May you have joy, my dear. I know I have encouraged you to find other fulfilments in your marriage, but may there be joy too.
A letter from Miss Lily to Lady Alison Venables, 1914
DECEMBER 1925
They made love only once the night before the surgery. Sophie was glad. Their first and even second nights together had been a garden of paradise, where nightingales sang and even the air was champagne.
But as the week progressed something almost frantic had accompanied their love-making, as if Nigel was determined to show that, despite age and illness, he could be a lover too. Or perhaps, she thought, lying on her side next to him, his arms about her, he simply knew this would be his last week of sexual pleasure.
And for her? Just then she did not care. Or at least would not think about it.
Nigel trailed his fingers from her shoulder down her breast, her waist, over her hips. She shivered. ‘Your body is so beautiful,’ he said softly.
‘So is yours.’
‘I’ve never found it so.’
‘What?’ She rose up on one elbow to see his face more clearly in the firelight. ‘I love your body. Oh. Would you rather it was a woman’s body?’
‘If you are asking would I turn my body fully into a woman’s if I could, then no.’ He pulled her down again, fitted her against him. ‘With my body, I thee worship,’ he quoted from the marriage service. ‘I love women’s bodies. I love your body. I love loving it this way, with mine. But when I look into a mirror . . .’ He shook his head. ‘It has never seemed as if the reflection is truly mine.’
‘Except when you are Miss Lily,’ she said quietly.
He didn’t answer. The fire snickered as a log fell. Firelight flared brighter, showing his body more clearly, which was beautiful: a tragedy that he did not know it.
And tomorrow that beautiful body would be torn, not ripped by war, but deliberately.
And that was why she was there.
Sophie sat in the small drawing room with Jones, as the winter sun spread morning light through the window from the icy garden. Neither spoke. Upstairs the surgeon and his team were operating on Nigel Vaile, sixteenth Earl of Shillings.
She longed to be there, but she was, after all, not a nurse or even a VAD. She had done all she could with personnel, equipment, sterilisation. But organisational skills could only help so far.
The vicar had called; it seemed he had forgiven her for usurping him with the archbishop. He and the Mothers’ Committee would maintain a prayer vigil until the evening, he said. Sophie managed to thank him, and not cry. Four children had arrived, each bearing posies of dried summer flowers, with holly for greenery. Each had been given a mince pie and a shilling and a kiss on the cheek, even if one small boy had indelicately scrubbed it off.
It had been strange to be called ‘your ladyship’. Stranger still to think of Nigel being carved like a leg of lamb . . .
No, she would not think of it. Bad enough that he must live it, without her sharing it. She must think of good things, so she could meet him calm and competent and focused on his recovery.
It had been two hours now. She had held his hand till his last moment of consciousness.
‘Luncheon is served, your ladyship,’ said Hereward, carrying a tray.
‘I do not think —’ began Sophie.
‘Mrs Goodenough insisted,’ said Hereward, placing the tray on the piano and putting the bowl of chicken soup, fresh rolls still steaming in their basket and butter on the table by Sophie, and the some on a side table for Jones.
Impossible not to eat, when they were so kind. The soup had every vegetable obtainable in mid-winter, and barley, thick and comforting.
‘Please thank Mrs Goodenough,’ said Sophie a little while later, as Hereward took the empty bowls away.
‘Yes, your ladyship. I will serve coffee in here, your ladyship.’
Not a question. He had learned command in the war, and Sophie had also learned when it was time to obey.
She and Jones drank the coffee. Finished the coffee. They waited.
Keep him here for me, Sophie silently prayed. A few years, only, or a lifetime.
Their marriage had begun on a whim crossed with so much desperate urgency she had not truly evaluated what she must have subconsciously intended when she began her journey. But she knew now, after only a week of marriage, that this was right. Was very nearly everything.
What was that phrase Lancelot had used of Guinevere in ‘Le Morte d’Arthur’, that Miss Thwaites had so laboriously instilled in her, that Nigel had quoted when he proposed? In thee I’ve had mine earthly joy.
Please, she prayed, let me have more than a week. Let Nigel live.
Hereward brought in the tea tray. No cherry cake. What perfect tact. Cherry cake was for happy days. No cream sponge. Fruitcake, dark and sustaining, and small cheese and cress sandwiches. She drank two cups of tea, dutifully ate a slice of fruitcake and two sandwiches; she watched Jones drink and eat exactly the same. They exchanged a look as they simultaneously put their plates down. They needed strength.
They waited.
A knock.
Sophie reached automatically for Jones’s hand. Servants did not knock. ‘Come in.’
A nurse. Her heart began to beat again. If it had been bad news, the surgeon would have brought it. ‘Mr Ffoulkes said to tell you all is proceeding well, your ladyship.’
‘How long now?’ Sophie managed.
‘Mr Ffoulkes is putting in the last stitches, your ladyship. Half an hour perhaps? I will fetch you.’
Sophie waited till the nurse had left, then rang the bell for Hereward.
‘Please ask Mrs Goodenough to have coffee and a good meal ready for the medical team in about half an hour.’ She had no idea what they might like to eat, or rather, the knowledge was buried somewhere, but was not retrievable right now.
‘Yes, your ladyship. If I may say, your ladyship, we prayed for his lordship at the servants’ dinner. We will keep praying.’
‘Thank you, Hereward. We . . . we are praying too.’ She waited till the butler had left, then held out her hand to Jones again. ‘We can wait outside the room.’ The chairs were hard there, but she did not want to make a fuss and ask for armchairs. ‘I’ll meet you up there.’
She washed her hands in ‘midwives’ water’ — water that had been boiled for half an hour with rosemary and lavender. Others would touch Nigel with gloved hands, but she needed skin to skin, and hers must be clean. She was careful not to touch the door or banisters, or even her skirt as she sat next to Jones.
And waited.
The door opened. Mr Ffoulkes came out, taking off his mask.
Sophie stood, and found no words.
‘Ah, Lady Nigel. Successful,’ said Mr Ffoulkes, sounding weary, self-important and sympathetic all at once. ‘The tumour was discreet. We removed it all.’
‘His pulse? Breathing?’
‘His pulse is a little uneven, but strong. You may go in.’
But she was already moving, stood by the hospital bed, saw his white face, the regular breathing, in, out, in, out. His beard had been shaved off that morning, as had the hair on most of his body. Sophie had even had them shave his head. She had learned in the war that hair carried infection, unless it was the lice that infested hair that carried it. She was taking no chances.
She used her foot to move a plain wooden chair from the corner of the room over to the bedside. The room smelled of Lysol and blood and intestines, a smell she had never thought to have to bear again. The chair too had been boiled in a copper, carried here in gloved hands. It was the only other furniture in the room. Even the floor was scrubbed wood, the carpet taken up, new pipes installed to hold hot water warmed by the fires in the rooms on either side, so there should be no chill but no smoke or ash or firewood either.
She sat, found Nigel’s hand under the sheet, held it. Watched him breathe. Keep breathing.
In, out, in, out . . .
A minute, an hour, or a month passed. The beam of sunlight on the scrubbed floorboards began to dim. She found a nurse standing next to her. They had been introduced, but the name had fled. The nurse felt Nigel’s pulse, counted it with the watch on her belt, nodded to herself and then, when she remembered Sophie understood, to her. ‘Steady enough,’ she said.
‘I know.’ Sophie had seen patients with far worse vital signs survive. And those with better, die, but that had been from sepsis, gangrene . . . ‘When does he need more morphia?’
‘When he begins to show signs of pain. It is difficult to know how long the anaesthesia from the operation will last.’
She had known that too. But procedures might have changed in seven years.
In, out, in, out . . . The most boring activity two people can manage in bed, Nigel had told her, is in, out, in, out . . .
He was going to live. He had to live. If she had to stand in the doorway and wrestle death, he was going to live.
He breathed. And she breathed with him.
Mr Ffoulkes came to stand with her under the bright electric light. Sensible Miss Lily, to prefer the gold light of candles. The surgeon did not deign to check Nigel’s pulse himself. ‘I believe the tumour was cystic,’ he informed her. ‘Not cancerous.’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’ Leg amputations, brain surgery . . . she had no experience of cysts or cancers.
‘It means that if he recovers there is a good chance the growth will not return.’
‘Oh. Good. Thank you, Mr Ffoulkes. I hope they have given you a good dinner.’
‘Excellent, thank you, Lady Nigel. His lordship’s port is . . .’ The surgeon hesitated, obviously realising that this was not the time to praise the port. Not a socially subtle man. But what man of empathy could spend his life cutting up the bodies of living people either? Either a saint, or one who could turn off fellow feeling.
She did not care particularly which he was, as long as his technique was good.
She slept in the chair, her arms and head resting on the bed beside Nigel’s. Twice he became restless. The nurse must have been listening next door because, before Sophie could call, she came to give him his morphia. A different nurse the second time, and then a doctor, one of the assistant surgeons, who pulled back the wound dressing, checking for swelling, haematomas, though Sophie had checked for those shortly before.
She woke again at dawn, to find Nigel watching her, his face inches from hers. He smiled, the barest movement of his lips. His eyes closed again.
In, out, in, out. Both breathing and pulse were stronger now.
She left the room, called for Jones, hugged him, cried in his arms for thirty seconds, then left him to take her place, white gowned and white gloved, while she went to bathe and dress and eat, and then return.
Nigel woke enough to smile again as she came in, woozy from the morphia. His first word to her was, ‘Bedpan.’
She held the bottle, not the pan; she was relieved to see him urinate, even if the urine was blood tinged. She put it aside for Mr Ffoulkes and the nurses to examine. Nigel lay back, exhausted by the effort.
‘You’re going to live,’ she said. ‘It was a cyst, not cancerous. No infection.’
‘Early days,’ he whispered.
‘Are you in pain?’
‘Not yet.’ The faintest of smiles. ‘Once your soul has lived in agony, the body’s pain can be . . . a distraction. Almost welcome.
‘Please don’t die, Nigel. I need you. I love you!’
‘Then I had better live,’ he whispered.
‘Shh.’ She dropped a kiss on his dry lips, held up water for him to sip. Water was important after surgery, another law she had learned in France that English doctors did not seem to know.
Mr Ffoulkes arrived, smelling of kippers, accompanied by a retinue of two assistants and a nurse. The nurse took Nigel’s temperature, looked startled. ‘Half a degree low.’
‘No infection! Excellent! We’ll have you playing golf in no time, old chap.’
‘Never,’ whispered Nigel. Mr Ffoulkes ignored him. An earl who was a patient was still only a patient. No attention need be paid him.
There was no fever that night either. Nigel dined on clear chicken broth, spooned by Sophie, rich in bones and the juice of vegetables, then apple juice. ‘Cut down the morphia by half, beginning tomorrow,’ she instructed the nurse.
The nurse looked startled. ‘But Mr Ffoulkes’s patients —’
‘In half,’ ordered Sophie. She had seen too many men struggle with addiction and daymares as they tried to wean themselves off the stuff. Nigel would have the regular dose of morphia to help him sleep at night, but each day the dose would be cut in half again.
Still no fever on the third day. She helped Nigel stand for a few minutes, again without Mr Ffoulkes’s knowledge or permission, and another of the reasons she had wished the surgery and recovery to be in a house she controlled rather than a hospital with its own regimen. Once a patient stood up things seemed to ‘fall back into place’ as one VAD had described it in France. If the stitches were placed well, they’d hold.
They did. A little swelling that afternoon: the wound needed draining — more morphia for that, but when Nigel woke, his pulse was stronger than ever. ‘What’s that music?’
‘Carol singers. I gave them permission to sing in the hall.’
‘What a lovely sound to wake up to. And your face too.’
‘I could telephone His Royal Highness if you’d like a change in repertoire.’
He laughed, winced. ‘What is for dinner?’
‘Clear chicken soup, or beef consommé, and port wine jelly for dessert.’
‘That sounds almost delicious. Sophie, are you . . .?’
‘Pregnant? I don’t know yet. But there has been nothing to say that I am not.’
The singers below burst into ‘Unto Us a Child is Born’. Sophie caught Nigel’s eye and they laughed.
If he could laugh, then he would live.
On Christmas Day Mr Ffoulkes presided over the Shillings dinner table with oysters, cream of onion soup, a tranche of turbot with sauce Albertine, venison in red wine, roast goose with chestnut stuffing, roast potatoes, parsnips and carrots followed by endive salad, anchovy toast, pudding, chocolates, nuts, crystallised fruit, mince pies and petits fours.
Upstairs Sophie, Nigel and Jones shared the servants’ meal of turkey with stuffing, and a small pudding especially made for them by Mrs Goodenough, in each portion of which they found tucked a silver ring, even Nigel’s extremely small one. It was the first solid food he had eaten. Sophie waited anxiously, but he asked for brown bread with his soup at suppertime, so she judged all was well.
Mr Ffoulkes departed on Boxing Day. This had been an experience his wife would dine out on forever, and his daughter too, but Nigel was so obviously recovering that there was no need for him to remain, though, as Mr Ffoulkes reminded them, he was only a telephone call away.
The two surgical assistants would stay to supervise, remove stitches, continue the watch for haematomas or fever. The nurses stayed too, though Sophie insisted on bathing her husband, helping him dress in one of the soft white cotton nightshirts embroidered on the collar that she had ordered for him, as near to a nightdress as a man could wear without comment.
On New Year’s Day he walked to his own bedroom, leaning on Sophie on one side and Jones on the other. Sophie slept next to him that night, waking often to listen to his breathing, in, out, in, out, subconsciously careful not to jostle him in her sleep.
Five days later Green arrived, with trunks. Jones blushed when Sophie asked him at breakfast the next morning how he’d slept. It was good to hear Nigel laugh again.
From then on Sophie’s dress improved enough for Nigel to remark on her outfit each morning; he made suggestions to her and Green, as he watched the bathing, hairdressing and selection of dresses from their bed with gentle, wistful eyes.
On 19 January she woke and watched him sleeping — the dose of morphia had been lowered till it was almost non-existent, but he still slept much of the time — then swung her legs over the bed. Dizziness swept over her, so for a second she wondered if a surgical embolism might be contagious, and then she managed to reach for the chamber pot before retching. She covered it quickly with a cloth, turned and found Nigel had lifted himself to sit against his pillows. He raised an eyebrow.
‘Pregnant,’ said Sophie. ‘No, don’t you dare try to kiss me. My breath must be foul.’
‘Champagne?’ he offered, grinning.
‘No celebrating till I’m three months along. I don’t want to tell anyone either. Just in case . . .’ For this would almost certainly be her only pregnancy, if this man was going to live, as she was now sure that he was. If she lost this child, she could just bear it — but not if the world sympathised with her. Though of course they must tell Jones . . .
Green entered with the tea tray, looked at the chamber pot, and smiled.
And Greenie, of course, as well.