It is real, she thought, looking out at the snow-covered hills, the tops of rows of grape poking above them, the almost black-green of stands of pines. I am going to arrive at Shillings in less than three weeks from Jones’ telegram. It is really happening, and I am here and almost there —
The train stopped so abruptly she almost fell from her seat. She stood and looked out into the corridor, a row of heads peering from doors. The steward appeared with an almost realistic expression of unconcern.
‘There is some small snow on the track,’ he said in English. ‘It must be dug away; an hour only.’ He repeated the message in more fluent German, and then in French.
‘Harrumph,’ muttered the occupant of the compartment next to hers — sixties, balding, portly, played bridge and spent meal-times discussing Mesopotamian archaeology with his slightly younger and only slightly less corpulent male companion. ‘That means there’s been an avalanche. We might be stuck here for days.’
‘I heard of a train that was halted for nearly three weeks . . .’ said the matron beyond him, whose pearls were almost as excellent as Sophie’s.
Sophie retreated to her compartment. One hour or three weeks: snow at least waist-high outside, the nearest town an unknown distance away, one week to Nigel’s surgery, and absolutely nothing she could do to change the situation.
Chapter 52
When your heart and mind are battered, a solid training in good manners can be a comfort. Good manners mean you can keep going without thinking, for a while.
Miss Lily, 1906
HANNELORE
The schloss was snowbound, but it was warm, a tribe of servants dedicated to adding wood to each fire, working their way up the castle, and then beginning the routine from the bottom again. The luncheon had been pre-war: caviar en croute, soup, oysters, trout, neck of venison, roast goose, roast pork with grapes and apples, anchovy savoury, Bombe Imperatice and dessert of nuts and cheese. The jewels on necks and wrists and earlobes rivalled the collection in the Tower of London, Hannelore saw with amused pride.
Germany still struggled. But at last she and others could see its way back to greatness.
The men conversed, and the women gossiped; or perhaps it was the other way around. Then it was time to change to dine once more, a process that would take two hours, leaving time for champagne before dinner and thus filled in a winter’s day.
She found Dolphie in her room, smoking a thin cigar. He gestured to it. ‘Do you mind?’
‘You know I don’t.’ She gestured to Liesl to leave. ‘An hour to dress will be plenty,’ she assured her. ‘The diamonds I think tonight.’
She was glad she had not tried to sell her jewels. They had been almost worthless towards the end of the war, and in its aftermath. Too many tiaras going begging and who in Germany would buy them? And even if someone had had the money, it had not been a time to advertise one’s status.
Now, once more, it was.
‘So?’ she asked Dolphie.
‘Ernst has asked me for your hand in marriage.’
‘Ah. I thought he would.’ It irritated her only faintly that, despite all she had achieved, her fate was still negotiated by men.
‘Do you want to marry him? He is rich — I checked — and the title is good. I know you like him.’
‘Yes, I like him very much.’ She sat in the chair by the fire — the schloss was well served by its fires and porcelain stoves, but in Germany in winter there were always draughts too — smoothing the velvet of her gown. ‘But, no, I will not marry him.’
‘Are you sure?’
He means I will soon be too old for marriage offers, she thought, except from widowers who already had an heir. ‘I do not think it would be fair to him.’
Dolphie raised an eyebrow.
‘Dolphie, in that . . . that time we do not speak of . . .’ she took a deep breath, grasped courage while keeping her hands still and graceful in her lap ‘. . . they used a bayonet to rape me. I do not think it likely I can bear children. Either the pregnancy would fail, or I would die.’
He kept his face expressionless. She was grateful. She could not have borne sympathy or compassion, even though she knew he felt both.
‘I see,’ he said, when she assumed he had managed to steady his voice. ‘So you will never marry?’
‘I’m not sure I would want to marry anyway,’ she admitted. ‘But my probable barrenness does seem to fix the matter.’
‘Ernst might accept adopting one of his illegitimate offspring. He seems . . . potent,’ said Dolphie. ‘These things can be arranged, as you know.’
Yes, she knew. Knew that Ernst had mistresses, would continue to after his marriage, even though she believed he felt true affection for her, and certainly respect. They would holiday in Greece or Italy. Or even, possibly, in Australia, to see the kangaroos, if ever she felt she could ask forgiveness from Sophie.
Once far away from Germany she would be announced pregnant, but in danger of miscarriage, the doctors warning her not to travel. The mistress would give birth, be given a house and pension, and stay where she’d been put while the baby grew up as the uncontested heir.
Australia would be quite suitable for that and it was large. She need not even go within a thousand miles of Sophie, much as she longed to meet her again. And Africa was large and suitably remote, as well. She and Ernst would return with babe in arms, and if it was a girl they would do it all again. Better, perhaps, to have a girl first, for there would be fewer murmurings and careful investigations of the child’s resemblances.
Possible. Quite simple. Ernst might even agree, both because he liked her and because the marriage would give him status. But she did not wish to do it.
‘Please tell him no with my deepest regrets. Tell him if I married anyone, it would be him.’ She smiled. ‘Which is the truth. It just matters less than it sounds.’
‘I will tell him after dinner.’ His voice changed tone. ‘I have been offered a position at the embassy in London. Nothing major. But it could lead to . . . contacts. Now you have decided about Ernst, I can ask — will you be my hostess?’
She had last seen London as an outcast, the friendships offered there drawn back as soon as war was declared. Except for Sophie’s.
She was not sure she wanted to face London again. She was sure, however, that it was her duty. To establish Germany in the minds and society of England, to make contacts that would further their cause. To work for peace, and for peace to be kept.
‘Of course,’ she said and pulled the bell for Liesl to come and dress her.
Chapter 53
I remember a Christmas I spent in a shepherd’s hut, shut off by the snow, with a single companion, and we dined on hard cheese and stale bread. We looked out at the stars and for the first time I understood the concept of heavenly peace. It was the richest Christmas I had had.
Miss Lily, 1914
In one hour and twelve minutes exactly, according to her watch, the train was free and snuffling on its way again, slowly at first, then the snuffle changing to a reassuring roar. The engineers were piling in coke, to make up time, or possibly because further blizzards were expected.
It felt both strange and deeply right to be following this particular Stuttgart route again, the one she had taken when she had left Europe nearly six years earlier. The same trees, snow-clad now, icicles like small daggers hanging from branches, instead of meadow flowers and curious deer. Gingerbread villages belched comfortable-looking smoke from stone chimneys; a girl in a shawl to her ankles herded geese who might be heading either to a warm shed or to the dinner pot.
Had Dolphie married? Surely he must have found himself a more amenable heiress by now, one who would sit at home and breed his heirs and let him rebuild his life using her fortune. Was Hannelore married too?
It had been an unlikely friendship, Sophie reflected, two young women far apart in background, yet flung together in the strangeness of both Miss Lily’s lessons and the equally odd, if more conventional,
peculiarities of a debutante season. Perhaps it was that . . . isolation . . . that had drawn them as close as sisters, though as Sophie had never had a sister, the comparison was possibly not apt.
At any time in the past six years she could have asked Mr Slithersole to enquire about the Prinzessin von Arnenberg from their Stuttgart and Munich customers. Even in post-war Germany the affairs of a graf and prinzessin must be food for gossip, even if it was ‘Poor things, in such poverty now’ or ‘The prinzessin? She married a korporal and has had twelve children, including triplets and three sets of twins. She breeds poodles now!’
She had not because . . . because . . .
Because Europe was the land of war, the land she had left, and she had foolishly imagined her past could be left behind just as easily as the continent. When things were . . . settled . . . with Nigel, whatever settled might mean (she refused to countenance the word death) she would enquire . . .
Another change of trains at Stuttgart. She longed for still ground, truly still — even the gentle roll of the Orient Express was tiresome now. She wanted no new countryside passing around her, no transient people. She wanted the familiar and those she loved, and Mrs Goodenough’s cherry cake. Jones would undoubtedly tell Mrs Goodenough when she rang him from Paris. Two hours’ flying time would give her sufficient time to bake one.
What would Nigel say? Had Jones even told him she was on her way? Would he fold her in his arms . . .?
Perhaps it had been only Jones who wanted her there. Perhaps Nigel had found another love. Maybe Miss Lily had returned to live at Shillings for the final weeks. Perhaps . . .
The snow lay behind them now. Tidy rows of cabbages lined what had been churned battlefields. Acres of mud were still black-brown, but this time they were fenced and enclosing pigs. Even the dead, blackened forests seemed to have vanished, either as firewood or because living with such visible skeletons was unendurable. The dead forests had perhaps been disposed of just as the crosses tidied the human mess into the ground.
I will be weeping next, she thought. And then: I cannot bear this. To see Nigel for a week, then see him die. To know that she would never eat crumpets with Miss Lily or feel the warmth of her gloved hand . . .
They approached Paris in darkness. She did not sleep; and then she did, so deeply that she dreamed Eloise was knocking on the door for long minutes before waking to discover it was real.
‘We reach Paris in half an hour, Mademoiselle Higgs.’
Time to bathe, to dress once more in clothes suitable for flying, trousers in soft green and rust tweed, and matching jacket, a burgundy silk blouse, lightly frilled, the leather coat, its furred hem almost sweeping the floor, the hat, leather gloves that matched the long aviator boots that none of the aviators who had helped bring her here had worn, but which looked dashing . . .
And of course, the pearls. Thank you, Mrs Henderson, for showing me the perfect accessory to wear when appearing from the sky.
A silver powder compact, with mirror, in one pocket, lipstick in another. Strange to think how these two necessities for a stylish arrival had been unthinkable not so very long ago. Everything else was packed into a dark green leather trunk and passed to a porter.
‘May I wish you a bon voyage, Mademoiselle Higgs?’ To her surprise, Eloise looked genuinely sad to part. Or was she simply hoping for a larger gratuity? Sophie handed her a sandwich of francs and was rewarded with a ‘Thank you, Mademoiselle,’ and even a curtsey, rarely seen since before the war.
The brakes squealed. The train huffed, instead of surged. Men scurried on a platform in the smoke-hazed dawn.
The train stopped. Footsteps sounded heavy along the corridor, and then a voice: ‘Sophie lass, where are you?’
Sophie opened the door with a bang. ‘Ethel!’
Chapter 54
The true structure of our lives is friends.
Miss Lily, 1914
‘Midge telegraphed me,’ said Ethel, solid in a pink suit and white stockings that made her legs look like substantial cottage cheeses. Apart from the shorter skirt she looked almost exactly like the eighteen-year-old girl Sophie had met in the war, capably organising one of the largest canteens near the Western front. ‘Said you’d need company. Nay, you don’t have to explain anything. Midge has done that.’
‘But how did you get here?’
‘Same way as we’re getting back to England. My nephew George runs an aeroplane company between Paris and London, but he’s taken the day off to bring me over and take us both back. Put Mademoiselle’s trunk in the back, see voo play,’ she added to the porter, in French that was as Yorkshire as it had been during the war.
‘I . . . I can’t say anything except thank you. I do need help.’ She had never said those words before, she realised. Never asked for help. Help to get to Ypres, help to learn the right manners, but not help for herself.
Ethel twinkled at her. ‘Midge said you were full of good ideas, but other people had to carry them out for you. Luckily I’m an organiser pa eggsallence.’
It took Sophie a second to realise the last two words were meant to be French. ‘Thank you again. A million times thank you. First of all I need to make a phone call.’
‘Righty ho, got it all fixed. Monsewer in the ticket office over there has a telephone.’ Ethel guided her through the crowd, a milling sea even at this time of the morning, effortlessly parting its waves to let Sophie through.
Sophie gave the operator the number, waited, drinking tea from the Thermos Ethel had — of course — provided, sweet enough to power a beehive, and eating a cheese and pickle sandwich which brought back enough good memories to steady her voice when the phone rang again.
She picked up the receiver. ‘England for you, Mademoiselle,’ said the first operator. ‘Putting you through to Shillings now,’ said the next and finally, a voice saying, ‘Shillings. His lordship’s residence.’
A man’s voice. Not Jones.
‘This is Miss Sophie Higgs. May I speak to Mr Jones, please?’
‘Mr Jones is not available, madam.’ The voice made it clear that telephoning one of his lordship’s staff was not acceptable.
‘May I speak to his lordship then?’
‘He is not available either, madam.’
‘Then who is?’ demanded Sophie. ‘And who are you?’
Silence on the other end. The voice spoke again with a degree of caution. ‘I am Cutler, Mr Vaile’s butler, madam. Shall I see if he or Mrs Vaile are available?’
Mrs Vaile? For one heart-wrenching moment Sophie thought Nigel had married. No, no: his wife would be a countess, not a Mrs.
Who were Mr and Mrs Vaile? And why weren’t Jones or Nigel available?
‘Never mind. I am calling to let Nigel —’ (take that, Cutler the Butler) ‘— know that I shall be arriving at Shillings by plane in about two hours.’ It was more likely three, by the time they were in the air, but better to have them ready too early than too late. ‘You will need to make sure the field below the orchard is clear of stock so the plane can land.’
The voice was more confident now. ‘I am sorry, madam, but that is not possible. The zebras are in that field.’
Zebras? ‘Zebras? What in the name of Harry —?’ The old wartime oath was not ladylike, but impossible to hold back. ‘What are zebras doing in the field below the orchard?’
‘They would eat the roses in the garden,’ said Cutler’s refined tones. ‘And the hippopotamus will be in the orchard. It is due this morning.’
Jones must be giving refuge to a madman. It was the only possible explanation.
‘If the zebras are in the field below the orchard in two hours’ time, they will likely be squashed by my plane,’ said Sophie sweetly. ‘The same goes for camels, rhinoceroses and aardvarks.’
‘Mrs Vaile felt a rhinoceros might endanger the guests. You do have an invitation to Shillings, Miss Higgs? Henry has just brought the household book and I cannot find your name in it. Mrs Vaile does know that you intend . . . wish .
. . to attend?’
‘I have never met Mrs Vaile and his lordship has made it clear that Shillings is my home whenever I wish. See to the zebras, Mr Cutler.’ She clanged the receiver down. Take that, she thought. She looked at Ethel, who grinned.
‘Zebras?’
‘I think Jones may need rescuing,’ said Sophie lightly. Protectiveness rose like an angry tide.
Zebras, camels, Vailes and a butler putting on an accent of not quite refinement . . . she’d have them all in order by lunchtime.
She took a final bite of cheese sandwich, feeling finally exactly like herself. Bring on the hippopotamus! ‘Let battle commence,’ she said to Ethel. Grinning, they strode out to the waiting car.
Chapter 55
I prefer a cup of tea before battle, rather than brandy, whether the battle is on a war front or in a drawing room. Tea clarifies and strengthens. A piece of fruitcake is an excellent addition.
Miss Lily, 1914
The aircraft was the most substantial she had seen yet. An aisle ran between six seats, not including the cabin for the pilot and co-pilot, and there was a rear chamber for luggage. Nephew George, however, was an unlikely pilot — at least a foot taller and wider than Ethel, which must have made him the most valued forward in a rugby scrum, if heavy cargo in a plane.
The seats were narrow, but cushioned; the wood trim was pale and polished. Ethel settled herself in beside Sophie, her backside almost contained by the seat. ‘La-di-da, isn’t it? Not like the kites in the war. Even has a girl serve tea and scones these days.’
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