Miss Lily’s Lovely Ladies

by Jackie French

  Chaplain Merryweather’s final sermon, 1916

  10 JULY 1917

  The banker had been reluctant to part with so much cash, but had finally agreed. The threat of displeasing the far-off Mr Jeremiah Higgs was evidently greater than the risk of handing over money to his daughter.

  Sophie was just pulling on her gloves as she left the jeweller’s when her shoulder jostled someone else.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said automatically, ‘I was looking at my gloves … Emily!’

  Emily’s swollen eyes peered out under the wisp of black veil without recognition.

  ‘Emily, it’s Sophie. Is something wrong?’

  A stupid question, with Emily’s eyes blinking as if she had been thrown into the village pond. At last Emily said slowly, ‘Sophie Higgs.’

  For a moment Sophie wondered if Emily simply didn’t wish to admit the acquaintance — perhaps Sophie’s theft of Angus had made her an enemy forever, as she’d feared. But now Emily’s black-gloved hands grasped Sophie’s grey ones. ‘Sophie?’

  ‘Tea,’ said Sophie. She looked around. No acceptable teashop lurked by the jeweller’s, but there was a Worthy’s Teahouse across the road.

  Would Emily accept a Worthy’s Teahouse? But she meekly allowed Sophie to shepherd her, to seat her in a corner by the window.

  What did one order in a Worthy’s Teahouse? She repressed an almost hysterical giggle. Not mixed sandwiches with precious corned beef. ‘Tea for two, and Bath buns, please. Emily, is it your husband?’

  Emily’s eyes seemed almost to see her now. ‘He’s well. Busy. He’s standing for election after the war is over. There is talk of a cabinet position.’ Her voice was controlled now. ‘It’s good to see you. I gather you are doing sterling work up at Wooten.’ She reached into her handbag, pulled out a tiny diary. ‘Do you have time for dinner before you return? Viscount Shortcliff is dining with us on —’

  Sophie had just over an hour before she had to catch a train. ‘Emily, you’re talking to me. A woman who can keep a secret. Something is the matter. Badly the matter.’

  ‘If I tell you, I will cry,’ said Emily carefully. ‘One doesn’t cry in public.’

  ‘All sorts of people cry in public these days.’

  ‘Not our sort.’

  ‘Tell me,’ said Sophie. ‘Or is there someone else you can tell?’

  ‘No.’ The voice was a whisper now.

  ‘If you don’t talk about things, they eat at you,’ said Sophie. ‘I’ve seen it with the men, the VADs. You see something … bad, and try to hide it away. But if you talk about it, the monster behind the door is never as dangerous.’

  ‘He’s dead,’ said Emily simply.

  Not husband, not brother. A lover?

  ‘Who is dead?’ asked Sophie gently.

  Emily — the old Emily — was back now. ‘No, he wasn’t my lover,’ she said quietly. ‘His name was James O’Brien and I hardly knew him. He was the only son of a neighbour. He was studying to be a doctor, said he’d enlist — his whole year would enlist — when he graduated. But I … I didn’t wait.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I posted him a white feather.’ Emily’s voice was feather-light too. ‘Wars have to be won, Sophie. Most people here have no idea how bad things are over there. Even with the Americans … we’re winning, but only yard by yard. We need more men …’

  ‘So you gave out white feathers.’ Feathers that said, ‘You are an able-bodied man who is not in uniform. You are a coward, betraying us all.’

  ‘He enlisted the next day. And now he’s dead. Another year and he might have been saving lives. I didn’t think …’

  Sophie held the black-gloved hand until Emily took it gently away. ‘You know,’ she told Emily, ‘if the events of this war are ever weighed up, I don’t think that … mistake … will figure at all.’

  ‘Not exactly a mistake, was it?’ Emily was almost wry, and Sophie nodded. ‘I think the greatest cause of my guilt isn’t his death, but the fact that I let myself be caught up, without thought. Fed by the mob.’

  That sounded more like the old Emily.

  ‘Then don’t let it happen again,’ said Sophie matter-of-factly.

  ‘You still haven’t learned tact.’

  Sophie considered. There was a pistol in her pocket, English pounds, French francs and jewels that could be converted to cash in her bag and on her person. ‘No.’

  She could have added that her father had not amassed a fortune with tact; that two opposing armies slugging it out, inch by inch, was as far from tact as could be imagined; that posting a boy a white feather was not tact at all, but cowardice. But Emily looked defeated enough.

  The tea arrived, and two Bath buns, sitting sticky-topped on thick white china plates. Sophie poured the hot, dark tea into the cups, added milk, a sugar each, even though Miss Lily had insisted they drink tea with neither milk nor sugar.

  Emily sipped. ‘It’s quite good tea.’ She sounded astonished.

  ‘I think we needed it.’ Sophie took a bun and pushed the other towards Emily.

  The buns were fresh, and Emily looked better when she had eaten hers.

  ‘No more posting white feathers,’ said Sophie. ‘If you’re going to urge a man to war, do it to his face, and without assuming he is a coward.’

  ‘Yes.’ Emily chewed her bun. ‘Do you hear from Captain McIntyre?’

  ‘Yes.’ Sophie wasn’t going to discuss Angus with Emily.

  ‘Please give him my regards. Your father’s fortune must be growing in leaps and bounds.’ A small revenge.

  ‘It is. But he isn’t glad of the reason.’

  ‘No. I don’t suppose he is. If only there were some way to break the stalemate. Submarines, aircraft — we’re too evenly matched.’

  For a second Sophie considered asking Emily if her connections could help. Then she had a sudden vision of what Emily might do, if she knew there was another weapon, a weapon more deadly than any currently being used in the war. Was Armitage right? Could the new gas end the war — for the Germans, if the English didn’t use it too?

  Am I like Emily, she thought, plunging in without knowing what is right or wrong?

  She didn’t know. You could only do your best.

  Sophie stood, then bent and kissed Emily’s pale cheek. The netting on Emily’s hat scratched her skin. ‘You did what you thought was right. I’m glad you’re grieving though. I have to catch a train.’ Let Emily think she was bound for Wooten. ‘We must meet up again soon.’

  ‘Yes, we must.’

  Neither of them meant it. Emily stood as Sophie left, but Sophie glanced back to see her sit again and pour another cup of tea. Impossible to guess her thoughts as she sipped it.

  Chapter 57

  We manage quite well here, given everything. Surprisingly well. Sometimes I look at the wives and widows ploughing the fields, the girls here who should be at dances or tennis parties, and think, Where was all this ability bottled up before the war? Has anyone noticed how easily a man’s world has become woman’s?

  The Dowager Duchess of Wooten to Miss Lily, 1917

  11 JULY 1917

  Two days until the weapons fell. Paris in 1917 was nothing but grey skies and soldiers — soldiers drunk; soldiers sitting on steps, white-faced, hung over or shell shocked or both; soldiers in British uniforms and French, the occasional slouch hat of an Australian or a New Zealander and accents that almost made her cry. Sophie had an absurd impulse to touch one on the shoulder, to ask for help. But no ordinary soldier could help her now.

  The ferry trip, a night on the train, stopping and starting with no regular schedule and no buffet car had left her weary, gritty, and badly in need of a bath, sleep and food that wasn’t buns. There was no time for any of them.

  Desperation kept her walking, talking, pleading.

  If she could not get a message to Ypres, she must get there herself. It must be possible, if Dodders and her companions had managed to drive their ambulances the
re. She might even find Dodders’s château.

  But Dodders had organised her own ambulance.

  It was impossible to hire a car in Paris. Impossible to buy one either, even with ready money. The concierge at the Ritz was desolate. ‘It is wartime, mademoiselle,’ he said, as though she hadn’t noticed.

  She should have realised that it would be even more difficult to get a car in France than in England. Stupid, sheltered …

  Recriminations wasted time. She had to have a car. A driver too, preferably a military one. No maps were available for civilians.

  Thank goodness for French lessons, but if only she knew someone in Paris. A useful countess, perhaps. If there hadn’t been a war, she’d have come here with Alison, perhaps, and would have met countesses galore, even the ‘Mrs Higgs’ whom Miss Lily had mentioned. She wished she could have seen the famous city in peacetime.

  The only person she knew anywhere nearby was Ethel Carryman. Miraculous Ethel, who had managed to get a canny businessman to part with half a war’s worth of corned beef.

  Could Ethel, just possibly, perform a miracle again?

  The train from England had passed Ethel’s canteen, but not stopped at what was now a purely military destination. Which meant Sophie couldn’t get a train there from Paris either, unless she disguised herself as a wounded Tommy. She considered the idea for five-sixths of a second.

  The doorman called a cab, a horse-drawn one. The nag looked nearly dead. The cab driver was an elderly woman, dressed in what might be her grandson’s trousers and shapeless coat. The woman looked startled when told the address. Sophie held out a handful of notes and the woman flicked the reins.

  The horse began to plod.

  Sophie could have run faster. But, unlike the horse, she could not have run all night. When they crept into the courtyard of Ethel’s village, she looked at the railway station hotel with longing. Hot water. Sleep, in a bed, not curled up on the cab’s wooden seat.

  No time. She trudged into the station house, then out onto the empty platform.

  She stared. She had expected carnage, but there was only an elderly man in a once-white apron sweeping the concrete with a straw broom. Long tables at one end of the station showed what might be, had been, would be, dealt with here, when the next train came in.

  The man looked at her curiously, his moustache like straggled cobwebs.

  ‘Mademoiselle Carryman?’ she asked.

  ‘Oui.’ He gestured to the stationmaster’s office, as unsurprised that one young woman might ask for another at this deserted railway station as he obviously was that a woman was commandeering a stationmaster’s office.

  Sophie went back inside and knocked on the office door.

  ‘Ontray.’ The Yorkshire accent was even more pronounced in French. Ethel looked up from scribbling in a ledger when she entered. ‘Sophie! Come to give us a hand, old girl? We could do with —’

  Sophie held up a hand. No time. No time. ‘No time,’ she said. ‘Ethel, I need a car, a military one if possible, and a driver who knows France. And enough fuel for a day’s drive — no, two days’ drive, if we are to get back.’

  ‘Why —?’

  ‘Please don’t ask me why. It’s … it’s desperately urgent.’

  ‘Why is it urgent?’

  ‘I can’t tell you.’ Ethel’s fury at what was due to happen the day after tomorrow might make her indiscreet — and indiscretion put them both at risk of a charge of treason, even a firing squad. ‘Just trust me. Please. I must get a car.’

  ‘Ask me for summat easy, like the moon.’ Ethel chewed her pencil. ‘Can’t get you a car. Don’t have one myself, not even one I can borrow just now. Most of the wounded come through on farm bullock carts these days. Don’t suppose even one of those could be spared, or a woman to drive it.’

  A bullock wagon wouldn’t get her to Ypres, or not in time. ‘You had an army car in England.’

  ‘I’m English. This is France.’

  Sophie supposed that made sense.

  Ethel looked at her. ‘Best I can get you is lunch with a randy French general. Was sniffing round Midge till she gave him the flick. But he’s got a car, and a driver, and most of the time they’re both just sitting around our hotel finding the best in Madame’s wine cellar. You might just be able to persuade the old bastard that he can spare you his car for a few days.’

  ‘How about one of the ambulances?’

  Ethel shrugged. ‘Those girls will take you to the edge of hell, and give the devil what-for if he tries to stop them. But there’s no way to get hold of ’em until they arrive here with a wagonload, and who can tell when that will be? Might be tonight, mightn’t be for a week. I can give you an address where some of them stay, but even that’s a couple of hours away on foot, or by cart, and chances are they won’t be there anyway. And you’d still have to persuade them.’

  Sophie was fairly sure that if she showed a woman like Dodders the note, and described the deaths of the sheep, she’d agree to help. But Ethel was right. It might take days, or even a week. Because the women’s ambulances were unofficial, they simply waited by the front lines till they had enough wounded to bring to a casualty station.

  ‘I’ll risk the general,’ she said. If that failed, she’d try to locate some of the ambulance drivers.

  Ethel scribbled a note. ‘Garsson!’ The elderly man peered around the door. ‘Pour le général, see voo play.’

  ‘At your service, missy,’ said the man, in a London Tommy accent. He vanished.

  ‘I’ve told the general a young woman from England wants to meet him. You’ve time to pretty yourself up,’ said Ethel. ‘Basin and necessaries through there.’ She indicated the inner door of the office.

  ‘Do you really think I can persuade the general?’

  ‘Dunno. Reckon he likes fluttering eyelashes better than old Worthy did.’ She looked at Sophie, with the knowledge of a young woman who had coped with three years of male bodies, and of the officers who had charge of their lives, and their deaths. ‘Might depend on how much you are prepared to convince him. His are the only car and driver around here. I’ve done all I can. The rest is up to you.’

  Sophie had a sudden image of herself pointing the revolver at the général and saying, ‘Take me to the front lines.’ Which might, just possibly, be an option.

  ‘Thanks.’

  She suddenly realised that a French général was exactly who she needed. She would not even need the car and driver, or to try to get to Ypres herself. If she could persuade the général of the danger, he could call the commanders there, tell them to get their troops away …

  She slipped inside, took off her serge suit, unpacked a silk dress with a low, frilled neckline, perfume, soap, comb, rouge for both cheeks and lips, the powder Miss Lily had taught her could be moistened to hide shadows under the eyes, positioned the corset to plump her breasts much further above the neckline than even Alison’s married-woman status would have allowed.

  ‘Got a message back! He can see you now!’ yelled Ethel from the outer room as Sophie tried to lace herself into a more alluring figure.

  ‘Already? Can you give me a hand? I need to show off my bosom.’

  Ethel stared at the reddened lips and low neckline. ‘Cripes. You don’t mess around.’ She pulled severely at the stays. ‘There you are. Eighteen-inch waist, and more bosom than the old rooster has seen since the Huns crossed into Belgium.’ She hesitated. ‘He’ll mean business, ducky.’

  ‘So do I.’

  Would she sacrifice her … her virtue … to stop the unleashing of a worse hell onto the battlefield?

  Stupid question. Hannelore had been willing to give her life — not just her death, but decades spent in a marriage of convenience — to stop this war. Miss Lily had made it her life’s work to teach girls to at least try. Not to mention the men and women actually already dying for their countries and honour. She owed this to all of them.

  A telegraph clattered in the office next door. A young woman
’s head appeared around the door; she blinked curiously at Sophie. ‘Train in two hours, Eth.’

  ‘Which means three or fifteen,’ said Ethel, not bothering to introduce them to each other. ‘Call the girls. Work stations, everyone.’

  The head vanished.

  ‘New troops, going to the front. No need for ambulances yet. The general’ll meet you at the hotel dining room,’ said Ethel. ‘Now.’ She hesitated, then hugged her. A bit like being hugged by a friendly gorilla. ‘Good luck, lass. And I don’t just mean with le général.’

  The hotel dining room was a good one: white damask tablecloths, much-mended, but good quality. What looked like genuine silver cutlery, not plate. A waitress cleared empty tables, presumably where Ethel’s volunteers had eaten.

  One table still set, in a discreet corner. Two chairs. One général, in uniform, wearing enough medals to brocade an entire sofa. He was seventy perhaps, with a trimmed grey moustache. He stood, and bowed over her hand. ‘A little English rose. How kind of you to dine with me, mademoiselle. It makes an old man’s heart glad, in these hard times …’

  She wanted to plead, on her knees if necessary. Every second mattered. But charm could not be hurried. Or not too much, at any rate. And this old man would know the rituals of charm far too well to skip them.

  A shy look down, a more flirtatious look upwards. It was as if Miss Lily’s instructions had taken over: all the sessions of her debutante season’s practice, just for this.

  ‘An honour, Monsieur le Général, to dine with a hero of France.’

  Soup, which she tried not to gulp, her first food since yesterday’s hamper on the train. Roast pheasant, celeriac remoulade, red wine, white wine …

  ‘If I had known in advance of the pleasure this afternoon would bring, mademoiselle, it would have been champagne. But I have brandy in my room, a hundred years old.’

  Should she ask him for the car now? Or tell him about the plan, plead with him to contact Ypres, and hope nothing more was necessary?