Christmas Lilies

by Jackie French

  Dedication

  To Lisa and Gemma, Kate and Eve:

  Merry Christmas!

  Contents

  Dedication

  Christmas Lilies

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Author’s Notes

  An extract from Miss Lily’s Lovely Ladies

  An extract from The Lily and the Rose

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  CHRISTMAS, 1914

  The greater the love, the greater the cost, my dears. Love is never free. But, you will never regret whatever price you pay.

  Miss Lily, 1913

  The sheets at the Paris Ritz were crisp from the iron, and yet enticingly soft. Most excellent sheets, thought Elspeth dreamily, tracing her fingers lightly over her lover’s sweat-warm body. She reached for a strawberry (hothouse strawberries, at Christmas, in a war!) and dangled it above Huw’s face; he was relaxed at last, but not, she thought, asleep. ‘Open your mouth,’ she whispered.

  Huw smiled without opening his eyes. ‘Why?’

  ‘Just do it.’ She pressed a kiss to his cheek. His lips opened obediently. She gently lowered the strawberry.

  He did open his eyes now, smiling at her. ‘Delicious.’

  ‘I know something more delicious.’

  ‘Smoked salmon? Steak with pommes frîtes. I could murder a steak . . .’

  ‘More than this?’

  Huw forgot the steak.

  It was an hour later, perhaps, when he spoke again. ‘We’d better eat or we’ll fade away.’ And we both have to be on duty again in two days’ time, thought Elspeth. As a staff officer’s batman, Huw was spared bully beef and biscuit, but his rations would be nothing like the Ritz’s menu.

  Nor would hers. But let Huw think she’d be eating roast beef and potatoes, well fed and safe . . .

  ‘We don’t want to waste Lily’s gift,’ he added. Nigel had wangled Christmas leave for the two of them, but the five days at the Paris Ritz had been a present from Miss Lily. Lily’s gifts were always more than you could have ever dreamed.

  ‘Will you pull the bell, Mrs Smith, or will I?’

  ‘You’re closer.’ Elspeth pulled the sheet up. ‘Mrs Smith’ (even the Paris Ritz would not accept an unmarried couple) was not getting dressed for the next four days, she decided. Bath towels, possibly — glorious thick bath towels after soaking in unlimited hot water, already a luxury, or maybe the almost sheer peignoir, another gift from Lily, divinely impractical in this first year of war.

  First year, she thought, suddenly realising how sure she was that this war would continue for at least another year, and almost certainly more.

  So many in England believed that war with Germany — supposed to have been over by this Christmas — would be a short one. But Miss Lily, James Lorrimer, and all those in this official and unofficial intelligence network, had known for the past four years that if war did come, it would be long, and far worse than the fire breathers like Winston Churchill with his ‘a good war will rid the country of the unemployed and Bolsheviks’ could imagine.

  She had known this intellectually. Now she knew it viscerally, the pain of loss to come spreading through her.

  A discreet knock. The door opened. ‘Monsieur? Madame?’

  The sudden anguish vanished. She was here, and so was Huw, and she would live each second of these few days. Miss Lily had taught her this, too.

  Huw answered in excellent French. He and Elspeth both spoke French and German fluently — necessary in their work — with a smattering of Japanese, Hindi, Arabic, and in Huw’s case, some words of Welsh from his childhood.

  He ordered for both of them: steak frîtes, poulet au Bresse, asparagus with hollandaise sauce (more hothouse fare), a Bûche de Noël and more strawberries and champagne . . .

  The waitress closed the door. Even at the Ritz male members of staff were being replaced by women. Soon, thought Elspeth, I doubt there will be a male waiter in Paris, at least not one under forty . . .

  Huw rearranged the pillows. ‘I have a gift for you.’

  ‘Me first.’ She reached under her pillow and pulled out a parcel.

  He kissed her again, and opened it. ‘A fountain pen!’

  It had cost almost a year’s wages — or at least a maid’s wages. It had been decades since she had subsisted on those. Even now Lily was away for what would probably be the duration of the war, she continued to pay the far larger salary Elspeth had commanded for some time. James Lorrimer’s payments also accumulated in her bank account, and her investment in Higgs’s Corned Beef was doing excellently, as it provided bully beef for half the Australian army. ‘That pen is for writing me a letter once a week,’ she told him sternly. ‘Promise?’

  ‘I promise.’ She met his eyes and knew he’d keep his word. It had been hard being apart the last few months. They had not been away from each other for so long in decades, except for the brief period of his marriage, which had ended with the tragic deaths of his wife and daughter. A marriage that would never have happened if she had agreed to marry him.

  But Elspeth was not cut out to be the little wife at home. Even as a cottager’s child, back at Shillings, peering out the door at the master on horseback, she had wanted the world. And during Huw’s various rebellions, when he would not accept her refusal of the role of wife, there had been other men.

  But not now. Possibly not ever again, she thought, finally admitting not just how much she loved him, but how much her heart was entwined with his. The last month, as the reality of war had begun to sting, had made her realise that whoever they were, wherever they were — and whatever role they were pretending this time — she and Huw were linked by far more than their work with Miss Lily.

  Had Miss Lily finally taught her that love was never free? If you loved, you paid for it: in fear, or grief, or by sacrificing the ‘other lives’ you might have lived. Maybe Lily had even shown Huw that a woman could not — should not — be defined by the limited roles given to them by men.

  Four more days, she thought. Just four. But there would be other periods of leave that maybe they could spend together. There had to be! And surely as a batman to a staff officer Huw would be as safe as any soldier could be?

  She realised he was holding a box out to her. Small, square, wrapped in gold paper. ‘Aren’t you going to open it?’

  She was desperately afraid of what it might be. But she smiled and nodded and undid the ribbon. She found herself staring at a box from Cartier.

  Please let it be a necklace, she prayed. Or a charm to wear under my uniform. She pulled back the lid.

  It was beautiful: a gold ring, a small blue sapphire, the colour of her eyes, with tiny diamonds on each side.

  ‘Huw.’

  ‘I asked you to marry me once before,’ he said quietly. ‘You said no then. What do you say now? I love you,’ he added. ‘In case it has slipped your notice. I always have. I always will, till all the seas gang dry.’

  ‘I love you too,’ she said wretchedly. ‘But I can’t marry you.’

  ‘Can’t, or won’t?’ His voice was even quieter.

  ‘Can’t. I’m doing my VAD training — you know that.’ Which was not quite all she was doing but he wasn’t to know that. James Lorrimer demanded secrecy even from those one loved. ‘It’s against the rules to marry.’

  ‘I know VADs can’t marry. But all they’ll do is kick you out. There are going to be as many opportunities for married women to nurse as unmarried. The Dowager Duchess has been talking about turning the Abbey into a hospital. You could do good work there.’

  And be safely away from the
dangers a VAD would face in France or Belgium, she thought. She knew her Huw.

  She examined him, this lovely man. This kind man, this wise and tolerant man who accepted so much. But the one thing he could not accept was a wife in danger. He had lost one family. She could not let him face that again.

  And for her? No, even for him she could not be the wife who stayed in safety while her husband faced the enemy. And there was one other thing that Huw longed for, even if he did not admit it — even perhaps to himself. You only needed to see his face when they passed a couple with a child.

  And this was what she could not give him, even if she would.

  She took his hand. ‘You need a family. You deserve a family. I am too old.’

  ‘Maybe not . . .’

  ‘I’m over forty, darling. I know women have healthy babies in their forties. But not often.’ And not safely, she thought, which as a man he probably didn’t know. (Though you could never be sure, with Huw, what he did and did not know.) But over half of women who gave birth for the first time in their forties died of complications or puerperal fever. She did not want to die. Nor, to be honest, did she want a child.

  ‘You still hope to have a child. Children.’

  ‘I’d rather have you.’

  ‘You have me. A friend forever, even if you marry someone else.’ Though not a lover then. Neither would betray his wife. She tried to smile. ‘You could have me and twelve children too.’

  He lifted her hand to his lips. ‘I want you. As my wife, forever.’ He smiled in pure and joyous confidence: he really did expect her to say yes this time.

  She wanted to run, hide, but she was naked and it was wartime and anyway they only had four more days and that might be all they ever had . . .

  ‘If you don’t say yes then I don’t have any other Christmas present for you.’ His voice was almost teasing.

  Almost. No: he was not as confident as she had thought. His eyes were fixed on hers. Desperate. She could not bear to think of Huw as desperate. And yet . . .

  ‘Thank you for my Christmas present,’ she said slowly.

  ‘You’ll wear it?’ His voice was cautious.

  He knows me well, she thought.

  ‘Yes. But not on my finger. I’ll wear it around my neck. Darling, this isn’t the time to be married. Or officially engaged.’

  ‘It seems exactly the time.’

  ‘Why? So I’m allocated a part of your army wages? I don’t need it. Nor can I sit at home. You know what will happen if Germany takes England. It will be the Belgian outrages all over again, and worse, because by then their losses will be greater.’

  ‘Is it wrong to want to know that you are safe?’

  Here it comes, she thought. The real reason he asked her now. To Huw, a wife would always be different from a comrade.

  ‘Yes, I’ll marry you.’ Her voice gentled. ‘I love you now. I’ll love you always. But I’ll only marry you when the war is over. Till then,’ she hesitated then said, ‘we are engaged.’

  ‘And you’ll wear the ring?’

  She held out her hand. ‘On my finger for this Christmas. On a chain next to my heart until we meet again.’

  He slid the ring onto her finger. It felt a little tight. Should it be enlarged? But already her hand was thinner than it was when war had been declared. Will we all be thinner by war’s end? she wondered. England’s wars had not touched her shores for almost a thousand years. Battles were fought elsewhere, or at sea. Was that why so many rushed blindly into this one, sure that it could not touch their lives too deeply?

  The waitress knocked at the door. They waited, sheets up discreetly, while she wheeled the white-clothed trolley in, set the table, put the dishes out, then left. And once more the world was just this room, the man warm beside her. Love so strong she could almost feel its pulse as she stroked his arm. Lover, colleague, friend . . .

  ‘Will we eat in bed?’ she asked, smiling at him. ‘You don’t want your steak frîtes to get cold.’

  ‘To hell with the steak frîtes,’ said Huw and bent to her again.

  Chapter 2

  By the end of February she knew she was pregnant. Not only had her monthly ceased, but her breasts were tender, her waist slightly thickened, and there was nausea in the morning.

  She lay in the narrow iron bed in a room shared with seven other women, all snoring in exhaustion after a day of bedpans and scrubbing, and tried to think.

  Her job mattered. Officially she was still in training as a VAD, a nursing assistant. In reality she was assigned to the German prisoners’ ward, where none of her charges knew she spoke their tongue. Already she had overheard scraps that, put together, might be invaluable, and had passed them on. She had hoped that as the war progressed she could coax James Lorrimer into giving her even more responsibility, as an interrogator, perhaps.

  Men, German or English, would be disconcerted facing a woman interrogator. Some she could charm — Miss Lily had taught Elspeth to be most charming indeed, just as she had taught all her ‘lovely ladies’. Even in her forties, blonde hair, blue eyes and a waist small enough to put her hands around — at least when she was wearing the corsets she would don again if necessary — tended to disarm men.

  And those who would not be charmed? The insult of sending a woman to interrogate them would make them angry. Angry men let information slip.

  But that possibility was gone now. She had a few weeks, at most, before she was dishonourably discharged, both for the pregnancy and the ‘immorality’ that had led to it. No one, officially or otherwise, would offer work to an unmarried mother. And who would care for the baby even if they did?

  She bit her lip in the carbolic-scented darkness.

  So many possibilities. Impossible to continue in her job here. Impossible to go home to her family in the village, an unmarried daughter, a scandal.

  Impossible to write of this to Huw too, even though she sent him a letter at least once a week. She had heard from him only four times, though she knew he wrote far more often. But letters were delayed by the censor, especially letters from the front line. And from the little the censor had let through she knew Huw and Nigel were no longer safely behind the lines. Nigel’s duty was to be with the men from his estate, and Huw would stay with him, a servant’s duty those in charge found understandable, even desirable, helping to improve morale.

  If she wrote about her pregnancy to Huw other eyes would see it: the censor, then an officer — not Nigel — who might well discipline Huw before sending him home with a day’s leave to marry her. Huw might even be demoted, moved to another job. And Nigel needed Huw, now more than ever.

  She could not risk that for either of them.

  So what was possible? She could call herself Mrs Smith again, or even Mrs Higginbotham. Though that was too much like the name she had been told to disregard, Bottomley. It had been her own choice to change ‘Enid’ to ‘Elspeth’. Perhaps she would be Mrs Lloyd. She did like the fiery little politician, Lloyd George. Mrs Lloyd would have a husband fighting in France. She would have moved to Dover — or even taken a flat in Paris, which might be safer, less likely to be recognised — to be closer to him. And if, by some miracle, Huw got leave and could meet her there, then they could marry. She would be respectable, their child legitimate . . .

  And she would be the very woman she had sworn she’d never be, the ‘little woman’ staying home, knitting booties, tending her baby.

  A baby. She quite liked children. They asked interesting questions. As the oldest child of a large family she had cared for all thirteen sisters, and enjoyed it. Babies, on the other hand, were mostly blobs, who drooled, and needed a vast quantity of napkins washed.

  She had hoped to avoid washing tubs forever when, at fourteen, she had become a lady’s maid in training to the countess, five years before her death.

  There was one other option. Actually, it was also a necessity, and what would come of it could be good or bad. She must tell the man who was her true employer — or
rather the most important of her three employers, Miss Lily being the second — her predicament.

  James Lorrimer might decide she was no longer of use, redundant, unreliable, a disgrace. But, just possibly, because Elspeth had known James Lorrimer for many years, and knew he was not a man who necessarily did what was expected of a man of his rank and class, he might see another way.

  Chapter 3

  She sat on the hard-backed chair in his office, which was at his home, as he did not entirely trust all the government employees at Whitehall. She had entered through the servants’ entrance, not the front door, for the same reason. Few employees at Whitehall would even consider a forty-year-old in a coat suitable for a lady’s maid a possible intelligence agent.

  James regarded her thoughtfully. He had said nothing since she confessed her plight except ‘I see,’ and ‘Thank you,’ to the maid who’d brought their tea tray.

  ‘Will you pour?’ he asked Elspeth at last.

  ‘Yes. Thank you,’ she said, grateful for his manner. James Lorrimer had asked her as he would a gentlewoman, not given the order as he would to a servant. And she was, and always had been, officially a servant, even if she could speak and act with the manners of a countess, a whore, or a middle-class matron, if required.

  She poured for both of them. ‘Milk?’

  ‘No, thank you. Even lemon spoils the flavour I think. I suspect England will be as short of lemons as it will be of much else, soon. Including the best of its young men.’

  He sipped, and so did she — white tea, with three sugars, a working-class taste, but it had been an age since she’d had thickly sugared tea. Not since Christmas in Paris.

  The ring was warm against her heart.

  She took a teacake, suddenly ravenous — she had lost her breakfast soon after getting off the bus that brought her to James’s office.

  ‘When are you due?’ he asked at last.

  ‘Late September to early October.’

  ‘You sound very sure.’

  ‘I am.’

  He nodded. James Lorrimer had never questioned the intelligence she brought him.