At last heat and cold faded.
‘Sophie, we need you,’ said Lily gently.
Soon, she thought. I’ll open my eyes and be with you soon. But I must be careful not to fall sleep, for if I fall asleep I will miss crumpets with Lily, Rose and Danny, and yes, Daniel will be there, for he knows all about Lily now. Daniel will eat crumpets too . . .
‘She will be there,’ said Hannelore.
Hannelore was here too! They would have a feast. After tea they would see kangaroos, for Hannelore had always wanted to see sunlight and kangaroos.
Something grated nearby. Sophie ignored it. The sound did not belong to Thuringa, and they must be at Thuringa if there were kangaroos outside. She must tell Lily to stay here at Thuringa so no one would ever know, she could not quite remember what they must never know, but it didn’t matter, not now, with everyone she loved so close.
‘Lily,’ she began, but her lips made no sound.
‘Sophie!’ Hannelore’s voice was almost a sob. Hannelore should not cry. She must be happy, with sunlight and kangaroos. Sophie had to tell her . . .
An English voice said urgently. ‘Find a medic! Hurry! Someone, help me get her out of here.’
‘Sophie, it will be all right. Truly, all will be well,’ said Hannelore’s voice.
That was good. Sophie smiled, and decided she might sleep.
Chapter 53
What is worth giving your life for?
If you have to ask that question, you may not easily find an answer. Those who give their lives usually do so without measuring its value against another’s. They simply give, an instinct of empathy or love and of humanity. Parents instinctively give their lives for their children. Strangers leap into rivers to save people they have never met. Soldiers fight for a cause, for the many. Would humans have survived if, many, many times, lives had not been given so the many could live?
Miss Lily, 1939
4 MAY 1945
NIGEL
Nigel Vaile sat in bed in striped flannelette pyjamas, suitable pyjamas for a Bob, and gazed at the pigeon roosting on his windowsill with a strange new calmness.
This pigeon could not be the one that had brought the message from Sophie. James had not told him where that pigeon had flown to, but it was unlikely to be in England and even less likely to be at Shillings, for they had no dovecote here, nor had any of the tenants bred racing pigeons.
But the pigeon had arrived more than two years ago, on the day James had rung to say Sophie was alive and at the Lodge. And yesterday James had rung again. Sophie was in Germany, alive, though ill with septicaemia, but James had organised that new wonder drug, penicillin, and George the wonder pilot, too, to bring her to a hospital in London. James would phone again as soon as she was there.
Sophie had been at the Lodge all this time. Now she was coming home. They could talk, at last; make decisions, at last; create whatever new life he would have in the new land of ‘after the war’.
We have a granddaughter, Sophie, he thought. Her name is Lily-Anne.
Nigel lay back on his pillows, reassured by the pigeon’s quiet presence, glad the cottage windows no longer had to be shrouded for the blackout each night. Somehow, as long as the pigeon had been there, he’d been able to believe Sophie would stay safe.
He’d lived mostly with his memories the last few months. Not of his parents, nor his older brother, the school where boredom was worse than the beatings that were, at least, over quickly. By the time Nigel Vaile had survived the North West Frontier and found a haven with Misako in Japan, Lily had learned to tweezer the trauma out of Nigel’s life and feast only on what was good.
The triumph of the first time Nigel had bowled the vicar out at the midsummer cricket match; he’d been only fifteen and the vicar had played for Harrow and Oxford. Meeting a defiant, overdressed colonial girl with a fierce intelligence and a conscience she did not have the experience to hide. The same woman, confident now, dropping from the sky to announce she would marry him and ensure he survived his surgery. The joy when he finally knew she loved him. His wife, gazing at their newborn babies as he held them in his arms.
Nor did he have regrets. If he hunted for them, he might find some, but why waste time with that? His life stretched behind him, dappled with so much love. Yet for some reason, he could not see his future, and there must be a future now, with the Allied armies advancing to Berlin.
And soon he would hold Sophie’s hand again, and feel her warmth. Mrs Goodenough would strengthen her with soups, and he would feed her memories: the day the doctor told them she was bearing twins, the Prince of Wales serenading her with his bagpipes to scare their unwanted guests away, the first day Lily had ridden through the Thuringa trees with her — with aching scars, but he did not tell her that — while Sophie explained how beauty could be dry, and tussocks and glinting eyes of quartz among hot rocks more lovely than a stretch of mossy field.
When she was stronger, they would talk, the conversation they should have had before Sophie left for Australia in 1936, or even further back.
And then he would choose, or rather, Sophie would do it, even if she didn’t realise her reaction would be the catalyst for what came next. Choices were still possible, he told himself. Lily had a birth certificate, a passport and bank accounts. An Englishwoman could have survived the war in France, especially one who spoke with an impeccable French accent, who was charming, capable and had French friends. Those who knew Miss Lily also knew not to ask her questions. They would assume a war of glamorous secrecy, not one of feeding pigs. And somehow it would all work out, even if he could not see the path now.
He gazed up into the darkness. He no longer wanted secrecy. He wanted . . .
What did he want? A night’s sleep, with no sudden dagger’s breath of pain. A cup of tea at breakfast, shared with Jones and Greenie, and perhaps Mrs Goodenough, who called in every morning now, as if to ensure he ate his toast. He wanted to hold his grandchild, with Sophie beside him. He wanted peace.
He reached for the photograph on his bedside table of Lily-Anne, the tired smiling face of the mother who was his daughter, and next to her, brown and confident, his son. If photos could fade from being gazed at, this would be blank by now. He reached for Sophie’s photo too . . .
A plane’s engine stuttered above him. He hardly noticed it — there was no need for air-raid warnings now. But the bedside table was under the window so he saw the sky explode the moment that the engine stopped, a star that turned to metal, fragments and a giant flaming mass falling down. Another crash, and screams and flames. But even before it hit the Hall, Nigel Vaile had grabbed a blanket and was running. He flew downstairs and out the door and pounded up the lane.
The flames had spread already where the plane had crashed into the reception hall, but this part of the Hall was still undamaged. Women shouted, called, women in nightdresses, pyjamas and dressing gowns staggered out of the back door and the library French windows, then clustered in behind the Hall. There was no sign of Jones or Greenie.
Emily appeared, a cashmere dressing gown, sensible boots unlaced. ‘Down to the orchard,’ she instructed the growing crowd. ‘You, Lucy, take the names of everyone who’s here . . .’
Nigel ducked behind her, through the scullery then the kitchen. No smoke here yet — the wind was blowing it away from the main part of the house. Screams rang like a siren from the butler’s pantry. He flung open the door. Hereward gazed up at him, his legs pinned by a fallen shelf.
‘Knew you’d come, your lordship,’ panted Hereward. ‘Knew you’d never let us down.’
How many years had it been since he’d been called that?
‘Never, my friend.’ No time to check if the legs were broken; nor did Nigel have the strength to carry him. He took the butler’s remaining hand and pulled.
Hereward screamed again. The shelf didn’t move. Nigel tugged again as Hereward’s eyes shut in what Nigel hoped was only blessed unconsciousness. On the third try the man’s body moved by
perhaps an inch. Tug by tug he moved him further, till finally the shelf clattered to one side. Nigel kept dragging, trying to mute his own pain, through the kitchen, and into the scullery just as Dorothy and Emily staggered back inside. He let them each grasp one of Hereward’s arms and keep dragging while he went back inside.
He swiftly gazed around the corridor. The drawing room, the dining room and the entire east wing were probably done for, but the women’s bedroom wing on this side seemed still intact. He headed for the stairs up to the bedrooms as smoke billowed like a small tsunami down the hallway.
Where were Jones and Greenie? Had they got out while he was in the pantry?
Smoke drifted, gathered, choked, thicker up the stairs and on the gallery. A form emerged from it, thudding down the stairs. Jones, his arms supporting two young women, one cradling what might be a broken arm, the other’s nightgown red with blood where it clung to her right leg. Greenie staggered down the stairs beside him, a familiar young woman in a fireman’s lift over her shoulder: Di Lennon, that was it. Her mum lived in the cottage with the wisteria, her dad had been a footman . . .
‘Servants’ rooms are clear now. Ceiling collapsed,’ Jones panted. ‘No one was in the main Hall at this time of night. Greenie will check the guest rooms next. Then that’s the lot, thank God.’
Nigel reached towards young Di. ‘I’ll take her.’
He felt his scars scream as he took the limp weight. For a moment he thought she might be dead, but then she groaned. He grabbed the banister with his free hand, to help support them both. Greenie vanished upstairs into smoke once more. Neither man wasted breath trying to stop her.
Flames licked the far end of the gallery now, but the fire was eating the Hall slowly, the wind still pushing it away from this section of the house, the thick stone walls and hard ancient timbers refusing to combust. He and Jones used the flames’ flicker to find their way to the scullery with their cargo, and again found Emily and Dorothy, now with four helpers holding the ends of a blanket to use as a stretcher, ready to ferry the women outside.
‘Don’t go back in there, you two!’ ordered Dorothy, her face black with smoke, burns on her arms and slippered feet below her nightdress. ‘The roof could go at any second.’
Nigel almost smiled as he disobeyed her. Such a mouse thirty-five years ago, a sergeant major now. He and Jones took a lungful of comparatively oxygenated air, coughed almost in unison, then ran back into the kitchen, staying as close as possible to each other in the dimness.
‘Greenie!’ yelled Jones.
No answer. Something heavy cracked, then fell. The kitchen shuddered. Dorothy had been right. The creeping fire had become a dragon now, feasting on the wooden attic walls, and timber roof. Flames shimmered at the far end of the corridor, reaching upwards, as if trying to find their share of the feast.
‘Greenie, where the bloody hell are you?’ shouted Nigel, as he and Jones staggered up the staircase. But the fire’s growl was louder than any voice now, as it swallowed carpets, the hangings on the walls. Suddenly he heard a cough, and a voice just above them on the staircase.
‘Here,’ it croaked.
‘Greenie, get out now,’ snapped Jones.
Greenie ignored him — of course Greenie ignored him; nor had Jones probably expected her to obey. She swayed above them, her purple pyjamas the only colour in the thickening smoke. ‘Saw two of them heading the wrong way in the smoke,’ she managed to pant. ‘Fräulein and that Hilda woman. Always bloody late . . .’
And suddenly two shapes, below them. The women must have found their own way down the stairs.
He was about to call down to them when he heard Emily yell, ‘Fräulein, over here! Clear a space, everyone, we’re coming through!’
‘Come on.’ Jones grabbed his hand, then Greenie’s. Nigel’s lungs hurt, or his chest hurt. Blackness gathered behind his eyes . . .
Somewhere below Emily shouted, ‘Green and Jones are still in there, and that handyman. I’m going to —’
Her voice vanished in chaos as the front of the Hall collapsed, the drawing room where he had first seen Sophie, the corridor where the Prince of Wales had played the bagpipes. The noise filled the world, and for a moment the updraught carried the smoke with it, so the three of them stood in almost clarity on the stairs.
There was no gallery above them now, no corridor below, only this momentary space. He had reclaimed the Hall again, or it had reclaimed him, as if after so many centuries of protecting the Vailes, the Hall still sheltered him, leaving him seconds to gather everything important, everything she loved, whispers too strong for flames.
‘Miss Lily . . .’
‘A Mr Lorrimer to see you, Miss Lily . . .’
‘Darling Miss Lily . . .’
‘Ah, Miss Lily, I think the Kaiser might agree to . . .’
Pain had vanished, and maybe eyesight too, but she saw it all in memory . . .
‘Get them out!’ she heard Emily scream. Lily’s lungs reached for air and found none.
‘A most productive conversation with Mr Churchill, Miss Lily . . .’
‘Miss Higgs has arrived, Miss Lily . . .’
‘Lily?’ whispered Jones. She found his arm round her. Jones’s other arm held Greenie close. The three of them stood, their arms around each other, a small wall of life among the flames. Just as we have always been there for each other, thought Lily, an almost perfect moment, if only she could see Sophie one last time, Sophie and their children, and their grandchild . . .
And suddenly she glimpsed them, as love stretched time and place, Sophie laughing astride a low-hung gum-tree branch, holding a baby in each arm, pretending to ride it like a horse. His daughter, older than her photo, the scar across her cheek and beautifully business suited, striding down an unfamiliar corridor, and smiling. There was Danny sitting on the stockyard rails, the drooling toddler in his arms, throwing a rusk down to a dog. Everything Lily had ever wanted, love and comradeship and duty done.
‘I love you,’ Lily said to them, to Jones and Greenie, their faces close to hers as they drank the last thin shards of air.
‘Idiot,’ whispered Greenie hoarsely, smiling at her, as Jones said, ‘I love you, too.’
The roof fell.
Chapter 54
In my end is my beginning.
Miss Lily as she packed away her dresses in 1940, quoting Queen Mary Stuart
6 MAY 1945
SOPHIE
The room did not seem like a hospital, despite the large number of tubes leading to and from various parts of her, the sheets tucked in with the precision only years of nursing training can give and the highly polished floor devoid of rugs.
But the painting opposite was almost certainly a Cézanne, one a patient could gaze at for hours and find a universe within. The scent was faded pot pourri, not the disinfectant she had smelled in the tent, and then the various rooms and spaces she’d been aware of for short and floating times, when nothing seemed quite real, including life. She was also clad in a silk nightdress, which hospitals usually did not provide, as well as a bright white bandage on her left hand, which was strapped to too many tubes to lift, assuming she had the strength to try.
This was a most exclusive hospital, perhaps, or at least an exclusive floor where patients would not be disturbed or seen by visitors clutching a handful of roses for Aunt Daphne. The only sound was the faint noise of traffic. A city . . .
Big Ben chimed. Sophie counted. Ten o’clock in London then, and from the glimpse of faded blue between the curtains it was ten am not pm and this was either a rare smog-free day, or pre-Roman Britain, though the Angles, or were they the Saxons, did not have Big Ben . . .
And she was alive. Lily would be with her soon, and if this was an exclusive hospital they could damn well wheel her to a phone, tubes and all, so she could speak across the world to Daniel, Rose and Danny, say that she loved them, that she was sorry, that she would never leave them, even travelling for Higgs was done . . .
Th
e door opened. ‘Sophie?’
She managed to smile. ‘James.’ Her eyes flicked to the corridor — linoleum, slightly more hospital like — but Lily — no: Nigel; no: Bob — was not with him. Still discreetly at Shillings then.
‘Ah, you’re awake at last. How are you feeling?’
She gathered the fragments of her brain, her life, and found they still fitted in a reasonable whole. ‘Almost entirely without sensation, which I assume means I’m heavily dosed with painkillers, and need them.’
‘Severe emaciation, and septicaemia, which penicillin is cleaning up nicely.’
She remembered the cut, the swelling. ‘Ah, the new wonder drug. What else?’
‘Sophie, I’m sorry. They had to amputate two fingers.’
She said nothing, not even, ‘Which two fingers?’ She would find out in time, and what were two fingers compared to those she loved?
He sat by her bed in an armless chair that was and covered in blue silk, the kind of chair designed for the wide skirts of women but also suitable for a multi-tubed patient to sit in. ‘No questions?’
‘You know the questions.’ Sophie closed her eyes. Even this exchange had tired her. She would live and home awaited her, somehow, somewhen, and Bob or even Lily would be here soon, and there’d be no need to talk for a while, for Lily had the gift of quietness, with everything necessary communicated without words.
James said, ‘Hitler is dead. The Americans and Russians have taken Berlin. The war in Europe is almost over. Japan hasn’t yet surrendered but the Allied forces have almost conquered Okinawa.’ He hesitated. ‘Over one hundred thousand civilians committed suicide on the first day of the invasion. The emperor has ordered all Japanese to suicide rather than surrender. The Japanese army is starving. It can’t be long now.’
Legends of the Lost Lilies Page 38
