Christmas in Paris

by Jackie French

  You had to shut your eyes to manage to smile in England now. Even Sophie, who all her life had stubbornly seen as much as she could. Even she could not bear to look too hard. How could you bear to see what you could not help? Or at least not enough to make a difference?

  A few streets away she had seen children scrabble in the Thames mud, hunting for firewood, finding mostly what their fathers, brothers, uncles had found in the trenches before them: frostbite, hunger and mud. Sophie wondered if Mrs Colonel Sevenoaks had ever even experienced mud, except at a foxhunt, of course.

  Prime Minister Lloyd George had promised England ‘a land fit for heroes’ in the last election,. This Year of Victory 1919 had not seen that promise kept. A million men already were unemployed — naturally no one counted the women cast out of work with the end of the war, or the grey-faced women, in grey flannel, walking wearily to the grey jobs that soon would be returned to men, at mean’s ages, not the pittance given to women. Much of the army still waited to be demobbed; the government afraid of the growing desperation and violence if even more men were turned out to a land where no jobs waited. But did some employers want demobilisation delayed as long as possible, to keep wage costs down?

  Britain, the colonies, had danced, prayed, laughed when the ceasefire had been declared. They had not understood. They still did not.

  This was not the land of peace. The Peace Treaty with Germany had not even been agreed to, much less signed. Officially this was only a ceasefire, though most of Europe America and the colonies tried to blot out the knowledge that the war- Officially — was yet to be won.

  Who still had the will to fight in 1919, where almost every country in the war was exhausted emotionally, economically, and by the influenza that has killed faster and more efficiently even than the guns?

  Outside this drawing room widows, or members of the even vaster army of wives whose husbands had returned from the trenches mentally or physically unable to work, fed their families with a rind of mousetrap cheese, withered potatoes or a half a mouldy cabbage. There was little else to be had for the majority in this post-war England, still suffering from the German blockades, and the diversion of ships from food shipments from the colonies to the returning colonial troops home as fast as possible, before they too muttered rebellion.

  One in seven men dead. One in seven too severely damaged in mind or body to work. A nation still on food stamps. Sugar, butter, even bread was severely rationed — but not in the home of Mrs Colonel Sevenoaks, or any of the ‘upper 600’ families who had estates to supply them not just with bread and cream, but hothouse pineapples.

  Here, in this drawing room that smelled of pot pourri and apple wood, privation was for others. Mrs Colonel Sevenoaks would never be an ‘other.’

  Yet even Emily had spent four years wondering if the young man next to her at a dinner table might be alive the next week, the next month, and too many of them had not. Emily might be one of the few across Europe who had not missed a meal the entire war. But she too had scars.

  Sophie bit a tiny portion of crust and apple, felt its buttery smoothness, and lost her appetite. She swallowed anyway. ‘Why do I need a maid? I’m not arguing,’ she added. ‘But how did you know I don’t have one?’

  ‘Your right stocking seam is crooked. And white stockings! Darling, white went out an age ago.’ Emily automatically stroked her own beige silk, the seams perfectly straight. ‘Your dress is excellent —’

  Sophie raised an eyebrow. Her wardrobe had been recently resupplied by the best private dressmaker in Paris, replacing the faded, louse ridden garments of her war.

  ‘— but there is a small stain on your collar,’ continued Emily. ‘And while your outfit was perfect for the sun this morning, it isn’t for this afternoon’s fog. A maid would have checked the weather forecast. She would also have advised you that with this year’s short skirts, high heels are a necessity, if one is not to look as short-legged as a penguin.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Sophie, trying to imagine how she would have coped fighting a war and its ramifications in high heels. She inspected her seam, but didn’t straighten it, in case Emily’s butler entered with more hot water for the teapot, and his nose lengthened another two inches at the sight. But Emily — damn her slightly porcine aristocratic nose — was quite correct. Two years of running military hospitals and a refugee relief system in Belgium and France, two years nursing at Wooten Abbey before that, had made her temporarily forget the social necessity of a good maid.

  ‘I don’t suppose you could suggest one?’

  ‘Darling, I’m not an employment agency,’ said Emily sharply. Sophie’s war service — and her failure to gain the prize of a good marriage, the ostensible aim of the debutante season that Miss Lily had prepared them for so well and so unconventionally — had let Emily forgive Sophie for being richer and more beautiful. But Emily was still . . . Emily. ‘It’s almost impossible for anyone to find good servants.’ She did not add ‘especially for a colonial’, but the implication lingered among scents of buttered tea cake and pot pourri.

  Munitions work has made girls think themselves too good for domestic service,’ continued Emily. ‘And why should Lloyd George give those ex-servicemen just lounging around the pubs an allowance when there are footmen’s and gardeners’ jobs going begging?’

  Possibly because having spent four years in the trenches saving your life those ex-servicemen don’t want to spend what is left of their own lives polishing your silver, thought Sophie. And alcohol dimmed nightmares — for a while — as well as provided camaraderie, with colleagues in the pub who understood all they would not repeat back home. But she didn’t argue. The reconciliation with Emily was still too fragile, just like the ceasefire that had been prematurely called peace’.

  And Miss Lily had also been correct. Women needed a network of other women, even in this post-war world where women over thirty had recently been allowed to vote, where women of good breeding might even visit each other, unchaperoned and unaccompanied even by a maid or footman, as Sophie was doing now. Although of course she was not well bred, just wealthy enough for that fault to be forgiven.

  Emily reached for a currant cake. ‘Surely Miss Lily could find you an adequate maid,’ she suggested, just slightly too casually. ‘Or is Miss Lily still . . . absent?’

  Did Emily care about Miss Lily? Or had her husband, now in the Home Office, an official reason for finding her? Miss Lily’s covert efforts before the war to balance the power between Britain and Germany might now be seen as treason.

  ‘As far as I know Miss Lily won’t be returning,’ said Sophie truthfully, ‘but I don’t think she took her maid with her. I wonder if she might be free.’

  Green would be perfect. Discreet and deeply capable, thought Sophie. Green was born at Shillings; she had worked for Miss Lily for twenty years; and she already knew Sophie by reputation. ‘I’ll call Lord Nigel at Shillings and ask after her.’

  Emily straightened in shock, though still swan-like, in her chair. Every girl who passed through Miss Lily’s tutoring emerged swan-like, and gracefully flirtatious. How else could a woman influence a world that men ran both politically and domestically? Miss Lily’s ‘lovely ladies’, were also — discreetly — intelligent. ‘You’ve actually met the notorious Earl of Shillings?’ Miss Lily instructed her pupils at the earl’s country estate, but never when he was in residence.

  ‘Notorious?’ asked Sophie carefully.

  Emily shrugged. No wrinkle appeared in the cloth of her embroidered blue dress — another benefit of having a maid who knew exactly how to iron and alter one’s clothing so that it hung like an extension of one’s body. ‘He’s never appeared in the House of Lords. Or anywhere in society for years. A total mystery. But you’ve met him?’

  ‘I’ve met him.’

  Sophie didn’t add that Nigel Vaile, Earl of Shillings, had recently asked her to marry him. And that she had refused, not because she could not love him, but because he was too deeply bound to hi
s land to let her be Australian.

  It was time to return to gum trees, the blue gleam of the harbour, to darling Miss Thwaites to the Higgs corned beef empire and her father. She had a duty to do first, though.

  Sophie closed her eyes briefly. She was so tired of duty . . . just so tired. If only there could be true peace. A secure peace . . .

  ‘Where did you meet his lordship?’ demanded Emily eagerly. ‘What is he like?’

  Sophie opened her eyes. ‘I met him at Shillings, early this year. He was on leave, and invited me to visit.’ Which was true, even if not the whole truth. She forced a little social vivacity back into her voice. ‘He was weary, like so many officers. He spent nearly all the war with his regiment in France. Quite a lot of people met him there,’ she added, slightly maliciously. Emily’s husband had never seen active service. ‘At the moment he’s trying to get Shillings back on its feet.’

  ‘A complete waste of his time, darling. I’m amazed he doesn’t realise that. The old estates just aren’t profitable any more, not with Land Tax and neglect during the war. More tea?’ Emily poured more hot water into the tea pot. ‘Hubert is selling all but the Home Farm and the house to some Americans. We’re keeping enough rough country for some shooting, of course. London property is more profitable and far less work.’

  Income from property and country estates was socially acceptable, possibly because the owner of that income did not have to work for it, but could employ agents. The money from Sophie’s father’s corned beef factories was not acceptable — especially as it was still being made by Mr Higgs himself. ‘Old money’, like Colonel Sevenoaks’, no matter how it had been obtained, was superior to new money. Enough time made society blind to the source of money.

  But Sophie’s ‘new money’ was also large new money and a great deal of it had been spent by experts to make sure that Sophie was presented at Court. Sophie was now ‘presentable’ in every sense. Except, she thought, for her crooked stockings, the stain on her collar, the incorrect shoes.

  Emily sighed. ‘Even the house needs a terrible amount of work to be liveable again. The gardens were all dug up for potatoes and cabbages during the war, of course. It’s going to take a regiment of gardeners to get them decent again. Everything has become so terribly shabby. I’ve convinced Hubert we really do need bathrooms now. It’s not just that guests expect them — even maids these days object to carrying bath water upstairs. Those moving pictures have given them all quite ridiculous ideas above their station.’

  Sophie put down her cup. ‘I’ve really come to ask your help. I urgently need a secretary. I thought you might know of someone. Sorry to treat you as an employment agency,’ she added.

  ‘Darling, the season is nearly over! Why on earth do you suddenly need a social secretary now?’

  ‘Not to keep my social diary.’ Sophie took a deep breath. ‘I’ve heard from Hannelore.’

  Emily’s social smile vanished. Her face looked carefully blank as she took another nibble of currant cake.

  No need to tell Emily that the letter had actually been from Dolphie, Count Adolphus von Hoffenhausen. Dolphie was Hannelore’s uncle but more like a brother, only a few years older than her. They had been brought up together. Nor was Sophie prepared to mention that she had last left Dolphie on the battlefield after shooting two of his men. ‘Hannelore needs help. I’m still going home, but I need to go via Germany. I want to find Hannelore and take her with me.’

  ‘A German.’ Emily’s face was still expressionless, but her voice sounded as if she’d noticed a fly in the sponge cake’s whipped cream.

  ‘Our friend,’ said Sophie evenly. She put the uneaten tart back on her plate, carefully crumbling it so it did not look as if she had insulted her hostess by rejecting the quality of her afternoon tea. But she wasn’t hungry. Had not been hungry now for months, or even years. Meals had been a necessary chore to keep up strength for the past four years, a matter of sawdust bread and potato and swede stew. Now, when the ceasefire and privilege put good food before her, she found it difficult to eat.

  Emily considered her. ‘Germany is still chaos, you realise. Hubert says there is a very real danger the communists will take over there, as they have in Russia. They’ve even established a soviet state in Bavaria.’

  Emily had always been the most politically astute of Miss Lily’s pupils. She took a watercress sandwich and added, ‘Hannelore might even have been executed, like the poor tsar and his family.’

  Emily could have been talking about the weather, not the young woman she had briefly regarded as a friend, both at Miss Lily’s and their finishing school in Switzerland.

  ‘Germany will rise again, of course,’ Emily added. ‘Both economically and politically, especially as the country escaped the devastation of France and Belgium. But when? It all depends on how ruthless France is with the reparations when the peace treaty is finally agreed.’ She looked thoughtful, nibbling her sandwich.

  Emily is considering exactly how knowing a German princess might possibly be of future use, thought Sophie, once Germany has regained stability and power. But that was, after all, what Miss Lily had trained them all to do — to use their charms to be effective politically, though with possibly more compassion than Emily usually wielded.

  Emily appeared to reach a decision. ‘How can a secretary help you find Hannelore?’

  ‘I need someone I can trust who can speak German. I thought a friend I worked with in France could help me, but she’s entering Oxford now women can be granted degrees. I plan to make the expedition seem as if I am scouting for European agents for sales of corned beef, even possibly setting up corned beef factories in Germany. That should mean I’m not suspected of being a spy, and am too valuable to shoot, with so much hunger.’ Sophie smiled wryly. ‘I may even succeed in getting new contracts, which might impress my father. My secretary needs to understand business and be . . .’

  Sophie hesitated. But this, after all, was Emily, who too had been taught that sometimes less . . . conventional . . . methods might need to be used to achieve a goal. ‘. . . broadminded. Intelligent. Willing to break with convention, if necessary, but able to be inconspicuously conventional, too. And available to travel to Germany at short notice, despite the dangers, and then make her home in Australia.’

  ‘Quite a list.’ For the first time Emily’s face showed a little of the strain women had lived with since the war began. ‘Five years ago finding a woman like that would have been impossible. Now,’ Emily gave her elegant shrug again, ‘fortunes are gone. A whole generation of young men are lost. Titles have gone to second cousins. Too many women have no support at all . . .’

  Emily straightened. Was that . . . relief on her face? ‘I know someone who will suit you exactly.’

  ‘You seem very sure of that.’

  ‘She is my cousin.’ A visibly grudging admission.

  Ah, thought Sophie. A close enough poor relation for this unknown woman to be a nuisance. The English upper classes traditionally either supported or exported their poorer relatives. Australia would be a convenient destination. Assuming this cousin actually could speak German, and was capable.

  ‘But with her background,’ and yours implied Emily, ‘she will need to be known as your companion, not your secretary.’ A touch of the old Emily there, dictatorial and competitive.

  ‘I don’t care what she wants her job to be called, as long as she does it well enough to earn her wages. She speaks German fluently?’

  ‘Just sometimes,’ said Emily, ‘your corned beef roots still show. Her mother was Austrian.’

  ‘Was Austrian?’

  ‘Her mother died last year in the first wave of the ’flu. Her father, maternal uncles and two brothers were killed in the first and second offensives at the Somme. The title now rests with our second cousin, but we hardly know him.’

  My word. ‘Any other relatives?’

  ‘Only myself. Her sister was a VAD. She caught consumption in Belgium but it was the influenz
a that killed her.’

  My word, thought Sophie again. Emily could be describing the flower arrangements for her next dinner party, not the tragic family history of her own cousin, a girl she’d known all her life. But had Emily too been struck by these deaths, even if her wellbred face refused to show the pain?

  Sophie retreated from obviously unwanted condolences to business like crispness. ‘How old is she, where is she, what experience does she have, and what is her name?’

  ‘She is twenty-four. She helped run the family estate during the war until Cousin Hartley returned from Palestine. Her name is Lady Georgina FitzWilliam and she is upstairs.’

  Chapter 3

  A lady can still be graceful falling in a pig sty, and when she rises, laughing, every man will see her as more beautiful than the immaculate debutantes looking embarrassed. Grace can carry you through small accidents or tragedy, my dears.

  Miss Lily, 1914

  Emily departed in a swish of fringed pink silk. Sophie looked at the apple tarts, the sponge cake oozing jam and cream, still without appetite. How she’d have loved to feed her nurses like this, and old Monsieur le Docteur. If only she could package them up and send them to Belgium . . .

  ‘More tea, madam?’ The butler appeared with a tray holding a teapot and a hot water pot.

  Sophie smiled. ‘Thank you.’

  She had already drunk an English Channel’s worth of tea, but Miss Lily had taught her never to refuse a gift of love. A dedicated butler’s service could be love. It could also be desperation for his wages or self-importance. Who was she to know or judge?