Christmas Lilies

by Jackie French

  Did the King and Queen drink brown Windsor soup when they dined at Windsor Castle? wondered Sophie, looking around the dining car. Her hat was bigger — a proper hat, a distinguished hat — and her furs more elegant than those of any other woman on the train. It had been exhilarating, ordering dresses without Miss Thwaites.

  The gravy had congealed. Sophie sighed, and pushed the plate away. It was thick and white, with British Railways around the rim, and the same crest that was on the thick silver cutlery.

  ‘Apple pie and crème anglaise, miss, or treacle tart?’

  ‘Apple pie,’ said Mrs Philpott.

  Sophie smiled up at the waiter. ‘Apple pie. Please.’

  The apple pie was good. Sophie ate all but the last spoonful (left for ‘Miss Manners’ as Miss Thwaites had instructed her, back when the schoolroom had still been the nursery), and smiled again at the waiter as she followed Mrs Philpott back to their own carriage, carefully ignoring the red-faced gentleman and the two young men rising hopefully from their seats.

  At least they had the carriage to themselves — two women, two travelling rugs, bricks to warm their feet (carefully changed at each station for fresh ones by Mrs Philpott’s maid), a box of Russian toffee, Mrs Philpott’s The Lady magazine and her own novel. Why do women who do nothing travel with so much more than men who are seldom idle? thought Sophie.

  In another hour she would meet an earl! And the cousin, still unnamed. Plump and elderly, Sophie decided, and in reduced circumstances, which meant she must help colonials through their season. She had once asked Miss Thwaites how one reduced a circumstance . . .

  The train chugged through another tunnel. Mrs Philpott rose and closed the window, to keep out smuts. Sophie waited till the tunnel’s darkness was passed, then opened it again, feeling the soft air on her face.

  English air. Not just cold air, not just unfamiliar smells, but a different feel: moisture without humidity, air that stroked your skin instead of battering it.

  ‘Shillings! Shillings!’ It sounded like the guard was calling for money. The earl’s house — castle — must be named after the town . . . or the other way around. Sophie rose and Mrs Philpott folded her travelling rug.

  Sophie felt guilty about Mrs Philpott. Mrs Philpott obviously minded enormously that the earl had suggested she accompany Sophie only to the Shillings railway station, and not to Shillings Hall itself, so that Mrs Philpott could catch the three-ten back to London instead of spending the night.

  The Shillings railway station was small — a single platform, a low-roofed waiting room (just one, no first and second class), and a couple of stone cottages. The guard was already helping the porter load Sophie’s trunks onto the trolley as Mrs Philpott’s maid hurried up from the second-class carriage to offer a Thermos of tea and some oranges.

  Sophie shook her head to both. ‘I’m sure it won’t be far.’

  ‘Miss Higgs? I am Samuel, Miss Higgs.’ The man might be either a driver or a groom. Sophie glanced through the waiting room. A carriage stood there, old-fashioned, black with a faded crest on the door. Two horses, perfectly matched bays. She looked at the man again. Fortyish, probably not able or willing to learn to drive a car. Either the earl was conservative or he was thoughtful enough not to let a chauffeur usurp this man’s position. ‘His lordship’s carriage is outside, Miss Higgs.’ He signalled to the porter.

  ‘Are you sure?’ began Mrs Philpott.

  Sophie kissed her cheek quickly — she was afraid Mrs Philpott might not want to presume to give her a kiss. ‘Thank you. You have been so kind. I promise I’ll write to you tomorrow to tell you all about it. Goodbye.’

  Mrs Philpott’s maid bobbed a curtsey. ‘Goodbye, miss.’

  Sophie followed the groom out to the carriage. She stood by awkwardly as Samuel and the porter loaded her trunks. The driver opened the door for her, then held out his white-gloved hand to help her up the step. ‘Thank you, Samuel,’ she said.

  Unexpectedly, the carriage seemed too empty. She had never, after all, been away from those her father trusted to look after her, except during the stolen hours at Thuringa and Warildra. ‘Samuel?’ she asked quickly, before he could shut the door.

  ‘Yes, Miss Higgs?’

  ‘You . . . you’ve been with the family a long time?’ It was the first thing she could think of to say.

  ‘All my life, Miss Higgs, in one way or another.’ He hesitated. ‘It is a kind family, Miss Higgs. You will find them very kind.’

  Kind. It was a strange word to use of an employer, but reassuring. ‘Thank you, Samuel. You are very kind yourself.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Higgs.’

  ‘Is it far to Shillings Castle?’

  He smiled, as though he were glad he could give her a reassuring answer. ‘Only about twenty minutes to the house, miss.’ He shut the door for her as she sat down. Leather seats, old polished woodwork, a scent she almost recognised — lavender and roses, that was it. The polish must be perfumed with lavender and rose oil.

  The last strap was fastened on the trunks behind. She heard the groom flick the reins. She took one of Mrs Philpott’s Russian toffees out of her pocket. It was comforting. The carriage began to move.

  The cottages near the station gave way to trees, with tall branches and leaves that were too flat, too yellow, as if only colonials would be brash enough to wear green. At least it smelled fresh here, away from the soot of the railway station and the stink of London; Malcolm had described it well in his letters: a combination of drains and coal smoke and unwashed clothes. Even at the Ritz the doorman had smelled of elderly underpants, the chambermaid of years of sweat stains in the armpits of her neat black uniform.

  Those trees must be woods, just like in the poems. Poets never told the whole truth, said Miss Thwaites. You must never expect the world to be quite like it is in a poem.

  Another street of houses, more substantial this time; a pub with Shillings and Sixpence on a wooden board hanging above the door. Fields and too-green grass, and Jersey cows, with the same brown-eyed resignation of Jerseys anywhere in the world, she supposed, even with grass well above their fetlocks here. They made her think of Miss Thwaites: well bred, calm, productive, captive in their green fields. Sophie stifled a giggle.

  A church, a graveyard next to it, what she thought might be a tiny school.

  The fields were edged with stone walls now. The walls by the road grew taller . . . or rather the road sank, Sophie realised, the high banks on either side created by time, as well as men. This green tunnel was English history.

  The carriage swerved around a corner, and met closed gates, wide, high wrought iron as if to ward off Cromwell’s army. The carriage stopped as a man walked steadily out of the tiny cottage at one side, as though to say that opening the gates was his job but it didn’t involve hurrying — or perhaps not unless the carriage contained someone more important than a Miss Higgs.

  Then they were moving again. She had to force herself not to push the window down and crane her head outside. Clumps of trees, too even to be natural in the eyes of someone who knew how trees grew on their own, then grass, an avenue of trees, the house.

  She had expected a castle, the sort the Prince might have taken Cinderella to. This was smaller and deeply plain — a flat façade of brick the colour of faded plums, not even stone. Two wings stretched back on either side. At least there was a portico, with pillars and broad steps to climb up to it. It was only when the groom had opened the door, and she had climbed the fourteen steps (she counted them) and looked back, that she saw that simplicity could have grandeur too.

  The grass stretched endlessly, bordering a lake in the middle distance, edged by trees that turned to woodland on either side. The grounds flowed up to the horizon, the lawns sloping towards the pale blue sky.

  No rose gardens. No statues. Just grass and trees and sky and water, but she was breathless.

  The carriage had already vanished around behind the house. The door opened. A middle-aged man stoo
d there in striped trousers, a stiff collar and a grey coat almost the same colour as his immaculate hair.

  At first she took him for the earl. She wished she had asked Miss Thwaites or even the porter at the Ritz if you curtseyed to an earl.

  The man gave her a short, stiff bow. ‘I am Jones, Miss Higgs. Miss Lily is expecting you in the drawing room.’

  Miss Lily must be the cousin. Perhaps the earl would arrive for afternoon tea. She must wear her blue frock to dinner . . .

  ‘If you will come this way, Miss Higgs.’

  Somehow her coat was gone: magic, she thought, for she had no memory of taking it off, and had certainly not felt Jones’s hands upon her person. She followed him across a hall — no, not a hall, for this space was larger than any room in any house she had ever seen, bigger even than the first-class dining room on the ship: a great vaulted ceiling and wood-panelled walls, tall doors on either side, a staircase branching in two leading up to a circular gallery above. Or perhaps this was a hall of the sort mentioned in poems like ‘Lochinvar’, big enough for the hero to gallop into on a steed.

  Did the earl have horses? Not just horses for the carriage and to work the farms, but to ride. Impossible to live a year without horses . . .

  This door led to a more familiar sight: a proper hall, human sized, not made for giants or knights on horseback with those spear things — what were they called? Lances. Again wood panelled, the only light coming from the high windows above the space they’d left.

  The butler stopped, opening a double door with a hand on each doorknob. ‘Miss Higgs has arrived, Miss Lily.’

  ‘Thank you, Jones.’

  The woman who sat in the shadows of the sofa at the other end of the room didn’t rise. Sophie supposed you didn’t, not for a Miss Sophie Higgs, not when you were the cousin of an earl.

  It was a beautiful room. Even at a fleeting glance, she could tell it was the most beautiful room she had ever been in. It was not just the parchment silk on its walls, the heavy drapes at the tall windows, not even the soft, faded silks of its carpets, the shine of floorboards and polished wood. It was more, perhaps the shape of the room itself, something that discerned everything that is needed in a room and said, ‘This is perfect.’ Or perhaps it was the scent, both floral and fruity, though there seemed to be no vases of flowers — those vases essential to Miss Thwaites and Mrs Overhill and every mother of the Suitable Friends — on any of the surfaces. A large but tidy fire burned in what Sophie supposed was a marble fireplace. She supposed this fireplace had had a long time to make fires do exactly what they should.

  ‘Good afternoon, Miss Higgs.’

  The woman in the shadows was tall, big-boned. Beautiful. Sophie had no idea why she was beautiful — it was actually quite difficult to make out her features, for her back was to the daylight. But even at first glance the beauty of the woman matched that of the room.

  The glow from the firelight flickered on a dark blue dress, a dress that was just a dress, nothing fashionable about it, but that somehow seemed perfect for that afternoon, that room; and lit softly gold hair, pinned up in a swirl that was impossibly simple, impossibly elegant, just like the white neck gently touched by a silver chiffon scarf, the curve of the wrist and hand.

  Sophie gave a small curtsey. ‘Good afternoon, Miss Lily.’

  ‘Whoever taught you to curtsey to your elders is two decades out of date.’ The voice was gentler than the words suggested. ‘Kind’, as Samuel had said. This was instruction, not rebuke. ‘Only servants or tenants curtsey now. Please do not curtsey again, except to royalty. Do sit down, Miss Higgs.’

  It was difficult to tell her age. Forty, guessed Sophie, but maybe ten years more. Her upright back never touched the chair. Sophie edged forward in her seat.

  The door closed behind them. The silence grew, broken only by the tick of the clock in the corner, the soft crackle of the fire and laughter from somewhere in the house.

  Surely it was up to the hostess to speak, thought Sophie.

  ‘Tell me why you have come here,’ said Miss Lily at last.

  ‘I . . . I don’t understand. I thought my father had arranged for me to stay here.’

  The woman gave a wry but most charming smile. ‘And I am asking why you have come.’

  To stay, thought Sophie. And then, No, that’s not what she’s asking me. It was clear this woman — at this tick of the clock, at least — had no time for polite fiction.

  ‘I . . . I want to be presented at court, to do the London season. I am engaged — I mean there is an Understanding . . .’

  The woman failed to be interested. ‘You want the glamour of a London season so you might outshine your prospective family?’ Was there a tinge of disappointment in the voice? ‘The young man is a colonial, I believe. His mother presumably believes her family is important. To anyone in England, it is not. I am sure your wishes are possible.’

  ‘I thought I couldn’t be presented, because my father is . . .’ she stumbled over the polite words ‘… in trade.’

  ‘There are ways to do these things. A private introduction, luncheon perhaps down at Windsor.’

  ‘Is that good enough, Miss Lily?’

  ‘A private luncheon with Her Majesty is quite “good enough”.’ The voice was amused.

  ‘If you didn’t know what I wanted, why did you agree to help me?’

  Sophie wanted to make this self-possessed woman with an accent that could cut glass admit that she was being paid. Instead Miss Lily laughed as though she were enjoying their meeting for the first time. It was a charming laugh. Sophie reassessed her age as forty at most, even thirty-five.

  ‘I could say because my cousin’s investments in your father’s companies have been extremely successful. Don’t look so startled, Miss Higgs — even the aristocracy need good investments, especially when the farms on their estates are in as poor a state as the ones at Shillings used to be. But that would only be a small part of the truth.’

  ‘What is the truth?’

  ‘All of it?’ The voice was still amused.

  ‘Whatever matters here.’

  ‘A good answer. The heart of the truth is that I enjoy the company of the young. I go very little into society these days. I prefer to watch my young friends venture into the world instead.’

  ‘I . . . I would be one of them?’

  ‘Friendship isn’t granted, Miss Higgs. It’s earned.’ The smile softened the words.

  ‘His lordship doesn’t mind your . . . friends? Presumably their fathers are as generous as mine?’

  ‘My dear child . . .’ To Sophie’s shock, Miss Lily sounded delighted. ‘It has been years since I have heard anyone speak quite so directly. To set your mind at rest: I neither receive nor need any financial recompense, and my cousin approves of my . . . hobby. He spends most of his time in the East and is grateful for my occupying the house and liaising with his estate agent.’

  ‘His lordship isn’t at home now?’ Sophie failed to keep the disappointment from her voice.

  ‘I’m sorry if you were expecting his company,’ said Miss Lily gently. ‘You will have to make do with me.’

  ‘I didn’t mean —’ Sophie stopped. There was something about this woman that pulled the truth from her. ‘I apologise. I did want to meet an earl. Or at least be able to boast that I had met an earl. But if I had to choose, I think I’d prefer to spend the time with you.’

  It was truth, neither kindness nor politeness. There was something fascinating about this woman; and not just her evident intelligence, her perception, and her lack of inhibition in showing both. She was at once almost familiar and deeply, intriguingly, unlike anyone Sophie had ever met.

  Miss Lily regarded her. ‘I think,’ she said at last, ‘that may be the most sincere compliment anyone has ever paid me. But we should move to specifics. I will arrange for a little . . . softening, shall we say, of your accent, your manners, your French conversation, and your dress.’

  ‘What is wrong with my dr
ess?!’ It had been the most expensive one in the salon the Ritz concierge had directed Mrs Philpott to.

  ‘Lesson one, Miss Higgs. A young lady in her first season — any unmarried woman for that matter — is deferential, not questioning. A quiet “Thank you, Miss Lily” is an acceptable response.’

  ‘Are you deferential?’

  Miss Lily laughed again. She had found a way to laugh — properly laugh — and still be ladylike. ‘No, very rarely. But then I do not go into society. Once you are married, you will have more freedom, which is why it is important to make a good marriage.’ One exquisite eyebrow rose. ‘You are now supposed to ask obediently, “What is a good marriage, Miss Lily?”’

  ‘One where both people love each other,’ said Sophie. She added, ‘One where money and a respected social position are assured.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Miss Lily quietly.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘My dear, let me be frank. You will never escape references to corned beef. But you can escape having it determine your social position if you have the determination to laugh it off, or at least pretend to. It is an art that anyone with any . . . peculiarity . . . has to learn. The first time a stranger meets you, you will be the corned-beef heiress. The second time, they will think, Ah, Miss Higgs, the corned-beef heiress. But if you are charming enough, by the third meeting, you will simply be that lovely girl, Miss Higgs.’

  ‘I’ve never been charming.’

  ‘Charm is something you learn, Miss Higgs. Like deference. After Christmas the relations of three of my friends will be here too: the Prinzessin Hannelore von Arnenberg, Miss Emily Carlyle and Lady Alison Venables.

  ‘Lady Alison’s parents are dead. Her grandmother — or stepgrandmother, to be precise — is a widow, the Dowager Duchess of Wooten, and one of my dearest friends. Her Grace the duchess will sponsor you into society at the same time as Lady Alison is presented. Her Grace will give a ball for you both, and arrange whatever needs to be arranged. Your father will pay for Lady Alison’s season as well as your own. And that, Miss Higgs, is the only role your father’s money will play, apart, of course, from making you a most eligible debutante, despite those cans of corned beef you despise.’