The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford

by Nancy Mitford

  ‘Then you ought to have smelt a rat at once,’ said Sophia unkindly.

  ‘But he was so earnest about it. He said over and over again that Bolshevism was the greatest force for evil the world has ever known.’

  ‘Of course I don’t want to say I told you so, darling, but there’s never been a pin to put between the Communists and the Nazis. The Communists torture you to death if you’re not a worker, and the Nazis torture you to death if you’re not a German. If you are they look at your nose first. Aristocrats are inclined to prefer Nazis while Jews prefer Bolshies. An old bourgeois like yourself, Luke, should keep your fingers out of both their pies.’

  Luke must have been quite distracted. He did not even protest, as he usually did, when Sophia called him a bourgeois, that the Garfields were an old Saxon family dating back to before the Conquest. Which, as Sophia would very justly observe, did not affect the matter one way or another.

  ‘And let me tell you,’ she went on, ‘if you continue to believe everything those foreigners in Germany said to you, you are in for some very nasty shocks, old boy. They have told a lot of people a lot of things not strictly speaking true, and most of us are beginning to get wise. The day they said they would never use gas against civilians every First Aid Post in London let down its gas-proof flaps, and we have all stifled ever since.’

  Poor Luke passed his hand over his smooth, white forehead and looked sad. Sophia was sorry that she had been so beastly to him, and said, ‘Darling, are you excited for your party tonight?’

  ‘I am not a baby to be excited for a party. It will, I hope, be interesting. Mr Egg appears to have seen the President.’

  So Rudolph was right, and Luke was getting bored with the Brotherhood. She wondered whether it was a religion which took a great hold on people, and whether it would leave the poor fellow with an uneasy conscience for the rest of his life.

  Brothers and Sisters now began flocking into the house. They all looked very much alike and might easily, had there not been a hundred of them, have been brothers and sisters indeed. The girls were all dressed in simple little tub frocks with a bastard Tyrolean flavour, they wore no hats or stockings, and quite a lot of grimy toes poked their way out of sandals. They were sunburnt, their foreheads were wrinkled, and their hair and lips were very thin. The young men, of whom there were quantities, appeared at first sight to be extremely well dressed, but their suits were too broad at the shoulder, too slim in the hips, and not made of quite the very best stuff – in fact, they would not stand up to close examination. They answered to names like Heth for Heatherley, Ken for Kennerley, and Win for Winthrop, and spoke with Hollywood accents. They were sunburnt, and when you first looked at them, immensely handsome, like the suits. Their eyes and teeth were blue. The cosmopolitan element in this party was not in evidence, and Sophia thought Florence must have meant Americans from every country in Europe, until she heard a gabble of foreign languages. She concluded that the Brotherhood, like Hollywood, places its own stamp on all nationalities, as it certainly confers a particular type of looks, of clothes, and that ‘If this is pleasure give me pain’ expression which is permanently on all the faces of its adherents. There was not one soul in uniform.

  Rudolph, however, when he arrived to take Sophia down to Kew was resplendent in the full fig of the Wessex Guards.

  ‘I kept it secret for a surprise for you,’ he said; ‘wait till you see my coat, though, lined with scarlet.’

  ‘Well, you do look pretty,’ said Sophia approvingly. Before the war, she had often thought of seeing him in uniform for the first time, and had supposed that she would cry. Now she simply felt delighted. Indeed Rudolph, unusually well shaved, looked handsome and soldierly, an example, she felt, to the brothers. War psychology, so incomprehensible during peace time, already had her in its grip.

  Florence introduced Mr Egg to them. ‘Heatherley, this is Sophia Garfield. Rudolph, this is Heatherley.’ Brotherhood manners were like that. ‘Sophia, you must wait a moment while Heth tells us what the President said to him. He’s just going to now.’ She got up on a chair and clapped her hands. ‘Silence everybody, please. Heatherley is going to tell us what the President said about Moral Rearmament.’

  Silence fell at once, and all faces were turned towards Heatherley who was scrambling on to the chair.

  ‘Well, folks,’ he said impressively, ‘I went to see the President.’ Pause. ‘We were alone together, just the three of us, you understand. The President is a busy man.’ Pause. ‘Well, he said to me.’ An impressive pause. Heatherley looked all round the room, and finally continued, ‘He said “I think Moral Rearmament is a very very fine idea.”’

  There was a prolonged and reverent silence, broken by Florence who said, ‘I always think it is so important to hear the exact words when a man like that makes a statement like that. Thank you, Heth; personally I shall treasure this little scene.’

  The Gogothskys were already at Vocal Lodge when Sophia and Rudolph arrived. Olga, greatly to Sophia’s delight, for she made a mental collection of Olga’s clothes, was wearing a snood. A bit of it came round and fastened under her chin like a beard and she looked, as no doubt she felt, very Slav. The Prince, a huge jolly drunken fellow whom everybody liked, was dressed in Air Force blue; he announced that he was on leave from his balloon, Blossom. It was evident that Blossom had made a man of him. Hitherto his life had been spent trailing about after Olga, making, in return for her considerable income, the small and rather unreal (as he was a British subject), but in his wife’s eyes, invaluable, contribution of princedom. Now he was bronzed, clean, fairly well shaven, and apparently quite sober. He and Rudolph slapped each other on the back, compared uniforms and were very gay.

  ‘You managed to get away from your Chief,’ Sophia said to Olga, her eyes feasting on the snood.

  ‘He heard of my sorrow and begged me to take some leave,’ said Olga reproachfully.

  ‘Sorrow?’ said Rudolph. ‘Why, you are looking a bit widowed, come to think of it. What’s up?’

  ‘My relations in Poland –’

  ‘Didn’t know you had any,’ said Sophia sceptically.

  ‘Didn’t you, darling? Yes, indeed, my great-great-great-grandmother was a Paczinska, and I fear my poor cousins must have fallen into Bolshevik hands. You know what that meant in Russia – they were given over to their peasantry to do as they liked with.’ Olga gave a tremendous shudder.

  Sophia said there must be something wrong somewhere. If the Duchess of Devonshire, for instance, was handed over to the peasantry to do as they liked with, they would no doubt put her in the best bedroom and get her a cup of tea. ‘If the peasantry are really such demons,’ she said, ‘whose fault is that, pray?’

  ‘But I saw in the papers that the Bolshies are going in on purpose to protect you White Russians,’ said old Ivor, rather puzzled.

  Serge Gogothsky had been brought up in England, and had spent most of his life here. He must, therefore, have been well accustomed to the national ignorance on the subject of foreign affairs, but this was too much even for him. He gave a sort of warbling roar, and jumped about the room like an agonized Petrushka explaining the historical and geographical position of White Russia.

  ‘All right, keep your hair on,’ said the old singer, taking his off and adjusting a curl. ‘Have another drink.’

  This panacea for all ills was accepted, and peace reigned once more until Rudolph tactlessly observed that he was not so enthusiastic about Europe being over-run by the murderous Muscovites as Hitler seemed to be. The Prince once more became very much excited, and said that if the Allies had assisted the White Russians at the end of the last war and enabled them to reinstate the Romanoffs, none of this would have happened.

  ‘What nonsense. The Romanoffs were just as likely to get imperial ideas as Uncle Joe any day of the week. You Asiatics should be kept out of Europe, that’s what it is.’

  ‘Keep your hairs on, dea
rs, and let’s have dinner,’ said Sir Ivor, who only enjoyed joking conversations of an esoteric kind.

  During dinner Sophia noticed that Olga was drooping her eyelids a good deal at Rudolph who seemed not to be disliking it. She cast about for means of retaliation (upon Rudolph, Olga she could always deal with very easily) but saw none to hand. The old gentleman would hardly bring conviction as a stalking horse, and the trouble with Serge was that the smallest encouragement too often led to rape. A tremendous dip of the offending eyelids stung Sophia into action and she turned to Olga with a sweet smile and asked how Savonarola was getting along. She always reserved this question for very special occasions.

  ‘Dearest, there is a war on, you know. Sometimes, however, I do manage to do a little scribbling, busy as I am my poetry simply forces its way on to paper. Last night, during a lull, I read some of my sonnets to the Chief. He says they remind him of Elizabeth Browning’s Sonnets to the Portuguese.’

  ‘From,’ said Rudolph. ‘Who is your Chief?’

  Olga gave a great swoop of the eyelids, and said that her job, which was very important, and her Chief, who was very very famous, had to be kept very very secret.

  ‘Bet Haw-Haw knows them,’ said Rudolph. ‘I suppose you are one of those pin-money lovelies I am always reading about, eh? Come clean now, aren’t you?’

  ‘By the way, dears, I have a new job,’ said Ivor.

  Sophia wrestled with temptation. She longed to take Olga down a peg by being in the know; the old gentleman was just going to tell them himself, so where would be the harm? On the other hand, Fred had begged her to be careful. She decided to wait and see what Ivor said. Meanwhile the conversation flowed on.

  Rudolph said, ‘I suppose you are a wonderful old spy in a wonderful new wig. I suppose that’s what Olga is really, a beautiful female spy, worming her way into the hearts of careless young officers like Serge and me.’ Olga, who liked to be taken very seriously, was not pleased. She drooped her eyelids at the Empire dessus de table instead of at Rudolph, and Sophia relaxed once more.

  ‘Talking of jobs, you should see Sophia’s Post,’ went on Rudolph, who, entirely against her orders, was always popping in and out of it. ‘Serge, old boy, here’s a tip for you – the first thing that strikes the eye is a notice, written out in wobbling capitals by our Sophia, which says, “Never give a drink to a patient marked H.” See the form, you old mujik, the great thing is never by any chance let yourself be marked H. Farther on, however, you come to notices with arrows attached, also written by our little friend, and therefore extremely unprofessional in appearance, saying, “Males remove underclothing here”, “Females remove underclothing here”, and these lead, quite logically, to the midwifery department. I had no idea the Borough Councils were such realists.’

  ‘It’s called the Labour Ward,’ said Sophia; ‘don’t listen to him, he has no business to come prying round my Post.’

  ‘The Labour Ward has to be seen to be believed,’ said Rudolph; ‘it’s a kind of dog kennel, and the only furnishings are a cradle and a pair of woolly boots. If I were a lady I should bag not having a baby there, I must say, raid or no raid.’

  ‘Poor Sister Wordsworth can’t get anybody to take charge of it, did I tell you?’ said Sophia, falling happily into talking shop. ‘You see, it’s awfully dull just sitting and looking at the cradle all day, they prefer the Treatment Room.’

  ‘But the real thrill is the Hospital Museum,’ went on Rudolph. ‘It’s next door to the Labour Ward – very suitable really, as exhibit A is a bottle containing pre-natal Siamese twins. You should come along one day, Serge, and take a load of the ulcerated stomachs. I promise nobody shall mark you H, and there’s a pub up the street.’

  ‘You’ve none of you taken any interest in my new job,’ said the King of Song peevishly.

  ‘Darling Ivor, how beastly of us. Come clean, then. What is it?’

  ‘I’m to go down to Torquay with our evacuated orchids.’

  4

  Sophia sat by her telephone at the Post, and tried not to long for an air raid. On the one or two occasions when she had lifted up the receiver and had heard, instead of the Medical Officer of Health wishing to speak to Sister Wordsworth, ‘This is the Southern Control Centre. Air raid warning Yellow,’ she had experienced such an unhealthy glow of excitement that she felt she might easily become a raid addict, or take to raids in the same way that people do to drugs, and for much the same reason. Her life outside the Post had ceased to be much fun, for Rudolph, after looking almost too pretty in his uniform for about a week, was now paying the penalty attached to such prettiness in a training camp on the East Coast.

  Inside the Post she made up things to keep her occupied, as people do who lie for weeks in bed not particularly ill. She looked a great deal at her watch, knitted, read Macaulay’s History of England, wrote quantities of unnecessary letters for the first time since she was a girl, and chatted to Sister Wordsworth. Finally, as a last resort, there was the wireless. Sophia hated the wireless. It seemed to her to be a definite and living force for evil in the land. When she turned it on, she thought of the women all over England in lonely little houses with their husbands gone to the war, sick with anxiety for the future. She saw them putting their children to bed, their hearts broken by the loneliness of the evening hours, and then, for company, turning on the wireless. What is the inspiration which flows to them from this, the fountain-head, as it must seem to them, of the Empire? London, with all its resources of genius, talent, wit, how does London help them through these difficult times? How are they made to feel that England is not only worth dying for but being poor for, being lonely and unhappy for? With great music, stirring words and sound common sense? With the glorious literature, nobly spoken, of our ancestors? Not at all. With facetiousness and jazz.

  Chatting to Sister Wordsworth was her favourite occupation. This young and pretty creature turned out to be a remarkable person in many ways. Before the war, she had been a health visitor, and Sophia, who knew but little of such matters, discovered that this was a profession which required the combination of a really impressive training with such virtues as tact, knowledge of human nature, sense of humour, and a complete lack of pretentiousness. Sister Wordsworth’s charming, rather hearty manner was that of a schoolgirl, deceptively young, but she was a nurse, certified midwife, and trained psychologist, and furthermore, had an extensive knowledge of law. Week after week she kept close upon a hundred idle people in that Post contented, on good terms with each other, and in so far as she could invent things for them to do, busy. Of course, there were troubles and difficulties. A German Jew had come to the Post as a voluntary worker; after two days the nurses had sent a deputation to Sister Wordsworth saying that they could not work in the same building as a Prussian spy, and she was obliged to send him to the next Post in the district where it was to be hoped that a more tolerant spirit prevailed. Sophia had been greatly tickled by this, and had wished that a few Prussians could have had a look at their prototype. She asked why he was supposed to be a spy. It seemed that he had spent half an hour reading the notices which were displayed everywhere in the Post, and which pertained to such things as the horrid fate of patients marked H, hot-water bottles to be filled at certain specified hours, the quantity of sterilized instruments to be kept handy, and so on. Sophia, who had written most of them out herself, could not believe that the High Command in Berlin would find its path greatly smoothed by such information. Still, as Fred had remarked when she told him about it, ‘You can’t be too careful, and after all, we are at war with the Germans.’ Fred had a wonderful way of hitting nails on the head.

  Today it was a Sunday, and all was very quiet in the Post. Sister Wordsworth was out, the wireless programme absolutely impossible, and the workmen who generally made life hideous with their bangings were able, unlike the personnel of the Post, to take Sundays off. Sophia did her knitting. She was a bad, slow knitter, and the sleeves of an
ything she made were always too short. She listened dreamily to a conversation which was going on beyond the sacking partition. Three of the nurses were discussing a certain foreign Royal Family with an inaccuracy astonishing as to every detail. It all sounded rather cosy and delicious, and Sophia would have liked to join in. One of the penalties, however, attached to immunity from knee-joints was that she was incarcerated in the office. The people in the Treatment Room had lovely gossips, but the day would come when they would have knees as well; in order to avoid the knees, she was obliged to forgo the gossips.

  ST ANNE’S HOSPITAL FIRST AID POST

  Darling, darling, darling, darling,

  I say, Florence’s bird is house-trained, I saw her letting it out of the window like a dog last thing at night. I only saw this because I happened to be in that loo which isn’t blacked out, with the light off, of course, and I heard a great flapping and Florence’s window opening, so I was guided to look out. As there is a moon, I saw it quite clearly streaking off to do its business with a most determined look on its face. I waited for ages, but it didn’t come back. What d’you suppose it does, peck on the window, or coo or what? Well, I should love to have a terribly nice, pretty faithful house-trained pigeon, what with missing Milly and so on, and I said so this morning to Florence, but she gave me a simply horrid look, so perhaps she thought I was laughing at her or something which indeed I wasn’t. Really I am getting quite attached to Florence, and it’s nice for Luke having her around, with me here such a lot, gives him something else to think about besides the Income Tax. Poor old thing, he looks fearfully tucked up about that, and of course it must be hell paying all those seven and sixes for a war you don’t believe in much. Besides, he feels quite torn in two between his heroes, Our Premier and Herr Hitler, now they don’t tread the same path any longer.