The Lily in the Snow

by Jackie French

  ‘Herr Hitler.’

  ‘Ah. You have news for him?’

  ‘Much less than I had hoped. Where do you dine tonight?’ Hannelore acted as his hostess, but rarely accompanied him elsewhere. One day — preferably soon — Dolphie would find a wife who was socially acceptable, extremely wealthy and, as importantly, whose money was available to her husband, not in a trust fund or controlled by her father.

  That she would probably be American was a pity, but had to be accepted. Europe had too few heiresses and too many aristocrats who needed fortunes. Once Hannelore had hoped, even assumed, that Sophie would be that heiress, and theirs a marriage not only of convenience but of love.

  Dolphie had never spoken of Sophie, though he must know that Hannelore had met her several times since their return to England. That was significant. Sophie had not just injured Dolphie’s pride, but his heart.

  ‘A dinner at the embassy. Please give the Führer my sincere regards.’ Dolphie had joined the Party three years before, though that was not yet public knowledge. Nor would it be till they had achieved power, something that seemed as far off now as it had in 1925. Only one seat in the last elections, when they had hoped for at least ten . . .

  ‘I will.’ Hannelore paused. ‘Dolphie, I . . . I think I would like to make an enquiry. A delicate one. Complicated perhaps.’

  ‘May I ask what it is?’

  She smiled at him. ‘No. Nieces are entitled to their secrets. But I might tell you if it comes to anything. Can you suggest anyone who might help? A woman, preferably.’

  ‘I think I can. The embassy employs her sometimes. Intelligent and discreet, and sometimes most inventive at getting the information we need.’

  ‘She sounds perfect.’

  ‘I’ll contact her tomorrow. Are you free in the afternoon if she calls?’

  ‘I can be. Thank you, Dolphie.’

  He shrugged. ‘It is just a telephone call.’

  ‘Thank you for not insisting on knowing why I want her. Thank you for . . . for everything.’ Giving me a home, a social role, for introducing me to Adolf Hitler. For my life . . .

  ‘You are the closest family I have left. Do give Adolf my regards.’

  ‘I will.’

  She turned to her letter again.

  Chapter 7

  Travel is always an adventure, especially when it involves a journey of the spirit, as well as place.

  Miss Lily, 1913

  SOPHIE

  Shillings

  31 January 1929

  My dear James,

  Thank you for your kind note. It was delightful to see you again at Shillings. Nigel always enjoys your company so much, and you know how much I value not just your presence and friendship, but your perceptions of the world.

  This letter is partly to let you know that we — an entourage of Nigel, Jones, the two children, Green and Nanny, Nanny’s assistant and me — embark tomorrow morning for Paris en route to the hospital you mentioned. I profoundly hope we can be of help to Mrs McDonald. It is such a tragic duty for her. At the least, perhaps, we can help her feel that others, too, care about the fate of her husband.

  I also wished to tell you of a conversation I had with the Prinzessin von Arnenberg on the afternoon of our luncheon. She urgently wishes me to put her into contact with Miss Lily whom, she believes, would support the desire for peace between our nations espoused by Herr Hitler. Like you, I am not so certain that a man as angry as he appears to be, and whose followers so violently attack their political opponents, truly envisages a long-term friendship with Britain, despite his speeches about our common enemy and how Germany will look to regain its lost territories in the north, rather than west towards Belgium, France and England again.

  I told Hannelore, truthfully, that Miss Lily is no longer available. On reflection, however, both Nigel and I wonder if there was something more to Hannelore’s request than a general wish for Miss Lily to convince her many powerful friends to support the National Socialists.

  I am, therefore, making you a gift of the knowledge as the person best able to establish whether Herr Hitler and his peculiar brand of socialism do intend a major escalation of their efforts soon, as Germany remains such a flammable nation, despite its growing stability. I now feel entirely relieved that it is in your hands.

  Truly, James, and all joking aside, I am deeply glad that a man of your ability and integrity works with such determination for the good of our Empire. I remain yours with love and admiration always.

  Sophie, Countess of Shillings

  Green’s choice of acceptable travelling wear for the Countess of Shillings involved heather tweed trimmed with dark mink, a sealskin coat with caped mink collar and a cloche hat trimmed with the same fur. Green herself wore a maid’s black — but of silk, beautifully if conservatively tailored, and her stockings were silk, not lisle.

  Nigel had decided that Brooks, his valet, would not accompany them. Sophie wondered if just possibly this might mean Miss Lily would appear — although Brooks had been trained by Jones, he had not met Miss Lily, except briefly as a child when Brooks was a farmer’s son on the estate. It would be discreet to ensure he never did.

  Brooks seemed content with his holiday. He and Jones had convinced Nigel to adopt the modern dress at last: the new fashion of wide woollen trousers with deep cuffs and a subtle pattern to the weave, pleated fronts and the new slash pockets as well as a double-breasted coat and waistcoat.

  ‘You look handsome,’ she said, kissing him on the landing before their entourage moved off.

  Nigel shrugged.

  He is missing Lily again, thought Sophie. Sometimes she too longed for Lily with an intensity that shocked her. If she craved her, what must Nigel feel?

  Two motorcars — the luggage had been sent on ahead — Jones chauffeuring the first, a new Silver Ghost, chosen by himself and adored by him immoderately, with Green at his side and Sophie and Nigel in the back. Nanny, the twins and Amy were in the second car.

  The nursery maid, Alice’s sister, was married to one of the tractor drivers on the estate, the result of Sophie’s ruthless modernisation of farm life after the war. Peace had brought a severe shortage of labour, with so many farm workers lying in the soil of France and Flanders. Alice’s sister was expecting her third child any day now and Alice had willingly relinquished her place to Amy, who had never been to Paris or anywhere further than Doustdene, twenty miles and a world away from the Shillings estate.

  They motored to Dover, where they took possession of adjoining staterooms overnight in first class.

  The Ritz in Paris remembered Mademoiselle Sophie Higgs, heroine of the Great War, and was duly impressed by the earl’s title. Five adjoining suites waited for them there too. The Ritz, at least, had few class distinctions: if a client could pay then even nursery maids were acceptable in their most expensive suites.

  Sophie gazed around the gilt and marble foyer; it reverberated with brittle English voices, for few French would ever stay at so parvenu a hotel as the Paris Ritz.

  ‘He lost the entire fortune in one night at the tables at Biarritz. And hers too, of course. All they have now is the title . . .’

  ‘A simply fabulous party . . .’

  ‘Oh my dear, she looked divine! And that necklace . . . Dodo bought it from a Russian refugee. Used to be a princess. So many of them in Paris these days — fabulous bargains. Pickles has promised to find me a Fabergé egg . . .’

  ‘. . . so Mother and I are going to put flowers on his grave. We always do on their anniversary. The commission has put up proper crosses now . . .’

  ‘Bertie ruptured his truss swinging on the chandelier. Daddy is going to be livid when he gets the bill . . . no, for the chandelier, darling, do keep up . . . and then we all went swimming in the Seine . . .’

  ‘The Brazilian Bond Scheme is the investment of a lifetime, old chap. You’ll double your money in two months . . .’

  You’ll lose it in four months, maximum, thought Sophie, but
she refrained from telling him so. It would cause a scene; nor would he believe a woman, or anyone, perhaps, in these heady days.

  It felt strangely good to be doing something. Sophie had been doing ever since she was sixteen, but a mother of two children had a duty not to risk herself on transcontinental monsoon flights in a plane made mostly of plywood and glue, nor accompany Ethel on a motorbike ride across the Pyrenees, nor accept Anne’s invitation to join their archaeological dig in Mesopotamia.

  Neither was this the time for further expansion of the global business empire she had spent almost a decade building. She preferred to wait and see what the American economy did. If it proved as unstable as she suspected it would there would need to be changes, but she could not yet predict what they might need to be.

  Bored, she thought again, and once again thrust the thought away. What right had she, who had so much, to regret all she had been given? Including Paris . . .

  A morning in the Tuileries Garden with Danny and Rose, as they chased pigeons who strutted just slightly faster than they could toddle; an afternoon viewing the most delightful hats and gowns, and having her measurements taken once again as they had changed slightly since her pregnancy. Though none of them spoke of it, this also gave Nigel a chance to rest before meeting the unknown man at the hospital.

  The Silver Ghost waited for them the next day.

  So much was familiar, even now this land of war had been returned to peace: the black-clad peasant women with bulging leg veins, loads of firewood on their backs; farm women who looked normal until you saw they lacked an arm, an eye or a leg, or had the hollow eyes left by nightly dream battles.

  Yet there was life now too: children everywhere, laughing, playing with hoops or skipping. Dogs trotted carelessly along the streets, no longer fated to end up in a starving refugee’s pot or captured as a messenger dog for the army. Cats clothed almost every windowsill, the perfect spot for soaking in the winter sun.

  Sophie did not know where cats went during wartime. Perhaps, being wiser than humanity, they were simply not there, and flashed into a separate universe until it was comfortable to return.

  Green looked at the map. ‘Turn next left. No, not that one, I’m sure it’s just a farm track. The next road left.’

  ‘When does a farm track become a road?’ enquired Jones equably.

  ‘When it is big enough to appear on a map. There it is! Turn now!’

  ‘I’m turning. How far now?’

  ‘About a mile,’ calculated Green. She peered through the windscreen. ‘That must be it there.’

  ‘That’s a hotel. The hospital must be here somewhere.’

  ‘I’ll stop and ask the landlord,’ said Jones. ‘I said we should have turned onto the other road . . .’

  They’re heading for another quarrel, thought Sophie, gazing out at fields of turnips, possibly one that might break up their three-year reconciliation. Greenie had flirted with the waiter last night, a man half her age but obviously interested in blonde hair (far more blonde and less grey than three years before) and a well-preserved bosom. Green was beautiful when she let the lady’s maid’s cloak of insignificance slip off her shoulders.

  Eventually they returned to the farm track. The hospital, it seemed, had once been a farm house and was more nursing home than hospital. ‘For incurables, according to the barman,’ said Jones as he slid back into the driver’s seat.

  More turnips, rows and rows of them; pigs rooting in frost-hardened furrows for the stumps of (probably) cabbages; dull green hedges of a plant Sophie didn’t recognise and then a slate-roofed building, one grey stone wall roughly repaired and outbuildings that had once housed hens, sheep or cattle over winter but were now the refuge of men.

  A man in a dressing gown faded to drabness limped about the cobbled courtyard on two wooden stumps and two crutches. As they drew closer Sophie saw his eyes and mouth had been lost to a vast ripple of shining scar tissue, with only a slit created for him to eat or drink.

  At least he had working hands, she thought, unlike John McDonald.

  Jones drew to a stop next to a newish Ford with the indefinable look of a hired car. Sophie waited for Jones to open the door for her — one must, after all, obey proprieties in public — then walked side by side with Nigel up the stairs, Green and Jones behind them. Jones pulled the bell. It clanked somewhere within the stone walls.

  They waited.

  The door opened. A very small nun looked out — white wimple, black robes — twenty years old perhaps but the size of a twelve-year-old. She looked up at them enquiringly.

  Please don’t let this be a silent order, thought Sophie. Hard enough for men closeted away from the world, without the additional loss of voices too. ‘Bonjour, ma soeur,’ she began, as another robed figure appeared behind the first one.

  ‘Your ladyship?’ The accent was unmistakeably Australian, the face within the wimple weathered not just by sunlight but in a way Sophie was familiar with from the war — unrelenting days of heat and cold, frostbite, infections and wind. ‘I must apologise,’ the robed woman added, ‘I don’t know the right way to address an earl and his wife. I am Mother Antill.’

  ‘If you don’t mind informality,’ said Sophie. ‘I am Sophie and this is Nigel.’

  ‘Lord and Lady Shillings,’ corrected Jones quietly. ‘I am Huw Jones, his lordship’s secretary, and this is Miss Green.’ He didn’t try to explain Green’s presence. Even a countess did not need to bring her maid to a hospital.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Jones. Please come in.’ Mother Antill stood back. ‘Excuse Sister Emmanuelle.’ She smiled at the small nun. ‘She has not spoken since the war. But she does not need a voice to speak to God, or act for Him.’

  ‘You are Australian,’ stated Sophie.

  ‘I am. Or was. Do follow me.’ Mother Antill led the way through a small freezing anteroom to an equally cold corridor smelling strongly of turnips, its walls brightly replastered in places, its well-scrubbed floor cracked concrete, then into another room, only large enough for six straight-backed chairs, a battered desk and, to Sophie’s relief, a small but adequate fire. ‘Please sit. Sister Emmanuelle, will you bring tea?’

  Mother Antill grinned at Sophie as she sat behind her desk. ‘I have given my life to God, but not my morning cup of tea. My niece sends me packages from Australia and I am weak enough to indulge in her kindness. You have come about Matthew? The man who might be Major McDonald?’ she amended. ‘We name all our unknown soldiers here.’

  ‘Do you have many?’ asked Green quietly.

  ‘Eighteen. Once there were fifty-six, but time and families have reduced their numbers.’

  ‘And none can tell you who they are?’

  ‘They all have identities now, except for Matthew. The rest simply have nowhere else to go, or no wish to return to pity in Australia. Yes,’ to Sophie’s look of enquiry, ‘they are all Australian. I founded this place as a hospital during the war, funded by the township of Gunamurra, and ran it as a civilian. I have heard of your hospitals too, Lady Shillings. When my husband was killed,’ Mother Antill’s calm look rejected the automatic gestures of sympathy, ‘I joined this order, and after my novitiate I came back here. We are more a nursing home than a hospital these days. The people of Gunamurra still send us money, and we make brooms to sell too. You may have noticed our broom hedges outside. It is enough.’

  But barely, thought Sophie, looking at the roughly repaired walls.

  ‘What can you tell us about Matthew?’ asked Nigel.

  ‘Very little that can help identify him. The hospital he was originally in was bombed in early 1918. Its records were destroyed, and all who knew him there were killed. From Matthew’s mustard gas injuries we estimate he was first a casualty in the latter part of 1917. I gather that Major McDonald went missing on 22 October 1917, but then so did so many others near that time.’

  ‘And he is unable to speak or write?’ asked Sophie.

  Mother Antill hesitated. ‘We are not sure. The sc
arring is severe, but he is able to make brooms and to feed himself holding a spoon in both stumps. But if he is given a pen or pencil, he lets it fall. It is possible that the nerve damage is too severe for him to use a pen, but still manage less subtle tasks. He can see vague shapes, but not read, nor probably recognise faces. As for speaking, he cries out at night, but hasn’t spoken by day.’

  This was unexpected. ‘Does he cry out words?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ admitted Mother Antill. ‘And, yes, they are in English. The accent is educated, but still, I think, Australian. Ah, thank you,’ she added to Sister Emmanuelle, bringing in the tea tray. Five cups, one teapot, no milk, sugar, nor other refreshment. Sophie doubted even Mother Antill could conjure cake or biscuits from turnips.

  Mother Antill poured. The tea was weak and tasted stewed — the leaves must have been dried and used again.

  ‘Why do you take him for an Australian?’ asked Jones, sipping. ‘Just his accent?’

  ‘No. Matthew dragged another man from the hospital rubble after it was bombed, a Lieutenant Grierson. The lieutenant said Matthew was a fellow Australian, but he just called him “my mate”. I’m afraid the poor man died before he could tell us more.’

  ‘Matthew can hear?’ asked Green.

  ‘Yes. Matthew understands English, French, even some Latin.’

  ‘Is he happy?’ asked Sophie quietly. She shook her head as Green began to object. ‘You are happy here, helping others, and Sister Emmanuelle too.’ She thought of the other John, in his hut by the gate. ‘It is possible to be happy with a simple life after so many years of anguish.’

  Mother Antill nodded. ‘You are correct. I am happy. A life of service to others can give extraordinary fulfilment. Matthew is a good man. Unlike most of the men here, he can walk, though it’s painful for him to do so — both knees were crushed when the hospital was bombed. He can even push a wheelchair if someone tells him which way to go, and he also supports some of the others in a daily walk around the courtyard, when weather permits. But happy?’ She shook her head. ‘No. I wish with all my heart that we could give him joy. We can’t.’