Legends of the Lost Lilies

by Jackie French

  Daniel adjusted his tie. Eventually he would need to explain to Rose and Danny why their mother had vanished to England at the behest of a mere telegram. It was an impossible job, one that Sophie could not do from England, and no one to do it but himself . . .

  He strolled through the garden as if he had merely gone for an early morning walk, as he and Sophie often did. The table on the verandah had been set for breakfast. He sat, carefully not looking at the chair that did not contain Sophie, as Mrs Taylor bustled through the French windows. War required a lot of bustling. Mrs Taylor was President of the Bald Hill Comforts for Soldiers Committee and Secretary of the local branch of Legacy, as well as their housekeeper. Besides, bustling made one feel as if one was really helping the war effort. Mr Taylor and their Johnnie were now Sergeant Taylor and Private Taylor, somewhere in the Middle East.

  ‘Scrambled eggs this morning, Dr G. Hens are laying well.’ Mrs Taylor put the plate in front of him. The days of a choice from the salvers on the sideboard had vanished, possibly forever, but apart from weak tea — long stewed on the edge of the stove to eke out the supply the coupons allowed each person — and a few other inevitable shortages, the privations of war had not hit them hard on a property where most of their food was home-grown. As a doctor and the woman responsible for organising so much bully beef, they were even allowed extra petrol coupons.

  ‘And here’s your toast too.’ Mrs Taylor plonked the plate down in a way unthinkable before the war, when toast came in a silver rack, replaced with fresh slices every twenty minutes and the scraps thrown to the hens. Toast piled on a plate retained a bit of warmth for longer.

  ‘Go easy on the strawberry jam,’ she added. ‘I’m saving the last pot for Master Danny and Miss Rose’s holidays.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Taylor,’ he managed, his voice casual, glad she apparently had noticed nothing unusual about him. He obediently helped himself to only a teaspoonful of jam. His stepson’s earldom was occasionally a burden to Danny’s family. It appeared that an earl — even a sixteen-year-old schoolboy earl — could not be expected to go without jam on his toast.

  ‘Morning, Dr Greenman. Mrs Greenman still not returned?’ Rita, the older of the two land girls billeted in the homestead, laid a comforting, sun-browned hand on his for perhaps two seconds too long before sliding into her seat. Twenty-two, the daughter of the foreman in one of Sophie’s factories, she had evidently decided that working with live cattle was preferable to packing their corned meat, especially if her father’s association with his employer meant she lived in what she must regard as the luxury of the Thuringa homestead, the residence of a genuine earl. Her hair had turned blonde overnight.

  Annie slipped into the chair on the other side of the table, accepting her scrambled eggs with a smile at Mrs Taylor. Nineteen, with brown hair as fine as rabbit fur, and as small-boned as a rabbit too, gave the glimpse of a smile that said she noticed the machinations of the Ritas of this world and was amused by them. She was the daughter of a country schoolteacher and his wife, and had actually done holiday farm work before enlisting in the Land Army when she left school. She had deferred her medical degree for war work.

  ‘It may take Mrs Greenman some time to sort out the problems in Townsville,’ said Daniel mildly. ‘What do you have on today?’

  ‘Fencing of course. Do you know how many miles of fences this place has?’ Rita pulled a face, then tackled the scrambled eggs she would certainly not have had access to at home, slathering Mrs Taylor’s home-churned butter on her toast. ‘You should come out with us after lunch, Dr Greenman. Get into the sunlight for a while.’

  Green shadows flickering through the trees on the tussocks. The afternoon river would mirror the slanting sun. The air would smell of bark and not of blood, the billy boiling . . .

  Daniel found that the young women were staring at him. He took toast, buttered it — essentially legal as it was made from the cream of Thuringa’s cows, though all Australians were supposed to observe austerity no matter how many Jerseys grazed in their home paddocks — added jam sparingly, forced himself to bite, swallow, be Dr Greenman, damask napkin on his lap, not John, who’d once worn ragged shirt and shorts, the earth warm under his bare feet.

  Sophie, I need you, he thought. I need the safety of your arms, the anchor of your voice. And in two months his children would be home. He did not know if he longed for or dreaded their arrival more.

  Chapter 5

  People look at the great houses of England and assume they are timeless in their grandeur and gardens. But a cottage is more likely to stay close to its original shape and purpose than the manor. Shillings Hall has been a fort, briefly a convent when the sole heir, a female, founded an order abolished twenty years later by Henry VIII, a hospital, then a fort once again in the Civil War. It had new wings added that now seem ancient, and was modernised time after time over hundreds of years, few of which measures seem modern now, except, you will be glad to know, its bathrooms. Shillings has always been the centre of an agricultural community, and a home, though the nature of both of those have changed too.

  And now Shillings changes once again.

  Miss Lily Vaile’s welcome speech to the new occupiers of Shillings Hall, 1940

  SOPHIE

  Sophie stared down at the paddock below them in horror. ‘George, pull up! You can’t land there!’

  ‘Why not?’

  She glanced at him incredulously as the plane headed resolutely downwards. ‘There are at least fifty sheep in that field.’ And no runway. She had last landed there with this same man as her pilot, back in 1926, but in a far smaller aircraft. An hour later the Prince of Wales had played his bagpipes to rid Shillings of unwelcome guests, and Sophie had proposed to Nigel . . .

  ‘Don’t worry.’ The reassuring voice broke through her memories. ‘The sheep trust me. They know I’m a safe pilot. I bet you not one of them even bothers to move.’

  ‘You are an insane pilot!’

  ‘Well, possibly. But I haven’t lost a plane or a passenger yet.’ George pulled the joystick. The plane swooped, then levelled, still dropping.

  The sheep didn’t move. The aircraft was almost at the hawthorn hedge when Sophie realised each one was made of wood and the swathe of green ‘grass’ was painted tarmac. The plane bumped slightly as it landed, then ran smoothly across the field, as Sophie grinned at the pretend sheep. Every one of them was slightly different, some with lambs, some gazing up, most heads down as if eating the grass.

  ‘Bob moves them every day. Wouldn’t do for a passing Messerschmitt to guess there’s any need for an airstrip here.’

  ‘Isn’t green paint a bit obvious when it’s snowing?’

  ‘Bob changes the colour with the season. Bob Green. General handyman.’

  Sophie took a deep breath. Bob Green . . .

  ‘Looks like there’s a whole committee to meet you,’ said George.

  Sophie stared out the windscreen as the plane drew to a halt. James, looking tired under his inevitable bowler hat, Mrs Goodenough, thinner and her apron temporarily discarded, Hereward still in most proper black with bright white cuffs, and he had lost weight too. But that was all. And why were the Shillings’s cook–housekeeper and butler here in a field, instead of waiting to greet her at the front door, as was proper?

  The one person who should be there was not. Lily, she thought. Lily’s absence from her life in 1936 when she had decided to stay in England and at Shillings had cut like a knife. But at least Sophie had known that Miss Lily still carved love and grace somewhere in the world. She would have to walk down Shillings’s passageways today knowing that no matter how many doors she opened, there would be no gentle smile, no faint perfume of oakmoss and roses.

  She forced herself to smile, to show no sign of grief or loss as she scrambled out onto the wing, then took James’s hand to steady her as she jumped down.

  ‘Sophie! It is so good to see you.’

  James looked too thin, too. ‘It is always good t
o see you, James,’ she said warmly, because the time for severe questioning had not arrived. ‘No,’ she added, as Mrs Goodenough began to curtsey. Sophie caught her hand and kissed the old woman’s cheek instead. ‘Curtseying is forbidden in war-time.’

  ‘I don’t think Britain has heard,’ said James drily, as Mrs Goodenough flushed, clearly pleased.

  ‘I have only just made the law. We must spread the word.’

  Hereward began a bow, halted.

  ‘Hereward, you are looking well. But I won’t kiss you in case someone is looking and it ruins your reputation. My suitcase is in the plane,’ she added. ‘Along with some boxes of provisions to add to the rations. Could you have them taken up to the Hall for me, please?’

  Higgs’s Corned Beef had now added lines of boxes of mixed dried fruit and packaged dates for sale to the public. She’d had exactly two hours to pack, but Thuringa was always plentifully supplied with Higgs’s produce, and Daniel and George had packed as much as George said the plane could safely carry. Sophie now wished she had demanded more time, a final night at home . . .

  If she’d had another night at home there would have been time to send a return telegram asking for more details before she left, coded of course, but less dramatic than the few words that had brought her here. She’d now had time to think of the questions she should have asked. Many questions, and for once James was going to have to answer them all, beginning with George’s shocking pronouncement about Lily that had driven all words away.

  ‘I thought it might be more discreet if you stayed in one of the cottages,’ James was saying smoothly.

  She bit back the words, ‘But the Hall is my home!’

  But it was not home; Sophie had made that clear when she left for Australia in 1936, leaving Lily in charge of the estate. Her title was a courtesy now, granted by King George at his wife’s request in recognition of Sophie’s role in the abdication of his fascist brother, now safely removed from any information that might help the enemy. And while Shillings Hall legally belonged to her son, even an owner had no right to stay in a house requisitioned by His Majesty’s government for the war effort.

  ‘I will see that everything is taken care of, your ladyship,’ said Hereward.

  Sophie presented him with a smile, despite the effort it took to manufacture it. ‘You are a wonder, Hereward.’ So she would not even have the reminders of Lily now, her parchment-lined small drawing room, her favourite seat with the dining room candles behind her — ‘Always have the light behind you once you are over forty.’ Nor would she now stay in the bedroom she had shared with Nigel, where the twins had been born, nor in the room she’d first stayed in and had occupied the last time she was here.

  ‘And there’s cherry cake for tea,’ said Mrs Goodenough firmly. ‘I saved the parcel of crystallised cherries and almonds you sent over. I knew your ladyship would be back again.’

  ‘And you are a miracle, Mrs Goodenough. Cherry cake!’

  ‘I’m billeted up at the house tonight. Too late to get back to Scotland now, but I’ll be leaving at first light.’ George grinned at her. ‘Thank you for not screaming, fainting or bringing up your breakfast.’

  ‘An eventful journey?’ asked James.

  ‘Only the last half hour of it,’ said Sophie drily. James took her arm as they crossed the field, while the others headed towards the orchard and Shillings. For the first time she let her emotion show. ‘James, George informed me an hour ago that Lily was dead!’

  ‘Sophie, please wait till we’re inside. Someone might notice us.’

  ‘And wonder why I’m upset? I have been dragged from my home at a moment’s notice with nothing more than an enigmatic telegram, told that the woman I love most in the world is dead, discovered that the man you sent to fetch me is a maniac conchie in an unarmed plane —’

  ‘George is the safest pilot I know,’ said James calmly. ‘And you could have sent a telegram demanding more information and had an answer by the time George refuelled in Darwin. You came willingly.’

  Sophie walked in momentary shocked silence. Yes, James knew her very well.

  Had the woman who had created a chain of hospitals and refugee centres in World War I and helped remove a fascist king from England’s throne been . . . just slightly — no, not bored — just left out of the dramas playing across the world while she debated the thickness of corned beef cans?

  Sophie Higgs-Greenman would not abandon her husband, children and workforce except in desperate urgency. But, yes, she had been all too willing to believe that just the correct level of urgency had been thrust upon her. She shut her eyes briefly, as the world spun slightly. She felt adrift, not just in another country, but in part of herself she had never fully acknowledged before.

  ‘But James, about Lily —’

  James made a quick gesture to silence her. They had reached the cottages, a small cluster for the workers on the Home Farm, thatched, despite Sophie’s offer of new tiled roofs when she married Nigel. The Shillings tenants were conservative, apart from their acceptance of flushing indoor toilets, bathrooms, a few telephones and electricity. But the flower-filled front gardens she had known before the war had now been replaced with cabbages and potatoes, though late roses and honeysuckle still climbed the walls.

  ‘Everything will be clear soon.’ James turned down the path to what had been the agent’s house, larger than the rest and slightly away from the others. Nigel had given the house to Jones and Greenie, when it had seemed that he would die and his cousin inherit, a fate avoided by Nigel’s marriage to Sophie and her producing Danny as the heir. As far as Sophie knew, Jones and Greenie had never used it but had always used Jones’s usual apartments in the Hall.

  She forced herself to speak normally. ‘Are Jones and Greenie back?’

  James shook his head.

  One of Lily’s letters at the beginning of the war had mentioned an assignment in Palestine or, rather, that Autumn will turn summer’s green to the tawny colours of Jerusalem stone. I fear their winter will be a long one, from which Sophie had carefully pulled the other meaning.

  ‘Who lives here now?’ Sophie had no wish to stay with a stranger, or even a cottager she had known slightly from her years as lady of the manor. She felt odd, light-headed. Had she subconsciously expected that somehow everything would be the same?

  ‘Bob Green’s using the house now.’

  Of course Bob Green would live here, as a relative of Greenie’s. Most of the village was related to each other — and quite probably to Nigel’s father, grandfather and other male ancestors as well — and the Green family was a prolific one. At times Greenie and Lily looked remarkably similar. Sophie felt her heart beat far too hard. The world suddenly seemed too clear, and yet as if it lurched just beyond her vision.

  What would Bob Green look like?

  The door opened as if the man who held it had heard his name. Of course he must have heard the plane land, and had, most probably, been waiting for their footsteps on the gravel path. And of course he would not have wanted this first meeting to be public.

  Then there he was, framed by the door. A thin face. Was everyone in this country thin? Medium height. A fringe of short grey hair around an otherwise bald head, a luxuriant grey moustache to make up for the lack of hair elsewhere. Kind eyes, and the calloused hands and ingrained dirt of a handyman who gardened.

  She knew the shape of those hands. She knew the eyes too. And yet Bob Green did not reach his hands towards her. He stayed in the dimness of the doorway, while she seemed unable to step inside.

  ‘Sophie,’ said Bob Green, as, for only the second time in her life, she fainted.

  Chapter 6

  The true test of a hostess is her ability to make a guest feel as welcome in a cottage as in a mansion, or at a picnic on a rug, or even in a cave if the car blows a gasket and you must suddenly shelter from a rainstorm.

  Miss Lily, 1937

  SOPHIE

  A faded chintz sofa beneath her. Embossed cream
wallpaper, dark with age. The furniture had the look of two hundred years of discards from the main house. Even the square of carpet was Empire, but mended at the edges.

  Bob Green sat on a small hard chair next to the sofa, watching her. A kettle’s whistle in the next room informed her that James was making tea.

  Sophie struggled to sit up as he brought in the tray: a silver teapot, slightly dented, with the Vaile crest; matching milk jug; the cherry cake proudly intact upon a cake stand; egg and watercress sandwiches unmistakably made with Mrs Goodenough’s bread, though Sophie had never seen only one kind of sandwich ever served on the Shillings estate, whether it be at the tea stall at the church fête or in any of the tenants’ kitchens. More than anything she had yet seen — even the Junkers, whose manoeuvres might have been an airman’s college prank, for, after all, no shots had hit them — that single kind of sandwich spoke of war.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ James didn’t sit. And only two cups, Sophie noticed.

  ‘Embarrassed. I’m sorry — I haven’t eaten since breakfast.’ Corned-beef sandwiches, which in fact she hadn’t eaten, as George had so clearly relished the treat. Australia might need to cut back its usual eight strong cuppas a day to four weak ones, but no one went hungry for lack of food in the shops. And she had been too tired to eat dinner in Lisbon.

  ‘I’ll leave you to your tea then.’ James hesitated, then bent and kissed her cheek. ‘I’m sorry, Sophie. There’s a good reason for the urgency. I’ll be back to answer questions later. I hope you’ll forgive me when you understand.’

  She nodded without replying, infinitely glad to hear the door close behind him, because she found she could not greet Bob Green with James watching, and James would know that too.