Lilies, Lies and Love

by Jackie French

  ‘But Nigel Vaile is not dead,’ said Daniel harshly.

  ‘I assure you, he is. My friend and colleague James Lorrimer, who runs the British agency I work for, has made quite sure that, legally, Nigel Vaile died seven years ago.’

  ‘Nigel Vaile is alive now and speaking in this room,’ said Daniel flatly.

  Sophie sat quite still, her hands in her lap. For it was true. She had grown comfortable with widowhood, grieving for a husband forever lost, grateful to have Lily in her life. But now, suddenly, Nigel was there, in voice and posture, unmistakably a man in women’s clothes. It was as if the world had melted around her, nothing solid, nothing sure.

  ‘So she is not a widow. Nor can she divorce a man who is dead. I wonder,’ added Daniel, ‘how you would explain Lily’s body to a coroner? Or even if you needed medical help.’

  Sophie began to shake. She would not cry. She could not cry. Yet suddenly all she wished to do was sob. Half an hour ago her world had been perfect, simple, happy. Now nothing was sure.

  ‘There is a doctor in Sydney,’ said Nigel quietly. ‘He attended me here when there were complications from my surgery a few years ago. Arrangements about any necessary death certificate or medical treatment were made with him on my behalf by others before we came out here. All possible . . . complications . . . have been dealt with.’

  Daniel looked at Sophie. ‘Did I ever really know you?’

  She met his eyes. ‘Did I know you? I met you as John, a hermit living in a hut by a farm gate.’

  ‘And for seven years you have known me as I am.’

  ‘This is who I am too!’

  ‘My dears, you both know each other very well indeed.’ This time it was Lily who spoke. ‘The person neither of you has known entirely is me.’

  Sophie was silent. It was true. She had been able to live with Lily, spend these last years in happiness, only because she believed that Nigel Vaile was truly gone. Yet Lily herself had warned her on that first night on the ship coming from England, that the person she would be living with was Lily-Nigel Vaile.

  I did not listen, she thought. I wilfully did not understand.

  ‘Is there anything else you need to tell me?’ enquired Daniel, gazing at her. ‘Another husband tucked away? Do you also have a spare persona or two?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ he said simply. Now the first shock had ebbed, he didn’t seem horrified or astounded, as she had expected. Perhaps, in his work, Daniel saw even more of the vagaries of human experience than a Lily-Nigel and a woman who loved them both.

  It isn’t Lily who has shocked him, she realised. It’s me. He has to accept I am a person who’d keep a secret like this from the man who loves me, who I love too, the possible father of my children.

  He was looking solely at her now. ‘When I asked you to marry me, on the verandah just now, what would you have answered?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said frankly. ‘I couldn’t marry you unless you knew, but the truth wasn’t mine to tell.’ She glanced at the third figure in the room and it was Miss Lily who nodded, Miss Lily who understood.

  Sophie turned back to Daniel. ‘But if, after you have thought all this through — who I am, who Lily is, who we both have been — and you ask me again, I will say yes.’

  An early spring fly buzzed at the window. Its noise grew louder. The young people began to yell outside. Sophie heard Rose’s unmistakable boot falls in the hall. ‘Mummy!’ she yelled, ‘it’s a plane, circling around! I think it’s going to land!’

  Sophie ran to the door and back onto the verandah in time to see a small Gipsy Moth F60 bounce twice on the paddock it had left nearly a decade earlier. A figure clambered on to the wing, a woman in a well-cut tweed trouser suit and flying helmet; she was followed by another woman, younger, slighter, in close-fitting brown leather trousers and jacket. She held up her hand to help a third passenger down, neat and as seemingly composed as when she had last seen him, seven years before. His tired face lit with joy as he saw her. ‘Sophie! My dear, it is wonderful to see you.’

  Somehow she kept her voice composed. ‘James. How good of you to drop in.’

  Chapter 6

  Politicians bluster sometimes. It is the nature of the beast. But Herr Hitler is the first to create a culture of political lies. This frightens me, even more than the Brownshirts’ fists, and even more because I am powerless to help those who might stop him.

  A letter from Miss Lily to James Lorrimer, 1934

  The living room was exactly as it should be: the teacups, the fresh scones, the jam, the butter, the crustless chicken and mayonnaise, and egg and lettuce sandwiches, as well as those of (Higgs’) canned asparagus, each spear rolled in thinly sliced brown bread, the chintz-covered sofas and chairs, the shining floor and Persian carpets, the Tom Roberts paintings on the wall — Miss Lily had found delight in Australian art.

  Only the collection of people should have been impossible in this most perfect room.

  Mrs Randolph Henderson sat in her tweed suit over a blue silk blouse with her perfect pearls, though she was Mrs Robertson now, married to their Northern Airlines chief pilot. Miss Morrison sat opposite her, her scarred face with its startling blue lashless eyes, two holes for nostrils and a lipless mouth lost to shiny red scars. She had unselfconsciously removed her flying helmet and replaced it with a wig of lush brown hair before coming indoors. She was now placidly eating a scone, while Mrs Henderson, no, Robertson, politely discussed the weather, though not quite as it was done in English drawing rooms.

  ‘. . .. and ran into a cold cell south of St George. The crate dropped like a stone. I thought we were goners for a moment, but Morrie pulled the joystick . . .’

  Morrie — Miss Morrison — gave what had to be a smile, even if there were no facial muscles left to move. ‘But then it was blue skies all the way here. Topping weather. Not at all like the journey you and I made together.’

  ‘It is so good to see you again,’ said Sophie, not shaking at all. She would shake later for this day had been too much, from the threatened castration of a stockman to a proposal to the unmasking of the husband she had let herself place in a small box labelled Do Not Look.

  She turned to Daniel, then to Lily. ‘I told you they were incredible women, didn’t I? Mrs Robertson flew me right across Australia and Miss Morrison through the monsoon to India just so I could reach Nigel before his surgery.’

  ‘We owe you a lot then,’ said Daniel. There was warmth as he added, ‘Including the marriage that led to those two peering in at the window.’

  Sophie sighed. ‘They won’t be satisfied till you take them up, but don’t let them pester you. You need to rest . . .’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Miss Morrison. ‘I’ll take them up now, if you like. Just a short spin.’

  ‘And I will freshen up, if you don’t mind.’ Mrs Robertson stood tactfully and kissed Sophie on the cheek with a ‘You haven’t aged a month, my dear’.

  Sophie waited till both women had left, Mrs Robertson escorted by Jenkins, then turned to James. ‘I should say all the polite things, or even try to be witty. But whatever you are here for must be urgent — and something that could not be said on the telephone.’

  ‘There are always operators listing on the telephone. Sophie and Lily and I need to speak privately.’ James smiled politely at Daniel.

  Daniel smiled as urbanely back. ‘If you are expecting me to tactfully leave, you will be disappointed. I have just learned that the woman I expected to be my fiancée by lunchtime has a husband still living and that husband is my friend Lily, who is in your employ as what Sophie describes as “agents of influence”. Now you suddenly appear and wish to speak to Sophie in private, as well as Lily.’ He turned to Sophie. ‘Did you perhaps forget to tell me something else?’

  ‘Are you asking if I’m a British agent too?’ She shrugged. ‘I knew during my time at Shillings with the other girls that we were expected to use what we were taught there, as wives
or political hostesses. I didn’t know then that there might be any formal intelligence role. The only official intelligence mission I’ve performed for James was the one to go and meet Herr Hitler.’

  ‘I don’t have the right to ask this, but I admit I am curious.’ Daniel looked from James to Sophie. ‘I saw the way you looked at Sophie when you arrived. Has your only connection been through Lily?’

  Sophie met his eyes. ‘No. For several years, during the war, we both expected we would marry when the war was over. Instead we are friends.’ She smiled at James ‘I hope I am right in saying that.’

  ‘Always,’ said James softly.

  ‘But James and I still correspond, and not just as friends. I believe the . . . the insights I have into commerce and world trade are useful to him.’ She lifted her chin. ‘Nor am I ashamed of that.’

  ‘Nor should you be.’ Daniel’s voice was more sympathetic than she had expected.

  ‘Thank you for that, Greenman.’ James looked as calm as if they had just ordered oysters at the Ritz. ‘If you don’t mind me satisfying my own curiosity — did Sophie accept your proposal?’

  ‘I think, possibly, she may have been about to propose to me, but your arrival interrupted the proceedings.’

  ‘I do apologise, old chap.’ James looked enquiringly at Lily and then Sophie.

  ‘You can trust Daniel’s discretion, his judgement and his compassion,’ said Lily quietly.

  James shut his eyes briefly, for the first time showing the weariness of travel. He opened them again. ‘I am here to ask his prospective fiancée if she would mind seducing our king.’ He held out his cup to Sophie. ‘And another cup of tea perhaps?’

  Sophie sat still for five seconds, simply breathing, then smiled and leaned towards the tea table, as swan-like as she had ever been during her debut. ‘Of course, James. May I offer you a lamington?’

  Chapter 7

  There is always joy in meeting old friends. Rarely unmitigated joy, for too much will have happened since you saw them last.

  Miss Lily, 1911

  Sophie could see the small plane droning upwards like a wasp in the patch of sky framed by the window. She belatedly hoped that Midge and Harry would not object to their offspring being carried up in a tiny craft of wood and canvas, and flown by a female aviator at that, even one who now ran a joint business carrying stores and sometimes people around remote northern Australia and the lands and islands even further north. But Midge and Harry would more likely be envious . . . though perhaps it would bring the war back too closely for them both. Either way they would not begrudge the thrill of flight for Ben and Harry.

  James regarded the lamington curiously, then bit into it with slightly more hunger than his usual refinement allowed. The travellers probably needed something sustaining, and soon, Sophie thought vaguely, and then realised she was clinging to normal life to avoid dealing with the reality of James Lorrimer in her living room and his latest proposal to . . .

  ‘So, James darling, you wish me to seduce the king? Don’t you think I am slightly past my first bloom? And David would surely remember all too well that when he was Prince of Wales it was he who ordered Nigel to Germany. People who do you wrong rarely forgive you. Do you still call him David, now he is King Edward VIII?’

  ‘His friends and family still call him David.’

  ‘If the plan was preposterous — or unnecessary — I doubt James would have flown all the way here,’ murmured Lily, giving no hint of her feelings.

  Was this Lily, thought Sophie desperately, or Nigel? For the figure sitting opposite her might still look and move like a woman, but she had lost Lily’s lightness, the impression she created that she spoke to each person alone.

  ‘How many planes did it need to get you here, old chap?’

  Lily’s voice, and yet not Lily. Because there, in that room, both Nigel and Lily could co-exist. But I don’t want them to, Sophie thought fiercely.

  ‘I believe there were six aircraft involved,’ said James lightly. ‘We had a little trouble over Bengal, and another hiccup just before Singapore.’

  ‘It would have been a tragedy for the Empire if James Lorrimer had been lost,’ said the not-quite Lily lightly.

  ‘Perhaps. And a tragedy if I do not succeed in persuading Sophie too.’

  ‘Then I ask again. Why?’ demanded Sophie. ‘Why is it necessary? And why on earth do you think I might succeed in seducing David?’ She shuddered.

  ‘I should probably not have used the word “seducing” — though that is essentially what it would need to be — as it would not require a sexual relationship. David is not a sexual man, though he very much wants to appear to be. He is also an extraordinarily dangerous man, but without enough intelligence or sense of responsibility to realise it.’ James looked at each of those in the room in turn. ‘David is not just pro-German; he gives them access to all the information he is privy to. Every government policy, every intelligence report. David’s secretary has even asked for military design specifications “so His Royal Highness may be better informed”, though I doubt David knows an engine casing from a propeller strut. Neither did I,’ James added with feeling, ‘until Bengal.’

  ‘That . . . that is appalling,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Yes. Germany is rearming and building thousands of fighter planes each year. Battle destroyers, tanks . . . other weapons I won’t go into here. And yet our government still will not rearm; it still has a policy of peace in our time.’

  ‘But they can’t ignore a threat like that —’ began Sophie.

  ‘Democracy, my dear,’ said Lily, glancing at her. ‘The will of the people. The people of Britain want peace. Instead they will have a conqueror.’

  ‘I knew David supported Hitler’s ideals,’ said Sophie slowly. ‘The racism, the anti-Semitism, the violent anti-bolshevism. But that is a long way from forming an alliance with Germany. Surely he couldn’t think that the British Empire —’

  ‘David no longer thinks. He has Mrs Wallis Simpson to do that for him.’

  Sophie and Daniel looked blank. James turned to Lily. Lily nodded. ‘Yes, I have heard about Mrs Simpson — but not from the English or Australian press, only from letters from my friends in America and England. She has been David’s mistress for at least two years — and his only one. Mistress is the most accurate word too. She instructs him in far more areas than the boudoir.’

  ‘Tells the king what to do?’ exclaimed Daniel.

  ‘Royal mistresses have always wielded power, oh innocent colonial, but not like this,’ said James.

  Daniel flushed. James shook his head ‘I’m sorry, old chap. I shouldn’t have said that. Half my brain is still over the Bay of Bengal and the other half is torn between the desire for sleep and despair. Wallis Simpson orders the king to do everything from having him light her cigarettes to dictating his public speeches. She commands, with a flick of her fingers. He obeys,’ said James. ‘And he likes it.’

  ‘That has always been exactly what David does like,’ murmured Lily. ‘The rest has been desperate make believe.’

  ‘But David has always wanted to be what he called a real king!’ protested Sophie. ‘One who actually makes the decisions.’

  ‘But not one who is able to decide what the policies will be.’ Lily poured James another cup of tea, adding the slice of lemon for him. ‘David is not very bright, my dear . . .’

  ‘I know,’ said Sophie with feeling.

  ‘And he knows it too, just as he knows he is physically slight and usually, I believe, incapable.’

  ‘Impotent?’ Daniel leaned forward, suddenly professional. ‘But he had a gentle war, always behind the lines . . .’

  Lily smiled. ‘You forget that traumas other than war can cause . . . problems. Like an upbringing in an English public school, naked cold baths with a hundred other boys every morning, the smallest pushed in first to break the ice. Beatings from the older boys with accompanying sodomy. The boarding school he was sent to was even worse than most
.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Daniel, sitting back. Sophie realised he was more comfortable now that they were discussing his own area of expertise, just as she grew more uneasy.

  ‘David is not a sodomite, is he?’ she asked.

  ‘Many are who cannot admit it to themselves,’ said Daniel. ‘Early sexual conditioning is powerful.’ He shook his head. ‘The English public-school system could have been designed to create dysfunctional adults.’

  ‘Or ones perfectly conditioned to succeed in a world ruled by and chiefly benefiting men just like them,’ said Lily. ‘It’s a system that has worked for hundreds of years.’

  ‘“The battle was won on the playing fields of Eton”,’ quoted Daniel. ‘It could also be said that the murderous stupidity of its leaders was also a product of the playing fields of Eton and schools like it. It took the Russian revolution to stop it. No matter what the Empire likes to think, it was the desertion of German troops infected by communist ideas that stopped the war, not the tactics or heroics of the Allies.’

  ‘But this Wallis Simpson,’ said Sophie. ‘She really wields so much power?’

  ‘Yes. She is divorcing her latest husband as we speak, to be free to marry the king.’

  ‘He is going to try to marry her!’ Sophie looked at him sharply. ‘You expect me to edge out a mistress who David loves so much he is prepared to risk his throne?’

  ‘I don’t think David is prepared to risk his throne. He believes, like a six-year-old, that he can have exactly what he wants now he is king.’

  Wait, thought Sophie. ‘James, are you seriously thinking I should become Queen of England? I don’t think I would be welcomed either. Not to mention the . . . complications of my own status.’

  ‘Of course not. One of the reasons we need you for this is because you would never be suspected of trying to become his wife. But you were once his close friend. You, of all people, can convince David of the brutal side of fascism. Give him the confidence to be king without Wallis Simpson at his side.’