The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford

by Nancy Mitford

  ‘The old King is coming to my office tomorrow. I am seeing him myself,’ Fred continued, when this horrid cacophony came to an end.

  ‘He will be wearing his curly, butter-coloured wig,’ said Sophia.

  ‘We must see that he has a black one made. Don’t want any Aryan nonsense in my scheme – I always think Propaganda is awfully un-English, anyway, but what I say, if you have it at all, for the Lord’s sake have it good. And, by the way, Sophie, this is all most fearfully hush-hush, you know. Leakage and all that – not a word to Luke or anybody. The element of surprise is vital to the scheme.’

  ‘I see, the old gentleman is your answer to Hitler’s secret weapon.’

  ‘I wouldn’t go quite so far as that, but I can tell you we are expecting some pretty fruity results. I mean it’s a world-wide scheme you see, not just a pettifogging little affair confined to England. And by the way,’ he got out a notebook, ‘I must remember to tell the police they had better keep an eye on the chap. Think what a coup for the Huns if he got bumped off or anything; I should never get over it.’

  Sophia rang up her enemy. Olga Gogothsky (née Baby Bagg) had been her enemy since they were both aged ten. It was an intimate enmity which gave Sophia more pleasure than most friendships; she made sacrifices upon its altar and fanned the flames with assiduity.

  ‘Hullo, my darling Sophie,’ Olga purred, in the foreign accent which she had cultivated since just before her marriage and which was in striking contrast with the Eton and Oxford tones (often blurred by drink but always unmistakable) of Prince Gogothsky. ‘Yes, I have been back a fortnight; such a journey, darling. And where did you go for the summer? Just quietly with dear Lord Maida Vale? Delicious. Me? Oh, poor little me, I had a very banal time with Pauline Mallory you know, the poetess, in her villa at Antibes. Crowds and crowds of people, parties, nothing else. You can imagine how that palled on me, dearest. Happily my beloved old Ambassador was there. He has her little villa, in the garden, and there he writes his memories. He is sweet enough to say that I inspire him in his work; he read it to me – so interesting, and written, how can I express it, with such art. The old days at the Montenegrin court – so picturesque. You can imagine. Then Baroness von Bülop was a great friend of his, and he told me some fascinating things about her and her beautiful aunt which were rather too intime for cold, cold print. Well, what else – oh yes, Torchon was painting my portrait – he sees me as a Turkish slave girl which is very interesting because when Fromenti cast my horoscope he said that is what I used to be in one of my former lives. (In the Sultan’s harem, I was his favourite wife.) Besides all this, I managed to get in a little writing, so you see my time was not quite wasted after all.’

  Olga’s writing was an interesting phenomenon, rather like the Emperor’s new clothes. She let it be known that she was a poetess, and whenever, which was often, her photograph appeared in the illustrated press, the caption underneath would announce that very soon a slender volume might be expected from her pen. Sometimes even the subject-matter would be touched upon: ‘Princess Serge Gogothsky, who is at present engaged upon a series of bird studies in verse.’

  ‘This beautiful visitor to our shores is a lady of great talent. The long epic poem on Savonarola from her pen will soon be ready for publication,’ and so on.

  Once, for several weeks on end, Olga sat alone every evening at a special table at the Café Royal and wrote feverishly upon sheets of foolscap which she tore up, with an expression of agony on her face, just before closing time. Her work always seemed to be in progress rather than in print.

  Sophia asked what she was doing as war work.

  ‘Dearest, I must tell you that it’s a secret. However, when you hear that I have an appointment under the Government, that I have to undertake great responsibilities, and that I may often be called out in the middle of the night without any idea of where I am to go, you may guess the kind of thing it is. More I cannot say.’

  ‘Sounds to me like a certified midwife,’ said Sophia crossly. It was really too much if old Baby Bagg was going to assume the rôle of beautiful female spy, while she herself had drearily admitted to working in a First Aid Post, all boredom and no glamour. Olga lied with such accomplishment that there were some people who believed in her tarradiddles, and Sophia had often been told what a talent for verse, what a delightful touch the Princess had.

  ‘No, darling – what a charming joke, by the way, I must remember to tell my dear Chief. No, not a midwife. Though I’m sure it must be far far more exhausting, my Chief is a regular slave driver.’

  ‘Oh, you have a Chief?’

  ‘I only wish I could tell you Who it is. But there must be no leakage. What a wonderful man to work with – what magnetism, what finesse and what a brain! I must allow I am fortunate to be with him, and then the work is fascinating, vital. What if it does half kill me? There, I mustn’t talk about myself. Tell me, what are you doing in this cruel war?’

  Sophia said that she too had an important job under the Government.

  ‘Really, my darling, have you? A First Aid Post, or something like that, I suppose?’

  ‘Ah well, that’s only what I tell people, actually of course it is an excellent blind for my real work. I wonder you don’t adopt this idea, say you are working in a canteen, for instance. I’ll forget what you’ve just told me if you like, and spread it round about the canteen!’

  ‘Delicate little me!’ cried Olga, ‘in a canteen! But darling, who would ever believe such an unlikely thing – they would at once suspect goodness knows what. Well, dearest, I see the Chief waiting for me in his great car with the flag and priority notices, I shall feel quite important as we whirl away to Whitehall. I must fly, darling. Good-bye. I will visit you very soon in your little First Aid Post. Good-bye.’

  Sophia then telephoned to her friend, Mary Pencill.

  ‘Now, Mary, listen. You’ve got to come and work in my First Aid Post,’ she said. ‘It’s perfect heaven. You can’t think what heaven Sister Wordsworth is.’

  ‘No, thank you, Sophie. I don’t intend to work for this war in any way. I don’t approve of it, you see.’ Mary belonged to the extreme Left.

  ‘Gracious, just like Luke. He doesn’t approve of it either, nor does Florence. You are in awful company. So why are you in this awful company?’

  ‘I can’t help it if Luke happens to be right for once. It’s sure to be for the wrong reasons if he is. All I know is that everything decent and worth supporting has been thrown away – Spain, Czechoslovakia, and now we’re supposed to be fighting for the Poles, frightful people who knout their peasants. Actually, of course, it’s simply the British Empire and our own skins as usual.’

  ‘I’m fond of my skin,’ said Sophia, ‘and personally I think the British Empire is worth fighting for.’

  ‘You can’t expect me to think so. Why, look at our Government. Your friends Fred and Ned, for instance, are just as bad as Hitler, exactly the same thing. What is the use of fighting Hitler when there are people like Ned and Fred here? We should do some cleaning up at home first.’

  ‘Anyway, it’s Hitler and Stalin now, don’t forget the wedding bells.’

  Mary had gone P.O.U.M., so she grudgingly conceded this point. ‘Ned and Fred are practically the same people as Hitler and Stalin,’ she said.

  ‘I never heard anything so silly. Poor Fred and Ned. Well, I mean the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Just suppose now that the Ministry of Information had forgotten to tell us we had been beaten, and one day in Harrods we saw a little crowd gathering, and when we went to look it was Hitler and Stalin. Think how we should scream.’

  ‘I expect you would.’

  ‘So would you. Now, my point is, I often see Fred and Ned in Harrods, and I don’t scream at all, I just say “Hullo duckie” or something. See the difference?’

  ‘No, Sophia,’ said Mary disapprovingly, ‘I’m afraid you don’t understand the princip
le.’ She loved Sophia but thought her incurably frivolous.

  ‘Another thing,’ she said; ‘why have you left the Left Book Club?’

  ‘Darling, I only joined to please you.’

  ‘That’s no answer.’

  ‘Well, if you want to know it’s because the books are left.’

  ‘Sophia!’

  ‘I don’t mean because they are Left and I can’t get Evelyn Waugh or any of the things I want to read. I mean because they are left lying about the house. Ordinary libraries like Harrods take them away when one has finished with them. I don’t want the place cluttered up with books, so I have left. See?’

  ‘Really, your life is bounded by Harrods.’

  ‘Yes, it is rather. I had rather a horrid dream, though, about its being full of parachutists; my life is slightly bounded by them now, to tell you the truth, I think they are terrifying.’

  ‘Nonsense, they would be interned.’

  ‘That’s what Luke says. Still, the idea of those faces floating past one’s bedroom window is rather unpleasant, you must admit.’

  ‘By the way, I saw Rudolph last night coming out of the Empire with that foreign woman.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The one who always wears star-spangled yashmaks.’

  ‘Oh, you mean Olga Gogothsky; she’s no more foreign than you or me – although she does pretend to have Spanish blood, I believe.’

  ‘Really – Government or Franco?’

  ‘Baby Bagg. You must remember her at dances.’ Sophia was only fairly pleased to hear that Olga had been out with Rudolph, who had announced that he was going to play bridge at his club.

  ‘Anyhow, she looks too stupid.’

  ‘She has just told me that she has got an important job under the Government, I simply must find out what it is.’

  ‘First Aid Post, probably,’ said Mary. ‘You haven’t told me yet what you do in yours?’

  ‘Well, it sounds rather lugubrious but I absolutely love it. I have an indelible pencil, you see, and when people are brought in dying and so on, I write on their foreheads.’

  ‘Good gracious me, what do you write?’

  ‘M for male and F for female, according to which they are, and a number. That’s for the Ministry of Pensions. Then, for the doctor, how many doses of morphia and castor oil and so on they have had.’

  ‘What an awful idea. What happens if you get a negro – or a neanderthal type with a very low forehead? You can’t always count on having high, smooth, white brows, you know, like Luke’s.’

  ‘Try not to be facetious, darling, it’s quite serious. Then I put their jewels into dainty little chintz bags made out of Fortmason remnants.’

  ‘When you say you do all this, what exactly do you mean?’

  ‘Well, darling, I should do it if there was a raid. It’s rather like private theatricals, you know what I mean. “It’ll be all right on the night” kind of idea. The worse the dress rehearsal, the better the show, and so on.’

  Mary became very scornful and said it was the stupidest job she had ever heard of. ‘Jewels,’ she said, ‘in chintz bags. Writing M and F. Really, Sophia, I give up.’

  Sophia said it was better than doing nothing like Mary, and they rang off, each in a huff.

  When Sophia saw Rudolph she said she had heard that he had been seen out with a duck-billed platypus disguised as a Sultana. (Olga’s rather long, turned-up nose was considered to be one of her great attractions.)

  ‘Yes, my little Puss-puss,’ he said, ‘I did take the alluring Princess to a movie what time you went whoring round with your Cabinet puddings.’

  ‘I thought you told me you were going to play bridge at your club?’

  ‘So I was, until I met Olga.’

  ‘But where did you meet her?’

  ‘At my club.’

  ‘Rudolph, what a story.’

  ‘Well, I did. She came along in a taxi after I had telephoned to her.’

  ‘Oh. What was she like?’

  ‘Cracking bore, as usual. Talked about nothing but herself. I had to hear the whole story of how Serge blighted her life by refusing to allow her self-expression on the films. As though one didn’t know that the old boyar would allow her to do anything which brought in the roubles.’

  ‘She was always having tests,’ said Sophia.

  ‘And they were lousy. Well, then of course she is having all those books dedicated to her and pictures painted of her, and so on. But she has abandoned these activities for a very important job under the Government. First Aid Post, I guess. Chap in my club, a doctor, gave her her first aid exam. He said, “Now Princess, if you found a man with a badly broken leg and you had no splint or bandage, what would you do?’ and she said, “Take my drawers off and tie the leg to my leg.” So of course he passed her.’

  Sophia saw that she must look out. She knew very well that when a man is thoroughly disloyal about a woman, and at the same time begins to indulge in her company, he nearly always intends to have an affair with that woman. The disloyalty is in itself a danger signal. She would not have supposed that Olga was exactly to Rudolph’s taste, but these things do not follow any known rules and you never can tell.

  ‘Beastly fellow,’ she said. ‘I see you’re in love with her.’

  ‘Rather,’ said Rudolph. ‘I see you’re jealous.’

  ‘Rather.’ Sophia got up and rang the bell for the cocktail things. ‘I say, darling, by the way, you know Florence?’

  ‘Yes, I’m in love with her too, of course?’

  ‘Very likely. Anyhow, you know she lives with us now. Well, I believe she must be nicer than we thought she was, because, whatever do you think? She keeps a pigeon in her bedroom.’

  ‘Does she now? I thought she kept Luke.’

  ‘No, no, darling, I’ve often told you. Anyway, there it is, she keeps this terribly nice pigeon.’

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘I expect it is her friend. I would love to have a sweet pigeon for a friend, but I must say I never would have thought it of Florence, she doesn’t strike one as an animal lover. Milly doesn’t like her at all.’

  ‘I call it very queer,’ said Rudolph. ‘Do you think it might have some religious significance?’

  ‘It’s a pigeon, not a dove.’

  ‘Florence wouldn’t know the difference. That’s it, I expect she is keeping it to let loose over Brother Bones’s head next time she sees him.’

  ‘Or maybe she saved its life. Mr Stone, in our Post, you know, has to keep down the London pigeons in peace time, and he says it’s awfully difficult because wherever you put your trap some old lady always pops her head out of a window and sets up a screeching about it and calls in the police and so on. However early in the morning, it’s always just the same. So the result is that London’s pigeons are not really kept down very much, as you may note. Perhaps Florence saw this one in a trap (they get up very early in the Brotherhood, you know), and promised not to let it loose again if she might have it. I like her much better for it, actually.’

  Florence now came into the room. She told Sophia that Luke had been guided to ask a hundred people to dinner the next day to talk about Moral Rearmament. ‘It’s to meet this friend of ours, Heatherley Egg,’ she said. (Florence always introduced new people into her conversation with the word ‘this’. ‘This woman I met in the bus’ or ‘This cousin of my father’s’. It was a habit which maddened Sophia.) ‘I have arranged the whole thing,’ Florence continued; ‘gold chairs and food and so on are all ordered. I just looked in here to say how much we hope you will come to it, as I feel sure you will be interested. Heatherley Egg has just arrived from the States, and he will tell us what the President said to him about Moral Rearmament. Just the two of them (the three, I should say, because of course, there was a Third present) talked it over for nearly five minutes, and Heth says – well, you must hear it from his own lips tom
orrow evening. There will be members of the Brotherhood from all, yes, I am happy to say, all the European countries.’

  Sophia and Rudolph hurriedly explained that they had a very long-standing engagement for the following evening. Florence looked a bit crucified and said how strange it must seem to live in a perpetual whirl of thoughtless gaiety.

  ‘I call a hundred people to dinner a pretty good whirl, personally.’

  Florence said she must go as she had this First Aid lecture.

  ‘It was her book I saw that awful old knee joint in.’

  Sophia went to the telephone and dialled a number. ‘You know I really admire her for doing the first aid course, I never would have expected it, like the pigeon, and dyeing her hair. It all shows how I underestimated Florence.’ She rang up Vocal Lodge and asked Sir Ivor whether she and Rudolph might dine with him the next day. ‘There is a Brotherhood orgy here, and we can’t take it.’

  ‘Yes, Sophie, my darling, you may, but you must be nice to the Gogothskys who are coming, and not make poor dear Olga cry like you did last time. Promise? All right, eight o’clock then, I have to be at my post by ten.’

  ‘Thank goodness for that,’ said Sophia to Rudolph when she had rung off. ‘People from every European country, think of it. I mean the whole point of the war is one doesn’t have to see foreigners any more. And as for what the President said to Heth – horrors!’

  The Russians marched into Poland on the very day of Florence’s party. Luke was stunned by this practical demonstration of Russo-German solidarity.

  ‘Herr Hitler told me himself that his life’s work was to lead a crusade against Bolshevism.’