2 reconstituted dried eggs (or 2 fresh)
3 tablespoons golden syrup or treacle
8 ounces plain flour
pinch salt
½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon mixed spice
1 pound dried mixed fruit
3 tablespoons cold, strained tea
Line an 8-inch cake tin with greaseproof or parchment paper. Preheat oven to 300°F.
Cream the margarine and sugar. Gradually add the beaten eggs, then the syrup or treacle. Sift the dry ingredients together and add to the creamed mixture. Mix in the fruit and tea. Spoon the mixture into the prepared cake tin and make a hollow in the top so that the cake will be flat once cooked.
Bake for 2 to 2½ hours or until the top is firm and the sides are pulling away from the tin. Cool in the tin. When cool place in an airtight container.
The British Ministry of Food, 1944
CHRISTMAS 1944
BOB AND NIGEL
The plane touched down upon the snowdrifts Bob had carefully painted two days before, and rolled its thirty yards. The propellers slowly stilled, though the pilot kept the engine running. Bob gave George a semi-salute as the door opened. Greenie ducked out first, her hair freshly blonde, wearing a rose-coloured coat trimmed with rabbit fur and what looked to be US army PX nylon stockings, followed by Jones in a trench coat, soft hat and carrying a valise.
The plane began to turn to take off again, and suddenly there was no reason to play Bob. Nigel was conscious of the four moth holes in his woollen jumper, the worn knees of his moleskins, the necessary sartorial adjuncts to his character. Only his scarf was perfect: a Christmas present from Rose that he could not bear to leave unworn. The three of them hurried to the end of the field before speaking as the aircraft taxied, then rose again into a sky pregnant with another storm.
Greenie inspected him briefly, then gave him a fierce hug. ‘Love the moustache.’
Jones’s inspection was longer, and he did not try to hide his concern. ‘You’re looking thin.’ He grasped Nigel’s hands and squeezed them, let them drop, a demonstration of affection that would not have been too out of place in any of the roles they’d played before, including that of Miss Lily and her butler.
‘You and Mrs Goodenough would have me stuffed like a Christmas turkey,’ he evaded. In truth pain had consumed his appetite. He lived on weak green tea and toast, topped with bramble jelly, crabapple jelly, redcurrant jelly, all the fruit fragrances Mrs Goodenough tried to tempt him with.
He did not think the tumour had returned. This pain was different, more likely emanating from scar tissue that had been slowly increasing over the past few years, aches even from the injuries both external and internal he’d received as a young man on the North West Frontier. And simply pain, as if his body was worn in too many places, and no movement or position of rest was comfortable. ‘Hereward has made up your old apartment at the Hall already.’
‘Can we pop into the cottage for a cup of tea first?’ asked Jones casually.
‘Of course,’ said Nigel, slightly surprised. Mrs Goodenough had prepared a feast for them to eat at the cottage tonight: pheasant in cider, Jones’s favourite. He had already mentioned it when Jones rang to say when they were arriving.
‘I don’t suppose Mrs Goodenough has made cherry cake?’ asked Greenie.
‘Cherry cake and your favourite gingernut biscuits too,’ said Nigel, who had given his month’s sugar ration for them.
They began to walk. ‘Is she well?’ asked Greenie.
‘President of the Women’s Institute. She gives thrifty cookery lessons on Wednesday evenings at the Vicarage if you’re interested.’
‘I’ll pass,’ said Greenie. She gazed at the snow-capped branches, the bare ivy fingers that clung to the stone walls. ‘It’s good to be back,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t ever want to go away again.’ She glanced at Nigel. ‘I’ve grown tired of it all. Tired of intrigue, and being alert every second, every day. I just want peace.’ She looked around and added quietly. ‘I want to be home.’
‘Don’t we all,’ said Jones.
Nigel nodded. He led the way into the cottage kitchen, its only warm room. Hereward had placed three small armchairs opposite the stove the year before, with a low ornate table from the Hall that Lily had brought back from Japan so many decades earlier. Nigel even slept here sometimes; the chairs were comfortable, and when one dozed off after the late news there seemed little point waking fully to go upstairs into the cold and empty bedroom with no Sophie.
They’d had less than a decade of marriage, but he still woke each morning, reaching out before he opened his eyes, hoping she might be there. But there was good reason to think she was alive and safe, according to James’s sources, even if Count von Hoffenhausen had lost his life as a result of that disastrous attack on Hitler, and Hannelore too had been removed from the Lodge. The count, like many of his conspirators, had bargained for the lives of his family, which meant that wherever she was Hannelore was — possibly — still alive, and had taken Sophie with her.
James’s contacts had also ascertained that there were only two servants at the Lodge serving a Herr Stauffen, a Gestapo operative: a manservant, Schmidt, and a cook, Frau Müller, who had cooked for the prinzessin before. Frau Müller might be Sophie, who, just possibly, had learned to cook in her time in Germany. Nigel had never known her to spend time at the stove. It was more likely that she and Hannelore had been forced to move elsewhere.
James had tried to rescue them twice in the past year, once with a lorry driver, amenable to bribes, illegally transporting confiscated art to Switzerland. The confiscation was not illegal — Nazi high officials could take what they liked from non-people — but sending it to Switzerland showed a lack of confidence in the Führer and must be done secretly.
Not secretly enough, as it happened. Instead of dispatching cargo to Switzerland the art’s new owner took a journey himself to the Russian front. The art — and Sophie and Hannelore — remained in Germany.
James had also heard of a plane taking an agent to Germany — a Jewish German who knew this was a suicide mission, but felt his life well spent on it, and the authorities were prepared to risk plane and pilot to get him there.
For a few days it seemed possible that the plane might land in the lane between the fields near the Lodge — Nigel had photographs of it and the area was remote enough for a plane to land and take off. But it seemed it was not near enough to the agent’s target. That plan, too, was abandoned.
There had been no plan since.
Nigel had plotted, of course. He had spent his entire adult life plotting, in whatever guise he had been in. He’d run through his lists of contacts, even potential contacts, for someone who might just be able to take Sophie . . . where? For though he knew women who would offer her shelter, none could get her to Spain or Switzerland, and she had probably been safer staying at the Lodge than with someone who knew she must be hidden. But Hannelore would take care of her, he told himself, at breakfast, as he moved the wooden sheep, or when he woke and heard the cuckoo call at five am.
He blinked to find Jones regarding him carefully. He quickly moved the kettle from the side of the stove to the hotplate and warmed the teapot, while Greenie cut slices of the cake. She took a bite and grinned. ‘Ah, that’s better. I know I’m really home now. I’m looking forward to our own bed in the Hall, too, even if we do need to come down here for Mrs Goodenough’s cooking.’
He didn’t ask if they wanted to live in this cottage. He had given it to them purely for security, in case his cousin had inherited Shillings. The Hall had been their home for most of their lives, in one role or another. Perhaps, now, they could finally be themselves.
He tried to find a topic of conversation. Once they would automatically have summarised what they had found in Palestine — if that was indeed where they had been. But this time they had been working directly for James. Nigel did not nee
d to know their mission, and so he neither asked nor was told. Even asking how the weather had been, that most conventional of conversation starters, might elicit enough information for him to deduce their location.
At last he said, ‘I’m glad you’re back. You’ll be a good addition to the teaching staff.’ It would be undoubtedly less arduous than the work they’d been doing, and considerably safer. He hoped that they would stay here now. Jones was five years older than him, Greenie two years younger.
Jones rubbed his hands. ‘At last, I get my hands on the young ladies.’
‘You’ll keep your hands to yourself,’ said Greenie, who rarely had. But she and Jones seemed more at ease with each other than they had ever been, though there was still no wedding ring on Greenie’s finger.
‘Is there news of Violette?’ Nigel asked abruptly. He hadn’t been going to ask, but the question was too heavy to hover unsaid.
‘James said she has been working with a resistance unit, not one associated with Britain. Perhaps she found . . .’ Greenie stopped.
Some patriotism at last? Guilt, at betraying Sophie? Or, more likely, Nigel thought, Violette had decided to buy insurance, for collaborators were vanishing all over France with the liberation. He glanced at Violette’s parents as he put the tea leaves in the pot and poured in water. Jones and Greenie had not seen their daughter since December 1940, he calculated, though James could surely arrange for them to get to Paris now . . .
‘Violette is busy. There is so much to do now Paris is free again. Fashion will be a large part of their recovery,’ said Greenie.
And there are so many conversations you do not wish to have with your daughter, thought Nigel. Violette would never seem like the long-mourned baby stolen from Greenie, nor had Greenie ever shown any wish to have other children. Jones had loved fatherhood, but even he . . .
He did not finish the thought. Jones and Greenie had also loved Sophie. They loved their country, too. Violette had betrayed both and, by doing that, had betrayed her parents. And yet he still couldn’t bring himself to believe she had done so purely from self-interest. Even if the Gestapo had threatened her, her business or those who worked there, surely she could have given Sophie a warning.
Perhaps she had. He would not know till Sophie returned. And Sophie must return, would return, surely by Easter or even sooner . . .
Jones gazed out at the snow-dappled laneway. ‘I’d forgotten how much I love this place. The smell of winter! I’ve eaten enough dust to last the rest of my life.’
‘There’ll be snowdrops soon,’ said Greenie dreamily. ‘And apple blossom and Mrs Goodenough’s apple pie. And my sewing machine had better still be up in the attic or I’ll have sharp words with someone.’
Nigel glanced at Jones, then at Greenie. There was something still unsaid. They had not come to the cottage merely to rejoice in being home. Greenie poured the tea, waited till he had sipped its fragrance, still redolent of those years in Japan. ‘Bob —’ safest to use the code name even now ‘— James has a request for you. He’s had a letter from Daniel.’
‘What did it say?’ He felt no tug of fear. Danny had sent a cable to Shillings after Rose’s accident; and another when, miraculously, it seemed she’d recover. Rose herself had written to Lily about her sudden war-time wedding, happily admitting she was pregnant. If there had been bad news he’d have heard it directly from Thuringa or from Midge Harrison.
‘It’s been an eventful year for them, with hard things as well as good. Daniel asked James if he could arrange another Christmas phone call.’ He swallowed then added, ‘With the twins’ Aunt Lily.’
Nigel sat silent. He was surprised it had taken so long to ask for a phone call. There had been that first aborted call, after all, even if ordinary people could not telephone across the world in war-time. They must have hoped for a call when Rose was hospitalised, or for her wedding.
It was a simple request. Simple for him to perform, and also impossible. He . . . Lily . . . had only ever been one person at a time. To be Lily he would need to dress as Lily, be Lily. And Lily was not here. Her letters were still postmarked Switzerland. But if Lily never returned from France, how could she speak to Rose and Danny on the phone from Shillings this Christmas? Completely impossible.
Yet these were his children. Children he longed to speak to, whose voices he yearned to hear once again. Children who had also been rocked to sleep by their Aunt Lily, had bedtime poems read to them and games of cricket played with them. But they were not children now. Rose was expecting a child, managing a major company. Danny had taken on the vast Thuringa holdings. He had never even heard their adult voices, never heard the young man who might have been his son-in-law. He still wrote weekly letters signed with all my love, Aunt Lily to each of them. But a letter and a voice were not the same.
‘A phone call would present a problem,’ he said, keeping his voice calm.
Which fooled neither Jones nor Greenie.
Jones reached over and took his hand. ‘It’s becoming time to decide,’ he said quietly. ‘France is still chaotic, but people will expect to be told soon if Lily has survived or not.’
‘Lily can’t survive. We discussed this before you left. There’s no guarantee the secret can be kept after my death, or even if I’m suddenly incapacitated and rushed to hospital. The scandal for Danny and Rose, the legal complications, the effect on James’s network James’s network, he thought, not mine. Only Lily had a role to play there.
‘Lily could move to Australia,’ said Greenie softly. ‘I’m sure when Sophie returns . . .’
He moved to the window and looked out. He wanted to yell in anguish, ‘What if Sophie doesn’t return? Do I tell Rose and Danny who I am, give them no option but to take me in, despite the new lives they have made?’ Because of course Rose and Danny would do just that, especially in their grief for their mother. Or would they blame Lily for that, and be right to do so?
And this was his home. Shillings, its moss-covered stone walls, the soft blue skies of England. He had perched on the red soil of Thuringa like a seagull blown off course, happy for a while, but knowing that instinct eventually would tug him here. Jones and Greenie had been his family for forty years, even Mrs Goodenough and Hereward.
‘Nigel, darling.’ It was a measure of Greenie’s distress that she used that name. She put her arms around him. ‘It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. You could be Lily part of the year, just like you used to be, at Thuringa, and come back home as Bob the rest of the time.’
Couldn’t she feel it? His body was too painful to haul back and forth across the world. Too weary to continue long as Bob the handyman, either. The Hall might remain requisitioned long after the war. The village had changed, and would change even more. What life would there be for Bob Green, retired handyman?
‘No need for any final decision just yet.’ Jones kissed his cheek, then took Greenie’s hand. ‘Come on, darling, we need to settle in if we’re going to get back here in time for dinner. Will I tell James to organise the phone call? He could say you’re ill, if you don’t want to do it.’ His look said that the excuse wouldn’t be far from the truth.
‘Tell him to book the call.’ Because no matter what complications had to be sorted out later, he would hear his children’s voices, their echo of Sophie’s tones, their Christmas laughter. Bob Green could not.
‘Would you like us here for it?’ asked Greenie gently.
‘No. No, I think I would like to be alone for the call. But thank you.’
‘Okay, I’ll let James know. We’ll see you at dinner.’ Jones grinned. ‘I heard a rumour that your cellar still has champagne.’
‘Ice-cold champagne,’ said Greenie dreamily. ‘I know you two will not dress for dinner, but I am going to.’
Nigel glanced at Jones. ‘Okay? Have you been mixing with Americans?’
Jones laughed. ‘No. A most erudite archaeologist who learned his English when studying in New York. Hilarious story, actually. I’ll tell you ove
r dinner.’
He smiled, managed to keep smiling as his friends, his closest family, left the room, till the front door was closed and he could sit with pain. Only some of it was physical.
After nearly three years of almost total silence, the church bells would ring for Christmas. But not just yet. Dawn still hid behind the snowy hills as Lily waited for the phone to ring. It would be late Christmas Day at Thuringa. She had chosen to wear the yellow silk she had worn for Christmas 1939, before her disappearance. A gold chiffon scarf at her throat, the blonde wig, silk stockings — a guilty luxury, for so many women deserved to have worn them in the past few years instead of them staying hidden in the trunk in the attic. Her nails were subtly manicured.
And no moustache. Bob Green could fake a small one, till his own grew again — not the luxuriant whiskers he had shaved off an hour before, but enough to make it look as though Bob Green was just trying a new style for Christmas.
Lily could not exist with a moustache.
The phone rang. ‘James Lorrimer? I have a call for you from Australia.’ The operator had a slight French accent, which could make her either a French woman living in England, or a woman in France speaking English. James had arranged a replacement for this morning, using Christmas as an excuse. This way the local operator would not recognise Lily’s voice and announce to the village she was home, nor would her replacement tell the other operators where her exchange was located. The Bald Hill operator undoubtedly would be listening in to the call, too, and possibly other operators across the world, which was why this call was booked in James’s name, not Lily’s — and James had the authority for a war-time call across the world.
‘Aunt Lily? Merry Christmas!’
‘Rose.’ And suddenly Lily couldn’t say another word.
‘Aunt Lily? I thought you would be pleased!’
‘I am. My darling Rose. I simply cannot speak. Talk to me, please. Tell me everything. Your young man . . .’
‘He’s here, so I can’t say anything rude about him. Say hello, Paul.’
Legends of the Lost Lilies Page 34
