The Lily in the Snow

by Jackie French

  She stood. She walked four steps. She said, ‘I am her ladyship.’

  ‘Your ladyship, I am so sorry.’

  ‘No,’ she said, as if this was a conversation around the tea table. Jones would bring in crumpets to toast. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Your ladyship, we did our best, but too much was damaged, his heart torn, one lung. There was nothing we could do —’

  ‘Then call another surgeon! One who can do something.’

  The gowned man looked helplessly at Jones, at Hannelore, then back at this woman who had always — almost — achieved everything that she desired. ‘Your ladyship, it is too late. He has died.’

  ‘People can be resuscitated,’ said Sophie stubbornly. She gazed around for Jones. Ah, there he was. She grabbed his arm urgently. ‘Jones, we must have another surgeon! Quickly.’

  ‘It is more than ten minutes now, your ladyship. Truly, we kept trying to revive him even after his heart had stopped.’

  She stopped then. Life stopped. Colour stopped. Sound stopped all around her. She felt Hannelore’s arms and did not have the strength to move away. Felt Violette thrust Hannelore’s arms away for her, heard Violette’s spit and Hannelore’s cry of shock.

  ‘Where is he?’ demanded Violette.

  ‘Still in the operating theatre.’ The surgeon spoke to Sophie again. ‘You may see him in a little while. Truly, your ladyship, we are well equipped for surgery here, and most experienced. We have clients of great importance . . .’

  Did he think she wanted to invest in the place? ‘I will see my husband now.’ Sophie was surprised that her own voice sounded so determined and clear.

  ‘We must —’ began the surgeon.

  ‘Tidy him? I am used to blood, and body parts. I have seen a hundred piled outside a surgery tent. Nigel is my husband and I will see him now.’

  ‘You will let her see him now,’ repeated Violette. Her tone was also calm, and subtly threatening.

  The surgeon hesitated. ‘It is most irregular.’

  Irregular? Nigel was dead. What could be more irregular than that?

  Back through the door. A white room, bright lights, a body lying on a scrubbed table, a bloodstained white sheet covering his body to the neck.

  Not a body. Nigel. Not a body. Nigel. Not a body. Nigel. Nigel . . .

  She could not think. Why couldn’t she think? Her legs were . . . strange. Not her legs at all. She felt vaguely sick, but that was wrong, for she had seen many surgeries, including Nigel’s, and not felt nauseated then . . .

  ‘Nigel?’ She touched his hands. They did not move. She touched his cheek, his cold smooth cheek. She did not draw the bloodstained sheet down. It had been fastened with strings at neck and ankles, perhaps to stop blundering stubborn fools like her from trying to revive the dead.

  Dead. He could not be dead. But his skin was white. She felt no breath . . .

  What was wrong with her? The room shuddered when she blinked. She must lie down. She could not lie down.

  ‘I love you,’ she said, staring at Nigel, seeing him grow white — no, the world was white, pale white, glowing white. She felt Violette catch her as she fell.

  Chapter 58

  What should you pay for love? Nothing? No, my dears. The greater the love, the greater the price you pay, whether it be for a husband, wife, a child or your country.

  Miss Lily, 1913

  Something was wrong. She wanted to be sick but could not open her eyes, much less her mouth. She was in a car and there was a rug over her knees.

  At last she managed to speak. ‘Stop!’

  The car stopped. She fumbled with the door and vomited in the gutter. Not neatly — it splashed everywhere, onto the car, onto a dachshund walking past, its owner yelling something. She vomited again, then retched once more.

  Nigel is dead, she thought. He is dead and I am here and all I can think of is throwing up.

  Sophie fumbled in her handbag for her handkerchief. It was sodden with Nigel’s blood. Sophie stared at it as Violette quickly took it, and handed her a clean one. Violette was still dressed in the unsuitable evening dress. Why had she and Jones been there? To protect Nigel from what had just happened? If so, they had failed. She had failed. All that way and he had died anyway . . .

  But we had almost four years, she thought. We have two children. We had happiness and I was loved and he was loved and those are the most important things ever in our lives, in his long life past and my long life to come . . .

  Because she must go on. Rose, Danny. Danny was the Earl of Shillings now, and Shillings must be cared for, for Nigel and for Danny, for the people there — they were her people now too, just like those of Thuringa and in her factories.

  She wiped her mouth, sat back in the car, hands trembling, still not sure she wasn’t going to be sick again. ‘What is happening?’

  ‘You fainted,’ said Jones briefly, as if unable to manage more than two short words.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ whispered Sophie. For Jones too had just lost almost as much as she had, more even perhaps, for she had children and a future she must live for, and Jones now had only the past with Nigel. What did he have with Violette and Green? A future, maybe. But no Nigel — no part of Nigel — but she had no Nigel either . . . Her thoughts would not stay still.

  ‘We’re heading back to the prinzessin’s. Hannelore has already taken a taxi cab there. She’ll have told her aunt what happened. Don’t worry,’ Jones added grimly, ‘we leave tomorrow morning.’

  How? she wondered vaguely. Did Green know yet? But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now, except to sleep. For some reason she desperately wanted to sleep, and when she woke perhaps it would be real, and even if it did not feel real there would be things to do, travelling away from this place and never coming back.

  I should not have come to Germany, she thought. I should have known not to come to Germany.

  Chapter 59

  I became myself, my dears, when I stopped regretting who I truly was.

  Miss Lily, 1913

  Jones and Violette helped her from the car. Nausea still buzzed in her stomach and brain. The rose bushes swam like prickly fishes. The door opened. She waited for Jones and Violette to help her up the stairs, but instead Violette vanished as Jones ushered Sophie towards the conservatory.

  The stench of conservatory plants nearly made her vomit once again. They were alive. Nigel was dead. She could hear Hannelore in the conservatory, stammering something in German to someone Sophie could not see. Hannelore was perhaps in shock too. Sophie did not care.

  She was vaguely aware of Jones behind her. Jones must break the news to Green . . .

  The conservatory no longer seemed like a haven tonight. Its heat was clammy, the candle shadows ominous, leaves dripping dankly from the steam from the pool. It seemed darker than it had the night before, with fewer candles. Or perhaps some had been extinguished, as Nigel had been . . .

  ‘Sophie!’ cried a voice. Elizabat’s. ‘My poor, dear Sophie . . .’

  Sophie stepped towards her, trying to control her fragmented thoughts. Elizabat stood in the pool, her arms about another woman, blue-eyed, with blonde hair that was liberally streaked with grey, and who sobbed into Elizabat’s shoulder without restraint. Both women were naked in the candlelight.

  This is how they had planned to trick Hannelore, thought Sophie vaguely, then more urgently. Hannelore must not doubt this is Miss Lily now. If she doubted the gossip might still spread, Nigel’s work of a lifetime would be lost . . .

  But Green’s body shook with grief. Impossible to doubt that it was genuine, even if the way she darted into Sophie’s arms and hid her face against her shoulder while Hannelore watched, shock warring with shame and sorrow, was not.

  Elizabat picked up a robe and slipped it on, then brought one over to Green, sliding it over her shoulders and back like a cloak. ‘Sophie, my dear. I have no words. When I lost my Jakob, too, I knew no words could help. Lily, that this should happen . . . it is
unspeakable that this should happen . . .’

  Elizabat stopped speaking as Hannelore stepped towards Sophie, still unable to cry, and the sobbing Green. Elizabat’s body stilled, as if suddenly turned to ice. ‘Stop,’ Elizabat said coldly, to Hannelore. ‘Do not dare try to offer comfort now. You did this. You brought his lordship to Germany. Now your politician has killed him.’

  ‘Miss Lily,’ whispered Hannelore, staring at the grey-streaked blonde hair, the lovely body, the breasts revealed by the unfastened robe sagging a little and skin marked with pale brown liver spots and the softening, crinkling of time, no vast and livid scar tissue across an abdomen that was soft and unmistakeably female. ‘Miss Lily, I am so, so sorry . . .’

  ‘Nigel would never have supported that man,’ said Elizabat bitterly, ‘and so your friends killed him before he could report.’

  Elizabat tucked the robe more securely around Green’s back, then handed her a towel for her hair.

  Green turned, her face half-obscured by the towel, her voice trembling with passion. But her posture was Miss Lily perfect, and her accent and even voice Miss Lily’s too as she said icily, huskily, to Hannelore, ‘He was my only relative! You do not know, cannot know, what he has been to me.’

  ‘Miss Lily,’ began Hannelore. She started to move closer again. Elizabat held up her hand to stop her, even as Green herself drew further into the shadows.

  ‘I do not wish to speak to you again,’ said Miss Lily’s voice. Sophie shut her eyes at the pain of hearing it again. ‘Have the courtesy never to write to me, or mention my name to any person ever again,’ said Green, her voice shaking. ‘You have taken the father of my niece and nephew, my beloved Sophie’s husband. I think you have done enough damage to our family.’ She leaned for one last steadying moment on Sophie, kissed her cheek, and then glided from the room, her hands obscuring her face as she wiped her tears.

  ‘I am sorry,’ whispered Hannelore again, though it was obvious the departing woman could not hear her. She turned to Sophie. ‘Sophie, I believed — I did not mean . . . I did not think —’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Sophie wearily, carefully blocking the route between the shrubs to the doorway in case Hannelore tried to follow before Green got to her room. Had this been the plan? Nigel would quarrel with Hannelore at the Seahorse Club, taunting her till she lost her temper. She would come back here, glimpse ‘Miss Lily’, who would use the excuse of the quarrel to vanish. Probably Green had intended to be here, naked, with few candles and many shadows, when Hannelore and Nigel arrived, so that she would be only half-visible in candlelight, then neither she nor Nigel would have agreed to see Hannelore again.

  It might have worked, especially as Elizabat, who had never known Miss Lily well, and for such a short time so long ago, had evidently accepted Green’s imposture. And why should she not? Or was Elizabat too part of this farrago? Had she agreed to tell Hannelore she had seen both Lily and Nigel together, naked? Surely she must resent her family’s treatment of her beloved husband, feel both shock and horror at her niece’s support of a fervent racist. But it didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered.

  ‘Nothing matters,’ Sophie said wearily to Hannelore. ‘Nigel is dead and nothing you feel or say will bring him back. I don’t care about your politician. I loved you once, you know. You were my dearest friend. I risked my life to save you and you have given me this. My husband gone. My children fatherless —’ She choked at the thought of Rose and Danny, asleep upstairs, not knowing they had no father. Danny, Daniel Vaile, Earl of Shillings . . .

  She almost managed the tears she was so desperate to shed, at the thought of the three-year-old earl, and all that he must bear so young.

  ‘Sleep,’ said Elizabat, a little desperately. ‘I will bring you a tisane. I know what it is to lose a beloved husband. Sleep now, my dear, and tomorrow . . . tomorrow you can think how to go on.’

  ‘Thank you,’ whispered Sophie. ‘No tisane please. I just need quiet. To lie down.’

  Jones put his arms about her waist as she left the conservatory, then supported her up the stairs, looking about him as if to ensure that no young men in brown uniforms might attack them there, then opened her bedroom door. Violette stood there, in maid’s uniform again. Jones left, still saying nothing, as Violette took charge.

  The fire was lit, her nightdress laid out. Violette began to undo the buttons on Sophie’s dress, not quite like a maid, but gently and with care.

  ‘Would you like a bath?’

  She smelled of vomit. She smelled of Nigel’s blood. She should wash, and go and see her sleeping children.

  She could do none of that.

  ‘I will just sleep. I can put my nightdress on myself. Go to your mother. Tell her she . . . she was magnificent. The prinzessin suspected nothing. She will not bother us again.’

  ‘Good,’ said Violette. ‘I do not suppose you would give me permission to kill her, so I am glad we do not see her again.’

  ‘I am glad too,’ whispered Sophie.

  She lied. She knew she lied. Tonight she had lost Nigel. She had lost Miss Lily too. And she had lost Hannelore.

  Chapter 60

  There are two kinds of women: those who men see, who charm or alarm them, and those they do not see, the ones who serve them. Sometimes it is useful to be invisible.

  Miss Lily, 1910

  VIOLETTE

  The clock below struck two am. The grey-streaked blonde head lay unmoving on the white linen pillow. Violette sat on the chair by the bed, listening, watchful, the room lit only by the streaked glow of the pink-tiled stove.

  A knock at the door. She ignored it.

  The knock came again, soft but insistent.

  ‘Answer it,’ whispered the figure in the bed.

  Violette straightened her black serge dress and tried to look as servant-like as possible. She opened the door slightly.

  Prinzessin Hannelore stood there. She had not changed her crumpled dress. Her eyes were red and swollen. ‘May I see Miss Lily?’

  ‘I’m sorry. She is not to be disturbed.’

  The bewigged figure in the bed gave a muffled sob. Violette looked back, then turned eyes of true anger at the prinzessin. ‘Go away.’

  ‘I . . . I must talk to her. Please.’ The prinzessin’s voice rose slightly. ‘Miss Lily, please let me speak with you. I must explain. I am sorry. I cannot tell you how sorry I am.’

  Violette thrust her body further out of the room, effectively blocking it from view. ‘Have you not done enough? To all of us? You think I am just a maid, that I have no feelings either?’

  ‘I . . . I didn’t think —’

  ‘No, Prinzessin.’ The words were a hiss. ‘You did not think. And so she lies there sobbing and nothing you can say can change that. And I may not sob, not yet. But I can tell you this: go away.’

  ‘Please, ask Miss Lily if she will see me tomorrow. I know there is nothing I can do to make this better, but I must explain —’

  Violette reached under her skirt and drew her knife from its sheath in her garter. The prinzessin stared at it.

  ‘Do you know where the earl found me?’ Violette asked. ‘An orphan, who had been singing in the snow, prey for men. And yet he took me in, made me a maid and now I tend Miss Lily and I will tell you this,’ Violette lowered her voice to a whisper, ‘if you try to see Miss Lily again tonight I will take this knife and carve Traitor on your forehead, for that is what you have been to those who loved you, trusted you. Now go away.’

  Did she imagine the prinzessin looked almost longingly at the knife? But she turned and left as instructed.

  Violette shut the door.

  ‘Violette.’ The figure on the bed sat up and straightened her wig. ‘We need to pack. We need to leave, now.’ Green slid out of bed, shrugged off her nightdress and pulled out a travelling suit of soft blue tweed.

  ‘Where do we go?’

  ‘Your father made the arrangements with England yesterday. Two cars are waiting down the road to t
ake us to the airport. We will fly back to England at first light.’ Green sat suddenly as if her legs no longer supported her. ‘And the coffin will be taken there too.’

  Suddenly she began to cry, not the neat sobs she had pretended before, but snorts, as if she had no practice in sobbing, no idea how to do it well. Her whole body began to shake. ‘He is gone,’ she whispered. ‘Nigel is gone, forever.’

  Violette sat beside her. It was only then she saw the handle of a pistol protruding from under the pillow. She looked at the pistol, at the sobbing woman, then put her knife back in its sheath.

  ‘Maman?’ she enquired softly.

  ‘I don’t know how to be your mother. I never did! If I had known how then you would not have been alone. If I knew how I would try to be your mother now.’

  Violette put her arms about her. ‘I do not know how to be the daughter of a mother, even of a mother like you. But I promise you this,’ she kissed the faintly powdered cheek, ‘as long as I live I will make sure that no one kills you except if it is me.’

  The woman who was her mother — yes, truly was her mother — looked up at her. Violette held out a handkerchief so her mother could blow her nose.

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Green.

  Chapter 61

  Friendship lasts. Remember that, my dears. If it does not last it was a temporary convenience, not friendship.

  Miss Lily, 1913

  ‘Soapie? Soapie, lass, it’s me.’

  ‘What!’ Sophie removed the chair she had put under the handle and opened the door. She had already refused to open it overnight for Hannelore, and for Elizabat.

  She did not feel real, though the nausea and the strange desire to sleep had passed. But Ethel was there, massive and comforting in a purple dust-coat and a hat like a dead purple rat.

  Dead. Nigel was dead . . .

  ‘Oh, lass.’ Ethel held her. Just held her, held her, held her. At last she said, ‘I can’t say it will get better, love. I never loved anyone that way, so how can I know? But you know, I know, that life goes on.’