A year passed, and another. Each day when the letters were brought to the breakfast table Sophie looked for one from Germany. None arrived, though Sophie’s banker’s draft had been cashed six months after she had arrived home. Sophie was sorry not to hear from Hannelore, but not surprised. She did not write herself in case a letter from a former enemy might hurt her friend or Dolphie in whatever life they had fashioned now. By the end of the second year Sophie stopped looking for a letter. The portraits James and Nigel painted of life in Germany were of a land where even a prinzessin would struggle to survive, and foreign friendships would bring perhaps deadly retaliation.
James even wondered — to her, at least, and in the discretion of a letter that would only be read far across the world — if Lloyd George truly believed that Germany could pay, as he claimed, or was he merely playing to the gallery — and which was worse. British, French and Belgian troops entered Germany to enforce repayment. Germany had offered to pay half what had been proposed, but at last agreed, rather than face continued occupation.
Skirts grew shorter and so did sleeves, which then vanished altogether.
Another year, and in 1922 the Irish were at last offered a free state. Twenty-four thousand fascists and Blackshirts marched on Rome, installing Il Duce, Benito Mussolini, as fascist dictator of Italy. In Britain in 1924, army, navy and air force reserves were called in to act against the national strike — which was in any case called off at the last minute when railway and transport unions refused to support the miners.
As James had predicted back in 1919, support for a soviet-style government had dwindled, but Britain remained rent by growing inequality and desperation.
There seemed so little to write to James and Nigel in return, from this land at the bottom of the world, where poverty meant your children would go without shoes or education, but anyone who could trap a rabbit or grow tomatoes would not starve, nor freeze in the mild winters, not even in a shanty made of kerosene tins or third-hand corrugated iron. Bungalows had sprung up like mushrooms around every train station, and these new ‘suburbs’ catered for the six-hundred-pound war-service loans with houses with an inside bathroom, two or even three bedrooms, on planned estates of quarter acres, where families could live in middle-class respectability without any servants, or even a gardener, though few turned away ex-servicemen who offered to mow lawns, plant a vegetable garden, or wash windows.
Why should James be interested in the first Country Women’s Association conference, the first federal cabinet meeting in the new capital city of Canberra, although it was less of a city than a few buildings and farms nestled next to the small country town of Queanbeyan? That was the year Greenie ordered a radiogram, and they all gathered in the library to listen to Australia’s first radio broadcast, audible (if crackly) all the way from Melbourne as Dame Nellie Melba sang in La Bohème.
Instead she sent James what economic analysis she was able to glean from her contacts in France and Belgium. Both countries were slowly recovering from war, and the contracts with Higgs extended. Herr Feinberg and his colleagues in Bavaria, however, had been forced to terminate their contracts. Two were bankrupt, Herr Feinberg managing — just — to keep on in a land where vast inflation could mean it took a wheelbarrow of marks to buy a loaf of bread.
The loss of the German contracts did not affect Higgs Industries — they had only ever been intended as a ruse to enter Bavaria, and Sophie had not seriously expected them to be lucrative. Politically, however, the German desperation, the insistent isolationism of America, and the determined short-sightedness of the Allies was worrying.
Nigel’s early letters were of debates in the House of Lords; of the League of Nations; of discussions at dinner parties. But increasingly as the years passed his news became limited to Shillings, and its world. Miss Lily’s intimate gatherings had gained her contacts and influence across Europe. Nigel Vaile, Earl of Shillings, attempting to be heard in the House of Lords after so many years of invisibility, belonged to no faction and was courted by none either. Perhaps, thought Sophie, he had simply lost the optimism that any effort of goodwill might influence the world. Like James, Nigel did not mention his personal life.
Sophie had no way of knowing whether this was because he had too little, or if, possibly, Miss Lily had truly left and Nigel was accepting his position as eligible bachelor. Each time she saw the crest on a letter at the breakfast table she was afraid, just a little, that the strong black-inked writing inside might announce his forthcoming wedding. But no such letter came. Instead, increasingly, his letters were on the minutiae of daily life at Shillings.
My dearest Sophie,
The vicar is undone! “Ethan”, the champion spin bowler of his beloved village cricket team has been unmasked as none other than Green’s cousin, the redoubtable Esme, barmaid at the Shillings and Sixpence. In an even worse blow to his pride, it appears the entire cricket team and all the pub’s customers have known for years.
The substitution was only discovered at an ‘away’ match when ‘Ethan’ was seen slipping into the Ladies’ not the Gents’ convenience. Esme has been stripped of her cricket whites — symbolically, of course — although Jones says the vicar may relent by next season, rather than relinquish the championship.
As the years went by she hoped more and more each morning that there’d be a thick white envelope with Shillings’s crest in the letters at the breakfast table. A day with a letter from Nigel was brighter.
James’s letters made her feel as if political importance belonged to Europe alone, with the United States of America an ‘also ran’ and Australia excellent only at doing what she too was part of: exporting food and minerals so ‘real life’ could exist elsewhere.
Nigel’s letters simply gave her joy. She told him so. She did not admit, however, that at every post she hoped even more strongly there might be a letter from Miss Lily. At times, in this new world, she felt adrift with only the memories of her wisdom. Nigel Vaile, Earl of Shillings, lacked Miss Lily’s confidence to instruct.
Her own letters in return to her correspondents also held little that was personal. She could not write of Green’s relationship with a married importer of Rolls-Royce motor cars, nor her assurance that married men were safer, as their intentions were not honourable and their discretion assured. Nigel, James, Sloggers and Ethel would not be interested in the first prize Timothy and his cattle dog had won at the Bald Hill Agricultural Show, or how her household had joined the growing craze for crossword puzzles, with even Cook offering a solution for three down: bird of prey, ten letters.
The ‘suitable friends’ of her Australian life before the war were all neatly married, though due to the loss of a quarter of their generation of men, often to those twenty or thirty years their senior. They now seemed, despite her tentative hopes on her way home, even more limited in outlook; nor was Sophie, as a single woman, and a businesswoman to boot, with no sign that she would resign her position to her husband on marriage, a convenient guest to invite to dinner parties, tea dances, or bridge or mah-jong mornings, tennis afternoons, ice-skating parties or picnic excursions to the Blue Mountains.
Those she met in business were usually men; but it was their wives who sent social invitations, and not to Sophie. Her few social contacts were with the Slithersoles (Johnny married in his first year in Sydney) and Cousin Oswald and his wife, or large dinners or balls at Government House, to which Georgina was naturally invited. Sophie’s presentation to the Queen entitled her to her own invitations too. She accepted, partly for business reasons, to make and further cement contacts, but also as a gift for her father. He had won her this position, and in return she would maintain it.
She had even lost the wish to charm the few single men she met. Lifting her eyes to them under her eyelashes, flattery then self-importance seemed too much bother. Most had self-importance enough already. She mostly kept charm for business. A contract for pineapples was worth fluttering her eyelashes and giving compliments. But marria
ge? The few times she met an eligible man — and there were very few of the right age who had escaped both war damage and marriage — she heard the echoes of the Blue Danube, as she soared in Dolphie’s arms; remembered the deep contentment of eating crumpets with Miss Lily or breakfasting with Nigel; the challenge of James Lorrimer’s knowledge of the world. No man she met could equal those she’d left behind; and she was too focused on Higgs Industries and the welfare of many to settle for nursing a war-damaged man.
Living quietly with Maria and Green, letting Georgina run Thuringa, building her empire with fruit cocktails, canned tomatoes and asparagus, satisfied her.
And then, quite suddenly, it did not. Creating an empire was fulfilling. Merely running one was less so. And Higgs Industries now purred like the Rolls-Royce engine of Green’s ‘friend’.
She awoke one morning to find there was nothing she had to do that others could not do as well, or better. She packed, or rather, asked Green to pack, for an extended stay at Thuringa. She had not spent more than a few days there at a time since she moved home.
It was time to spend hours ambling on a horse between gum trees again; to see if she could still swing a billy of tea without dropping it; and to pause, and see what direction life might take now. Taking on the challenge of making chokos fashionable? Travelling to the United States of America, perhaps with Green, ostensibly to look at other manufacturing enterprises, but mostly for the adventure, which she suspected Green was beginning to hanker for too? Or to think about being wife and mother, though to do either of those one must have a husband in mind. But of the men who had courted her, none had felt like someone she could share her life with.
Her life, and not just his.
Chapter 35
4 APRIL 1925
She arrived at Thuringa in a new dark green Rolls-Royce Twenty, on an afternoon when the blue sky was hazed with casuarina pollen and the leaves were turning gold on the poplars planted down the mile-long driveway.
She spent the first two days simply riding — Georgina had kept the stables well stocked with most excellent horses. On the third day, too stiff to ride again, she breakfasted with Georgina and Timothy on the verandah, a leisurely meal as they looked out at the galahs pecking down through the tussocks, newly down from the mountains before winter, the cattle fat and decorative, the fences neatly dividing the land into rectangles.
Georgina grinned at her obvious enjoyment of the scene. ‘More tea?’ She lifted the silver pot. ‘You should come down here more often. And stay longer.’
Sophie spread a slice of toast with honey from the hives old Joe kept up on the hilltops. I should send a pot of this to Nigel, she thought. It was paler than Shillings honey. It tasted of sunlight and gum blossom. Maybe Thuringa honey would even encourage him to visit Australia. ‘I will now. I’d forgotten how peaceful it is.’ It had been this, as much as the business empire, that had called her back from Europe. She had forgotten how strong her love was for this place. She blinked. ‘Timothy, is that a snake in your shirt pocket?’
‘Just a young python, Aunt Sophie. Did you know that pythons can grow up to forty feet long and eat a man?’
‘I think only boa constrictors can do that. Yours won’t grow to more than about about six feet.’
‘And not in the house,’ added Georgina.
‘But we’re on the verandah —’ began Timothy.
‘Time for lessons,’ said Georgina firmly, angling her cheek for a kiss. Timothy spent most of each day with a tutor now, preparing for school in Sydney next year. No matter how much he loved farm life, the young viscount needed to experience the best approximation of boys his own class that the colonies could provide.
‘He’s a darling,’ said Sophie, watching him run off, the small python now draped over his shoulder. ‘You’ve done brilliantly with him. And with Thuringa. Thank you.’
‘Thuringa has done well by us,’ said Georgina. Sophie looked at her sharply. Perhaps Georgina too felt it time to change direction. But to where?
Georgina helped herself to plum jam. ‘By the way, the McPhee property is on the market. Jock McPhee is getting too old to run the place and both sons died on the Somme. Are you interested?’
‘Of course.’ Higgs Enterprises still followed the policy of buying any good land available in the district — it was not just good business but also what one did for neighbours. They knew their fences would be kept up, their strain of cattle appreciated, the house lived in, even if by a stockman. Those who received the generous asking price with no haggling carefully closed their minds to the possibility that that stockman and his family might have dark skin.
It had been more than a decade since native workers had been chained on any farm in Bald Hill. Under Georgina’s gentle pressure as patroness of Bald Hill Central School, children with dark skins were not just permitted to go to school, but any attempt to expel them on spurious grounds was firmly resisted.
‘Might be worth having a chat to the McPhees today then, if you’ve nothing else on.’ Georgina hesitated. ‘I was thinking of going up to Sydney this afternoon to see the dressmaker before the May Day ball. But if you like I could postpone it and come with you.’
‘Go and gallivant,’ said Sophie lightly, reaching for the honey pot again. ‘I am more than capable of negotiating with the McPhees.’
Which was how, finally, six years after Ethel’s urgings, Sophie Higgs and Midge Harrison, nee McPherson, finally encountered each other in the McPhees’ lounge room.
Midge had been one of the two friends with whom Ethel founded the wartime canteen in France. She and Sophie would undoubtedly have met earlier if Sophie had not been so busy, although the Harrisons’ property, Moura, was closer to Biscuit Creek than Bald Hill, so the Harrison family did their shopping, schooling and memberships of clubs there. Midge had also been preoccupied: she was not just a farmer’s wife, but herself a farmer.
If local gossip was accurate — and it usually was, in Bald Hill and Biscuit Creek — in the last five years Midge Harrison had made the decisions that had turned a cockie farm into one that was almost — if not quite — a squatter’s holding, pedigree rams improving their stock, her own money buying whatever adjoining land became available. Georgina had met Midge several times at Country Women’s Association meetings and church gatherings, and liked her, but, possibly regarding Midge’s husband with a remnant of her aristocratic reserve, had never invited them to dine.
Midge was sitting on Mrs McPhee’s purple-and-green-flowered sofa when Sophie entered; she had a cup of tea in one hand, a jam-laden scone in the other and a spark of property competition in her eyes.
‘Er, have you met?’ asked Mrs McPhee nervously. Having two rivals for her husband’s land required etiquette she was not familiar with, especially as both were women and so, by convention, were to be entertained by her and not her husband, who, in true male fashion, was down in the gully repairing a fence just when he was needed.
Midge put down her cup and scone, stood, and held out her hand, man-like, to shake. A red hand shiny with scars. That is our badge, thought Sophie. Those scars from constant wartime infections say, ‘I was there.’ ‘Midge Harrison. Mrs Harry Harrison,’ said Midge, smiling. ‘May I call you Sophie? I have heard so much about you from Ethel’s letters.’
‘I’ve heard about you too.’
They all sat, Mrs McPhee visibly relieved that battle was not to commence in her lounge room. There might even be gossip to pass on. ‘Tea?’ she offered Sophie.
‘Yes, please. Milk, no sugar, thank you. The scones look delicious. How is Ethel? I haven’t heard from her in months. She is a mutual friend, from the war, Mrs McPhee.’
‘I haven’t heard from her much either.’ Midge ate her scone with a heartiness Miss Lily would have gently reproved. But then at Bald Hill eating enthusiastically was not a social solecism, but a compliment to one’s hostess, thought Sophie. Miss Lily would have approved of Midge. ‘The last letter said she’s feeding half the children in Manche
ster with free school lunches and is trying to open a Marie Stopes Clinic there too.’
‘Ethel?’ Sex was the last thing Sophie would have associated with the large and energetic Ethel.
Mrs McPhee blinked, obviously hoping this was another Marie Stopes, not the notorious campaigner for women’s rights and author of Married Love, and the provider of devices that ensured love did not too copiously procreate.
Midge grinned, winked, swallowed the last of her scone, then got down to business as efficiently as Sophie herself would have done in another five seconds. ‘So, about this property. How about we buy half each? You have the half on your side of the river, we have the half on our side. It’s roughly half and half.’
And Sophie was getting slightly the best of the bargain, as the creek flats she wanted were north of the river, and more valuable than the southern side. She nodded agreement. ‘Only if I pay sixty-five per cent of the purchase price — though we split the conveyancing costs evenly.’
‘Done.’ Midge held out her hand to shake again on the deal. Mrs McPhee looked even more nervous, at both the female handshaking and the magnitude of business that appeared to have been completed without her husband present, and by women, over her tea and scones.
‘I’ll get the solicitor onto it tomorrow.’ Midge stood. ‘Thank you for the tea, Mrs McPhee. We are going to miss your scones, and you too. And thank you for letting us have your home. We will care for it, I promise.’
‘Thank you from me too,’ said Sophie.
Mrs McPhee saw them out, hesitantly, as if still unsure whether she should wait for her husband to come in and ratify the deal, but equally sure she knew no way of stopping either Sophie nor Midge.
Midge paused at her car, a stylish blue Riley. ‘Are you busy tonight? Would you like to dine with us? Totally informal. We’re on the phone line, if you’d like to ring Thuringa to say you will be late.’
The Lily and the Rose Page 19