The Lily and the Rose

by Jackie French

  She had also sent telegrams to Australia, to Thuringa, to the Sydney house, to Cousin Oswald, to Midge and to the Dowager Duchess of Wooten, bedridden, but perhaps little Sophie could come in her place, if her aunt or even dear Doris could bring her. She had sent telegrams to Mrs Henderson and Miss Morrison, announcing her marriage as well as assuring them of the help of Slithersoles Senior and Junior in their business venture. She had considered sending a telegram to the mother who had left her as a six-week-old baby, but that woman lived in Paris — close enough she might even attend with an earl, a prince and an archbishop on the menu. Best keep her forgotten and out of their lives.

  ‘Ask the world,’ said Nigel.

  Sophie lay back again. Her hand held his, tightly. ‘One more confession,’ she said.

  ‘A few other lovers you forgot to mention?’

  ‘Of course not. My other premarital experience is limited to two kisses, from two different men. Though they were extremely interesting kisses.’

  ‘I won’t ask for details then. What is this other confession?’

  ‘I called your surgeon too. Nigel, I’m sorry, I know I have no right to interfere.’

  ‘Actually, you do,’ he said gently. ‘From tomorrow you will be my wife, my next of kin, my legal guardian jointly with Jones if . . . necessary . . . and my heir.’

  ‘Also I hope jointly with Jones.’

  ‘Actually I haven’t worked out the details of that. I will need to sign a new will after the ceremony. So will you, for that matter. This is all a little unexpected.’

  ‘We can work it out together. How about joint ownership of the estate, but all profits after expenses, staff pensions and necessary improvements go to Jones? And if something happens to me — well, you’ll get my presidency but I would like my people to inherit some stake in Higgs as well as keep their positions.’

  ‘I am marrying a businesswoman, aren’t I?’

  ‘Who will ensure the ongoing prosperity of Shillings. Nigel, I didn’t ask for details about your condition — he wouldn’t have given them to me without your permission, even if we had been married today. But I persuaded him to perform the operation here.’

  ‘What? Sophie, it’s major surgery.’

  ‘There will be an anaesthetist, the best equipment possible, two assistants for the surgeon and a doctor and four surgical nurses to stay in the house afterwards. Mr Ffoulkes, your surgeon, has himself agreed to spend his Christmas holidays here, with his family. His wife in particular is looking forward to it,’ said Sophie dryly. ‘Christmas at Shillings, with an earl, even if he is upstairs in bed. Luckily they only have one daughter. She’s twelve, so is unlikely to be noisy. Nigel, I told you — I am very, very good at creating hospitals.’

  ‘But why, Sophie? I would prefer to be at Shillings, I admit, but I accepted that I might well die away from here years ago. I certainly knew it during the war.’

  ‘Because I am good at hospitals. Surgeons usually do an excellent job — it is not their work that kills people, but sepsis afterwards. And it happens all too often in hospitals, the infection carried from person to person and who knows how else. That’s why the post-operative survival rate in my hospitals was so high. Small wards, lots of washing and I kept a very close eye indeed on where the doctors put their hands. I could control the nurses’ hygiene but it was harder to persuade a man.’

  ‘I expect you managed,’ he said wryly.

  ‘Yes. And I’ll manage this time too. Boiled white gowns for everyone, boiled scarves over their hair, and boiled gloves, each time anyone comes near you until the incision has healed. Boiled sheets . . . everything.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘No discussion? Argument? Protestations of “Am I going to be hen-pecked like this all through my marriage?”’

  ‘You are a swan, not a hen,’ he reminded her.

  ‘I almost remember to be, most of the time. But swans peck too.’

  ‘I knew exactly who you were when I first realised I wanted to marry you, twelve years ago. You know, there are more . . . interesting . . . things to do right now than discuss hygiene.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Definitely,’ said Nigel, and began to do them.

  Chapter 59

  I do not attend weddings. They are too painful — you know why.

  Miss Lily, 1912

  The dress was white, knee length, shot with silver, and had silver beading at the hem and sleeves, ending in a froth of snowy rabbit fur.

  Jones had found a long veil in the attics and the maids hand-washed it, bleached it, and resecured the tiny diamonds on its headband. It smelled of starch, and the apple wood from the fire in front of which it had dried overnight.

  Mr Slithersole arrived, carrying a box, his wife in floral mauve and extreme excitement, his daughter trying almost successfully to look nonchalant.

  ‘From his lordship,’ said Merle breathlessly, as she handed a small flat leather case to Sophie in her dressing room. Merle was Green’s niece, who had no experience as a lady’s maid.

  Green would have to train her, Sophie decided, in case Miss Lily reappeared. One maid could not be expected to attend both husband and wife, or whatever she and Lily were to each other. Wife and wife . . . no, that was not correct. Words didn’t matter, Sophie decided, where there was so much love. And . . . complications . . . could be worked out.

  She opened the lid, and stared.

  The case contained a necklace of diamonds, presumably hastily retrieved from the bank vault in London and cleaned. Sophie watched herself in the mirror as Merle put the necklace around her neck, small stones and one long pendant shape matching the earrings.

  ‘Jones told me to put a little rose oil on the comb, Miss Higgs. He said it will keep your hair neat.’

  So that was how Green had managed it. ‘Thank you, Merle.’

  She waited while the veil was draped. Traditionally the bridesmaid helped with the veil, but Ethel was greeting the wedding guests at the Shillings and Sixpence with champagne from the Shillings cellars as well as the pub’s excellent ale — the district would be gossiping about that for years. And, besides, while she would trust Ethel to feed an army, and command it, she was not sure her fingers could manage the delicacy of tulle.

  She looked at herself in the mirror and saw a bride. Saw a swan, a true graduate of Miss Lily’s skill. Saw Alison, the morning of her marriage, and felt tears sting, for her, for all she had loved who had gone, for Nigel, who might leave her so very soon, just when they had begun . . .

  Oh, Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling,

  From glen to glen, and down the mountainside.

  The summer’s gone, and all the roses falling,

  It’s you, it’s you must go and I must bide.

  No, she would not let him go! She had lost too much, and so had he. They deserved time together. And she would fight fate itself to make sure they had it.

  Cars lined the muddy lane outside the church. The zebras peered, fascinated, over the fence, like horses in striped pyjamas, giving strange high-pitched then low-pitched cries. While the Vailes and their guests, the caterers, Cutler the Butler and even the palm trees had been dispatched by supper-time the previous night, the zebras were still in residence.

  Jones handed Ethel from the Shillings car, massively glorious in shimmering pink, which clashed only a little with her red face and hands, then held his hand out to Sophie. She took it and held it tight as she stood up, then put her hand on his arm. Small burps of music came as the Prince of Wales, resplendent in his kilt, prepared his bagpipes.

  ‘Doris!’ She hugged her former maid, and stared at ‘little Sophie’, her Goddaughter, eleven years as shy and awkward looking as her mother. She embraced her, trying not to cry. ‘All you have to do is hold up my veil at the back, and then go and sit back with Doris. I . . . I want to ask you a million questions but probably won’t get a chance to. Soon though.’ She pressed a kiss to the soft cheek.

  ‘Sophie!’ A tall w
oman in an excellent green satin ensemble strode from the church.

  ‘Sloggers! How wonderful!’

  ‘You look wonderful too, old bean. I won’t hug you in case I mess you up but you need to know.’

  ‘What?’ asked Sophie, suddenly terrified. Nigel had collapsed. The archbishop hadn’t arrived. The licence needed documents that were back in Australia . . .

  ‘A jazz band has arrived! Six of them, and a singer. They say they are supposed to play this afternoon and refuse to leave.’

  ‘There was to be a house party — Oh, never mind. Ask them if they can play us out of the church. Better explain it to the Prince of Wales too.’

  ‘That is the prince? Gosh.’ Sloggers sounded interested, but not deterred. She strode over to the piper.

  She saw David listen, nod, then he began to play. He walked, as possibly only royalty could, step, step, step, each perfect, bagpipes bellowing around the church.

  ‘Good luck, old thing.’ Ethel bent and kissed her cheek, then began to walk towards the church, not perfect at all.

  Jones wiped the smudge of lipstick Ethel had left off her cheek. ‘This is one of the most wonderful moments of my life,’ he said quietly, offering his arm to Sophie. She rested her hand on his arm.

  ‘You wait till Green gets here,’ said Sophie, to ward off tears for them both, as they followed Ethel, young Sophie clutching the veil in case a tornado might unexpectedly rip it away. Sophie, turned, and winked at her. They entered the church, smiling.

  Step, step, step . . .

  The bagpipes swung into what was probably the wedding march. Sophie, young Sophie, and Jones began to walk up the aisle, following Ethel, who looked like a pink ship in full sail, holding a vast bunch of pink roses that did not quite match her dress. All around them surprisingly well-dressed women — though admittedly two were dressed in men’s coats, jackets and ties — stood and cried as per tradition into handkerchiefs as Jones kissed Sophie’s cheek at the altar and placed her hand in Nigel’s.

  ‘Dearly beloved . . .’ began the archbishop.

  Beloved, thought Sophie. Once I thought I never could be loved. I was corned beef, valued for money, indulged because I was the only child my father had to indulge. But I have been beloved all my life, and am beloved now, and so is Nigel . . .

  Outside the zebras sang their dismay that the bagpipes had ceased.

  ‘The hippopotamus has arrived,’ said Jones.

  Sophie turned, champagne glass in her hand. The jazz musicians, who had given an original but beautiful rendition of Mendelssohn, were now playing just outside the big drawing room, in fur coats and fur-lined boots arranged somehow by Jones.

  The Slithersoles foxtrotted, dazed and happy; fourteen-year-old Miss Victoria Slithersole and then young Sophie danced with the Prince of Wales. Both would be floating on the experience for the rest of their lives, and spent the rest of the afternoon together, exchanging notes on the wonder of it all. Ethel clumped around the dance floor with the vicar, who was trying not to look put out at not performing the marriage service for the Earl of Shillings. Women danced with women — inevitable when nine out of ten of the guests were female. How had so many of the women she’d worked with managed to get here today? Ethel must have worked miracles. But then, she always did.

  But the hippopotamus?

  ‘What have you done with it?’ she asked Jones.

  ‘It’s in the hay shed at the Home Farm. I was afraid it might be chilly in the rose garden.’

  ‘When can we return it? And the zebras?’

  ‘I’m afraid they were not on hire and return,’ said Jones grimly.

  ‘Really? Were the Vailes planning on turning Shillings into a wildlife park? No, I don’t want to know. May I have the honour of the next dance, Jones?’

  He looked startled. Admittedly, he had long been Nigel’s secretary, not butler, a position now held by a young man named Hereward, whose handless left arm was kept discreetly tucked inside his jacket — the Vailes had evidently preferred a butler with bad teeth to a hero with one hand. But Sophie suspected the butler role, and its social limitations, still lived in Jones’s heart.

  ‘It’s a Charleston,’ she added. ‘It would be bad for Nigel to attempt it.’

  Jones grinned. ‘Very well.’

  It should not have surprised her, of course, but Jones was excellent at the Charleston. They even did an encore. And across the room Nigel sat in conversation with Ethel, Sloggers and Dr Marie Stopes, and met her eyes with joy, and love.

  Chapter 60

  May you have joy, my dear. I know I have encouraged you to find other fulfilments in your marriage, but may there be joy too.

  A letter from Miss Lily to Lady Alison Venables, 1914

  DECEMBER 1925

  They made love only once the night before the surgery. Sophie was glad. Their first and even second nights together had been a garden of paradise, where nightingales sang and even the air was champagne.

  But as the week progressed something almost frantic had accompanied their love-making, as if Nigel was determined to show that, despite age and illness, he could be a lover too. Or perhaps, she thought, lying on her side next to him, his arms about her, he simply knew this would be his last week of sexual pleasure.

  And for her? Just then she did not care. Or at least would not think about it.

  Nigel trailed his fingers from her shoulder down her breast, her waist, over her hips. She shivered. ‘Your body is so beautiful,’ he said softly.

  ‘So is yours.’

  ‘I’ve never found it so.’

  ‘What?’ She rose up on one elbow to see his face more clearly in the firelight. ‘I love your body. Oh. Would you rather it was a woman’s body?’

  ‘If you are asking would I turn my body fully into a woman’s if I could, then no.’ He pulled her down again, fitted her against him. ‘With my body, I thee worship,’ he quoted from the marriage service. ‘I love women’s bodies. I love your body. I love loving it this way, with mine. But when I look into a mirror . . .’ He shook his head. ‘It has never seemed as if the reflection is truly mine.’

  ‘Except when you are Miss Lily,’ she said quietly.

  He didn’t answer. The fire snickered as a log fell. Firelight flared brighter, showing his body more clearly, which was beautiful: a tragedy that he did not know it.

  And tomorrow that beautiful body would be torn, not ripped by war, but deliberately.

  And that was why she was there.

  Sophie sat in the small drawing room with Jones, as the winter sun spread morning light through the window from the icy garden. Neither spoke. Upstairs the surgeon and his team were operating on Nigel Vaile, sixteenth Earl of Shillings.

  She longed to be there, but she was, after all, not a nurse or even a VAD. She had done all she could with personnel, equipment, sterilisation. But organisational skills could only help so far.

  The vicar had called; it seemed he had forgiven her for usurping him with the archbishop. He and the Mothers’ Committee would maintain a prayer vigil until the evening, he said. Sophie managed to thank him, and not cry. Four children had arrived, each bearing posies of dried summer flowers, with holly for greenery. Each had been given a mince pie and a shilling and a kiss on the cheek, even if one small boy had indelicately scrubbed it off.

  It had been strange to be called ‘your ladyship’. Stranger still to think of Nigel being carved like a leg of lamb . . .

  No, she would not think of it. Bad enough that he must live it, without her sharing it. She must think of good things, so she could meet him calm and competent and focused on his recovery.

  It had been two hours now. She had held his hand till his last moment of consciousness.

  ‘Luncheon is served, your ladyship,’ said Hereward, carrying a tray.

  ‘I do not think —’ began Sophie.

  ‘Mrs Goodenough insisted,’ said Hereward, placing the tray on the piano and putting the bowl of chicken soup, fresh rolls still steaming i
n their basket and butter on the table by Sophie, and the some on a side table for Jones.

  Impossible not to eat, when they were so kind. The soup had every vegetable obtainable in mid-winter, and barley, thick and comforting.

  ‘Please thank Mrs Goodenough,’ said Sophie a little while later, as Hereward took the empty bowls away.

  ‘Yes, your ladyship. I will serve coffee in here, your ladyship.’

  Not a question. He had learned command in the war, and Sophie had also learned when it was time to obey.

  She and Jones drank the coffee. Finished the coffee. They waited.

  Keep him here for me, Sophie silently prayed. A few years, only, or a lifetime.

  Their marriage had begun on a whim crossed with so much desperate urgency she had not truly evaluated what she must have subconsciously intended when she began her journey. But she knew now, after only a week of marriage, that this was right. Was very nearly everything.

  What was that phrase Lancelot had used of Guinevere in ‘Le Morte d’Arthur’, that Miss Thwaites had so laboriously instilled in her, that Nigel had quoted when he proposed? In thee I’ve had mine earthly joy.

  Please, she prayed, let me have more than a week. Let Nigel live.

  Hereward brought in the tea tray. No cherry cake. What perfect tact. Cherry cake was for happy days. No cream sponge. Fruitcake, dark and sustaining, and small cheese and cress sandwiches. She drank two cups of tea, dutifully ate a slice of fruitcake and two sandwiches; she watched Jones drink and eat exactly the same. They exchanged a look as they simultaneously put their plates down. They needed strength.

  They waited.

  A knock.

  Sophie reached automatically for Jones’s hand. Servants did not knock. ‘Come in.’

  A nurse. Her heart began to beat again. If it had been bad news, the surgeon would have brought it. ‘Mr Ffoulkes said to tell you all is proceeding well, your ladyship.’