The Lily and the Rose

by Jackie French

  ‘Not a pannikin of cocoa and corned-beef sandwiches and two cigarettes?’

  Ethel gazed out the window as the plane began to taxi. ‘They were good days, weren’t they? Nay, you know what I mean. They were bad days but we knew what we were doing. Clean up the generals’ messes and feed the boys and try to spoon them cocoa if their faces were blown off. These days . . .’

  ‘Midge said you were standing for election to local council.’

  ‘Lost,’ said Ethel briefly.

  ‘Me too. Mine was a federal.’

  Ethel grinned. ‘I know. You even got half an inch in The Times. Colonies to have Female MP?’

  ‘I assume they didn’t even bother to announce I lost. You’re still running the clinic?’

  ‘Got some good women to keep that afloat. I’ve been getting an allotment project off the ground, if you’ll excuse the pun. Pushing blokes with scarred lungs out in the fresh air, and growing fresh vegetables for kiddies who live on bread and treacle. Every little bit helps, as the old woman said when she spat into the sea.’

  The plane swerved upwards, the smoothest take-off Sophie had experienced so far. But of course, George must make this plane flight pleasant enough for people to want to do it again and to tell their friends. ‘Flying to Paris? Darling, you must try it. You can get there in time to have lunch and buy a hat and be home for tea. I bought this one the last time Horace and I were over there . . .’

  ‘Another sandwich?’ offered Ethel, rooting in her capacious handbag as if digging for parsnips.

  ‘Please.’ There had been no time for breakfast.

  ‘Can do you a ham and pickle. Here, you finish what’s in the Thermos.’

  ‘You don’t want any?’

  ‘Not till they work out how to put a bathroom in these things.’

  ‘A hole, so it all drops,’ suggested Sophie.

  ‘I told George that but he says a long drop would spoil the aero-whatsits.’

  ‘Aerodynamics?’ She had not spent two days in the company of Mrs Henderson without learning some useful phrases, even if Miss Morrison had contributed little.

  ‘That’s it. Should have gone back at the station. I keep telling George he needs to build an airplane station too, one with toilets and where you can buy a cup of tea and a rock cake. The rock cake might make the passengers a bit heavier but that toilet could also make them lighter. He said he’ll think about it.’

  ‘Is his business good?’

  ‘Enough to keep him flying and out of working at Carryman’s Cocoa. Luckily he’s got a younger brother whose heart heads to chocolate rather than the sky.’

  Ethel’s father evidently still did not consider a girl a useful heir. Though possibly if Ethel had children . . . ‘You’re not tempted to get married? Excuse me, old thing — put it down to colonial bumptiousness.’

  ‘I don’t mind. Nay, not for me. If it’s a choice between a man and a motorbike, I’d rather have the bike. One gives me freedom and the other would take it away.’

  ‘Girls?’ asked Sophie discreetly, under the noise of the engine. The wings waggled, as if shocked by her suggestion, and they changed direction. She could see the coast below them, grey water and grey sails, seagulls scattering, jealous of these apes with wings who had taken to the skies.

  ‘Nope,’ said Ethel cheerfully. ‘That wasn’t an offer, was it?’

  ‘Of course not!’

  ‘Well, it takes all sorts. Especially now. Well, I suppose it always did, but people are more open about it these days. What are you going to do with this Nigel fellow once you get there?’

  ‘Be there for him.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ethel patiently. ‘But as what?’

  ‘Friend. Nurse. I truly don’t know.’ And she had carefully pushed that question aside throughout her journey. ‘Whatever he needs.’

  ‘He didn’t give you a hint when he asked you to come?’

  Sophie flushed. ‘He didn’t exactly ask me. His secretary did. And best friend.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Ethel, carefully noncommittal.

  Sophie suddenly thought of her two other journeys, to Ypres and to Munich, impulsive, dramatic, and without full understanding of where she was going, or even why. This dash was even more dramatic, its ending less dangerous, despite the zebras, but even more unknown.

  No, it isn’t, she thought. Whatever happens in the next week, or weeks, there will be Nigel or Lily, who I love, and Jones, who I trust, and Shillings, where I am myself more than anywhere except home.

  Ethel peered across Sophie and out the window. ‘The good old white cliffs. You’d better go up front and give George directions.’

  ‘Hasn’t he got a map?’ Sophie asked in alarm. She wasn’t sure she could recognise the roads to Shillings from the air.

  ‘Of course he has,’ said Ethel patiently. ‘But you’ll need to tell him where to land. And help him look out for zebras too.’ Her grin appeared again. ‘I’m looking forward to seeing those zebras.’

  ‘So am I,’ said Sophie. And found she meant it.

  Chapter 56

  When does friendship begin? Liking someone enormously at first sight is no guarantee that you will stay close. Acquaintanceship may slowly ripen. The only test of true friendship is time.

  Miss Lily, 1914

  Hedges, their covering of briar and brambles bare now in winter, showing the old stones beneath. Cold cows on cold grass, and reproachful sheep. Why did the merinos at the Harrisons’ look disdainful and these merely reproachful? It must be the merinos’ long noses. These sheep did not know they were part of an earl’s estate . . . and there was the Shillings and Sixpence and the home farm . . .

  ‘That field! The one just past the house, with the —’

  ‘Zebras,’ said nephew George. ‘Miss Higgs, I can’t land there. I might hit one of them.’

  ‘What happens if you do?’

  ‘I have no idea. I’ve never landed on a zebra. Or any other animal,’ he added hurriedly. ‘I imagine it would flatten the zebra and damage our undercarriage.’

  ‘Land,’ ordered Sophie. ‘I’ll pay if the plane’s damaged. Zebras run from lions — I bet they know how to escape from a plane too.’

  The zebras stared up as the plane circled, as if wondering if it was a new variety of vulture. Sophie peered down at the rose garden, but there was no sign of a hippopotamus, just bare bushes, heavily pruned among the —

  Palm trees? Surely not. Except they were.

  The rear of the house was crowded with vehicles, at least twenty of them. As they circled again a man in a toga and laurel wreath and, presumably, gooseflesh unless he was wearing several layers of woollen underwear, wandered out of the front door carrying a bottle of champagne.

  ‘Land,’ Sophie ordered again.

  The wings waggled. The plane dropped. The zebras left in an explosion of hooves just in time. Nephew George brought the plane to a halt before the hedge.

  ‘Well done,’ said Ethel encouragingly, hauling herself to her feet. ‘I’ll give you a hand to unload the luggage while Sophie makes her entrance. I’ll be up later, lass.’

  ‘You’re staying?’

  ‘Wouldn’t miss it,’ said Ethel cheerfully. ‘Brought a bag just in case. But I’ll make myself scarce if all is not ginger peachy with his lordship.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Sophie. And meant it. Troops in reserve were always useful. Especially one as resourceful as Ethel.

  She stepped out of the plane and straightened, feeling her fur coat blow back in the wind, and settled her hat at the correct angle. The scent of Shillings. Cold grass and old stones and lichened apple trees and . . . zebra dung.

  ‘I say, is that your crate?’ A young man, not the Roman, but who looked vaguely familiar. He wore normal dress, plus fours and a striped vest under a tweed jacket, a champagne glass in one hand and a bloody handkerchief around the other.

  ‘No, a friend’s. What happened to your hand?’

  ‘A zebra bit it. Nasty beast. One was just
trying to have a chat.’ He drank the rest of the champagne then let the glass fall into the grass. ‘Is that a costume? An aviatrix shouldn’t come as an aviatrix. Not done.’

  ‘I’m not an aviatrix and I’m not in costume. Should I be?’

  ‘Well, it’s a costume party, after all. “Tutankhamun Returns”. Don’t think an aviatrix quite fits the theme, but then I never was one for history.’

  ‘Surely his lordship isn’t having a party now?’

  The young man looked at her more closely. ‘Not his lordship. Claude Vaile and Beatrice.’

  The cousin. The one who would inherit when Nigel . . . if Nigel . . .

  ‘How is his lordship?’ asked Sophie quietly.

  He looked at her with concern. ‘I say, are you all right? He’s not well, I gather. I haven’t seen him yet this visit — only arrived an hour ago. Vaile says this party is to cheer him up.’

  ‘I can’t think of anything less likely to,’ said Sophie crisply. ‘You’re not in costume yet?’

  ‘And I won’t be. Rank hath its privileges.’

  And then she knew who he was. ‘Oh, I am so sorry. I should curtsey, should I? Or is that only if we are formally introduced? I have lost all my manners in the colonies. And I don’t know how to curtsey in trousers.’

  The Prince of Wales laughed. ‘Shall we pretend the zebras introduced us? And call me David.’

  ‘I am Sophie Higgs, Your, er, Royal Highness.’

  ‘I said to call me David.’ He looked at her with interest. ‘Nigel has spoken of you. I was sorry I never met you on my tour of the colonies.’

  ‘You made quite an impression,’ said Sophie dryly. He had also, if rumour was true, left possibly a hundred illegitimate children behind. But that rumour was almost certainly unfounded.

  Or at least exaggerated.

  ‘I’m glad you’re here. All this —’ The injured royal hand gestured at the zebras, two chilly-looking camels among the apple trees, and a pair of Cleopatras smoking gaspers in the leafless rose garden, still unadorned by a hippopotamus. Perfectly pleasant, and pleasantly perfect, just as a prince should be. She supposed he had been taught well. ‘— it’s all jolly bad form. I didn’t know it wasn’t Nigel’s do until I got here.’

  ‘You’re not a friend of Mr Vaile and his wife?’

  ‘No,’ said the prince. ‘Though I do enjoy a good party.’ He looked at her sideways and repeated, ‘Jolly bad form in this case, however. There is a dinner tonight, and a ball tomorrow night.’

  ‘And Nigel has surgery in a week’s time.’ A week and one day, she thought. I got here!

  ‘That soon? I say. I’m sorry.’ His eyes gleamed at her. ‘Anything I can do to help, just yell.’

  ‘I will, Your Royal Highness.’

  ‘I said call me David.’

  ‘I know. But just then you were being a prince.’

  He laughed. ‘I can tell why Nigel is so keen on you. I’ll just linger by the front door and have a cigar.’

  ‘So you can watch what happens next?’

  ‘You really are a clever girl.’

  ‘Always,’ said Sophie. She strode past a pair of mummies, dressed in bandages except for their patterned socks and shoes, six Julius Caesars, who did not seem to know that Tutankhamun was ancient history to him too, and a bifurcated camel, sitting on the heads or tails of their costumes, gaspers. A mermaid in a mink stole lay, hiccupping gently, on the lap of yet another mummy. Well, a pharaoh’s garb would be chilly in an English winter.

  All the guests seemed well lubricated. None gave her more than a cursory glance. Planes and aviatrixes, it seemed, were not worthy of comment. They seemed more interested in the Prince of Wales, following her with amusement. It was as if all the frantic idiocies of post-war England were gathered here at Shillings, an obscenity of past glories while their master was at the point of death. She had read of parties like this. Australia even had its own version, as brittle, if less sumptuous, and none, as far as she knew, featuring zebras. The war had cracked people’s lives and the safety of their worldviews, and so they danced and played faster and faster to ignore the cracks.

  For a while.

  This is not real, thought Sophie. Not just the costumes, the false pillar façade on Shillings Hall, but the gaiety, put on like a bandeaux of gilt and feathers.

  She ran up the steps to the front door just as it opened.

  Cutler the Butler was tall, lean and had appalling teeth. Good teeth were a necessity for a butler, and if not natural should be acquired by his employer. ‘I am Miss Higgs,’ Sophie announced.

  ‘I am sorry, Miss Higgs. Mr and Mrs Vaile are not at home. Nor is his lordship.’

  ‘But I am,’ said Sophie.

  Mr Cutler’s elbows widened subtly, blocking the entire door. ‘I said, Miss Higgs, that —’

  ‘Would you prefer that I go through the window? Actually . . .’

  She turned and hurried back down the steps before he could call a footman to manhandle her — not that she couldn’t handle a footman or two, but it wasn’t fair on the boys to leave them clutching their male parts for the next two days just because Cutler the Butler was an ass.

  She strode around the house, past the library, from which emanated a gaggle of voices and someone screaming ‘Dahling!’ and, yes, a fire was lit in Miss Lily’s small drawing room, glinting through the curtains. Sophie rapped on the glass with her knuckles.

  Nigel’s voice said faintly, ‘What the dickens . . .? Jones, would you mind?’

  Jones’s large hands appeared, followed by his body. He stared, his face cracking in a grin, and opened the window, then gave her a hand as she clambered inside. ‘Miss Higgs,’ he whispered. ‘Sophie.’

  She stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. ‘I’m here. It’s all right.’

  She looked at Nigel, who was not all right. Who sat on Miss Lily’s seat by the fire, in flannels and a beard. A beard! His skin was pale, his eyes shadowed, widening in shock. ‘Sophie!’ Impossible to tell what he was feeling.

  ‘Sophie,’ he said again, as if he were tasting the words. And this time she heard joy, and the small ice dagger of fear that she had propelled herself where she was not wanted melted.

  The door opened. ‘There she is!’ said Cutler the Butler. ‘Excuse me, your lordship, she insisted.’

  A woman appeared behind him, middle aged and fighting it far too hard, dressed in a long purple tunic embroidered with gold thread and beads, purple stockings, sandals and an over-supply of probably paste diamonds. A purple toga-ed man with a gold-painted laurel wreath came panting up beside her. Ah, thought Sophie, Mr and Mrs Vaile. Who should not wear purple, not with those red-veined cheeks. Her eyes were drawn back to Nigel. Nigel, who seemed to see only her. Nigel, beginning to smile.

  ‘What on earth is happening?’ demanded Claude Vaile, following his purple-clad wife and Cutler into the room. ‘Cutler, get this woman out of my house!’

  Curious faces crowded in behind him.

  ‘Your house?’ The voice from the doorway was quiet. The crowd turned towards the Prince of Wales. ‘My dear chap, this is Nigel’s house, remember? Your dashed zebra bit me,’ he added.

  ‘I . . . I am so sorry, Your Highness,’ stammered Beatrice Vaile. ‘We have an intruder.’

  ‘I am not an intruder,’ snapped Sophie, glancing back at her. How dare they? Nigel had looked so small, so lost.

  ‘You have not been invited,’ stated Beatrice Vaile, her face turning almost as puce as her costume.

  ‘I invited her.’ They were the first words Nigel had spoken except her name since she’d clambered into the room.

  ‘This is my party,’ snarled Beatrice Vaile.

  And suddenly the world locked into shape again. And the future. Because suddenly Sophie knew exactly what she could do for Nigel, and Jones too, and Shillings.

  Sophie grinned. ‘But as this will also be my house tomorrow,’ she said, winking briefly at Nigel, ‘I’m afraid I fail to see how you can be throwing a party
here.’

  Nigel stared at her, startled for a split second before his grin matched her own. ‘Will it be?’

  ‘Of course it will.’ She turned to the purple tunic. ‘Nigel and I are getting married by special licence tomorrow.’

  ‘You are not!’ barked Beatrice Vaile.

  ‘We are,’ said Nigel, not at all apologetically. ‘Jones, dear chap, would you mind seeing to the . . . necessaries? And tell Mrs Goodenough we need cherry cake. And Miss Higgs’s room made ready for her.’

  ‘The guest rooms are all taken,’ snapped Beatrice Vaile.

  ‘They can leave,’ said Sophie. ‘Now. In fact I wish the whole lot of you to leave.’

  ‘But they were invited!’

  ‘Not, I think, by the earl.’ The prince’s voice was friendly, and his smile implacable. ‘Come on, Vaile, there’s a good chap. You can see Nigel isn’t up to this.’

  ‘But I . . . we —’

  ‘I’ll tell you what: I’ll get my bagpipes. That will bring everyone together by the stairs. You can tell them the party’s off.’ The Prince of Wales gestured to the butler. ‘You’ll find my pipes in my luggage. My man will show you where they are.’

  ‘I . . . yes, Your Royal Highness,’ said Cutler breathlessly. The heir to the throne of Britain outranked his mistress, and had been bitten by her zebra.

  ‘And then get rid of the zebras,’ Sophie called after him. ‘And the hippopotamus.’

  ‘It was indisposed,’ said Beatrice Vaile, still in shock.

  ‘I hope it recovers,’ said Sophie brightly. ‘Now could you all make a noise like a bee and buzz off? Apologies, Your Highness,’ she added to the prince. ‘Of course I didn’t mean you.’

  ‘Naturally not. But I’ll buzz anyway. This way, children.’ The Prince of Wales sauntered from the room, leaving a faint scent of expensive cigar. The rest followed, dazed, except for Jones.

  ‘Nigel?’ said Sophie.

  Chapter 57