Miss Lily’s Lovely Ladies

by Jackie French

  ‘Er, yes, that’s what I was looking for.’ He smiled back at her automatically, seized on the excuse with edgy eagerness. ‘Miss … Higgs, isn’t it?’

  ‘You are good with names, Captain McIntyre.’ And you really need to get away from that crowd.

  ‘Thank you, Miss Higgs.’ He was still answering on automatic.

  All at once she could almost feel his desperation. ‘I suspect that men who, ahem, need a washroom use that dark area behind the ice-cream parlour. No one can see what goes over the rail there.’

  He looked at her then.

  ‘It’s dark and quiet, Captain McIntyre.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He slipped into the narrow space between the parlour walls and the railings. Sophie stood, guarding the passageway, her skirt and hat blocking what little light might shine there.

  An aproned servant, or volunteer — these days it was hard to tell — took her teacup. A seagull shrieked above her, awakened by the pier lights, hoping for scraps. She couldn’t remember the Sydney seagulls’ cry, just that it was different from this one.

  Mrs Fitzhubert made her way through the crowd. ‘There you are, Miss Higgs. I hope you don’t mind, but Mrs Arnold has asked us back to supper. Her late husband was in the same regiment …’

  Sophie smiled. ‘You go, Mrs Fitzhubert. I imagine Colonel Sevenoaks and his wife will escort me back.’

  ‘If you’re sure, my dear.’ There was more colour in her cheeks now. There’d be tears tonight, but shared tears. A future, and friends finding a future beyond their own loss too.

  The crowd thinned. If he didn’t come back soon, she’d have to go and find him before Emily came hunting — and humiliate him if he really was relieving himself. Then she heard the footsteps behind her.

  He looked embarrassed. She was glad. The short time of quiet had at least brought him back to himself enough to feel embarrassment.

  Now to get him out of here. She was sufficiently aware of her own emotions to know that she was not doing this just from empathy for a young man who had done his duty and much more; nor was it from the slight — very, very slight, she told herself — wish to discommode Emily. It was the way he looked into the distance, as well as at what was nearby, the half-instinctive gaze of a countryman, who looked at the whole world, not the small human slice in front of him.

  Malcolm looked at the world like that. So did Moonbeam Joe. And strangely, Dolphie, who perhaps truly loved his land, which was both the same as and different from loving his country. I look at the earth and sky like that too, but James does not, she thought as Captain McIntyre glanced longingly at the darkness beyond the pier, then back at the group of top hats and feathers and regimental caps around Emily.

  ‘Would you think me terribly rude, Captain, if I asked you to walk up to the cliffs with me? Just for a few minutes — the crowd makes it so stuffy, even on a pier.’

  ‘Of course Miss Higgs.’ The words were automatic.

  She took his arm, led him — as she had led thousands of war-scarred men now, letting them feel they were leading her — beyond the pier and onto the seawall.

  The lights behind them faded. The path glowed white in the moonlight, and the noise of the crowd eroded into indistinctness. They turned the corner and even that was gone. The waves swished below them, and there was the faint crunch of their shoes on gravel, but that was all.

  ‘My nanny once said you could hear stars sing on a night like this,’ he said at last. The night and waves had worked faster than she’d expected. This was the true man speaking, not the polite puppet.

  ‘Your nanny was a wise woman.’

  ‘Sometimes. She had a bit too much faith in prunes and custard.’

  ‘Ah, I’ve had too much experience with prunes and custard myself. Thank you for this, Captain McIntyre. I’ve longed to walk these cliffs by night for the past three weeks. You wanted to escape too, didn’t you?’

  ‘I couldn’t breathe,’ he said.

  ‘I know. I’m sorry if I’m embarrassing you. My manners are entirely too forward.’

  But he wasn’t hoping for kisses in the darkness. Whatever he had done at Ypres, he had shown as much courage, or more, here tonight.

  ‘What did you want to escape?’ She could hear the effort it took to make polite conversation.

  ‘A feeling of emptiness at having finished helping Mrs Fitzhubert set up her home as a convalescent hospital.’

  ‘You’re a nurse?’

  ‘Nothing so well trained. But it seems I have a bit of a talent for organising. I was spending the season under the wing of Her Grace, the Dowager Duchess of Wooten —’ Too painful to mention Alison. ‘Her Grace has let us use Wooten Abbey as a hospital since the war began.’

  ‘You’re related to the family?’

  ‘No. Not grand at all. My father owns corned-beef factories and a property called Thuringa back in Australia. He served long ago with the Earl of Shillings, and the earl’s cousin is an old friend of Her Grace. I’m nobody important.’ She smiled at him, trying a compliment. ‘Yet now I’m walking with a hero.’

  ‘I’m no hero.’ His voice was curt.

  She glanced at his medal, its edge gleaming in the starlight. How could he wear that and deny his heroism? ‘You risked your life. All of you over there risk your lives.’

  ‘I’m not sure we do. No, I haven’t lost my marbles, Miss Higgs. For most of us death wasn’t real when we enlisted. How many men do you think would ever go to war if they knew they would likely die? Lives are sacrificed, but others have made decisions about that sacrifice, have deliberately moved the pawns into harm’s way. And men like me give orders on their behalf.’

  She had a sudden image of James, moving pawns on a chessboard in his office, across the Atlantic Ocean. She found Captain McIntyre still staring at her. ‘I’m sorry, Captain McIntyre. I shouldn’t presume to think I have any idea of what’s happening over there. My father bears the scars of war, but I don’t know what war was like for him.’

  His brown eyes were suddenly far away again. ‘He obviously thinks it better that you be spared it. He’s right.’

  ‘No. Women may not fight wars but we’re part of them.’ She had never put this into words before; never even known she felt it. There was something in this young man’s gaze that took the world to pieces and put it back in its right shape again. ‘You shouldn’t keep wars secret. Do you think all those young men who cheered when this war began would have celebrated if they had known the truth? If their mothers had told them, “Your papa went to war and this is what happened to him, to us”?’

  His gaze was steady. ‘You are the most unusual woman I have ever met.’

  ‘This is an unusual situation.’

  ‘War?’

  ‘War is common, at least according to my governess, who tried to teach me some of the dates. I meant walking in the dark with a man. At least war has removed our chaperones.’

  He laughed. It was a good laugh. I’m bringing him back, thought Sophie. She wished she could fly, could carry him back to Thuringa, to the old, twisted red gums along the river.

  ‘How long have they been parading you about?’

  ‘Six weeks, since I got out of hospital … or sixty years, which is what it feels like.

  ‘Hospital?’

  ‘Shrapnel. Nothing serious.’

  Serious enough to keep you hospitalised for months, she thought.

  ‘Captain McIntyre, will you forgive my being blunt? You are on convalescent leave? This … parading … isn’t part of your duties?’

  ‘I’m on convalescent leave. But it’s for a good cause.’ He spoke mechanically.

  ‘Then vanish. Forget about The Cause for a week, at least.’

  He looked at her with sudden hope. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You can. You can scribble your regrets to Mrs Colonel Sevenoaks. Tell them it’s a family emergency. Which is quite true. You are part of your family and you need a break. Trust me,’ Sophie added, ‘I’ve been nursing men back from t
he front for over a year. You need quiet now. That’s what leave is supposed to be for, not shaking hands at rallies. Walking on the cliffs, eating fish and chips, if there are any to be found.’

  ‘It sounds like paradise!’ She caught the flash of a smile in the darkness.

  ‘Why not go home?’

  He shook his head. ‘It would be more of the same. My father’s the agent for Lord Arthur Rothmere, up on the borders. Lady Arthur wrote that she expected me to do my duty to help with the recruiting up there. I pleaded Mrs Colonel Sevenoaks’s previous invitation as a way out.’

  ‘From the frying pan into the fire. You must miss home dreadfully.’

  He looked out over the waves. ‘Yes, though … I know it sounds strange, but even without Lady Arthur’s plans I don’t want to be there now. My parents stayed nearby while I was in hospital; my father could only get a few days away but my mother was there the whole time. It was good to be with her. But home …’

  ‘It hasn’t a hold on you?’

  ‘That’s the trouble: it has too much. We Scots call it our calf country — the land you were raised on. I love every hill and loch of it. But I have only another ten days’ leave, then I’ll be posted back to the front. I need to spend the next ten days becoming the Scots captain again, not the Angus McIntyre of home.’

  Her heart wept, just a little, for this man who could not bear to see the hills he loved. ‘You need to find another place where you can be at peace, then.’

  ‘You don’t know Mrs Colonel Sevenoaks. If I’m within fifty miles of here, she’ll find me. I’m surprised she hasn’t sent out spotter planes already.’

  ‘I do know Mrs Sevenoaks.’ And wouldn’t you be startled if I told you how well. She watched him watch the waves, an outrageous idea somehow becoming not just possible, but even good.

  ‘I think I can find you a place to stay. Come back with me to Wooten Abbey.’

  There — she’d said it. It was the worst of manners to ask a guest to stay when you were a guest yourself, impossibly forward to ask a young man, especially one your hostess had never met.

  But the dowager had said that she was family. And there was no way she could leave this man to be paraded about till he left again for France.

  ‘I won’t ask you to stay at the Abbey itself.’ Too much like the hospital he’d left, she thought. ‘But there’s a groom’s cottage that’s empty, if you don’t mind two rooms and an outhouse. Her Grace keeps it in readiness in case any of the men from the estate come back on leave, but I’m pretty sure none are expected. I’ll have your meals sent down … It’s not the land you’re longing for at all, Captain McIntyre. It’s flat mostly, all in wheat and barley; even much of the park has been dug up for potatoes. But if you’d like it …?’

  He stared. ‘Are you sure?’

  Of course not, she thought. If Her Grace doesn’t forgive this, I have no refuge in England. ‘Yes.’

  Again he looked across the sea. ‘You can hear the guns from here, on a still night. Can you hear them now?’

  She couldn’t. ‘Don’t go back to the pier. I’ll write a note explaining that you’ve been called away, and get Mrs Fitzhubert’s kitchen maid to take it to Mrs Sevenoaks. There’s a train to Wooten at ten past eleven. It’ll be late when we get in, but I’ll use the stationmaster’s telephone to call Wooten so someone meets us. Don’t bother with your luggage,’ she added. ‘I’ll arrange with Mrs Fitzhubert to get it sent to you. I just need to leave her a note in case she worries if I’m not there tonight. I’ll tell her it’s an emergency back at Wooten.’

  ‘You remind me of a sergeant major,’ he said slowly.

  She gave him her best Miss Lily smile. ‘Most people wouldn’t realise that was a compliment.’

  ‘Oh, it is.’

  ‘Then we’ll meet in the waiting room,’ said Sophie, starting back towards the house.

  The wind blew cold on her sweating palms. Please, she thought, please let what I’m doing be right. Let him be the man I think he is. Let Wooten be a refuge, not remind him of the hospital he’s left.

  She glanced back, but he was looking at the stars again.

  Chapter 49

  Love at first sight exists. ‘First sight’ isn’t just about beauty, or the lack of it. The quirk of a smile, the lines about the eyes, even the way a uniform is worn — you absorb so much about a person without realising it. Love at first sight may not last, but it exists.

  Miss Sophie Higgs, 1918

  As soon as she left the house, she began to doubt he’d be at the station. The suggestion must surely have seemed outrageous to him, as soon as he properly considered it. But there he stood in the corner of the waiting room, leaving the seats for the convalescents wearier than himself. The room was a fug of cigarette smoke. He gave a quirk of smile as soon as he saw her, as though he had been wondering if any of this was real.

  ‘Sorry about the crowd,’ he said.

  ‘Shall we wait outside?’ Her words tripped over his. Again she had to put her hand on his arm before he moved towards the door. He was a captain; you didn’t rise to be a captain, even in the Territorials, even in a war, without the ability to act decisively. Yet he had let both her and Emily move him more or less at will. Frighteningly, she felt she might tell him to stand on the train line and he’d obey.

  There were fewer soldiers outside, and they were mostly with wives, sisters, mothers, sweethearts. She and the captain walked to the end of the platform, where there was a vacant seat. She sat, then gestured to him to take the seat next to her.

  They sat in silence for a while. The wind was cold along the train track. She was warm in her fur coat and wished she could offer him her muff; he had no gloves and couldn’t even put his hands in his coat pockets while he was in uniform, or in the presence of a lady. But a muff would push forwardness into eccentricity.

  ‘Miss Higgs, why are you doing this?’

  If she’d been him she would have asked the same question — would have guessed her impulse wasn’t solely forged by compassion. She tried to give him an honest answer, even if she wasn’t sure what the answer was herself. ‘Maybe because my job here has been done. I need to go back and … I’ve been dreading it. Haven’t even admitted to myself how much. You’ll be a … diversion. A treat.’

  ‘Like a box of chocolates?’

  ‘If I can accept a comparison to a sergeant major as a compliment, you can accept being a box of chocolates.’

  ‘A diversion from what?’ he asked softly. ‘The work? I’ve watched nurses manage on three hours’ sleep, week in, week out. At least we get leave, or time out behind the lines.’

  ‘Not the work. I’ve been replaced by twenty VADs.’

  His face truly relaxed for the first time as he laughed. ‘Twenty VADs to replace you!’

  She flushed. ‘I didn’t mean it that way.’

  ‘But I suspect it’s true. Go on. What do you dread, then?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What are your nightmares?’ He asked the question as if it was the most normal question in the world. But this was a world of nightmares now.

  She glanced at the stillness of his face. ‘About people who have left me.’

  ‘Which people?’ He might have been soothing a restless horse.

  She said nothing.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘My mother. A woman who taught me, just before the war. Lost to me, like so many people in a war. Another friend is lost too.’ She was telling him the truth, but not the whole truth. She wished she could be honest, but Miss Lily and a German princess could not be mentioned, even to this man. Especially, perhaps, to this man, a mentally exhausted official hero. ‘My best friend, Alison, Her Grace’s granddaughter — she died in childbirth last year. Her Grace … Her Grace is dying too, though she won’t admit it. My father was middle-aged when I was born, and the war must have aged him too, but I can’t even get home to see him, not since the Lusitania was torpedoed. Everyone I love … I’m sorry. Many women
have lost far more than I.’

  Sophie felt the wetness of tears on her cheeks, felt his hand grip hers through her glove, saw the white of the scar across his fingers …

  ‘Miss Higgs,’ said Emily coldly.

  Sophie looked up, trusting the poor light to hide her tears. Further up the platform, Colonel Sevenoaks waited with a small group of men and women. Emily had obviously told them to wait while she collected her errant lamb.

  ‘Emily, how pleasant to see you again. I’m sorry not to have said goodbye properly back at the pier, but I’ve been called back to Wooten and Captain McIntyre has kindly offered to escort me.’

  Emily smiled at Captain McIntyre. Instinctively he smiled back. Step one to Emily, thought Sophie. ‘You are feeling quite well, Captain McIntyre?’ she asked. ‘I was concerned.’

  ‘Yes, I’m right as rain, thank you.’

  ‘It was so kind of you to let Miss Higgs appeal to your better nature.’

  Step two, thought Sophie. And a hint that I am manipulating him, which has the advantage of being correct.

  ‘Miss Higgs, could we speak privately?’

  Sophie let herself be drawn down the platform.

  Emily’s smile vanished. ‘How dare you?’

  ‘Easily. He’s exhausted. He needs rest, not being hung out like a recruiting banner.’

  ‘And you need a husband.’

  The attack was so crude she simply stared.

  ‘It wasn’t a successful season for you, was it? Alison and I married. Mr Lorrimer did not come up to scratch. No ring on your finger nearly two years later, despite all the eligible men you have been cosseting at Wooten. And now you have found yourself someone who is eligible and vulnerable, and you have sneaked him out into the night.’

  The assumption was so extraordinary Sophie began to laugh, despite the remnants of tears on her cheeks. ‘Emily, it didn’t even occur to me he was eligible.’

  ‘I prefer not to be on first-name terms these days, Miss Higgs. The captain’s mother is the youngest daughter of Viscount Eldershire. His father is third in line to a baronetcy. No money, of course, but that is of no matter to you, is it? Your father is a war profiteer. And you, of course, know exactly how to charm a man away from his duty.’