Legends of the Lost Lilies

by Jackie French

  A deep voice, a good one: ‘Merry Christmas, Miss Vaile.’

  ‘Merry Christmas to you, Paul.’ And I know you saved my daughter’s life but if you ever hurt her I will hunt you like a rat. ‘I can’t tell you how overjoyed I am about the baby. You’ve entirely recovered now?’

  ‘Well, I think my career as an international gymnast might be over, or a ballet dancer too, but I’m not doing too badly. And Rose is . . . is beautiful. Here she is again.’

  ‘Aunt Lily? What will you do for Christmas? Did you get our presents? I’m sorry my knitting is still wobbly. I’m arranging to have samples from every one of our factories shipped to Shillings this year now things are a bit easier. You can feast on canned pineapple, dried fruit and corned beef! Oh, and the pearls are glorious! Thank you! And the book . . .’ She laughed softly. ‘Will be most useful.’ A quick aside to Paul. ‘I’ll tell you about the book later, darling.’

  Sophie’s book of Japanese woodcuts, which Lily had asked Daniel to wrap for Rose and give to her privately. Thank goodness Daniel was not a prude, but then if he had been Sophie would not have married him. Rose would indeed find the woodcuts useful. Lily had sent a similar book to Danny four years earlier, in case it was necessary to counteract the smut he might be told at school by other boys who might never have learned love could come with fun and laughter.

  ‘You’re doing well? And the baby? No morning sickness?’

  ‘Only for a few weeks. I’m eating like a horse. Oh, I wish you were here and could feel her move. I swear she dances whenever I put a record on the gramophone. I’d better give you to Danny now. Here he is.’

  ‘Aunt Lily? Merry Christmas! Is it snowing? Mum told us it snowed for her first visit to Shillings. It’s ninety-four degrees here. You could cook an egg on the chook shed roof. I mean you really can. Annie, she’s a friend of mine, tried it.’

  Lily began to cry then, though she hoped her smile crossed the Date Line, and not her tears. Danny’s voice was a man’s now, and not a boy’s. She would never hear his boy’s tones again. And nor would Sophie.

  ‘Aunt Lily, you don’t know . . . I mean, what Mum is doing . . .’ So much could not be said over the phone, not with operators listening.

  Lily made her voice light. ‘I expect she’ll be home as soon as all the war crises come to an end. Though it looks like your Pacific War will go on a little longer even than ours.’

  ‘You really think it will be soon?’

  ‘As soon as possible.’

  The boy . . . no, the young man, was not asking if, but when. And that was what was answered too.

  ‘Here’s Pa, just for a minute.’

  Daniel’s voice wishing him Merry Christmas, then the two young voices side by side. ‘Merry Christmas, Aunt Lily. We love you!’

  ‘I love you, too, my darlings! I miss you so much!’

  ‘You’ll have to visit as soon as the war is over —’ began Danny.

  ‘I am sorry, your twelve minutes is up.’ The Bald Hill operator did sound sorry, so had most definitely been listening in. Even James Lorrimer could only commandeer twelve minutes on Christmas Day.

  ‘I love you!’ Lily called again, hearing the echo of their voices as they spoke a final time before the phone link was cut. ‘Love you, Aunt Lily. Love you!’

  The phone was silent, but Lily held it a long time before she placed the receiver down.

  Mrs Goodenough was coming to Christmas lunch, too, and Hereward, and Jones and Greenie of course. For five minutes only Lily considered meeting them like this. But of course people might call in, it being Christmas, the vicar perhaps, a new incumbent, invalided out after Dunkirk, a man who had never met Miss Lily but would undoubtedly realise who the woman in Bob Green’s house must be.

  And yet Miss Lily sat there, her hands unmoving in her lap. Bob Green had thought he had made an irrevocable choice, three years ago. But Bob Green was no relation to the children. How could she live with no right or cause to visit them, to hold her grandchild in her arms?

  Sophie, Lily thought. I can’t decide this until I can talk with Sophie, confess the past, see what she feels about the future, because looking at her face I’ll know. Somehow from that first day Lily had always been able to see Sophie’s feelings, no matter how much she might hide them from others, even from herself.

  Lily smiled, remembering. Such a prickly young woman, ridiculously overdressed and over-jewelled, but Lily had seen the vulnerability too.

  Perhaps she should never have permitted this call, though it had given her more joy than anything in the past three years. But it was a reminder just how much Bob Green had lost. Was it possible to bear the loss of children, grandchildren, and Lily too?

  Miss Lily, stood, with a swan-like grace Bob Green could never manage, and walked upstairs to change.

  Chapter 47

  Midge Harrison’s Tomato Jam

  Tomatoes grow well in a war and drought and make wonderful jam.

  2 pounds tomatoes

  Grated zest of three lemons

  12 peach leaves

  1 pound sugar or as little as half a cup

  Boil all except the sugar till soft and mushy; add whatever sugar can be spared and stir till dissolved. Boil till thick and a little sets in cold water — about half an hour. Bottle and seal.

  This is like a very dark honey, quite unlike tomato. It’s good on bread or crumpets; also good with leftover cold meat or hot roasts.

  FEBRUARY 1945

  SOPHIE

  She had been invisible, and if she stayed that way, she might be safe.

  Sophie kneaded rye flour, ground pumpkin seeds and caraway, added them to the bread dough and then a handful of the starter kept covered in the bowl near the fire. She kneaded the loaf again, then left it to rise as much as a loaf with so little true flour could do. She checked the haunch of venison slowly stewing in its marinade of wine vinegar, with sprigs of thyme, juniper berries and bay leaves. There should be other spices, but she could not remember them, and Herr Stauffen had never noticed their absence, and nor had his guests. At first she had salivated as she cooked, imagining eating the meals to come. Now she found she could manipulate ingredients as if they were the chemicals in Grünberg’s old laboratory.

  Hunger was a constant companion, sometimes merely muttering, at other times taking over so her entire body shook. She was not permitted food of her own and so she ate the scraps from the plates, which she assumed was what Herr Stauffen expected. No ‘Frau Stauffen’ had arrived, and no close friend or mistress stayed at the Lodge either. Guests came occasionally and guests left; the same guests rarely came again. This was a man who liked his solitude, or disliked his fellow man. His wounds had soon healed, but he still only left the Lodge two days a week, when a car and driver arrived to take him to what was presumably Munich headquarters.

  He slept in the room Hannelore had occupied. The manservant Schmidt lived in Sophie’s room, but that was probably just coincidence, as that bed had been made up when they moved in. Schmidt must have assumed that the clothes belonged to a friend of Hannelore’s. Neither he nor his employer had asked why there had been three servants, but only two servants’ rooms occupied. Perhaps they thought two women shared one room. More likely they had never bothered to look. Schmidt spoke little and seemed to have even less curiosity, which was probably why he had been hired.

  Sophie slept in Grünberg’s chamber by the kitchen, which was small, but the bed was comfortable and the quilts enough for warmth, especially as the kitchen stove let a little heat into the room too. She dressed in Grünberg’s clothes, quickly unpicking the Star of David from the older clothes, though there was no Star on the ones Hannelore had given her in the past year, when there was no one but herself and Grünberg and Simons to see.

  Every time she dressed she wondered where Grünberg was, and Simons, and Hannelore. For a while she had been able to pretend it was possible that the Nazis might keep their word, that Hannelore would be questioned, possibly for months, b
ut eventually returned. Hope ebbed slowly. She did not know when she finally accepted that the next car, or the next, would not bring Hannelore. She did know that she had never felt as alone.

  Schmidt did not speak as Sophie served his scanty meals in the kitchen, hoping he would leave his crusts, a little of the meat on the bones of his stew, the potato peel, or some of the acorn coffee which was all even Herr Stauffen could obtain these days. But Schmidt too grew thinner as the year wore on. Sophie never met his eyes: friendship and enmity were equally dangerous. Best Schmidt never saw her fully. She was just the channel for food delivery.

  Once a week a woman came to scrub and change the sheets and take away the washing. A silent woman, or rather one who knew it was safer not to speak in the house of an official of the Gestapo. Sophie took care not to speak to her, too.

  Twice a week skeletal men in rags adorned with the big yellow Star of David clambered from the back of a lorry, and dug or planted potatoes, carrots, turnips, cabbages, while guards watched to make sure starving men did not gnaw raw ones. They tended the greenhouse and brought the produce to the kitchen too, and the guards counted every spear of asparagus, every tomato.

  She wondered if whoever had been left at the farm had been arrested too, as possibly complicit with their landlord. There was no way for her to know, for she was forbidden to leave the house, except to go to the small courtyard to hang up her own washing, or the tea towels, or a shirt Herr Stauffen needed urgently. She was glad she knew how to wash and how to iron — she had learned that art a war ago, in Belgium and in France. It seemed she had not forgotten.

  The Lodge was little changed; some more artwork arrived in a covered truck — a collection of statues that had no theme, a female nude, a much-clothed peasant woman, a man holding a sheaf of wheat, some modern paintings, some ancient-looking, works that had been gathered for their value, she assumed, not chosen, as she and the Lodge had been gathered.

  One other new item. The Lodge now had a wireless, and a crystal set too. She crept out when Schmidt was upstairs preparing Herr Stauffen’s room or straightening his clothes. She listened at the door.

  Germany, the wireless declared, was triumphant, but slowly half-heard words became a pattern. England was still the enemy, so England still survived. Americans were dogs and so must be fighting. Our ‘gallant allies’ were still forging south, which meant the Japanese had not reached Australia, for when you reached Australia there was no further south to go. Unless the Japanese were on the mainland and battling their way down the country — hideous thought — but, if so, no towns were ever mentioned: no victorious parades in Brisbane, no mention of Sydney shipyards taken.

  It took Sophie minutes to realise that the faint crackling sound through the door that came from the crystal set was speaking English. Herr Stauffen, it seemed, listened to the BBC, whether as part of his employment or not she did not know. The BBC stuttered victories as well. Of course it did. But sometimes it spoke of ‘D-Day’ landings, of Normandy, a Paris free and celebrating, the Netherlands, specific dates and places that must be the truth. Mustn’t they?

  She only had to stay alive.

  Hannelore had given her this chance, and Grünberg, and even Simons and perhaps the people remaining at the farm who had not said ‘Frau Müller is a friend of the prinzessin’ but agreed she was the cook.

  She only had to live and she’d see Daniel, Rose and Danny. Thuringa and its gum trees and the scent of hot air and cattle dung, mountains that rode blue on the deeper blue of the horizon and were never white with snow. Live and she’d see Nigel and even maybe Lily. Oh, to see Lily once again.

  Daniel occupied her dreams, and Rose and Danny too, usually as children much younger than they had been when she’d seen them last, and younger still than they would be now. Sometimes Dolphie loomed there too, as she had seen him on that last hard day, but those were nightmares, night horses, to be sent galloping back into the dark, just like the flashes of her tortures that for some reason came to haunt her now, as they had not when Hannelore shared the Lodge.

  But Lily never came in dreams, nor Nigel, though sometimes she saw him in the distance, but could never reach him to see whether he was dressed as himself or Bob. But one day soon the war was going to end. If she was ever to see Lily’s smile again, or Nigel’s, she had to live.

  She simply had to live.

  Herr Stauffen seemed content with her work. While he stayed content, and she remained invisible, she was probably secure. But she did not need Dolphie’s warning to remember what had happened in invasions both at the beginning and at the end of the last war, and in its aftermath; she had known women who had survived and who had not.

  Defeat was rarely simply, never safe. She might belong to the empire that won the war. She was now in the land that would lose it. The invaders might come in a disciplined convoy, or be let loose to loot and kill. The retreating troops would likely have no discipline at all.

  Neither Schmidt nor Herr Stauffen knew about the hidden portion of the cellar. Hannelore had not had warning enough to get there. Deep in the night, quietly, Sophie lit a precious candle and took down supplies, a little at a time, that would not be noticed, pulling the shelves back as silently as possible, just enough to take her burdens through. Empty schnapps bottles filled with water. Blankets from Simons’s bed. Some of Simons’s clothes, which did not fit her, that she tore into strips that might be used as bandages or menstrual pads, though hunger had made the last unnecessary. A spare dress. A bucket for waste.

  She did not dare take food from the larder, but she dried crusts in the wood stove at night and added them, one by precious one, into the canister below. It would be enough for a week, perhaps, but she could come out to forage, with a refuge to retreat to.

  Time passed. She ate her scraps, or dried and stored them; she made the bread; she feasted on other scraps, torn from the scratchings from the wireless and crystal set as she listened at the door. She was missing, from life and from all else, missing like Miss Lily. In some strange way it gave her pleasure that she and Lily were joined like this now.

  She could survive. She could pray that those she loved survived too. And that was all.

  Chapter 48

  To Re-use Tea Leaves

  Always dry tea leaves after they have been used to brew a pot of tea. If you leave them to stew in the dregs, the next pot of tea you use them for will taste stewed, too. Well-dried tea leaves may be used three or even four times, though the fourth time let the tea sit for five minutes, not two, before you pour.

  Advice to housewives, 1945

  15 APRIL 1945

  NIGEL AND BOB

  James brought a small box of tea down from London, as he always did these days. This time he must have called in at the Hall, for he brought Jones too, still in the overalls in which he and Greenie taught the women who passed through Shillings what was still discreetly called ‘self-defence’ rather than ‘how to render your enemy swiftly unconscious when he finds you photographing secrets’.

  Nigel forced his hands to calmness as he made the tea and put out the eggless, butterless apple teacake that Mrs Goodenough had brought him yesterday, but which he hadn’t yet touched. If James had brought Jones there must be news that James thought should not be borne alone.

  He poured the tea, falling accidentally into Lily’s grace with the teapot. He had been doing that more often recently, but it didn’t matter. His role at Shillings as the odd-job man was too entrenched now for strangers to notice a gesture slightly too delicate for a Bob.

  ‘Well?’ He smiled at James, aware it was Lily’s smile, warm and deeply discerning, but no longer caring about that, either. ‘You have news of Sophie?’

  James carefully helped himself to cake, then picked up the cake fork that a Bob would not have placed on the table. ‘Not exactly. The Lodge is too remote for surveillance. We still know nothing of Sophie’s and Hannelore’s movements after Count von Hoffenhausen’s death. But MI5 has put together a group that hav
e gone to Germany in advance of the US and Soviet armies to try to locate our agents and bring them back to England before they can fall into Soviet hands. We have officers assigned to the front-line US units too. MI5 have agreed to add Sophie’s and Hannelore’s names to the list of those agents.’

  ‘I see.’ Every day Nigel carefully moved the coloured pins on the map of Germany that showed the Allies moving closer to the Lodge. Now Sophie would not be lost in the confusion of retreating and advancing armies. ‘How long?’

  ‘I can’t tell. They might find her and fly her back in a week, or several weeks. It might take months. Germany is in chaos, with two armies advancing and one retreating and breaking up.’

  A week! Nigel ignored the longer estimates. Sophie might be here in a week!

  Suddenly the persistent pain that drained his energy didn’t matter. Mrs Goodenough must use the last of the cherries she had kept preserved in syrup for just this day, and the almonds up in the attic. He’d kept apple prunings in the shed especially for the fires.

  Sophie was coming home. And with her warmth, and choices, and perhaps a life . . .

  He glanced at Jones, who sat expressionlessly. Nigel knew exactly what that lack of expression meant. Jones had already known that the rescue party had been sent. Jones was glad for him, but . . .

  There always had been a ‘but’ about Sophie for Jones and Greenie. They and Sophie were friends, but never could share Sophie and Lily-Nigel’s closeness. The three they had been for so long had never truly become four.

  James put down his cake fork. ‘There is something else.’

  Jones’s expression became slightly wary. He obviously had not known there was more.

  ‘The Ministry may not be leaving Shillings quite as soon as we supposed.’

  Jones frowned. ‘But surely, with the war in Europe nearly over, there’s no need to continue this kind of training.’

  ‘There are other enemies.’