Christmas Lilies

by Jackie French

  A cry from the bed next to hers. The woman with the septic ulcer was awake again. The cry diminished to an agonised whimper.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Elspeth flatly. She touched the ring on her left hand. ‘Angélique?’

  ‘Is dead. Elspeth, I am so sorry.’ A gentle voice. He had never used her first name before.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Suzanne’s body was identified. I don’t know the details, I’m afraid — it is too dangerous just now for any stranger to ask questions in the village, but one of the agents in Brussels heard the entire family was killed in retaliation. I do know that their house is empty. My dear, I am so, so sorry.’

  ‘But Angélique was not a member of their family!’

  ‘I doubt the soldiers cared. Or even knew.’

  So they were gone. Savage Madame and beautiful Charlotte, courageous Suzanne.

  And her baby, and her dreams.

  James Lorrimer sat, holding her hand. Nurses came and went around them. Someone must have told them James Lorrimer is important, she thought, for there were no other visitors; nor should a man have been allowed to stay so long.

  ‘What now?’ she asked at last. She felt empty. Was empty. Empty arms, forever empty. Even her anguish seemed to have been swallowed by the magnitude of loss. But duty continued . . .

  ‘We’re not going to put anyone in that area again — the Germans near your village are suspicious now, and the murder of the Larresse women too recent for other women to volunteer.’

  ‘Or all the more reason why they may.’

  ‘Perhaps. We can’t risk it.’ He hesitated. ‘Sabotage is not for amateurs, Elspeth.’

  ‘That was their plan, not mine!’ Madame who had dreamed of vengeance, of freeing her land. Suzanne, Charlotte, the women who would be an army, to fight the war too . . .

  ‘La Dame Blanche will be primarily espionage.’

  That is what you believe, she thought. The women would make their own choices and report what they wished, too. But she would not be there among them.

  ‘Does Miss Lily know? And Huw?’

  ‘That you have been badly injured? Yes. There are letters from both of them. About the baby?’ He met her eyes. ‘I’m afraid I read the letters. You didn’t tell either of them about your pregnancy or the child.’

  ‘Her name is — was — Angélique. No. I didn’t want to worry him, or Lily, or get Huw into trouble . . .’

  Which was not entirely true. She hadn’t wanted to be trapped by his expectations that she would wait safely in England. Women and children first, she thought. There is sense to that after all. I should have known. I should have realised. Women and children first, so the women can keep the children safe.

  As she had not.

  Huw would blame her, if he ever knew, but never as much as she blamed herself.

  ‘I brought grapes,’ said James Lorrimer. ‘The letters too.’

  A matron, starched and elderly, approached and glared at him with a look that said, ‘I have been told you are important and therefore not under my control. But this is my hospital and I want you gone till the next set of visiting hours.’

  James Lorrimer stood and bent forward. His lips touched hers once more. ‘Sister Donovan will stay as long as you need her. The hospital is desperately short staffed, of course.’

  ‘The war? What is happening?’ How odd she hadn’t thought to ask earlier, hadn’t even wondered.

  ‘The war goes on. Will keep going on. We are not losing nor are we winning, except we are all losing, every second of the day.’

  ‘I want to do something. Must do something.’

  He looked at her, and she knew he understood. ‘Get well first, and I’ll find a job for you. Or rather, you can choose. There will be a wide choice,’ he added grimly. ‘Rest well, Elspeth, my dear.’

  He left.

  Sister Donovan was at her bedside almost at once, had obviously been waiting for him to leave. She held a small cup. More morphia, thought Elspeth.

  ‘Time for your medicine,’ said Sister Donovan.

  ‘Put it on the table,’ said Elspeth wearily. ‘I don’t need it yet.’

  Her legs screamed with pain. But she needed the pain. Needed to feel it, endure it. Pain for Angélique, for Huw, who would never know, must never know, that he had lost another child. Pain for Madame, Suzanne, Charlotte, pain for the whole stupid conflagration of men fighting a war that could have no result except more death. ‘War is the most useless human activity of all,’ Miss Lily had said once. ‘At most it is a bandage on a wound that will soon weep again.’

  She could not tell Miss Lily either. She and Huw were too close.

  She had hoped the pain would increase, even that unconsciousness would overwhelm her again. But she must truly be improving. She must open the letters then, and face them, whatever pain they held. For they would hurt, even if they were intended as comfort.

  Miss Lily’s first: good paper, the fine educated hand, just slightly flamboyant.

  My dearest friend,

  I am so sorry, and so proud of your work, and so glad that James says you will recover.

  If you wish to go to Shillings, I will tell them to expect you and care for you. But there may be questions about your injuries you do not want to answer, including, or especially, from your family.

  If you do not wish to go there — and, please, it is entirely your choice — a friend has a holiday cottage on the Dorset coast. It is comfortable and the family that cares for it lives down the lane and will care for you, cook and clean for you, but not disturb you.

  Excuse the brevity. We are safe, but busy. Get well, my very dear friend.

  Love,

  Lily

  A cottage, she thought. She had dreamed of a cottage. But a cottage might still be the best plan, for a while . . .

  If she waited to open the next letter, she might never find the courage. She picked it up.

  My Darling Elspeth,

  I am scared for you and proud of you and infuriated and know I have no right to be. Do what you need to in this war, as Nigel and I are doing. But never doubt I love you more than life itself.

  Nigel can wangle leave for me on compassionate grounds, as you are my fiancée. I wanted to come immediately but he assured me you are recovering, and a couple of weeks together when you leave hospital will be better than two short visits a day with a dragon matron looking on.

  That will make it nearly Christmas. Will you marry me at Christmas? At least the ring will be on your finger now. I am imagining it and you, and dreaming of Christmas. The two of us will defy this insane world, and make this Christmas wondrous.

  Love, with all my heart,

  Huw

  So. She must write back. Or maybe — yes, far better — get James Lorrimer to contact Huw and Miss Lily and say that she was needed. There could be no Christmas leave for her. No Christmas, no lover, no baby in her arms. Her empty arms.

  ‘Help me, oh God, help me . . .’ moaned the woman in the bed next to her.

  Elspeth swung her legs out of bed. They were only bandaged above the knee, she saw, as she waited for the pain to subside enough to move, the wounds below almost healed.

  ‘Here.’ She held out the cup of morphia. ‘The pain will go, I promise.’

  The elderly woman looked disbelieving, but she drank. She grasped Elspeth’s hand in her own liver-spotted one, the fingernails split from age and work and illness, as if as desperate for human touch as relief from pain. Elspeth waited in agony, head spinning, till the woman’s hand relaxed. She slept.

  Elspeth put the cup back, then lay down, trying to focus on the physical pain. But I have always known, she thought. At some level I knew as soon as I woke that Angélique was gone. My dreams were always only dreams. I merely pretended they were not.

  Dinner came — not the meal served to the rest of the ward, for her soup smelled of chicken and theirs of mutton fat and turnip. The woman who she had given her morphia to did not wake. Mrs Tantry in the bed nex
t to her died; or Elspeth assumed she did, for screens were put up and the bed wheeled out when it was dark.

  She still could not sleep. Pain? Anguish? She had slept a morphia sleep for weeks, after all. Maybe she would not sleep again for weeks too. How could she bear it?

  ‘My dear?’ The woman in the other bed must have woken.

  ‘Yes? How are you now?’

  ‘The pain has gone. You did that, didn’t you?’

  ‘It’s the morphia. A medicine.’ But it should have worn off now, if she was awake. The dose had been more than four hours back.

  ‘Can you sit with me again? Everything is . . . strange, almost as if it’s fading. I . . . I think I am dying. I want to . . . I must . . . tell you something.’

  Elspeth forced her legs out, down, lurched to the bed opposite, sat down. Her legs screamed pain. She ignored them. The woman’s hands were cold. ‘Should I ask Matron to call your family?’

  ‘Both my sons died at Ypres.’ She pronounced it ‘wipers’. ‘Bertie, my husband, died twenty years ago this Christmas. I’ll be seeing them all soon in Heaven.’ She paused to find the breath to continue. ‘My only sister lives in Australia. But she will know I’m dying. Our family always knows these things. I had a dream,’ the woman said, trying to lift her head, and failing. ‘A true dream. So vivid.’

  ‘A morphia dream,’ said Elspeth gently. ‘Don’t worry about dreams under morphia.’

  ‘No, my dear, you do not understand. I . . . I have always had these dreams. Not often, but I know when one is true. My sister too, my mother, all my aunts. I have to tell you . . .’

  The words came in between harsh breaths now. Yes, this woman was dying, and alone except for her. Calling a nurse would not help; indeed the one supervising this ward was dozing at her desk. Understaffed, so desperately understaffed. The whole country, the whole war . . .

  ‘I saw you in my dream,’ said the whisper.

  ‘Did you?’ Elspeth managed a smile. ‘I hope I was behaving myself.’

  The woman laughed weakly, more a series of soft barks. ‘Not really. You were naked.’

  Elspeth blinked. This was not what one expected of a dying woman, elderly and respectable. Presumably respectable.

  ‘You were in bed with your husband. I heard him say, “My darling wife.” Oh no, not . . . behaving . . . yourself at all. My Bertie and I . . . we were like that once too. I’ll see you soon, Bertie.’ The pale eyes focused on Elspeth again. ‘You were on a ship, a big ship. It was Christmas time. He put tinsel on your head then kissed you and then the dream shifted, the way dreams do.’

  Elspeth said nothing. Had this woman seen what might have been, what her stubbornness had destroyed?

  ‘You were in a dining room after that,’ whispered the dying woman. ‘More tinsel and wreaths, a giant tree. You sat at a table with a pretty woman and an older one, but she was still beautiful as well. Lily, you called her. That was it. Her name was Lily.’

  Elspeth started at the sound of the name. But the woman must have heard James Lorrimer say it. She tried to think if he had mentioned Lily. Yes, of course he had . . .

  ‘And your daughter sat there too. She was giving you your Christmas presents. A brooch for you, a butterfly, and cuff links for her father.’ The woman gasped again, and shook her head. ‘Your daughter said she hadn’t stolen them. It must have been a joke.’

  I cannot bear this, thought Elspeth. Please, die now. She shut her eyes in guilt and held the woman’s hand more firmly in repentance.

  ‘And then your husband gave you his gift. You opened it. A ring. A wedding ring. I . . . do not . . . understand it . . . all. For you were married . . . weren’t you? Are married? There is a ring upon your finger.’

  ‘It is your dream,’ said Elspeth softly.

  ‘No. Your life. Will happen. Am sure that it will happen. You laughed, and you were crying too. You said, “I love you, Huw,” and your daughter laughed and kissed you both, and so did Sophie and Miss Lily . . .’

  Sophie? Surely this woman couldn’t know about Sophie Higgs? It must be a name found at random. And yet Nigel had hoped to marry Sophie, might yet ask her. And James Lorrimer surely had not spoken of Lily’s last — and favourite — protégée.

  ‘It . . . will be . . . a good Christmas,’ said the woman, and shut her eyes. ‘You will be happy. You and Huw and your daughter . . .’ Her breathing dropped to shallow pants.

  She would not wake to consciousness again.

  Nor should she die alone. A woman should not go nameless to death, either.

  Elspeth had no strength to stand. She managed to peer over the end of the bed, and lift the chart, to find the woman’s name.

  Mrs Thomas Christiansen (Agnes). Elspeth lay down beside her and, at last, she too slept.

  It was close to dawn when Sister Donovan woke her. A cuckoo called outside as she whispered, ‘Mrs Lorrimer! What are you doing there?’

  ‘Keeping company with the dead.’ For Mrs Thomas Christiansen (Agnes) lay still and stiff beside her. Elspeth wished she had known her, for she had given her the greatest gift one woman could give another.

  There would be love. She would have another child, a child of Huw’s. That would not wipe away the agony of Angélique. Nothing could do that. But one day her arms would no longer be empty, and she would hold their child. Sometime in the future the pain would ease. She and Huw and their daughter would sit with Sophie and Lily and have Christmas — a wondrous, happy Christmas.

  Tomorrow she would not believe it. Impossible, despite the coincidence of names. An old and dying woman’s dream. But just now she knew it to be utterly true.

  Christmas — the best of Christmases — would come again.

  Author’s Notes

  This e-book short story — or long story or novella or short novelette (it was meant to be shorter, but grew) — sits between The Lily and the Rose and The Lily and the Snow, the second and third books in the series beginning with Miss Lily’s Lovely Ladies. It is for those readers who can’t wait for the next in the series, but it can be read as a stand-alone story, as can each of the Miss Lily books. Last year’s e-book, With Love from Miss Lily, is still available at https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9781460709993/with-love-from-miss-lily/. Each of the short stories will add depth and background to the books themselves.

  LA DAME BLANCHE

  Look for the history of La Dame Blanche and you will probably find no two sources that agree. To some it was an organisation founded in Liège, Belgium, by Walthère Dewé (1880–1944), Jean Desonay (1886–1948) and Herman Chauvin (1876–1952), made up of about eighteen hundred members, mostly men, but with about three hundred women, as well as a large number of Roman Catholic clergy. Some sources state it was run by the British General Headquarters and then the Tinsley Organisation, the British Secret Service’s outpost in the Netherlands. Other sources claim it was nominally run by men but the information was gathered by nearly four thousand women. But oral histories refute that the British had any real control: it seems that many of the women regarded the men only as necessary liaisons to get their information through and nothing more. They did not trust British intelligence, and with good reason.

  By 1942 in World War II, for example, every British spy in Europe had been captured or killed, their place taken by German operatives. The women appeared to have run a tight network of cells where only one member of each cell knew the name of someone in between one and three other cells. Given its combination of extremely tight and extremely loose organisation, we may well never know exactly what La Dame Blanche was, its size or composition, as even those who worked in it, or worked closely with it, would have had deeply different experiences of its operation.

  Having also seen the extent to which women have been written out of World War I history — partly accidentally, as their roles were rarely official and most histories were of official organisations like the Red Cross or army regiments, and partly the result of subconscious bias — the war and the post-war period was n
ot a time when those in power wanted to admit, even to themselves, that without the women who ran the many and vital private hospitals where most of the injured were eventually treated, the ambulances, army transports (often farmers’ wives and bullock wagons), and a great deal of provisioning via parcels and unofficial canteens as well as French and Belgian women taking stew pots out to the troops, the war would have been lost almost before it had begun.

  It is impossible to overstate the resentment in the early 1920s of the women who had ‘taken men’s jobs’ and, worse, demanded university degrees as the right to gain qualifications that would threaten the male dominance of the world even more.

  World War I showed both women and men what women could do. The 20s were as disturbed by this revelation as they were by the aftermath of war.

  This short story is part of Jackie French’s Miss Lily series.

  Keep reading for extracts from books one and two, Miss Lily’s Lovely Ladies and The Lily and the Rose (both out now).

  The third instalment, The Lily in the Snow, will be coming in April 2019.

  ‘The story is equal parts Downton Abbey and wartime action, with enough romance and intrigue to make it 100% not-put-down-able’ Australian Women’s Weekly on Miss Lily’s Lovely Ladies

  Chapter 11

  The way to a man’s heart is not through his stomach, unless of course it is with a bayonet. But good food helps most situations.

  Miss Lily, 1913

  ENGLAND, 1913

  A railway roast potato, looking crisp but actually soft when Sophie prodded it with her fork, six slices of brown meat, brown gravy over drab-coloured Brussels sprouts . . . even the soup was brown: brown Windsor soup, the same colour as the drains when a stall was washed out at the Agricultural Show back home. The world beyond the windows glided in drabs of orange and red, with sudden shocks of gold when the stubborn English sun allowed itself a moment between clouds.

  Mrs Philpott sat opposite her on the train, eating with the dedication of a woman who rarely dined without children vying for her attention, whose cook back home could stuff a shoulder of lamb but never had time to make brown Windsor soup.