The Lily in the Snow

by Jackie French

  ‘Sophie.’ Hannelore paused on the stairs. ‘I must speak with you.’

  ‘Speak away, darling.’ But I am not coming to Germany, she thought. Too many memories and none of them good. Nor am I going to write a cheque for your fiery little politician, no matter how good his intentions.

  ‘I must see Miss Lily. It is urgent. Truly urgent.’

  Sophie stopped, schooled her face, then turned around to face her on the staircase. ‘Hannelore, you know Miss Lily vanished at the start of the war. Her . . . friendships with . . . those who became our enemies made her suspect. She has retired. Even Nigel . . . only rarely hears from her.’ Which was true, if not the whole truth.

  ‘But Miss Lily wished for peace. As we wish for peace. It is the Bolsheviks who are our enemies now.’

  ‘Fighting for peace?’

  ‘You of all people must know that sometimes one must fight. It is who we fight that matters. Our common enemy is to the north, in Russia.’

  Hmmm. ‘Perhaps. What a mistake it was for your Kaiser to arrange for Mr Lenin to return to Russia during the war. If it hadn’t been for that piece of treachery, the revolution might not have happened.’

  ‘Is that analysis from Miss Lily?’

  ‘No, it is my own, and from an editorial in The Times. Truly, Hannelore, I can’t arrange a meeting with Miss Lily.’

  ‘Nigel must know how to contact her! Miss Lily is his —’ Hannelore stopped. Miss Lily had never exactly explained her relationship to the Earl of Shillings, nor why he allowed her to use Shillings for three months each year to school her chosen girls.

  Neither Burke’s Peerage nor Debrett’s gave any clue, either, for there was no Lillian Vaile there. When they had first met Sophie had wondered if Miss Lily were possibly an illegitimate child of the late earl, and thus Nigel’s half-sister. She wondered if Hannelore was too tactful to put forward the same theory now.

  ‘Why do you need to see her so badly?’ she asked instead.

  ‘Because Miss Lily would understand. She of all people would accept that England and Germany must be allies. Her network of friends across Europe and the world, all those girls who are now women, in so many royal houses and families of power . . .’

  A network gathered for British influence and knowledge, not for a would-be German politician. ‘You think Miss Lily would convince those influential friends to support Herr Hitler?’

  ‘Of course. If she could only meet him she’d understand how much good he could do with the right connections. Sophie, you cannot know how bad it is in Germany now. The communists in Berlin have their own army. They battle on the street with any who do not support their cause. The desperation, the . . . the decadence, as if no one can bear to look at reality and so seeks any escape. The heart of Germany is dying, Sophie. I cannot see my country die.’

  ‘Hannelore.’ Sophie shook her head helplessly. ‘I wish I could help. But I can’t take you to Miss Lily. Nor can I support Herr Hitler, either in person or with my money. I’m sympathetic to the need for a peaceful Europe, of course I am sympathetic. But my own country needs me too. Needs my factories, my energy.’

  Actually her factories were running perfectly without her now, managed by the Slithersoles, father and son, and Cousin Oswald, except for a few hours’ guidance by mail or telegram each week. She did in fact have both the money and the energy to devote to Hannelore’s Herr Hitler, if he was as miraculous as Hannelore believed. The nasty taste in her mouth, however, legacy of both her rescue mission to brutish post-war Germany and the little Nigel had shared with her of the man Hitler’s manifesto, meant she doubted she would spend either on him.

  ‘And of course you have a family now, as well,’ said Hannelore softly.

  Which Hannelore would never have, after the injuries inflicted on her in the revolution.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Sophie. It seemed cruel to take Hannelore to see the twins now. How could anyone see Rose and Danny and not long for children too?

  ‘Please,’ said Hannelore quietly. ‘Please, help me to see Miss Lily. It is more urgent than you can know.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Sophie softly. She added, with perfect truth, ‘I wish we could all be together again. I wish it far more than you could know.’

  Chapter 4

  Dinners are long because of the necessary progression of many courses. But if a luncheon takes three hours it is because the diners enjoy the company as much as the food.

  Miss Lily, 1913

  HANNELORE

  Luncheon was perfect, Hannelore thought, sipping her Moselle, watching the firelight glint on the crystal wine glass. Of course it was perfect. Miss Lily might be gone, but she had instructed Nigel Vaile’s household well.

  Lucky Sophie, to have married not just an ancient name, but a house organised to perfection, furnished with the treasures the Vailes had collected over the centuries.

  Hannelore doubted her friend truly appreciated the heritage of Shillings. After all, she had abandoned it, and Nigel’s offer of marriage too, to build her business empire in Australia. Doubly lucky Sophie, to have got all this anyway, and so effortlessly: a home, a husband, children, and money, a name and intelligence to lend to whichever cause she wished.

  Once, Hannelore’s home too had been furnished with heritage and money, her great-grandmother’s embroidery table, medieval storage chests, smelling of woodruff, the tapestry coverings on the chairs wrought by so many great-aunts, the carpet from the North West Frontier, a gift from Queen Victoria. Now — if they had not been burned — all were possessed by the Bolsheviks.

  Hannelore spooned up her cock-a-leekie soup, tweaked from a Scottish peasant soup to a clear bowl of rich consommé flecked with prune. Miss Lily had learned the art of balancing food with each season in her years in Japan. This meal sang both of winter and of warmth.

  Hannelore smiled her appreciation and laughed despite her tiredness at James Lorrimer’s anecdote about his straight-laced Great-Aunt Euphemia, who would never have had a dish with such a . . . suggestive . . . name in her home, nor coq au vin either. She charmed him with gentle touches on his wrist and a slow smile at everything he said, as if she alone appreciated it.

  What did James think of Mussolini’s treaty with the Vatican, making it an independent state, in return, presumably, for the Church’s tactful silence about the Italian dictator’s ruthless control over the country? Or the coming British ‘flapper’ elections, the first in which all women over twenty-one could vote?

  And James smiled back at her, with laughter crinkles at his eyes, as if he knew quite well he was being charmed, but enjoyed it nonetheless.

  Hereward proffered quenelles of pike, balancing the tray superbly on his right hand, his handless left arm discreetly tucked into his butler’s jacket. Quenelles were by far the best way to deal with that troublesome fish, with the lightest of champagne sauces.

  Hannelore turned to Nigel for this next course, as formality required. Had Nigel read the new book, All Quiet on the Western Front? A book that reminded a generation now trying to forget the anguish of little more than a decade ago, preferring dance clubs and rouged knees to facing the problems left by war.

  She knew Nigel had read it — Sophie had mentioned it — but Hannelore too still obeyed Miss Lily’s rules of charm. A man like Nigel would know he was being flattered. He would still enjoy it.

  ‘A hard book to read,’ said Nigel. He looked out the window. ‘Even harder memories.’

  ‘A necessary book,’ said Sophie firmly. ‘Society is trying too hard to forget. Or to remember only convenient sections, like heroism and memorials. They forget the agony. And the women. Sometimes the women ambulance crews almost outnumbered the living men on the front line.’

  The table was silent. ‘I will always feel guilty that I never saw active service there,’ said James.

  ‘You served your country the best way you could,’ said Nigel. ‘The Empire’s resources were stretched to breaking point. If the United States hadn’t entered th
e war we might now be only a few ragged starving troops still fighting for a yard or two of mud.’

  Nigel glanced at Hannelore. She knew the moment he realised there was no tactful way for her to enter this conversation: she had never seen fighting on the front line, but, once the Russians had taken her estates, she had spent the war in the household of her uncle, the Kaiser, before his exile.

  Nor had the German army lost the war, and all at this table knew it, even if most of the general public and the newly written history books liked to pretend it had. Germany had agreed to fair terms in the 1918 Armistice, when continuing would have meant even greater starvation and anguish in the occupied countries, as well as the increasing risk of Bolshevik revolution in Germany, and even in France and England.

  The agreed upon ceasefire had also been a convenient way to oust a Kaiser who was at best incapable as a leader, as well as mentally unbalanced. Germany had been betrayed by France’s trickery, by England agreeing to the change in terms, and United States President Wilson stepping away from any involvement in the deeply unfair Treaty of Versailles in 1919.

  Hannelore knew that some felt she was . . . overzealous . . . in her hatred of bolshevism. But few of those in England or Germany who regarded bolshevism as hope for equality, ending the privileges that condemned so many to poverty, had seen communism in practice. She had lost her estates to Bolshevik troops, and been abducted and tortured under the Bavarian soviet army before it was ruthlessly supressed.

  Hannelore looked carefully at her plate. Sophie had undoubtedly told Nigel and probably James, too, of Hannelore’s injuries and escape, as well as her post-war poverty, alleviated by the Higgs’ cheque that had established her factory and refurbished the estate Dolphie’s uncle had left him. But none of that was fit luncheon conversation at an English manor house, even if she could bear to talk about it.

  ‘What do you think of the American stock market rise, James?’ Nigel asked, breaking the silence before it stretched uncomfortably. ‘Sophie thinks it can’t last.’ One did not talk money at a formal meal, even when one’s hostess was successful in business; nor did one speak across the table. The master of the house was defining this luncheon as a gathering of friends where society’s rules need not be followed.

  It was also kind, thought Hannelore. Nigel was always kind. This was the compassion Miss Lily had tried to teach them: understanding how another felt. There was so much of Miss Lily in Nigel, not just his empathy, but the colour of his eyes, even the shape of his face, though Nigel’s hair was dark to Miss Lily’s blonde. Once again Hannelore wondered if Miss Lily was Nigel’s half-sister. Whatever the relationship, it must be genetically close. Ah, how good it was to know of genes now, and how eugenics affected the world . . .

  ‘The United States’ industry and farmlands make it the wealthiest country in the world,’ objected James. ‘It’s too big to fail.’

  ‘You spent much of the war there, did you not?’ asked Hannelore. She smiled, to remove all past enmity from her words. ‘Cajoling the United States to sell the Allies armaments, to lend them money and finally to dispatch troops to Europe?’

  Sophie shook her head. ‘Its very size now is what makes American economic influences dangerous. The American market rules the world only because it is enormous. But many of the American stocks are overvalued — there is no clear relationship between the real value of many American companies and their stock prices. Greed is setting those now, not output or profits.’

  ‘Clever Sophie,’ said Hannelore lightly. ‘You understand more of the world than a hundred politicians.’

  And you will not help, Hannelore thought. You sit here in quiet comfort with your children and your earl and your factories even as the world lurches towards another war, as bolshevism sweeps across the Continent. What will you do when your factories are nationalised? When Rose and Danny are killed by a firing squad just as poor Tsar Nicholas’s family and so many of her other friends and family had been?

  Only one man had the vision to save Europe now. She had met him at a luncheon much like this and ignored him too, the bourgeois little Korporal who Dolphie had so surprisingly invited.

  That was the luncheon at which Prince Waldi — widowed, fat, fifty and flatulent — had tried to seduce her, for surely every unmarried woman must be desperate for a husband, or at least a lover. Waldi had fetched her coffee after luncheon, clicking his heels as he bowed and handed her the coffee cup. ‘I would bring you stars and unicorns,’ he whispered in what was meant to be a lecherous whisper but sounded more as if he had the grippe. ‘But all I have to offer is this coffee.’

  ‘Sugar?’ she asked, to get rid of him.

  Waldi clicked his heels again and departed towards the coffee tray.

  Hannelore was suddenly aware of another man behind her. ‘I cannot offer you stars or unicorns.’ The voice was a hilarious mimicry of the prince’s tones. ‘But I can perhaps protect you from his attentions for an hour.’

  She turned. Blue eyes that saw her properly, in a kind, intelligent face. ‘How can you do that? Herr Hitler, is it not?’

  He inclined his head instead of giving the conventional bow. His accent was good, despite his lower middle-class origins. ‘We could talk politics, Your Highness. The prince is allergic to politics. I hear he comes out in a rash.’

  Hannelore laughed. A clever man. A funny man, with no pomposity. Suddenly she liked him enormously. ‘You are the president of the National Socialist Party, I believe? I think they call you Der Führer?’

  ‘I am simply a man who loves his country, Your Highness. That above all. A man who will give his life to saving us from bolshevism, from the creeping decadence of Judaism, from the Treaty of Versailles that not only cripples our economy but saps our very will.’

  It was as if reality had suddenly flowed into the empty elegance of this room. Herr Hitler’s bright blue eyes met hers again. And suddenly she was his — not as a lover but as a follower. She, who had been lost ever since the outbreak of the war, had found a will again, a purpose and a life . . .

  Hannelore realised Hereward was behind her, offering yet another salver. Medallions of venison with juniper and port wine sauce. She smiled at him, accepted two medallions and a helping of winter apple, walnuts and chicory from the footman who followed him. The conversation flowed about her. ‘Even Jones has bought shares,’ said Sophie.

  ‘A butler with a share portfolio!’ said Hannelore.

  Nigel smiled. A lovely smile. ‘Jones is my secretary now. A private secretary with a portfolio is entirely respectable.’

  Hannelore looked up, startled. There was something in the way he said, ‘entirely respectable’ that was familiar. So very familiar. ‘I did not think that Miss Lily would ever spare him. Jones was devoted to her,’ she ventured.

  ‘It was the war,’ said Sophie lightly. ‘Even the most magnificent of butlers must be spared in wartime.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Hannelore.

  Over the next few hours she ate a savoury of a single oyster in a froth of batter; brought glasses of wine to her lips, but did not drink; consumed her portion of lemon soufflé, more taste than substance; and nibbled cheese and walnuts. She watched, she laughed, she listened as finally the long conventions of a formal lunch wound to a close.

  Sophie glanced at the windows. Already the short winter day had dulled. ‘If this was Australia I’d suggest a walk in the sunshine. But since I have not yet found a way to can sunshine and bring it to Europe, coffee for all in the library? Or do you men wish for port and cigars before you join us?’ She stood.

  ‘If you don’t mind,’ said James, ‘I might head back to London before the snow makes the roads impassable.’ Ah, thought Hannelore, whatever you hoped to gain from this luncheon, you have achieved already, in your talk with Nigel in the library.

  ‘I should leave too,’ said Hannelore, who had gained nothing except further frustration, not at all compensated by the pleasure of good company at lunch. ‘If you would have my ca
r sent round?’

  Nigel rose in one smooth movement, despite his age and what must be crippling scars from his surgery. Hannelore’s own scars often made it difficult to rise with the grace expected of Miss Lily’s ladies, especially after sitting for several hours. But Nigel had managed it perfectly, just as Miss Lily would have done . . .

  She did not stare at him. She very carefully did not let her gaze linger nor her expression change as she kissed Sophie.

  But when Nigel kissed her hand as she departed she felt the shape of his fingers in hers: small hands for a man, slightly large for a woman, as Miss Lily’s hands had been just slightly too big for classic beauty, always carefully disguised with ruffles at the cuffs, and gloves. There was a scent too, oddly familiar under the fragrance of bay rum.

  Her chauffeur drove at a cautious ten miles an hour through the slush, following James’s vehicle, whose slips and slides warned of icy patches. The cars slowly drew apart. James evidently had more need for speed than she did. There was no function at the embassy tonight, nor did Dolphie need her as his hostess.

  She had disregarded the fleeting coincidence of resemblance between Nigel and Miss Lily as soon as she had thought of it. But now, in the snow-muffled silence, broken only by the Mercedes purr, it came again.

  Dolphie’s role at the embassy was officially Cultural Attaché. Unofficially, it was to gather gossip, to try to mend the royal alliances between Germany and England that were still close personally, but not acknowledged publicly.

  Yet Dolphie had heard no gossip about the Earl of Shillings, except for his mediocre political career after the war, and his illness and marriage. Miss Lily herself was never mentioned, which was exactly what she had asked of each of her ‘lovely ladies’, the girls she had trained to make the most of every asset a woman might use, especially those ignored by finishing schools.

  Every ‘lovely lady’ knew that gossip about the Shillings ‘school’ might make her subject to gossip too. The pact had held, so well that Hannelore only knew of Sophie and Emily, and her own grandmother — and that there had been far, far more.