Legends of the Lost Lilies

by Jackie French

  ‘I truly don’t know. She has stopped sending information. Our last intelligence was that she is staying at the hunting lodge near Munich — it’s too isolated for surveillance. Possibly — even probably — her uncle has suspected her activities and is making sure she can find out nothing more. But the lodge is as safe as any place can be in the war.’

  ‘Then why am I here?’ she asked quietly. ‘And why so urgently?’

  ‘Because a woman died in the south of France three weeks ago. An unimportant woman who lived in seclusion with her husband, who died three days before she did, of a particularly virulent strain of influenza. Her name was Amelie, Comtesse de Brabant.’

  ‘But what has that to do with me?’

  The familiar eyes met hers again. ‘We need you to take her place.’

  Chapter 8

  When times are hard, hope costs nothing. Hope shared with friends can bring joy. Just possibly, hope may change the world.

  Miss Lily, 1914

  ‘You can’t be serious.’ Sophie took a slice of cherry cake, to show the impossibility of such a proposition, and also because she was still hungry and this was Mrs Goodenough’s cherry cake, the best in the world.

  ‘I am entirely serious. We have been looking for an opportunity like this for over seven months. The possibility that European aristocracy and disaffected army officers might lead a revolt against the Nazis is too important to ignore. Contacts in the resistance have ensured that the comtesse’s death has been kept secret — she is said to be taking a long convalescence. But if she fails to appear for too many months there will be enquiries.’

  ‘But why me?’

  ‘Partly physical likeness. You are similar enough to be able to use her identity documents. Those can be forged, but genuine ones are far safer. But you were always our first choice for a mission like this, even if we had to supply false documents. The women trained at Shillings can’t enter what is still a closed circle of society —’

  ‘Rubbish. You always chose the best of English aristocracy, as well as European. I was the middle-class exception.’

  ‘Exactly. Any English aristocrat already has too many European connections. They’d be recognised within a day.’ The man in front of her smiled. ‘But you were a small, defiant colonial fish swimming in strange waters, believing her only value lay in her father’s corned-beef empire, totally unaware that she was both lovely and intensely lovable.’

  ‘Sometimes I think that year was my only season of complete, uncomplicated happiness,’ she whispered.

  ‘But entirely complicated for me,’ said her companion wryly. ‘Offering you James as the most suitable companion for your future — and quickly, before Count von Hoffenhausen swept you off to a castle on the Rhine — when all I wanted to do was kneel before you at breakfast, and say “Miss Higgs, will you be mine?”’

  ‘I seem to remember I proposed to you.’

  ‘Almost a decade after I’d finally asked you to marry me.’

  ‘You and Jones made a joint proposal, sitting together on the sofa, both of you in uniform. I wonder if any other woman has been proposed to by an earl, with his butler cum batman offering good reasons to accept him.’

  ‘We’ve had quite a history, haven’t we, my love?’

  ‘You talk as if it’s all over.’

  ‘Is it?’ he asked quietly. ‘You are the one woman who can play this role, totally believable because you moved in those circles for years, and yet not widely enough to be recognised in Paris now.’

  She looked at him with quiet horror. Yes, she had longed for something more challenging than paperwork. But this! ‘It’s impossible. Too many people know me and would recognise me in France. Even my mother is there, though we have only met once, and that was more than twenty years ago, so we could probably pass each other in the street and not notice.’

  ‘The people you worked with in the last war aren’t from the circles in which you will be moving.’

  ‘It’s not just old acquaintances from France or Belgium. People in Germany have met me too. Hannelore’s Aunt Elizabat —’

  ‘She remarried and moved to the United States in 1937.’

  ‘And that horrible man at whose castle we stayed.’

  ‘Who fled to Switzerland to avoid conscription into the army.’

  ‘And Count von Hoffenhausen? I’d be mixing with exactly the kind of people Dolphie is hunting too. What do I say if I meet him? “I say, old thing, would you mind not mentioning I’m a British agent?”’

  ‘He loves you.’

  ‘He loved someone he had constructed in his imagination. He kidnapped me, drugged me —’

  ‘And, yet, when he knew you would always remain faithful to your country, not his, he did not kill you, even though it would have been convenient to do so.’

  ‘He didn’t have time to, thanks to Jones and Greenie and then Violette. Anyway, he’s married. I’m married. He would turn me in to the authorities within five minutes.’

  ‘He is now a widower. Truthfully, I don’t know if he would turn you in or not; nor can we risk it. But there is no reason for him to recognise you — you and the comtesse are similar in height and facial type, but when you become her your hair, dress and manner will be very different. If by any chance you see him you can even dash for the loo. But you will be based in Paris, and he is in Germany. There’s little chance you’ll meet.’

  ‘What use am I in Paris, if I am to investigate the sentiments of German aristocrats?’

  He looked at her patiently. ‘Because Paris is where every German soldier spends his leave. The German army even gives each man a book on how best to enjoy it. Paris is being transformed with brothels for every class of soldier, nightclubs for every taste, and luxury hotels for officers and their French mistresses. Who better to flirt with than a beautiful young French comtesse?’

  ‘I’m not young.’

  He smiled. ‘The comtesse was thirty-three. You look far younger than your age. And you are deeply, unalterably beautiful, and will be when you are ninety-four.’

  She looked at him helplessly for a moment. ‘I can’t. I don’t just mean I can’t carry it off. The war may drag on for years. I have a husband, children, a business that provides vital supplies for our armies.’ And I might die, she thought, which would mean abandoning them all forever.

  Her work with Higgs was essential, even if played out in boardrooms and factories, via long phone conversations and paperwork that seemed to reproduce itself faster than rabbits. England and its armies could not fight without food, and England did not even grow enough to feed its civilian population. Did her potential usefulness in Europe outweigh her undisputed achievements back at home, her loyalty to her family?

  ‘Six months,’ said the man she could almost think of as Bob. ‘We’re not asking you to sway the undecided, simply to evaluate current sentiment. Three months’ training, while arrangements are settled — that is the fastest we can get you there — then three months in France.’

  ‘You expect me to sniff out anti-Führer sentiments in three months? It might take me that long to find a good butcher.’

  ‘Hannelore has sent us a list of names,’ he said patiently. ‘You may only need to get one or two of them to trust you to find out who might be further encouraged by contact from England.’

  ‘So I just flutter my eyelashes seductively and say, “Guten Tag, Herr Kolonel, do you feel like strangling the Führer sometimes?”’

  ‘You will know exactly what to do when the time comes.’

  She sat silent. He was correct. Two decades of dealing with suppliers and factory managers and other men meant she was extremely good at tactfully extracting information they might wish to keep secret, from an inability to reach production targets to who was pilfering the petty — or not so petty — cash. She could even imagine giving a ‘Heil Hitler’ with a wink at an inappropriate time, and watching to see if the reaction was indignation, or male condescension for a mere woman who, of course, could not
understand the significance of such a great man, to, just possibly, relief at being in company where Hitler was not revered. But knowing she could do it did not mean she should.

  ‘You then return to England and make your report. Others can target those who might be persuaded, or support those who already want a change of regime. Your mission is simply to confirm Hannelore’s information, and add to it. George will fly you home again.’

  Sophie sat back, suddenly desperately weary. ‘You can’t ask this of me! I have children. We have children.’

  She remembered too late Nigel had sacrificed a life with his children to protect a vital intelligence network.

  He smiled at her, infinite sadness in his eyes. ‘Our children will be adults soon and they have a stepfather who loves them. Armies are not composed solely of those who do not have children.’

  She almost retorted, ‘But soldiers are mostly men.’

  If Nigel or Daniel had wanted to enlist, if they had been young enough, she would not have tried to stop them. Both had fought wars before. Danny planned to enlist on his eighteenth birthday, though it was hard to think of her gentle son as a soldier. She suspected he dreaded the thought of New Guinea, too. But within weeks of his birthday he would be in the blood and mud of the jungle island, with other young men as idealistic as he was, and with little more training than their school cadets and potting rabbits had provided. She had no legal power to stop him. She would not try to dissuade him either. It would be useless. Better he go knowing his family was proud of him, than having had to listen to her pleading.

  If a boy would offer his life for his country, with so little of its sweetness tasted, shouldn’t she? Lily-Nigel, even James, worked not just for love of country, but for Agape, that love of everyone.

  She was not abandoning her children to be uncared for. She would even return before they left school, long before they turned eighteen and Danny could be sent to New Guinea with the Militia.

  And there was that tiny whisper growing inside her: ‘I can do this!’

  She looked at the man in front of her. He would not have been a party to the plan if he thought she was betraying their children without the most overpowering of reasons.

  ‘What do you think?’ she asked. ‘Honestly?’

  She knew the look Lily and Nigel shared when they were suppressing anguish.

  ‘I think,’ he said slowly, ‘that any chance, no matter how small, is worth taking if we can end this war. At the moment, we are losing, despite what the newspapers are saying. Britain is being ground down. If it wasn’t for the colonies’ raw materials we’d have lost a year ago. As it is,’ he shrugged, ‘we can’t replace the ships that are sunk fast enough; nor can Australia, nor Canada. It takes less time to build a fighter plane, but they’re not much use for carrying supplies for an entire population. With the lack of ships to transport food it’s a toss-up which will happen first — that Britain will starve, or an invasion will be successful. Japan is perilously close to India and Australia — if they had moved less swiftly and paused to consolidate their positions as they went they would have been unstoppable.’

  ‘But America has joined the Allies now.’

  ‘They have only just begun to mobilise. Most of the fleet was destroyed by the attack on Pearl Harbor. Their main objective now is defeating the Japanese, though they’ll be fighting in the war in Europe, too. If Hitler is eliminated, that leaves the USA free to focus on the war in the Pacific.’

  ‘In other words, all faint hopes must be seized, even if this one means my possible imprisonment or death?’

  ‘No!’ he said sharply. ‘Your new identity will be impeccable. And you will have Violette to help you.’

  ‘Violette must be a major asset to your organisation.’

  ‘It is now James’s organisation, not mine; he refuses to have any contact with Violette.’

  ‘Why on earth?’ Violette had been separated from her mother, Greenie, at birth. Her early years had been spent with an elderly member of La Dame Blanche, the Belgian Resistance movement. Sophie believed that after the loss of her daughters the old woman had become viciously imbalanced, especially in the way she had accustomed the young Violette to exacting brutal revenge on any collaborator. But Violette had shown herself ingenious — and ruthless — both in Berlin in 1927 and when Sophie had been kidnapped in 1936. ‘Violette would be the perfect contact for agents in Paris.’

  ‘I agree. James does not. James says Violette is truly loyal only to herself, enjoys risk, and is therefore unreliable.’

  Sophie hesitated. Violette had never expressed love for Jones and Greenie, the parents she had so belatedly been reunited with; nor had Greenie been able to give her the love she’d had for the baby she’d been parted from, although she had tried. After her adoptive grandmother’s death, Violette had, indeed, lived with no love in her life at all for several years. Yet Violette had been close to Jones, and even closer to Lily and to Sophie, who she admired, and who did not attempt to restrain her with too obvious parenting. But Daniel had expressed relief when Violette left their family circle.

  ‘Daniel once called her a “possible psychopath”,’ Sophie admitted. ‘Though he wouldn’t tell me why. But Violette saved my life. James has to admit that.’

  ‘James believes Violette saved you not for love, or loyalty, but because your gratitude, and money, would be useful. He said she also employed far more violence than was necessary and appeared to enjoy the bloodshed as well as the adventure.’

  Sophie bit her lip, thinking back, then shook her head. ‘She was much younger then. I would trust Violette with my life.’

  ‘You might have to,’ he said lightly. ‘Violette’s lack of connection with any British agency — and, as far as we know, any resistance organisation — will be an advantage. She is perfectly placed to vouch for your new identity.’

  He reached out and took her hand in his. His was more calloused than she remembered, with a hint of ingrained dirt, but they were the hands she’d loved, small for a man, a little too large for a woman. ‘Sophie, I love you. So does James. I don’t think either of us would have conceived of this if we didn’t think you would survive.’

  ‘Despite the loss of every other agent?’

  ‘Not quite every agent, now. And those were not from James’s network. All of his agents are still alive.’

  ‘So far.’

  ‘As you say, maybe none of us will survive this war. But believe me when I say we are not sending you to certain death, or even probable death. You won’t be caught in a truck with the resistance, trying to blow up a railway line, or discovered transmitting in a cellar with a two-way radio. We worked out your possible identity, and contacts who will help you, every detail, before I asked you here.’

  ‘You said that Lily needed me.’

  ‘She does.’ Another wry smile. ‘The fact that your country needs you, too, does not lessen that.’

  He met her eyes. ‘You are loved, and you are needed. But if this works,’ Nigel lifted those graceful hands and Sophie, for only one second, saw Lily, ‘then Hitler and his henchmen will be deposed. Rudolf Hess offered a negotiated peace when he parachuted into Scotland, even if Herr Hitler refused to acknowledge his mission when it failed. A negotiated peace on far better terms for the Allies is possible now.’

  ‘The Japanese army will still be on Australia’s doorstep if peace is negotiated with Germany.’

  ‘The Japanese will also be facing the USA. If America only needs to fight in the Pacific and not in Europe too, the Japanese will be overcome.’ He sat back in his chair. The sunlight from the window shone on his scalp and showed the wrinkles of his decades on his face and throat. Miss Lily had always automatically shielded her face from the harshness of direct sunlight. Yet there was still a glimpse of her as Bob said softly, ‘You may end the war.’

  Sophie stared at him. Sophie Higgs-Vaile-Greenman might be the lever that stopped the war? Unlikely. Remotely possible. Far better than a war dragging on for dec
ades, or ending in the servitude of the lands she loved, certainly. Both possibilities were deeply tempting — as they were meant to be. Sophie Greenman had been using Miss Lily’s arts for too long herself to be manipulated by them.

  ‘What if I say no? Will George Carryman risk his life again to take me home?’

  ‘If that’s what you wish.’

  Sophie wondered if that was true. Letting her think she had the freedom to choose might make her more likely to agree.

  A chance to end the war. How could one say no to that? But such a small chance. The chance of a beam of sunlight in the unending black.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said at last.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Good?’

  ‘If you haven’t recoiled immediately you will almost certainly agree.’

  Sophie managed a smile. ‘You let me announce the decision myself.’

  ‘Things need to be hurried in war-time.’

  ‘So I’ll be training with your Lovely Ladies?’

  Bob almost managed a smile. ‘No. The less the others know of your mission and the less you know of theirs, the safer for all of you. Besides, you have already graduated as a lovely lady.’

  Charm that had permeated her so deeply it was now an instinct? Walking, swan-like? Gazing with delighted intent into the eyes of whoever was talking to her, even if it was about the art of growing the largest marrow at the Thuringa Show? Pausing in a doorway for a few seconds before she entered a room, so everyone looked up at her? As she smiled for every one of them . . .

  She shut her eyes for a moment, remembering that magic winter and golden summer before the Great War. The shock of finding that European royalty actually liked her, this gauche colonial from an empire of corned beef. The laughter, the confidences, the loyalty as they left Shillings that last day, knowing they would always be alumni of that select academy, Miss Lily’s Lovely Ladies . . .