge of bushfire smoke about the Blue Mountains that meant an Australian summer; and every worker at Higgs Industries was given two days off work to mourn — and if they spent it sleeping or playing cricket or went to the beach, all the better, said the president, before she retired to the study with Green, Georgina and Maria to cry.
Women cry best together, thought Sophie, a skill few men had learned, just as they knew that tea was comforting, especially accompanied by crumpets with honey.
And that life went on.
Chapter 32
Pockets are essential, not at your waist or hips, which will spoil the line of your outfit, but tucked into petticoats, or, at court, your train. Many a lady-in-waiting has been sustained by sandwiches and brandy discreetly retrieved while the presentation queue stretched for hours before the queen. I prefer petticoat pockets, but what is secreted there is less accessible in public.
Miss Lily, 1914
BAVARIA, GERMANY, DECEMBER 1919
HANNELORE
And life went on, it seemed, even when you assumed you had lost it several times over. Her beloved Germany continued, spluttering from crisis to crisis. But despite the political and economic dramas that Dolphie was once more caught up in, that made it seem as if the nation would split into the separate kingdoms it had been until only the previous century, Hannelore felt that her country would continue.
Aristocracy would too. The Kaiser might have fled, pushed, rejected, but a prinzessin was still a prinzessin, not just in the eyes of Dolphie’s political allies, who naturally regarded high birth with respect, but the others who called at the hunting lodge now that order had been restored — or at least one’s life was not now immediately under threat from political assassination or casual rape and murder.
She managed a walk out into the sunlight each day, feeble as the winter sun itself, which managed only half an hour of snow-drenched light — all she could manage too. She wore fur coats that were fifty years old, perhaps, that had been wrapped in linen bags in the attic to keep them from moths, forgotten by an aunt or even great-aunt. She also wore Sophie’s bank draft, tucked in a pocket in her underwear.
Dolphie had not spoken of it, or of Sophie. Hannelore knew he had hoped Sophie’s fortune might re-establish them, after his marriage to her. She would feel no shame at using his wife’s money and nor would Sophie — a title and a fortune were a fair and well-established exchange. But to have that money thrown carelessly on a shabby bed by a woman who would not marry him must humiliate him deeply.
And of course, he loved her. Who could not love Sophie?
But the bank draft was hers. A man able to forge a career in this post-war world could afford pride. Hannelore could not. She also had her duty.
And so she planned, as she sat rugged up on the steps of the lodge, or huddled by the fire in the one small room that could be kept warm. She thought of Sophie. She thought of Higgs’s Corned Beef.
Slowly the way ahead grew clear. A life, a small way to help those whom she loved, which included her entire country, and, as Sophie said, all humankind.
And when I have done this, she thought, shivering despite the fur coat, the fire and the rugs, I can write to Sophie.
Chapter 33
A new decade should be exciting. I have never found the first year of a new decade remarkable. Perhaps I failed to notice.
Miss Lily, 1914
FEBRUARY 1920
SOPHIE
Sophie looked up at Cousin Oswald from where she sat at her desk, then took the plain white envelope he offered her.
‘My resignation,’ said Cousin Oswald.
‘But why? Cousin Oswald, if I have said anything that might make you feel we do not value you —’
‘Not value me!’ The New Zealand accent was stronger, either from indignation or because he had served in a New Zealand unit during the war. ‘Miss Higgs —’
‘Cousin Sophie.’
‘Miss Higgs, I admit your Miss Thwaites was invaluable during the war. Many women were invaluable during the war. But the men who served their country deserve their jobs again.’
‘Cousin Oswald, your job is waiting for you. General manager of Higgs Industries.’
‘With two women as my superiors! I would be a laughing st
ock.’
‘Not as your superiors,’ said Sophie evenly. I am doing this all wrong, she thought. He has come to confront me, and I am attacking back. Miss Lily taught me better than that.
She smiled at him, slowly, carefully. ‘It is so good to be home, isn’t it?’ she said softly. ‘No more mud. No more rockets in the night. I never want to see fireworks again.’
The smile was reluctant. ‘Yes, well, I must say I feel the same.’
‘Who have been our main beef suppliers?’
‘We buy what’s cheapest at the market,’ he said automatically. ‘Apart from what our own farms produce.’
‘And the price of cattle will go down. How much can we afford to lower the cost of corned beef and still make a profit?’
‘We can’t,’ he said flatly.
We, she thought. I’ve hooked you, Cousin Oswald.
‘Then how about we use the factory capacity for other lines? There is a young man who badly needs a job, Cousin Oswald. You may even have met him in France. Johnny Slithersole.’
‘Young Johnny? We met on leave in Paris.’ He grinned. ‘I reckon half the army met the other half on leave sometime or other in Paris. But we got to talking about home, and that led to corned beef.’
‘I won’t ask you what else you got up to.’
‘I married her,’ said Cousin Oswald, grinning.
‘What? Why didn’t Dad tell me you were married? Congratulations! I am so glad. What is her name? When will we meet her?’
‘Her name is Gladys.’ His smile was open and relaxed now. ‘Couldn’t tell anyone. Gladys was a VAD. Would have lost her job if anyone knew she was married. She’s trying to get a berth to Australia.’
‘Telegraph Mr Slithersole, and I’ll telegraph the Earl of Shillings — between the two of them they’ll have the contacts to get our Gladys on the next ship to Australia.’
The Lily and the Rose Page 17
