The Lily in the Snow

by Jackie French

  ‘Day after day I lay there, enduring the pain in my eyes, but the pain in my soul was greater. It was in those days, desperate not for myself, but for my country, I resolved to be a politician. I must rise again, and live. I must live for my country!’

  It was impossible not to be moved by the sincerity of the quiet voice, the sheer presence of the small man with his odd haircut and tiny moustache, his body so insignificant behind the desk, his passion a flame across the room. Sophie glanced at Nigel. He too seemed moved.

  ‘Und nun?’ asked Nigel.

  ‘And now,’ translated Hannelore. She listened, then began to give the Führer’s words to Sophie. ‘Now we in Germany and in England must find our traditional friendship again. Our wars are not with each other, have never been with each other. If twenty-three thousand Jewish bankers and protesters had been killed in 1914, the war would have been over in months. Our leaders have been betrayed by the Jewish bankers and war profiteers, the Jewish film makers who glorify war and try to destroy society from within.’

  ‘Ich verstehe nicht. I don’t understand,’ said Nigel.

  The Führer smiled at him. ‘This is why your prince’s opinion is so important and that of people like you and your wife, and the Prinzessin von Arnenberg,’ translated Hannelore. ‘Superior people in mind and body. Humanity deserves a future where the decadent, the unfit, cannot just breed, but are outbred by the superior people. We must improve not just our society, but humanity.’

  Adolf Hitler looked about the room, his eyes still fervent, his hands clasped quietly on the desk. ‘Go out and look at Berlin tonight.’ His voice was still quiet, controlled, Hannelore’s even softer, translating. ‘See how the soul of Germany is debased. It was the Jews who brought the pornographic art form called movie theatres to Germany, to America and England where they can spread their filthy propaganda on the screen. Look at Jewish so-called scientists, the so-called doctors of the mind, like the man Freud with his psychoanalytic filth, like Bloch and Hirschfeld, who use science as an excuse for debased ideas of homosexualists and worse, that destroy the sacred institutions of marriage and the family.’ Herr Hitler gave a thin, sad smile. ‘The only vice Berlin recognises now is chastity.’

  Nigel spoke again. This time Hannelore didn’t translate. Her hands were in her lap, as if she tried to stop them shaking. She had obviously not expected this part of Hitler’s vision to be expounded tonight. Sophie heard the word Hirschfeld again. Hannelore looked as if she were going to interrupt, then sat back again.

  What was being said? Surely Herr Hitler could not know that Hannelore’s aunt was a supporter of Dr Hirschfeld, that they had lunched with him that very day at her house.

  ‘What are they saying?’ whispered Sophie.

  ‘Nigel says he has met Dr Hirschfeld,’ said Hannelore, without further comment, or defence of the doctor. Ah, thought Sophie, so someone else in this room speaks English, someone Hannelore does not want knowing quite how close her connection to a ‘degenerate’ doctor was.

  Nigel stood. He reached his hand across the desk. Herr Hitler took it in his, then stepped out from behind the desk again, making his small almost-bow to Hannelore and to Sophie. Once again Sophie felt as if his eyes were searching for the bond that linked them. There was no such bond — the very opposite of a bond — and yet such was the strength of Hitler’s gaze she almost felt that somehow it must be there.

  Herr Hitler spoke to Nigel again.

  ‘The Führer is thanking Nigel for his visit. He hopes that his report to the Prince of Wales will bring peace and understanding between our nations.’ Hannelore paused, as Nigel began to speak.

  ‘Nigel says that he will indeed be reporting to His Royal Highness.’ Hannelore stopped translating suddenly.

  ‘What is he saying?’ demanded Sophie in a whisper.

  Hannelore shook her head. The Führer said something quick and harsh. The man Goebbels replied, barking a command to the young men in uniform. They stood, this time facing Sophie and Nigel.

  What was happening?

  Nigel turned to Sophie. He took her hand and kissed it, his face clear and determined, a smile of ruefulness and love. ‘I have just told Herr Hitler I will indeed make my report to the prince. That I will say that it is strange that a party of peace needs its own army and with it violently attacks its opponents, rather than merely defending itself. I will tell him that my good friends who are Jewish, but not bankers, and those who are bankers, but not Jewish, will be most interested in Herr Hitler’s ideas about evil bankers, as would my mother have been, who was the granddaughter of a rabbi.’

  Nigel added quietly, ‘I also told him I liked and admired Dr Hirschfeld and that we are now going to visit the Seahorse Club that Dr Hirschfield recommended we visit, where we can see homosexualists and others who feel they must hide who they are from society, sit in peace and friendship, the true peace and friendship that he pretends to desire but I do not think he can ever feel.’

  Hannelore put her hand beseechingly on Nigel’s. ‘Please, do not do this.’ She turned to Herr Hitler, her words too fast for Sophie to make out even one of them, but evidently an apology, even, perhaps ‘He does not mean this’ or ‘I can convince him. Give me time.’ Nigel watched her, smiling calmly.

  He turned back to Herr Hitler, but spoke in English, letting Hannelore translate. ‘The prinzessin and I will talk to my sister when she arrives later tonight. I am sure the prinzessin will urge Lily to visit you, but I will advise her against it. Lily will make up her own mind, of course, just as the Prince of Wales will.’

  Hannelore was translating Nigel’s side of the conversation for Herr Hitler. It was impossible to read his reaction. Goebbels looked openly furious, his almost fleshless hands twitching as if the slimmest control was holding him back from physical attack.

  ‘Gute Nacht,’ said Nigel pleasantly. ‘Hannelore, we will wait for you in your car.’

  He took Sophie’s hand again. A man and his wife did not hold hands in public, or not in the best social circles. But still he held it as he reached to open the carved wooden doors, as they walked down the hall, through the front doors hurriedly opened by a uniformed manservant and then to the car, where Hannelore’s brown-uniformed chauffeur opened the door for them.

  Sophie climbed in first, then straightened her skirts. She waited till Nigel had settled next to her and the chauffeur had shut the door. There was still no sign of Hannelore.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you’ve done it now.’

  ‘Not quite,’ said Nigel quietly. ‘But this is the beginning.’ He leaned over, careless of who might see them, and kissed her lips. It was a long kiss, almost as urgent as their kisses had been in that brief period of passion before his surgery. Sophie was breathless when they finally parted. She also found that she was crying.

  ‘What you did was right,’ she said. ‘I . . . I am so glad I am married to a man who does right.’

  ‘I am forever blessed to have a wife who thinks so. I hope you think what I do next is right too.’

  ‘What will that be?’ She looked at his expression and nodded. ‘You’re not going to tell me, just like Jones and Green won’t tell me either.’

  ‘Best not yet,’ said Nigel.

  ‘If you say so, I accept it.’ She realised she meant it too.

  Nigel bent towards her again. ‘I love you so very much,’ he said.

  Chapter 56

  History is rarely simple. If it seems to be, those who have told the story have collaborated so only the ‘real’ events are remembered.

  Miss Lily, 1920

  Hannelore came out of the house about twenty minutes later, alone. The chauffeur bowed, opened the motorcar door for her and bowed again after she entered. ‘Zuhause, bitte,’ she said.

  ‘Nein,’ said Nigel.

  The chauffeur waited, trying not to show curiosity.

  Hannelore turned to Nigel, her face granite. I have never seen her angry before, Sophie realised. Anguished, frightened, anxious, filled
with delight and kindness, but not angry. ‘Why did you do that? Say that? Do you really intend to go to the Seahorse Club!’

  Nigel gestured for the chauffeur to close the door and move to the front seat behind the glass between them. ‘Because, with the wrong people supporting him, that man might be dangerous. Now?’ Nigel shrugged. ‘He may be presenting himself as a saviour, almost a religious one, with that talk of his Calvary. Which I must say, as a practising member of the Church of England, I found . . . presumptuous. If I had not read his book I might even have believed him sincere, a man like myself who has seen war and knows its horrors and is determined that it will not happen again. But a man who hates war does not have his own private army.’

  ‘You do not understand how things are here,’ protested Hannelore desperately. ‘The Bolsheviks already have their army. An army in Berlin, and other armies elsewhere, as well as the Soviet forces.’

  ‘Your country has a police force. It is the government that should control unrest, not a civilian who reports to no one but himself.’

  Hannelore stared at him, anguished, almost motionless, her gloved hands rested in her lap as if carved by Michelangelo centuries before. ‘You do not understand. You cannot understand. All we have lost, all we still have to lose —’

  ‘I think I do,’ said Nigel lightly.

  Sophie grabbed Hannelore’s shoulder, forcing her to turn. ‘What that man said about killing Jewish people, about homosexualists. Hannelore, Elizabat’s husband was Jewish.’

  Hannelore looked puzzled. ‘What has that got to do with it? He was not a bad man, as people like that go. I liked him, though of course I did not visit formally while he was alive. But you of all people must know of the Jewish war profiteers —’

  ‘Actually, I don’t know any. My father is not Jewish, but he made an extremely large profit from the war, though the money he made from that has gone to creating jobs, to building hospitals and rehabilitation centres. My friend Ethel’s family made millions from their cocoa business in the war. They are Quakers, not Jewish, and they too do good with their wealth.’ She thought of Daniel Greenman, and his work in psychiatry. ‘The Jewish doctors that man spoke of — they work for humanity, not against it.’

  Hannelore shrugged, as if the matter was of no importance. ‘The “Chosen People” have always been a problem, even if some among them are not so bad. Sophie, you know some races are inferior. You must.’

  ‘Why must I?’

  ‘You are Australien,’ Hannelore gave it the German pronunciation. ‘You have seen the Aboriginal people of your land. You have told me how they work for you.’

  ‘You . . . you think they are inferior?’ Sophie had never felt a desire to slap anyone before. Yet this was Hannelore, compassionate, intelligent Hannelore. ‘Two of the most wonderful people I have ever met were Aboriginal. My present farm manager is Aboriginal and, yes, there is prejudice, but I’d back his intelligence, courage and wisdom against any of the aristocrats in the House of Lords.’ She looked at Hannelore steadily. ‘I am a successful businesswoman. Very successful. I employ the best. He is the best.’

  ‘I think perhaps sentiment —’

  ‘Sentiment has nothing to do with it. As for homosexualists, four of my nurses were sapphists. More, maybe — their private lives were their own business. I only knew because I had to comfort three of them when their lovers died. Extraordinary, strong women who gave their lives for others, and if the whole world was made up of women like that, it would be much better.’

  ‘Just a trifle short-lived,’ murmured Nigel.

  Sophie glared at him. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Darling, a world only of sapphists would mean no babies. Or would you let one of us men live to breed your new race?’

  How could he, of all people, trivialise this? thought Sophie. And now, of all times. She was almost in tears, remembering the friends she had lost, their courage, their love for their patients . . .

  Nigel knocked on the window, and spoke in German to the driver. Sophie recognised the name of the club Dr Hirschfeld had mentioned.

  ‘I am not going there,’ said Hannelore stiffly.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You know why not!’

  ‘Because you do not like the people we will meet inside?’

  Hannelore met his eyes. ‘You know that is not the case. I do not agree with Herr Hitler on this, although I cannot say so publicly. Why else would I suggest to Elizabat that you meet Dr Hirschfeld today, but to show you what my real feelings are? But to go into that club! We will be seen. There will almost certainly be gossip.’

  ‘And you arranged our stay with Ruffi to remind us of the power of gossip, didn’t you?’ asked Nigel gently. ‘Well, we will now go to this club to show that we are not intimidated by gossip, nor will we ever be.’

  ‘I will not!’

  ‘Yes, you will,’ said Nigel calmly. ‘You are going to sit with us and have a calm drink while you watch the people your Führer believes are so decadent. And if you behave with tolerance and impartiality you will have a chance to meet Lily tonight and convince her that her brother is biased and that she must meet Herr Hitler herself. She probably will,’ he added. ‘After all, she has come all this way to do so. But Lily and I respect each other. If I ask her not to meet him, she won’t.’

  ‘You are blackmailing me?’

  ‘Yes, a little pre-dinner blackmail. Do you enjoy it too?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Hannelore stiffly.

  ‘Of course you do,’ said Nigel. ‘You have blackmailed me into coming here by persuading the heir to the English throne to have me — and Lily — meet Herr Hitler for him. That it was not a direct command is irrelevant. I am loyal to my country and to its royal family.’

  And you are not mentioning the true blackmail, the implicit threat to reveal you and Lily as one, thought Sophie. You are even promising she will meet Lily tonight.

  But she still could not see how that would be possible. Perhaps Nigel planned to provoke Hannelore now into saying or doing something that would give an excuse for Lily not to stay at Elizabat’s. But how? There would be no way now to even contact a presumed-to-be-travelling sister to tell her of the change of plans.

  She felt Nigel’s hand in hers again. He smiled at her: a smile of such love, such calm confidence, that she felt her uncertainty ebb. He knew what he was doing and she had accepted that she must not question it.

  Hannelore looked out the window. She did not redirect the driver, nor ask him to stop.

  Chapter 57

  I have lain, half-dead, wishing myself wholly dead, with friends’ and strangers’ bodies all around. I have lived almost three decades since then and, in each of them, those I have loved have died, not as dramatically, but at what is so tragically called ‘our natural span’. You would think I would be used to death by now. Yet each loss is a tragedy.

  Miss Lily, 1918, to the Dowager Duchess of Wooten

  The respectable homes with ground-floor offices vanished as the car turned the corner. No tree-lined streets here, but shopfronts. The first window advertised painless castration for cats and dogs; in the next the mannequin of a young dark-skinned woman wearing only a loincloth lounged next to a long-leafed tree that bore the sign Zwei Pfennig Zigaretten; the next held a family of mannequins in traditional German ‘harvest’ dress. To Sophie’s relief the shop seemed to be selling traditional clothing, rather than offering an entire family to a ‘discerning clientele’.

  They turned another corner.

  This street was more crowded. Cramped, narrow-fronted shops sold birdcages, carbide lamps, old top hats, shoes ‘hardly worn’, bootlaces, portraits in ‘gold’ frames and ostrich feathers. A liquorseller stood by a rickety bench on the footpath, with large glass jars of clear liquid and rows of glasses and a sign that said, Eine Mark.

  A woman lay unconscious, blood trickling from her mouth, outside a more crude tavern, presided over by a man who seemed a cross between an ape and
a mountain. Passers-by carefully ignored them both, as well as the two rouged children, ten or twelve perhaps, a boy and a girl dressed identically in short skirts that showed their stocking tops and garters, rouged knees, their thin singlets, even their lipstick identical as well.

  The car pulled to a stop. The driver turned enquiringly to Hannelore, his face as carefully expressionless as a stone. ‘Wait here,’ said Hannelore stiffly. ‘We will not be long.’ She spoke in English, which the driver evidently understood. But the message is for me, thought Sophie.

  ‘I think it’s that door across the street,’ said Nigel. Sophie wondered if he had asked Jones to find the location for him, for there seemed to be no street numbers.

  They crossed the road, weaving in and out of the traffic. No trolley buses here, but more motorcars than horse-drawn vehicles. Sophie presumed the customers, if not the vendors, were reasonably well-off.

  A woman in chiffon, which showed inadequate lace underpants beneath and nothing more, nudged Nigel suggestively as they reached the footpath. He ignored her. The woman laughed drunkenly, and yelled something that sounded like a threat.

  ‘What did she say?’ Sophie asked Hannelore.

  Hannelore’s face was pale. ‘She said he is leftover,’ she said tightly. ‘That come the revolution our kind will be gone!’

  A street merchant held up arms draped with neckties. ‘Every one only one mark each! Only a mark! Straight from Hollywood!’ Variations on the words had been spoken so often since Sophie came to Germany that she needed no translation.

  The door they sought was blue and freshly painted, with a discreet seahorse engraved at its top. There was no name on the door, nor any other sign this was a café. The shop to one side of it sold gilded birdcages, some a mere semi-circle on a chain, others almost as elaborate as Ruffi’s castle. On the other side an even smaller shop sold cigars.