The pilot did look at her then, her eyes furious, even though her scars were not mobile enough to truly express anger. ‘What business is it of yours?’
‘Because the Boche killed my family, and tortured some of them, and if the Boche did that to you I would like to give you le cadeau ideal.’
The pilot considered. ‘An ideal gift? For me? Very well then. The Germans shot down a plane. I dragged the pilot from the flames. He is now blind. We married, though I keep my own name, and he runs the business end of our air transport business. I am as you see me now. What kind of “ideal gift”?’ Was that a smile on the lipless mouth? ‘I wouldn’t mind another aircraft.’
‘That I cannot give you, Madame. But I can make you a dress.’ The blue and silver brocade would be wasted on a dance at Bald Hill, especially a dance she now had no intention of attending.
‘I don’t wear dresses. Now please excuse me . . .’
‘Madame, you have a figure most fine. It is your face you wish to hide. I will make you a dress with a matching bandeau so beautiful no one will look at your face. And my mother taught me how to cover the scars with make-up, and give you lips and eyebrows.’ All that was necessary was in the box that ensured Miss Lily’s face was perfection each time she left her room.
The woman hesitated. ‘That isn’t possible.’
‘It is most possible, Madame.’ And would be interesting, even spectacular, and fill in the time while the old ones talked and she was left out of it all. ‘Will you let me try?’
‘I will let you try,’ said Miss Morrison.
An hour later Miss Morrison peered at herself in the mirror of Miss Lily’s dressing room.
‘This is the first time I have looked in a mirror for over twenty years,’ she whispered.
The face that looked back at her had uneven skin, but tinted powder mixed with water and a little almond oil had covered the red scar tissue. Rouge gave the face definition. Painted-on eyebrows were the height of fashion, and so not remarkable at all. The wisps left by the eyebrow pencil over and above the eyes gave the illusion of lashes that were no longer there.
Violette had left the lips thin, and used the palest lipstick in Miss Lily’s palette. ‘You like the fabric?’ She had pinned it roughly into shape, then used brown paper to cut and pin a pattern onto Miss Morrison’s body.
‘What? Oh yes, it’s beautiful.’ She still stared at her face in the mirror.
‘Bon. We will now go down to lunch, and I will explain to my Aunt Lily that we have borrowed her cosmetics to do this. My Aunt Lily is Lady Lillian Vaile,’ she added proudly.
‘I know. Will . . . will she mind?’
‘She will be glad,’ said Violette, for of all things her Aunt Lily was kind. ‘I am sure she will lend you what you need and I will write to my maman’s suppliers, to ask them to send the materials to you too. Once you have their address you may do this yourself.’
‘I don’t know how to thank you,’ said Miss Morrison frankly. ‘I have been hiding myself under a helmet and goggles for twenty years.’
‘I am happy to help any woman who has fought the Boche.’ And anyhow, she had been bored, and Aunt Lily and Aunt Sophie would be grateful she had done this miracle for Aunt Sophie’s friend. It was useful to have Aunt Sophie and Aunt Lily grateful. ‘I will begin on the dress now, so you may wear it at dinner, and everyone will say how beautiful you are. And they will mean it,’ said Violette.
The face in the mirror nodded. The addition of painted eyebrows allowed a little more expression. But no make-up, Violette realised, would help tears form, the tears so badly needed by a woman who had refused to be destroyed.
Chapter 11
Water is always a comfort — the seashore, a lake, a river, even a bath. Perhaps it is because, according to Mr Darwin, our species once came from water and deep within us we long to return.
Miss Lily, 1906
‘Sophie?’
She didn’t turn. She knew his voice, his shadow. She had been sitting there for two hours, perhaps, letting the song of the breeze soothe her, the spring heat warm bones that even nearly two decades after the war still sometimes felt its chill.
Daniel sat beside her, cross-legged, then, without speaking, took her hand. A hard-muscled hand, despite his profession, the hand of a man who still chopped his own wood or helped his patients build small houses where they might find peace. ‘Sophie, do you remember when we first sat here together?’
Still she didn’t look at him. ‘Yes. That old swaggie, Bullocky Black, was boiling his billy here as we rode by. He offered us a cuppa.’
‘And you just happened to have corned beef and pickle sandwiches in your saddlebag, and a whole fruit cake.’
She turned to him then. ‘One of the men had seen him set up camp the day before. Old Blackie wouldn’t accept charity. Sharing tucker over a billy of tea though, that’s different.’
‘It is impossible not to love a woman who carries corned beef and pickle sandwiches in her saddlebags. Sophie, my darling, will you marry me?’
‘And not go to England?’
‘Will you go to England and then marry me?’
They were perhaps the only words that could have persuaded her that the preposterous scheme was even possible. She turned to look at him, found his face serious and close. She reached up as his lips met hers.
A gentle kiss, their first after eleven years. She felt him move back with reluctance and she regretted that too, but this was neither the time nor the place for more.
‘Daniel, everything today . . . it doesn’t make a difference to you?’
‘Of course it does. This morning I was full of doubts. Sophie, you were ostensibly a widow for six years. We loved each other — or so I would tell myself in moments when the sun shone brightly, but could never accept in the four am shadows. But in all that time you never looked at me as a woman does who is inviting more than friendship. And now I know why.’ He took her hand and kissed it. ‘My darling Sophie — Nigel is still alive for you, isn’t he?’
‘I don’t . . . I mean, how did you . . . ?’ She smiled. ‘Ah yes, my psychiatrist. I didn’t even admit it to myself until today. I told myself Nigel Vaile was always really Miss Lily, and Lily is the companion I have now. But it’s not true. It’s never been true.’
‘Second truth,’ said Daniel lightly. ‘Do you love Daniel Greenman, or do you love John?’
‘Both,’ she said immediately, knowing as soon as she said it that it was true.
‘Thank goodness. Because it was John who came back to Bald Hill, though it was Daniel Greenman who founded the clinic, and told himself that being close to Rose and Danny was my main reason for coming back here. But, at times, many times, I am once again the man who tries to live only in each second of the present, seeing a flower open or the long grass flowing in the wind, who wants the simplicity of a hut by a gate and needs the exhaustion of chopping wood or skinning rabbits to sleep.’
She smiled at him, rested her hands against his chest, then let him draw her down, onto his shoulder, his arms around her.
It felt good to be held. Six years, she thought. I have not been touched except in the most chaste embraces of my ‘sister-in-law’, the hugs of my children and by Green’s hands of friendship and professional expertise.
‘Very well,’ said Daniel, his voice soft above her head. ‘It is time for a third truth.’
She pulled away from him. ‘You are already married too!’
She felt physical pain at the possibility. There had been years since the war when both John and Daniel Greenman had vanished from public view. There had been those rumours that he had married his widowed sister-in-law. That woman was happy now, her husband found at last, but had she and Daniel . . . ?
‘Not a truth about me,’ he said calmly. ‘But you.’
‘You know about me now.’
‘But do you know yourself? Sophie my darling, you have loved two men who have both been two people, who still are two people. Don’t you
think it possible there might be two Sophies too?’
‘Of course not! I know my life has changed enormously several times. I was a colonial corned beef heiress, then Countess of Shillings, then a businesswoman again. But all are just . . . me.’
‘I didn’t mean that. I was thinking of the Sophie who tried to seduce a French generale, who ventured into Bolshevik-held Munich to save the life of a friend . . .’
‘I’m not that woman now.’
‘Are you sure? You have spent six years valiantly trying to give jobs to the vast desperate horde of Australian unemployed, being a model mother, friend, judge of the jams at the Bald Hill Show. Aren’t you now . . . just sometimes . . . bored?’
It was as though an elephant that had somehow been standing unnoticed on her shoulders had jumped into the river. She could almost hear the splash as well as the weight lift from her. She smiled at him. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said softly. ‘Sometimes — just sometimes — I have been so very bored.’
Chapter 12
Yes, I am sure the wheel is a most useful invention. But far more has been achieved by the woman who invented the kiss.
Miss Lily, 1906
He kissed her again then. Or she kissed him. Every man tastes different, she thought, but it is more than that. Every kiss expresses a different bond.
This was a deep one. And passionate: potentially far too passionate for a dutiful mother on the banks of a river so close to the house. She drew back at last, reluctantly. That reluctance too, was yet another realisation.
She had slept with two men in her life: her husband and this man. Nigel had shown expertise and an astonishing athleticism, which she had put down to his realisation that — whether or not he survived his surgery — a full sexual life would be impossible for him afterwards, and so it had proved to be. The nights with Nigel had been thrilling. They had also been loving.
This was . . . different. Because it was a beginning, not an ending? She loved this man. She would marry him. And their love would be long and slowly, wonderfully changing . . .
‘So you will marry me?’
‘Yes.’ She sat back now, so he could see her face. ‘If Lily-Nigel had been able to live openly in society, I would not have asked for a divorce. I loved him. As you realised, I still love him and he loves me. I love Lily too, though not like that. But my . . . oh dear, I have nothing but a cliché. My heart belongs to you.’ She met his eyes, those deep green eyes. ‘Rose is your daughter. I am sure of it.’
‘And Danny is Nigel’s. You did the almost impossible, my dear, and were impregnated by two men. And another almost impossible: you loved two men, too. But now . . .’
‘Now I want to marry you, as long as Lily can still be in our lives.’
‘Of course. In our lives and in the home we share. And even, sometimes, Nigel Vaile, if he wishes, and it can be discreet, and if he accepts you as my wife, not his.’ He looked at the river for a while and added, ‘Just as the hermit John will still be part of me, even if kept hidden.’
‘Not always,’ she said softly. ‘Not from me.’
‘I’m glad.’ He took her hand again. ‘Now for the other Sophie, the one who has not yet admitted she would love the challenge of captivating a king.’
‘He is a bastard. I don’t mean literally. Sadly he is all too legitimate. David is racist, entirely self-centred and completely irresponsible. He ordered us to go to Germany and did not even have the courage to face me after Nigel’s death. Well, what he thought was Nigel’s death . . . Yes, I would very much like to . . . set him on a better path. Or spank him, like the child he is.’ She considered. ‘Which in fact he might like. Daniel, will you come with us?’
‘Both Lily and Lorrimer have asked me to, though it would probably not be useful to be your official fiancé until all this is over. I will be the old friend of the family escorting two women who could not, of course, manage a voyage by themselves, with only the help of their servants and ship’s crew.’ He smiled. ‘And if I seem captivated by the Dowager Countess of Shillings, who would not be?’
Sophie smiled. ‘It would be so respectable to have a fiancé. I hope I can have one soon.’
‘James told me back at the house that he will begin the flight back to England tomorrow. He has booked suites for the rest of us, sailing on Friday.’
‘So quickly?’
‘That was one of the reasons for his haste — once we are in England we must be seen to be travelling at leisure, with no purpose other than to renew old ties and introduce Danny to his inheritance. It’s the Port Moruya, British and Australian owned, with all the usual steerage and first- and second-class berths, but only twelve suites, kept primarily for senior public servants.’ He smiled. ‘It is luckily quite simple to order a senior public servant to sail a fortnight later.’
‘All of us?’
‘Yes, including Violette — that girl needs a strict eye kept on her. Miss Letitia will undoubtedly have lists of everything the children must see at the Victoria and Albert Museum by tomorrow night. Jones and Green will join the ship at Bombay. Till then there will be a stewardess to act as your maid, and Lily’s — Lily says that she can manage the more intimate duties until Green joins you all again.’ He grinned. ‘Lily will be your chaperone.’
‘England.’ She shut her eyes, imagining England in winter, then opened them. ‘Violette! Daniel, she threatened to castrate Bill Latton this morning. I have promised to have her apprenticed to a Parisian couturier.’
‘I am sure James can arrange that. Or Lily, or one of her connections.’
‘True. And the children will love the adventure. We can call it a holiday — three months free of lessons.’
‘I think Miss Letitia will make sure their education is not neglected.’ He hesitated, then stroked her hair. ‘Separate staterooms, Sophie. But . . . I hope not always alone in them?’
She met his smile. ‘No, not alone.’
Never alone again, she realised. The privileged, indulged, spoiled child who had, despite all her riches, been desperately alone, now had a solid wall of love and friendship all around her, a small army, as they went to battle for the future of England and its Empire.
Chapter 13
The ancient Greeks had so many words for so many kinds of love but even they, I suspect, had at least a thousand too few.
Miss Lily, 1901
Hannelore, Prinzessin von Arnenberg had been smothered in rooms for too long, smiling charmingly for too long, listening and evaluating while pretending to be sweetly demure for far, far too long.
She deserved a holiday, a Holy Day as the English once had it. And this was one of those days, here by the lake at the lodge that was still the most beloved of the homes she shared with Dolphie and his wife, the colourless ‘Countess Whatshername’. The first time she had ever known Dolphie to be cruel was when he bestowed that nickname on his heiress wife.
The lodge and its farm had sheltered her and Dolphie in those days after the war that were still a time of war, the Bolsheviks nominally in control, roaming packs of ex-soldiers stealing, raping, maddened by the death and torture they had been forced to perform, unwilling or unable to put the fighting behind them.
Sophie had found her there, rescued her, with her friendship and her money, with which Hannelore had bought the first of her factories. She had in fact never visited them, for a prinzessin did not do such things, or not in Germany, especially when the title was no longer official and so the slightest of slips could instantly undermine her political acceptance.
Leaf dapples on the lawn, shadow dapples on the lake, swans artfully ignoring the human sitting on the flower-dappled grass until Anna came running from the front door, bread in hand.
An amazing child, blind all her life, but so confident that no one would ever guess she could not see. Anna jumped down the last of the stairs, then headed unerringly to the lake, knowing the distance from memory as well as by the scent and sound of water, the moistness on her face, the soft lapping in her ears.
The fact that the swans happened to be exactly at the spot where she stopped, however, was entirely the swans’ doing. The Prinzessin Hannelore von Arnenberg might not carry bread for them, but her small goddaughter always did.
‘Over here, Liebling,’ called Hannelore, holding out her arms. Anna walked more tentatively towards her voice, till she found Hannelore’s fingertips. The swans followed her progress, waiting.
Hannelore felt the warmth of the small body. Anna smelled of sunlight and buttercups and bread and butter. Blonde hair, blue eyes, a skin like early peaches: Anna might have been Adolf’s perfect Aryan were it not for her lack of sight. Hannelore was afraid — as Gerda was too — that each child in the entire school for the blind Anna attended might be subject to the recent Lebensunwertes Leben or ‘life unworthy of life’ laws.
The forced sterilisations the state sanctioned for those considered imperfect was tragedy enough. The killing of ‘impaired persons’ had not yet been publicised, and nor would it be. But it took a surgeon hours to sterilise a child and weeks for that child to recover. Death took only minutes.
This new Germany valued efficiency.
Hannelore had not told her maid of the new law. Gerda was scared enough. And Anna?
Anna was a joy. Hannelore would never have children — the Bolshevik’s bayonet had made sure of that. But she had held the baby at her baptism; she played with her each week when Gerda visited to show how she had grown, as well as to make sure the new maid was doing all that she should be to keep the shine in her mistress’s hair.
Gerda had said nothing about a husband who used his fists to show his opinion of a wife who had produced so imperfect a child, though Hannelore had noted the bruises. But as soon as the law was changed to allow divorce on the grounds of genetic disability, Otto vanished.
And Gerda returned to Hannelore, sending Anna to live with her sister.
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