The Lily in the Snow

by Jackie French

  Green put the white dress carefully on the bed. It was impossible to see where the lace had been. ‘It is more complicated than you think.’

  ‘Is it? When I find out the complications will I respect you?’ Green had not protested, thought Violette, wondering why she felt so empty. Green had not said, ‘Of course I love you. I think that you are wonderful, to have survived all these years. I think that you are beautiful, a treasure, my life is full at last . . .’

  Instead Green said, ‘We don’t know each other. Not yet.’

  Violette shrugged again, without speaking.

  The woman who was her mother took a breath, as if calming herself. ‘Very well, I will ask you again, not as your mother, but as a member of a party of English people in a strange land and a stranger’s castle: where have you been?’

  Eh bien. ‘The count invited me to see his collection. It is of things that men use to hurt women and . . . pleasure themselves. I pretended to cry and then I left. He did not touch me.’

  ‘I see,’ said Green slowly. ‘Thank you for telling me.’

  ‘I do not think he will ask me again. I do not think he will ask Amy, nor her ladyship. I think he hoped I might agree to be used by him, for money or because he is a count, but when he saw I would not he enjoyed watching me be scared, no more. I was not scared, of course,’ she added. ‘But I pretended most convincingly.’

  Green nodded. ‘He will have no shortage of women to play games with, if he pays. The aristocracy is looked up to around here. But try not to be alone with him again.’

  ‘That is good advice. I do not enjoy pretending to be scared.’

  ‘I do respect you,’ said Green.

  ‘Good. Tell me, did you ever want a child?’

  ‘No. But once I was pregnant, I did want you. I loved you more than my life, or any cause for which I worked. You were my life. And then they told me you were dead and I could not even see your grave. I mourned for you — silently, secretly, but every single day.’

  Not — ‘I love you now.’ Violette wondered vaguely if she had inherited her mother’s habit of honesty, though in her case, it was combined with a useful ability to deceive, even if she did not like to lie directly. ‘You mourned a baby. It is a long time since I was she.’

  Green nodded at the truth of that. Once again Violette wished she hadn’t. But it was best to know the truth. Fooling yourself could lead to danger, even death, when there was no one to protect you.

  ‘We do not know each other yet,’ repeated Green with a touch of almost desperation.

  ‘I would like you to leave my bedroom now,’ said Violette. She had a strange feeling that she was going to cry. She wished to be alone to do it.

  Chapter 41

  There have been times when I longed for ignorance, so I would not know how ignorant I was. But that is cowardice, perhaps the most common kind there is.

  Miss Lily, 1913

  SOPHIE

  Sophie woke early the day they were to leave for Berlin. Nigel lay next to her, still deep in sleep. He had shared her room ever since they left England. She welcomed him, but did not feel she could ask him why he had changed the habit of the years since his surgery.

  It was not to protect her. Green had told her of Violette’s experience, but nothing untoward had happened since. After that first evening Ruffi had been an almost absent host, meeting them only at dinner. He breakfasted in his room and filled his days with, ‘Meetings with neighbours, my dear, so boring. But I have prepared some little activities that may amuse you.’

  Were the meetings with neighbours political, urging them to National Socialism? Possible, though Sophie doubted it. Ruffi had not mentioned politics at all to them. Nor, indeed, had he seen any military service beyond wearing a uniform while accompanying the Kaiser.

  And the activities he had arranged had been genuinely amusing, unlike the forced and febrile gaiety she had seen in Sydney and England. They went rowing on the lake with the children and Green, Jones and Violette now that Ruffi seemed to have recognised they preferred to be a party of seven, not four. A small bevy of footmen accompanied them, just in case anyone fell in or dropped their asparagus fork, on a picnic to the small island in the lake with its Roman ruins (commissioned by Ruffi twenty years earlier).

  There had been a midnight feast in a firefly-lit forest glade that almost made up for Ruffi’s detailed descriptions of every royal scandal for the past fifty years as they ate. There had even been a birthday party picnic for Rose and Danny, with a ludicrously elaborate birthday cake, an exact replica of the castle, but with candles, and a quartet of jugglers who sang ‘Happy Birthday’ in strongly accented English. The twins had ignored the jugglers, but demolished the cake with joy, while Sophie caught Nigel’s eye. Was this, too, a demonstration of Hannelore’s affection, or her knowledge of their family affairs?

  They had toured the district, in Ruffi’s old-fashioned horse-drawn coach, in a hay wagon and in their own cars. The area seemed prosperous — plump children, with shoes on their feet and well-combed or plaited hair, fat cattle and mended fences. Germany — or this part of the country at least — had not known invasion for over a century. Despite the reparations Germany seemed a wealthy land again, trading on investments and loans from the United States. Certainly the income from Sophie’s Bavarian contracts had been steadily increasing through the decade. The Weimar Republic seemed successful and, possibly, a most welcome change from the rule of the king Ruffi had described.

  Sophie had known the Kaiser was unstable, eccentric and hated England. She had not realised how much even those in the court, like Ruffi — and probably Dolphie and Hannelore — had despised him, even while they accepted his royal authority.

  Prosperous countries did not easily change governments. Hannelore had claimed Germany desperately needed her favoured politician and his National Socialist Party to restore its pride and prosperity. Sophie had seen no sign that it did.

  And now, thank goodness, they would soon be gone, not just from there but from Germany, the Prince of Wales’s demands and Hannelore’s political machinations. Tomorrow they would leave for Berlin. Three days there, or a week at most, and they could leave for England, report to David then sail for Australia.

  She glanced again at Nigel, still gently snoring. Suddenly she needed time to herself. She slipped into the dressing room, removed her nightdress and slid the first dress to hand over her body, and then stepped into some shoes, not bothering with stockings or even underwear, then walked silently out into the corridor and down the stairs.

  Voices came from the kitchens, louder than they would be later in the day. No one expected anyone to be in these rooms now. The front door was still locked, but it was simple to unbolt the drawing room’s French doors and escape out onto the terrace.

  I am floating across dew-diamonded grass as the morning sunlight ripples upon the lake, she thought, crossing the carpet of green lawns. It was a phrase worthy of any romance novelist, but what else could do justice to the small, white, turreted icing-sugar castle in this morning light, to the swans that seemed to have been recently washed with Pears soap and to a summer-green silk dress that by pure accident perfectly matched the German forest around them, bright with new leaves? Though perhaps that was not accidental — presumably Green had chosen to leave the dress out for the morning for just that reason. Undoubtedly a matching hat or bandeaux waited for her back in the dressing room.

  She breathed in the scent of lake, swan dung and lush grass, with the slight musk of forest below it. A pair of deer glanced at her from the edge of the lake opposite, then cantered surprisingly calmly back into the wall of leaves.

  Dolphie had once promised she could grow to love Germany. She had not doubted him, even as she tried to explain that her loyalty would always remain with a far harsher land. But she had not guessed at the beauty of a German summer.

  ‘Sophie, darling, slow down . . .’

  Sophie turned and smiled as Nigel came towards her. ‘I was ju
st thinking this was perfect, and now it is even more perfect.’

  ‘You don’t mind my joining you?’

  ‘Of course not. I just didn’t want to wake you.’

  He kissed her cheek, then took her arm. ‘Shall we take a sedate pre-breakfast promenade? Do you remember your pre-breakfast walk on your first morning at Shillings?’

  She laughed. ‘Then Miss Lily explained to me exactly why a guest does not take pre-breakfast promenades, including the chance one may embarrass the master of the house returning from an illicit night with his lover. But I doubt Ruffi would be embarrassed in the slightest.’

  ‘On the contrary, I should think,’ said Nigel. ‘After you left the dining room last night he told me how Catherine the Great had pulleys installed so she could copulate with a stallion, having decided that only a horse had the equipment to satisfy her. He said he had considered having a set made for his castle.’

  ‘Were you duly shocked?’

  ‘Only at his lack of originality. I first heard that story on the North West Frontier in my first year in the army. I think I heard it for the fiftieth time in 1918, just before the Armistice.’ His expression grew more sombre. ‘He also told me in considerable detail about his liaison with Hannelore’s grandmother twenty years ago.’

  ‘I wonder if Hannelore knows?’

  ‘Almost certainly. It was Hannelore’s grandmother who advised Hannelore to come to Shillings. I doubt she desired Ruffi, or even liked him — she was a woman of considerable taste — so there would have been other reasons for the affair.’ He shrugged. His face had lost all its earlier joy now. ‘Perhaps it was just to bring the families closer. Hannelore must have considerable influence with Ruffi to have persuaded him to accommodate us this summer, especially as she cannot have expected you to . . . entertain . . . him in return.’

  Sophie was silent. Nigel looked at her with sympathy. ‘Losing friendship can be even more painful than the loss of a lover.’

  Sophie shook her head. ‘The problem is that in a strange way the friendship is still there. I . . . I think Hannelore would still risk her life for me. I probably would for her, if it weren’t that my life is no longer mine to risk, but belongs to you and the children. She has brought us to Germany because she believes it to be right, thinks that I will even eventually agree with her. But . . .’

  ‘But it is the way that she has gone about it,’ finished Nigel.

  ‘Blackmail is not comfortable,’ said Sophie, trying to keep her tone light.

  ‘Blackmail doesn’t end,’ said Nigel. They had reached the lawns mown about the lake. The swans paddled towards them, hopeful. ‘We’ve partially confirmed Hannelore’s suspicions simply by agreeing to come to Germany. It just increases her power over us.’

  ‘But no matter what your . . . the . . . circumstances, you’d have agreed to see this Herr Hitler once David asked you to.’

  ‘Possibly. Even probably. But I would also have explained that it was impossible for me to arrange for Miss Lily to meet him. It is Miss Lily’s influence she really wants, remember, not mine.’

  Sophie nodded. She had tried to think of a way Green could convincingly take Miss Lily’s place in Berlin where Hannelore would notice her. But while the women of La Dame Blanche had never met Miss Lily, Hannelore knew her well. Hannelore had also met Green, though possibly not noticed her particularly, or even recognised her and Jones on the night they had helped Sophie escape from Dolphie’s hunting lodge. But Hannelore would immediately notice any deception. She might even expect them to try to deceive her, even if she did not know how.

  The best they could do was Nigel’s stipulation that Miss Lily was now retired and unwell and so would appear for only one day, to speak with Hannelore and then be introduced to Herr Hitler. Miss Lily would wear gloves — perfectly acceptable, and no chance of leaving incriminating fingerprints. But no excuse for Nigel’s absence on that same day would be sufficient to erode Hannelore’s belief that Lily and Nigel were one.

  And if Miss Lily did not volunteer her support for Herr Hitler? Would Hannelore demand that, too?

  ‘It’s my fault,’ said Nigel slowly. ‘I was overconfident, sure that no one would recognise me. And if they did . . .’

  ‘We were only women and therefore powerless, apart from our charm as “Miss Lily’s lovely ladies”? And so we were, before the war. Any scandal we spread would have rebounded on us, to be associated with such a decadent setting as Shillings would suddenly have become. That shame would also hurt Miss Lily’s friends in so many countries, too.’

  Sophie smiled at the memory of their last day there, so unlike the quiet, dignified Shillings she had first known, with Rose and Daniel going bump, bump, bump down the staircase on their bottoms, and Nanny scandalised, but unable to intervene while the children’s mother chose to bump down stair by stair beside them.

  No more ‘lovely ladies’ for Shillings, though the children would have friends to stay, and she and Nigel would have visitors over as a sedate married couple, even if Ethel did arrive on a motorbike.

  ‘I should have cut the connection with Hannelore when I returned to England,’ she said slowly. And yet she had risked her own life to save Hannelore, had loved her like a sister.

  That was the worst of it, she thought. For Hannelore was no villain, demanding money. Possibly, even probably, she would never act on the unexpressed threat, never do anything that might hurt her friend.

  But even probably was too great a risk.

  Sophie gazed at the swans, now paddling back to an interesting clump of reeds. ‘Do you think I am sufficiently swan-like in my movements after all these years?’

  Nigel lifted her hand and kissed it. ‘I think you are perfect.’ He met her eyes. ‘And, if I do not say it often enough, every day I give thanks for the miracle that you married me and gave me two children and the happiest two years that I have ever known.’

  ‘That . . . that sounds ominous, as if you were heading off to war and might not return. Darling, what is the worst that Hannelore can do? Yes, I know what she can try to do — have us support this wretched man financially, even join his political party, support an alliance with Germany in the House of Lords, have Lily at least write to her friends, urging support. But if you refuse? We could simply sail for Australia till the gossip blows over.’

  ‘But it never would,’ said Nigel. ‘Think of Ruffi last night, with scandals that are decades old. The Australian papers, too, would love the gossip. What of Danny and Rose, growing up with that?’

  ‘But if Miss Lily never appears again . . .’ Sophie took a deep breath of air. ‘That is it, isn’t it? That’s what you plan after Berlin? The scandal might be survivable — but only if Miss Lily vanishes forever after Berlin. Hannelore can never prove what she suspects. If Miss Lily disappears for good, ‘somewhere in the East’ perhaps, there can never be photos of her, nor fingerprints. Few if any who have know her will tell any journalist that they ever knew her, except possibly as a Vaile relative who spent quiet months at Shillings.’

  ‘Pretty much,’ said Nigel, though something in his tone made Sophie uneasy. He looked out at the island. ‘Do you think we need Roman ruins at Shillings?’

  It was an obvious attempt to change the subject, but Sophie accepted it. ‘No more than we needed the Egyptian columns your horrible cousin tried to install when he thought you were going to die. I am very glad you didn’t die, Nigel.’ Miss Lily gone, she thought. Why didn’t I realise before this was what Nigel — and probably James too — had planned? Miss Lily’s network must not be tainted by scandal.

  ‘I am glad I didn’t die too,’ said Nigely lightly. ‘And as my cousin has no sons his line will never inherit, even if Danny has no children.’

  Sophie didn’t ask who would inherit then. Impossible to think of Danny ever dying. But she had lived through the Great War, when almost every family in Britain and the colonies had lost a son. There must not be another!

  And yet in her heart she knew Hannelore w
as correct. The Great War had never entirely ended. The tensions that drove it were still there: White Russians still fought the Red; France believed so deeply in the inevitability of another German invasion that it was still insisting on those crippling reparation payments.

  She almost wished the next war would come soon, while Danny was still too young to fight in it, and Nigel and Daniel and Jones now too old.

  Perhaps this politician really was the answer: an alliance between Germany and England, and France too, against their common enemy. The Bolsheviks might, just conceivably, keep the peace — for Britain and her Empire, at least. German territorial ambitions would be directed northwards and east, to reclaim the German lands Russia had taken. Perhaps Herr Hitler really would make Europe safe . . .

  She shivered. ‘No talk of dying. You are going to live to be a hundred and four and Danny will have six sons by the time he inherits the title, and his oldest son will be eighty before he becomes earl.’

  ‘Very well, I promise — no more talk of dying. Time we turned back for breakfast,’ said Nigel.

  Sophie nodded. ‘I’d like to write a letter before we leave. Jones can post it on the way to Berlin. I don’t like the idea of Ruffi reading my correspondence.’

  ‘I feel the same way. I have some letters to send too.’ He leaned over and gently kissed her on the lips. ‘In thee I’ve had mine earthly joy,’ he quoted.

  She stroked his hair. ‘And you will always be my Lancelot.’ They walked back to the margarine heiress’s perfect German castle together.

  Chapter 42

  Knowing you have found beauty that will always stay with you in memory and with joy is the most profound triumph of any journey, literal or otherwise.

  Miss Lily, 1913

  Sophie sat at the far too ornate, too small and entirely too inconvenient desk in her sitting room. The margarine heiress had evidently not expected her guests to write more than a few words on a visiting card. But the paper was good, the nibs sharp, the ink fresh and the pen wipers embroidered with Ruffi’s crest.