‘Really?’ responded Sophie, trying to subdue her anger. What did this young aristocrat know of her beyond her wealth and connection to Emily? She doubted that Emily had thought to mention Sophie’s wartime achievements. Yet she was also honest enough to acknowledge that despite her longing for home, part of her did relish the sense of ‘one more adventure’. She put down her soup spoon. ‘If your husband had been a better man, would your works have been so much more useful that Emily’s or mine?’
‘Yes. I’d have helped my husband manage the plantation, a job that actually produces something, not playing politics and jockeying for position.’
‘And Higgs’s Corned Beef is a less valuable product that . . . what was it you grew? Rubber? Coffee? But I am forgetting, aren’t I? Those are respectable crops, like wool, or cotton or even beef. Corned beef is not.’
‘You don’t run the factories, or the farms. You just spend the money.’
A good point. ‘I hope to play a part in running the business when I get home. And yes, I do spend the money, but in the past four years I have spent it on very good causes indeed. You really know very little about me. Do you really think I’d risk you all on this journey into Europe just for fun?’
‘Not for fun, perhaps. But I believe you do regard this expedition as an adventure. So does that man Jones, and your new maid. Am I now fired?’
This woman was perceptive. ‘Do you want to be?’
‘Probably, or I wouldn’t have said so much. But I can’t afford to be.’
She did not, however, apologise, Sophie noted. Georgina must have been holding in her resentment of Emily for a long time. Now she had been expected to be subservient to a brash colonial commoner, as well. Lady Georgina, employed by a Miss Higgs, had not managed subservience.
Sophie looked at her thoughtfully, giving Georgina time to regain her temper — if she wished to. ‘You need me, at least at the moment,’ she said at last. ‘So let us get a few things clear. I do need your services for the next few weeks. I can’t appear as a respectable businesswoman in Europe if I am accompanied only by servants; nor do I speak more than a few words of German. But once we reach Australia I can easily obtain another secretary. You can stay in my employ in my home, or in your own house, or I will help you establish another identity. After that, if you wish, you may have nothing more to do with me, or Higgs’s Corned Beef.’
‘That is . . . kind.’
‘This is in my interest quite as much as yours,’ acknowledged Sophie dryly. ‘Now, your son . . .’
Georgina laid down her soup spoon. ‘My son is not to be discussed.’
‘Because you do not trust me?’
Georgina’s eyes turned to granite. ‘My dear cousin, and your dear friend, has tried to have me followed every time I have visited him. Once his father has custody of him, any potential embarrassment to her vanishes. Emily did not succeed. Neither will you.’
‘Emily is scarcely my dear friend. She regarded herself as my enemy until I redeemed myself with hospitals and formal recognition from both the French and English governments. But that is irrelevant. Do you really think that if I wanted to inform Emily of your son’s whereabouts I wouldn’t find out where he was once you have brought him to Australia? My family has contacts across the country. You don’t.’
She saw the flicker on Georgina’s face. ‘Ah. You intend to vanish before we reach Australia. I should have guessed. South Africa? Gibraltar?’
Georgina was silent.
Sophie was growing tired of this. Or rather, she was growing weary generally. The brief peace she had felt in Miss Lily’s presence had vanished. ‘Very well. Shall we make a deal? Or rather, I will make an offer that you can choose to accept or not. I have asked Mr Slithersole to book us passage on a ship from Naples in a month’s time.’
Sophie smiled. ‘There are no passages available, of course, but passengers can be persuaded to postpone their voyages for the right price, especially in times like this. If necessary, he will arrange a passage on another ship, if we are delayed or choose to leave earlier. He will arrange an extra carriage be added to trains for us where necessary too.’
‘How convenient to be able to buy whomever and whatever you like.’
Definitely Emily’s cousin, thought Sophie. Why ever had she thought Mrs Colonel Sevenoaks might provide her with someone congenial? She should have asked Ethel to recommend someone, or Sloggers might have known a friend who needed a few weeks’ work, even if she could not afford the time away from Oxford herself.
‘Mr Slithersole will book two extra passages for a “Mrs Smith and her child”. I presume your son is in the charge of a woman who will bring him to you? And that she will not mind using an alias? No need to answer that. If you learn to trust me in the next week or two, you may be able to arrange to have them meet the ship. I am trustworthy,’ she added. ‘Uncouth and impulsive, but I always keep my word.’ Except that once, she thought, when I lied to Dolphie on the battlefield . . .
‘You’re not uncouth. Your manners are surprisingly good.’
‘I will forgive the “surprisingly”. I was well taught, by a dear friend, when I first came to England.’ Sophie stood, and gathered the soup plates.
‘I suppose I should do that,’ said Georgina.
‘Nonsense. Put it down to the ingrained tendency of my class to tidy up. Both the table and the world. But you may serve yourself the cutlets. I seem to have lost my appetite.’
Chapter 11
Bathing is not just a way to cleanse. It can be a quiet time to repossess your body and your mind. You find your true self in the silences.
Miss Lily, 1914
SOPHIE
Green had laid out her nightdress, a new one in eau-de-nil silk; and her bath was already steaming, scented with roses. The fire burned in the fireplace, wood, not coal, and a luxury.
‘Green, you are a treasure. I adore the nightdress.’ She had forgotten the enormous security of having someone wait for you each night, of letting someone unbutton your dress as you stood childlike and being tended.
‘I took the liberty of buying new undergarments too, Miss Sophie. You did tell me the clothing allowance was,’ Green permitted herself a hint of a smile, ‘unlimited. You will need more formal dresses for the ship. I will ensure that they are waiting for you there.’
‘As I said, a treasure. It is possible though we may not make the Rosanna.’
‘I will order the trunks to be stored, and released to the ship on my telegram.’
‘A triple treasure. Please order whatever you need for yourself too, before we leave.’ Green must have travelled extensively with Miss Lily, but her clothes would be pre-war, and probably worn too.
‘Thank you, Miss Sophie.’
‘And do yourself proud. Dresses for your day off and evening dresses for aboard ship. You won’t want to dine in uniform.’
Green smiled. ‘I wouldn’t want to stand out from the other maids. But a few pretty dresses . . .’
‘As many and as pretty as you like.’ She added casually, ‘I imagine that when you travelled with Jones and Miss Lily, you had a first-class cabin too.’
Green hesitated. ‘Sometimes. I would not want you to think I was presuming, Miss Sophie . . .’
‘Presume away. I won’t be the one making the bookings. We may have to take what we can get — maybe we’ll all be in steerage. But make sure you have the right clothes for first class too. By the way, I was too tired to thank you last night. I hope there was no trouble resigning from your last job. Please let me reimburse you if you had to forfeit wages.’
‘If you will excuse me saying so, Miss Sophie, it was a pleasure to tell the lazy chit I worked for to get out of bed and fetch her own chocolate creams. She had as much need of an experienced lady’s maid as I have of a third leg.’ Green considered. ‘Though a third leg would be useful when the other two get tired.’
Sophie laughed. ‘Feel free to tell me whenever I need to get my own chocolate creams. Good nig
ht, Green — I can take care of myself from here.’
‘Are you sure, Miss Sophie?’
‘It’s been more than four years since I’ve had the gift of a maid. I am not quite as helpless as I once was. Oh, if you are buying hats for me, choose at least three for yourself. You will need them in Australia.’
‘I know. I have been there before, miss. Good night, miss.’
So, thought Sophie, as she slid into the gloriously scented water and reached for the perfumed soap. Nigel . . . or Miss Lily . . . had perhaps visited Australia too. Perhaps one day Green would tell her, or Nigel, when she wrote to him. Dear Nigel . . .
No regrets, she said to herself. You are going to find Dolphie and Hannelore, then you are going home.
Chapter 12
Grace is a luxury, my dears. A charlady, bent from work, cannot be graceful. Never forget you are privileged. Always give back what you can.
Miss Lily, 1914
The baby’s body lay half hidden by long grass in a storm-water ditch. In the glimpse as the train clattered by, Sophie thought it still lived, then saw the rat bites on the cheek, through the porcelain flesh.
The length of the grass must make it easy for passersby to pretend the baby’s body was not there. This was time to help the living, not waste strength on the dead.
Sophie forced her eyes away as the train chuffed past. What should she do? Pull the cord to stop the train, to bury one small body? She glanced at Georgina, but her companion looked lost in memories or, possibly, plans. Green and Jones had refused to travel with them in first class. ‘Appearances are important,’ said Jones, which settled the matter.
The France of peace was strangely different, and yet still the same. The same men in uniform, but now instead of lounging against walls smoking, they crouched on pavements, medals bright and eyes dull whenever the train stopped long enough for her to see them properly. The same black-clad peasant women with thick, veined ankles carried scavenged firewood, or drove bullock ploughs. Glimpses of blackened battlefields, still mud and blood, but fringed with green. The same pigs, rooting in their sties, stared indignantly at the train that passed above them. Every scrap of ground along the railway line grew vegetables or held geese tended by thin children.
Even the train was still filled with French and English soldiers, except in first class, where the few officers tended to congregate in the same carriage. Despite the looming demobilisation, the English ones had been sent for some unknown and possibly senseless military reason back into France; they were joking, singing, sometimes drunk, their eyes still shadowed with what they had seen and the unknown to come. Even if the new world of peace proved a good one — unlikely — the whispers from the dead and missing would be with them always.
There was still no dining car, or not on this train, but Green appeared at each stop with a hamper, with everything from Thermoses of coffee or bouillon to smoked cucumber and salmon sandwiches and rich dark fruitcake.
Their first stop was Paris, staying at another gloriously unchanging Ritz, and Sophie negotiated her first corned-beef contract, ‘Mrs Wattle’ sitting beside her neatly taking notes, Jones in his chauffeur’s uniform, Green back at the hotel organising meals as well as clothes and the next day’s transport.
Georgina proved efficient and capable, if still taciturn. Green, however, was exactly the treasure Sophie had expected. She had telegraphed Sophie’s measurements from London to a private Paris fashion house, extending Sophie’s still-limited wardrobe. The order arrived with assurances that they would be delighted to continue to supply Mademoiselle Higgs with garments of the most fashionable once she had crossed the ocean to Australia, from underwear to ball gowns to outfits le sportif if Mademoiselle Green would correspond with any changes in measurements. They even recommended a dressmaker and milliner in Sydney who would be suitable for alterations, if necessary; and a shoemaker who worked from the latest Paris designs, with a quality assez tolérable.
The Parisian corned-beef contract was a good one. Sophie had assumed it would be, no matter how inexperienced she was at negotiating orders. France still starved, its farms turned to battlefield mud, its men dead or crippled; and land deeply tired both physically and mentally after being the ground on which so many countries had fought.
Dad will be glad of another market, she thought. He was an accidental war profiteer — as an ex-soldier he had never rejoiced in war. This war had made him far, far richer, but now, without the contracts to feed the troops with bully beef, Higgs’s Corned Beef faced a leaner future unless they obtained new commercial opportunities.
This contract, like all others, must officially be negotiated as an export from England, via Mr Slithersole. Australia was forbidden from selling to any nation other than the Motherland. The transport to London and then back to Paris would put an extra halfpenny on each can, which the customers could only just afford. But that was one of the conditions the English government demanded of its loyal colonies.
They travelled from Paris to Lille, Green and her hamper still magically supplying the Bath biscuits she had discovered Sophie would nibble with coffee even when she had no appetite. They stopped twice to meet businessmen who politely pretended not to be shocked at discussing terms with a young woman in a dark blue linen suit, creamy white blouse and a ribbon at her neck comfortingly reminiscent of a man’s tie.
These contracts did need firm negotiation — unlike the more experienced Parisian wholesaler, the provincial merchants seemed to feel a woman would sign away any rights, even keeping the present low price unchanged indefinitely as France’s prosperity returned in the years to come. Sophie swiftly disabused them.
It was difficult, however, to focus on these small-town men, with their small mentalities, when outside wounded veterans begged on street corners or sold home-made brooms with a mixture of desperate hope and crushing despair, when children sat on crumbled walls, hollow cheeked and without even the energy to play.
Even the Higgs fortune could not help them all, or even a noticeable proportion of them. It could, however, provide food and eventually jobs to some. Each to their own duty, thought Sophie. This will be mine.
They stayed at railway hotels, as James Lorrimer had suggested. These too had changed. Not in their comforts, nor their menus — somehow, throughout the war, the Mesdames of the kitchens had managed to procure pheasant or wild boar for their favoured customers or even venison hit by a train, butchered by the guard and bought for a ruinous price their more wealthy customers happily paid. The hoteliers had cultivated their own gardens of endive or lettuce, asparagus, artichokes, carrots and new potatoes, and still did. But now the clientele was mostly commercial — as we are, thought Sophie — and, like her, hoping to make money from feeding a land whose chief crop for four years had been battles. Would blood make good fertiliser for France’s fields?
Most startling was the loss of the ‘unknown army’ of women, like Sophie, who had volunteered for the duration, manning ambulances, first-aid stations, refugee relief booths, uncounted and unacknowledged, the vastness of their numbers an embarrassment, for to acknowledge them would be to admit that none of the warring nations, except the United States of America, had been able to feed, clothe or transport their troops efficiently, or provide for the wounded. These had been the women who had automatically recognised each other, supported each other, provided anything from a dress to food or transport or advice regarding which colonel had roving hands and should be avoided, or which casualty posts had the best or most compassionate surgeons.
They had been her friends, her colleagues, her support. Now they were gone, dispersed back into the land of peace, and the men who controlled it. Sophie suspected that most, like her, could no longer be entirely controlled.
Yet still, as the train steamed its way to Lille, Sophie found herself watching for ambulances driven by women in jodhpurs; bullock carts filled with wounded men guided by peasant women in black; or small tribes of village women bringing pots of hot soup to marchin
g men.
All she saw was ghosts and memories.
They stayed two nights and a day at Lille to complete Sophie’s business dealings, in an office above a warehouse empty of all but rats, where a small cadre of ex-soldiers boiled water in a can above a tiny fire in a courtyard.
The next train took them to Brussels, pausing at the border for the passengers to produce the new documents of identity now required to enter another country. Sophie wondered how much use this was in keeping out refugees, or even anarchists with bombs. After all, a simple photograph, physical description and signature had converted Lady Georgina to Mrs Wattle.
Brussels bustled, like London, with post-war urgency. It was only when you looked that you saw the beggars, and the painted women desperate, loitering in the alleys, trying to smile.
Sophie gave the first band of begging children francs, and the word must have spread quickly, for after that they were invariably followed by more. Georgina and Green were charged with doling francs out to each of them. There were worse fates than begging for a child in times like this.
But the office she visited stood well above the poverty in the streets. The furniture might be old, but it was dusted and polished; the rugs were threadbare but well beaten. Monsieur Gabelle signed contracts for five years’ supply, with an option to renew. Sophie suspected that the wholesaler would have signed without her visit, but the appearance of the daughter of the firm undoubtedly added a personal note and possibly made renewals more likely.
Even better, Monsieur Gabelle had a brother-in-law in Munich (‘One can confess these things now the ceasefire has been signed, can we not, mademoiselle?’) who dealt in wholesale grocery. Monsieur Gabelle would telegraph Herr Feinberg to ascertain his interest in Higgs’s most superior corned beef.
Herr Feinberg’s telegram in return assured them he was indeed most interested in corned beef, if an acceptable price could be arranged. He wished to assure Fraülein Higgs that while parts of Bavaria were ‘troublesome’, order had been restored under the Freikorps in Munich itself. It was not perhaps recommended to drive to the city, but the train from Stuttgart was ‘almost regular’ now and, she would find, well guarded. He was her devoted servant . . .
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