Miss Lily’s Lovely Ladies

by Jackie French

  Had she truly destroyed them? Of course, thought Sophie fiercely, angry even at her momentary doubt.

  She turned her mind to the earl’s letter:

  My dear Miss Higgs,

  Please accept my profound apologies for my absence during your stay at Shillings. I assumed, like most of the world, that we had endless time to play with. We did not. I cannot tell you where I am at present, as it would be scrubbed out by the censor, but that in itself will tell you why I cannot be at Shillings to greet you this Christmas.

  I hope there will be a time soon when we can meet — not just because you are my cousin’s friend, and the daughter of a man I deeply admire, but also because your own efforts in the past couple of months at Wooten have been extraordinary, far beyond the organisational brilliance one might expect even from your father’s daughter.

  One of the men from my brigade wrote to me [a section blackened by the censor] that you smile at the wounded as if they are men, not [censored again].

  My profound thanks and admiration,

  Nigel Vaile

  Where was he? In France? Flanders? The Middle East? They would have made him shave his beard off, she thought vaguely, unless he was in the navy.

  She opened the other letter.

  My dearest Sophie,

  I promised you peace, or at least implied it, when I encouraged you to stay in England, rather than sail for home. I am deeply sorry you are in this land of war, but also deeply glad, for an England with Sophie Higgs just now is a richer one. I am not referring to your father’s money, a blessing though it is.

  There is also another matter about which I believe I should have been more frank with you. It concerns your mother. I told you the truth when I said I knew nothing about what might have happened to her, but, as you have so bluntly pointed out, I do, at times, tell less than the entire truth.

  I have heard of a Mrs Higgs who lives in Paris. Whether she is your mother I do not know, nor how she came to be there. She may be no relation, but it is a slightly unusual name, at least for a resident of Paris. When you were at Shillings I was reluctant to distract you from your season with what might be a vain or distressing meeting. I now regret that, but alas none of us realised that things in France would become so chaotic so soon.

  I will give you Mrs Higgs’s address, as well as tell you the little more I do know about your mother, when we meet again. I very much hope that this will be soon — though I very much doubt it will be, nor can I encourage you to come to Paris when it may be occupied any day by the enemy.

  I gather from Her Grace that you have Wooten thoroughly organised, and its home farm too. I am proud of you, my dear, and look forward to our next meeting, and to introducing you, at last, to my cousin.

  Yours, with love,

  Lily

  The letter was postmarked Paris. Was Miss Lily working at one of the volunteer hospitals? Organising supplies for refugees? Or did the ‘chaotic’ mean she felt it safer to be out of England, in case she was accused of helping the enemy, before the war? Perhaps Paris was simply where she lived, when not at Shillings.

  She opened the parcel, almost in a dream. It was a box covered in old faded leather. Even before she opened it she could smell the scent that had lingered in the parchment silk sitting room of Shillings. She looked at the card inside: To Sophie, with love.

  There was no signature. Somehow she was glad of that. Miss Lily had not signed her false name this time, even if she would not give her real one.

  Sophie lifted the cloth. Beneath it was a piece of jewellery, small, gold, with an emerald heart. It had the beauty of age; it was not just old-fashioned but almost ancient, the pattern that was etched into the metal softened by time. It might have at one time been a man’s cravat pin or a fob, but now it was a brooch, and hers.

  She sat with it in her hand, ignoring the tears that slid unwiped — tears not just for the lost Christmas at Shillings, nor for the men in their wards, and for the whole mad world of war. These tears were full of joy too.

  I am so lucky, she thought, to have so much love.

  Chapter 44

  Why does no one write about the beauty of men? Even artists rarely celebrate it. Would it be different, my dear, if women were allowed their own voices?

  Miss Lily to the Duchess of Wooten, 1899

  JANUARY TO APRIL 1915

  Winter sat heavy on Wooten: the cook harried from trying to feed the patients as well as the staff; the dowager confined to her bed with arthritis in the cold weather; Blaise affronted by an orderly who seemed to think the army’s orders outranked a butler’s; Doris crying in the linen closet, her hands red and swollen from scrubbing, not the lady’s maid’s soft hands she had been so proud of; the Home Farm ploughman enlisted and the farmer was desperate to find someone who could handle a plough before the spring planting.

  Sophie changed the staff mealtimes to an hour earlier and arranged with two of the tenants’ wives to bring big pots of potato and corned-beef stew to the big house twice a day, placated Blaise with charm and the orderly with offers of tea with a genuine duchess, moved the dowager’s bedroom to one where she could share old Nanny’s sitting room and fireplace, and convinced a father his daughter could learn to handle a team and plough as well as she could horses and a carriage.

  Doris was reprieved from scrubbing: she and Alison served the meals now. As Alison said, once you’d taken the trolleys around three wings and three floors it was time to begin the next round. Doris was immediately happier — happy, even — in one of the ‘nurse’s’ uniforms.

  Most of Sophie’s time was spent on administration now, with Her Grace confined to bed: ordering supplies, checking their arrival, receiving calls from the tenants and solving more of their problems, deciding which of the woods were to be cut for timber for the army, making sure that while the hunters might be taken as war horses enough plough horses were left.

  One day she was at what now passed for family luncheon — just Alison and her — when Blaise entered the room, a silver salver holding a yellow telegram in his hand.

  Blaise’s face was white. ‘Lady Alison.’

  Alison stood. ‘Thank you, Blaise.’ Her voice was calm, her step unhurried as she took the telegram. She stood without opening it. ‘You may go, Blaise.’

  ‘Lady Alison, I know it’s not my place, but —’

  Alison touched his arm briefly. ‘That will be all, Blaise.’

  ‘Yes, my lady.’

  Alison waited till the door was shut, then moved over to the window.

  ‘Mouse, darling — do you want me to leave?’

  ‘Stay.’ She ripped open the envelope, then stood staring at it, her face expressionless.

  ‘Mouse?’

  ‘Dead.’ The voice was flat. ‘He could have sat the war out behind a desk back here …’

  She was crying, Sophie realised, even though her voice was steady, the tears dripping down onto her pearls.

  ‘You know what the joke is? I loved him. Not like a husband maybe, not yet. We hadn’t known each other long enough. But as a good man, a kind man. I wanted him to see his child. I could have done that one thing for him, at least. Who am I now, Sophie? I was someone because I was his wife. Who am I now?’ Her face crumpled. She sank into a crouch by the wall, rocking back and forth.

  Sophie kneeled beside her, holding her, trying to muffle the wails. ‘Shh, darling. Shhh. It will be all right.’

  Stupid words, she thought. But what could she say? It wasn’t all right. Alison had no husband now, never would have one again, perhaps, as more thousands of men died each day. The world had accepted that war could happen on a scale never known before. It would never be all right again.

  They held the funeral in the chapel: family, servants, a few convalescents who’d got attached to the quiet Lady Alison. Later, a small man with a smaller beard read the will. It was a simple one. Everything I own to my wife, Lady Alison Standish. Irregular, said the little man, but signed and witnessed. It would stand.


  Sophie stared at her friend, her face hidden by the small black veil on her hat. She was rich. Not as wealthy as the Higgses, but rich. It made no difference now, of course. There were still the chamber pots to empty, the letters to be read aloud, lint to scrape for bandages, used bandages that had been boiled to roll again, suppers to spoon into a hundred helpless mouths.

  Later, perhaps, the money might mean freedom, choices that could be made if Alison had the courage or even the power to imagine what they might be. But that would be in another land, one harder and harder to imagine. The land of peace.

  Whitehall, London

  20 April 1915

  My dear Sophie,

  Please do pass on my most heartfelt sympathy to Lady Alison. I have sent a card, but it will be one of so many. I would like to think a more personal message might be added too. I met Major Standish only briefly, but he seemed a good man and one who knew his duty. It would be trite to say he was a hero who died for his country, and yet it would be true. No matter how many times one writes it, it is still true.

  Forgive me for writing like this. I am tired, and I confess I am weary too, which is not, I find, the same as being tired.

  Tomorrow I leave for the United States, for reasons you can probably guess. One cannot say, of course, that without assistance we cannot win the war, and so I shall not say it. I CAN say, however, that if negotiations go as planned I shall return to England in about three months, but my absence may, sadly, be far longer. By then I hope to have earned at least an afternoon to call my own, or at least the right to assert that a weary tool will be of more use to his country after rest.

  May I make a request of you, and of Her Grace? I shall of course write to her separately. An American, Mr Thomas G Kranowski, is in this country briefly. Like your father’s, his empire is based on exporting food. His is based on rice, and I hope very much to persuade him, despite the risk to his ships, to continue

  to send his rice to England. It is possible that seeing your work at Wooten would encourage him in that, and also, perhaps, make him a stronger advocate of England’s need for help.

  Please give my regards to Her Grace, and again, my sincerest condolences to Lady Alison.

  Yours always,

  James

  Once she would have shivered at the thought of James Lorrimer’s trying to get yet another nation into the war. Now she only thought of how Mr Thomas G Kranowski could be charmed, not just by her, but also by a ‘genuine English’ duchess, as well as by seeing England’s need embodied in its wounded.

  When had James Lorrimer begun to call her Sophie in his letters, and sign himself simply James? She put the letter into the box where she kept all her letters now. It was easier to keep them all than think, Who is important to me? Whose letters should I keep?

  It seemed as if her life had expanded then contracted, like a balloon a child kept blowing up and letting down. The small life back home had become the larger life of English society; the war’s initial challenges had now shrunk again into days of ordering stores and checking bandage supplies, gobbling down hurried meals and the blessed blank each night as she fell over the cliff of sleep.

  And now Mr Thomas G Kranowski to persuade. She did not even realise how far she had come in this last year, when neither the logistics of his tour, nor the charm needed to persuade him, seemed more challenging than simply ensuring that Wooten had food for the coming month.

  Chapter 45

  I keep thinking, I can’t do this. But then I find I can do it, after all. That’s all we can do, isn’t it, Soapy, old girl?

  ‘Dodders’ to ‘Soapy’, 1915

  20 May 1915

  Dear Dad and Miss Thwaites,

  You will see from the address that I am in London for a few days. Alison and I have come down to select which of Major Standish’s paintings and other valuables and sentimental objects should be sent to Wooten. The house will then be sold. Alison never lived there with Philip, so it has few memories for her, nor does she enjoy London society. Going through his things is hard for her especially in her condition but necessary, and also in a strange way seems to have made her happier, linking her again to the father of her unborn.

  Alison has also seen a medical specialist to make sure there are no problems. I accompanied her. Dr Hilson says she is in the best of health, despite her loss and hard work, and the baby can be safely delivered at home, as she wishes, with no need to stay in a London clinic.

  We are staying at the duke’s London residence. The Belgian refugees have left for more permanent homes, and the Admiralty refused the offer of the house, as it needs too many repairs to be suitable. The furniture is mostly under holland covers, but the housekeeper is still here and Mr Ffoulkes the butler, who is too old to enlist, and the boot boy and a couple of maids-of-all-work, so we are well cared for. I am glad that by the time you get this I will be back up north, as you probably already know about the London air raids.

  Alison and I went up onto the roof and watched the searchlights and the big shells fired at the enemy planes — they looked just like fireworks, and went woof, woof, woof like massive dogs, and the whole house shook. People ran through the streets as soon as the ‘take cover’ siren sounded, but there isn’t really anywhere safe to shelter except in the cellars, and I would hate to be trapped by rubble underground. Many people go and shelter by the big guns, thinking the guns will protect them, but I think the Germans are more likely to try to hit the cannons.

  We stayed up there till part of a shell broke one of the nearby lime trees and Mr Ffoulkes came up himself to ask us to come down to the kitchen to reassure the scullery maids, which was a tactful way of telling us to behave ourselves and get inside.

  The next night Mr James Lorrimer and a friend of Alison’s husband, Major the Honourable David Threasington-Blythe, came to dine, and stayed with us during the raid. Alison is still in mourning, of course, but these days widows seem to be allowed company, though it was a very informal affair. Major Threasington-Blythe told us how to tell the German planes from ours by the sound of their engines. He is on leave from France. He would not tell us anything about the war. He doesn’t realise how much we have learned already from the patients at the Abbey.

  Alison and I have been invited to visit Windsor Castle. It is a royal command, so we have to go. We had Mr and Mrs Slithersole to luncheon. I know it was a waste of Mr Slithersole’s time just now, but it pleased Mrs Slithersole no end to lunch at a duke’s residence. Mr Slithersole has been a rock, and he was pleased at her happiness.

  I can’t thank you enough for funding Wooten. His Grace has given his agent orders to sell the woods if necessary, but the army has requisitioned the timber so I doubt anyone would buy them at the moment.

  Lady Alison and I will be safely on the train to the Abbey tomorrow, with twelve newly qualified VADs. I considered training to be a VAD too, but Her Grace pointed out that I don’t take orders well and might have to spend the war scrubbing floors.

  Don’t worry, there are no more London trips planned — Her Grace doesn’t want us near the air raids again, especially with Alison in her condition. Her Grace and I had hoped Alison might stay in London for the next month, where there are experienced obstetricians, but that was before the air raids.

  Alison is well and sends her best regards.

  Love from me,

  Sophie

  It still seemed strange to get a taxicab to Victoria Station, instead of a private carriage with footmen to guard them. But the carriages, the footmen, even the horses, were needed for the war now.

  Sophie stared out the window. London had changed even in a few months: not many people on the streets, and most of those women; Call to arms posters and the Union Jacks. The world of the debutantes’ season seemed far more remote than it was.

  The porter at Victoria Station wheeled away their luggage: one trunk for the two of them for the whole week they had been away, instead of the multitude of hatboxes and luggage they had previously ne
eded even for a Friday-to-Monday.

  ‘Sophie? It is you, isn’t it?’

  ‘Malcolm!’

  The chuff of a train turned into the buzz of cicadas. He looked exactly the same, despite his uniform, and totally different too. His face was almost as brown as it had been at home.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I thought you would have gone home.’

  They spoke together, broke off together too, laughed. And suddenly it was simple.

  ‘Alison, this is my old friend Malcolm Overhill. Malcolm, this is Lady Alison Standish, wife of the late Major Philip Standish. I’m staying with her family up north.’

  ‘Doing a sterling job too.’ Alison glanced down at his kit bag, then at the insignia on his arm. ‘You’re about to catch a train, Lieutenant Overhill?’

  ‘No, just got in. Forty-eight hours of leave before we head off over there. I’m sorry, Lady Alison, my sincere condolences.’ He turned back to Sophie, ignoring deeply pregnant Alison in her crepe veil. ‘I took the first ship over here when war was declared — I want to be where the real action is, not stuck in some colonial regiment. Sophie, how long are you in London?’

  Another sixteen minutes, thought Sophie.

  ‘Another night,’ said Alison. She took her calling card from her handbag and offered it to him. ‘Won’t you join us for dinner, Lieutenant Overhill? Sophie, darling, I will see you after lunch. I need to make sure the porter has put that package on the train.’ And get our luggage back, thought Sophie, and inform Their Majesties we will be a day late. She wished she could tell Malcolm all that. She looked back at him as Alison made her way through the crowd. She suspected Alison would also be heading for the loo; the baby was pressing on her bladder.