The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford

by Nancy Mitford

  It generally took her about an hour before she could make the numbers tally twice, and even then it was far from certain that they were correct. On this occasion she made them alternately twenty-five and twenty-eight, so she assumed the more optimistic estimate to be the right one, and stowed them away in their pigeonholes. She was longing to tell Sister Wordsworth about Greta and the main drain, but of course that would never do. She did ask Mr Stone whether the drain really flowed underneath the First Aid Post and could she see it, to which he replied that it did, and that she could, but in his opinion she would not enjoy such an experience.

  ‘Rats,’ he said. Sophia thought of Greta and shuddered. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he went on, ‘some fellows are going down there this evening to have a look round. I expect you could go with them if you like.’

  Sophia asked what time, and when she was told at half-past ten, she declined the offer. It would require a bigger bribe than the main drain to get her back to St Anne’s when her work there was finished.

  She spent the rest of the day learning Morse Code, partly because she wished to be a well equipped counter-spy and partly (and this spurred her to enormous industry) so that she could wink at Olga in it the next time they met. There was a photograph of Olga in that week’s Tatler wearing a black velvet crinoline with a pearl cross, and toying with a guitar, beneath which was written the words, ‘This Society beauty does not require a uniform for her important war work.’

  Sophia, thinking of this, redoubled her efforts of dot and dash. But she found it far from easy, even more difficult than counting overalls, though the reward of course was greater. She sat, winking madly into her hand looking-glass, until she was off duty, by which time she knew the letters A, B and C perfectly, and E and F when she thought very hard. The opportunity for showing off her new accomplishment came that evening. She had gone on duty at the Post earlier than usual, as Sister Wordsworth wanted to go out; leaving it correspondingly early, she was on her way home when she remembered that her house would be full of Brothers. So she looked in at the Ritz. Here the first person she saw was Rudolph, and sitting beside him was a heaving mass of sables which could only conceal the beautiful Slavonic person of La Gogothska herself, in the uniform, so to speak, of her important war-work.

  ‘Hullo, my darling,’ said Rudolph, fetching a chair for her. ‘You’re off very early. I’m dining with you tonight, though you may not know it. Elsie said I could, and she’s telling your cook.’

  ‘Good,’ said Sophia, without listening much. Her eyes were fixed upon Olga and she was working away with concentration.

  ‘What are you making those faces at me for?’ said Olga crossly.

  ‘Dear me,’ said Sophia, ‘how disappointing. It was just a bet I had with Fred. I betted him sixpence that you were in the secret service, he was so positive you couldn’t be, and I said I could prove it. Well, I have proved it, and I have lost sixpence, that’s all.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, darling, I was just telling you, in Morse Code, to proceed to the ladies’ cloakroom, and are you proceeding? No. Have you made any excuse for not doing so? No. Therefore, as you evidently don’t know Morse Code which is a sine qua non for any secret agent, you can’t be that beautiful female spy we all hoped you were.’ Actually, of course, Sophia had only been winking out, and with great trouble at that, A, B and C.

  Olga said, ‘Nonsense. Morse Code is never used in this war; it’s completely out of date. Why, what would be the use of it?’ and she gave a theatrically scornful droop of the eyelids.

  ‘Well, as a matter of fact, dear, it would be a very great deal of use indeed under certain circumstances. Supposing one happened to be gagged, for an example, it would be possible to wink out messages to the bystanders which, if they understood Morse, would save one’s life.’

  ‘Gagged,’ said Olga, shrugging her shoulders. ‘Gagged indeed. Bystanders! Darling, you have been reading Valentine Williams, I suppose. Let me tell you that in real life the secret service is very different from what the outside public, like you, imagine it to be. Gagged! No, really, I must tell the Chief that.’

  ‘Do,’ said Sophia. ‘He’ll roar, I should think. Naturally, I don’t know much about these things. Well, then, what shall I do with the sixpence?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when the war is over. Are you working very hard in your little First Aid Post? Poor Olga is overwhelmed with work. Figure to yourselves, last night I was up till six – even the Chief with his iron constitution was half dead. I had to keep on making cups of black coffee for him, and even so he fell asleep twice. Of course, the responsibility is very wearing, especially for the Chief – if things went wrong, it doesn’t bear thinking of, what would happen. My knowledge of Russian, however, is standing us in good stead.’

  Olga had learnt Russian when she was courting Serge, to but little avail so far as he was concerned, as he did not know a word of it. However, as she had taken the name of Olga, broken her English accent, and in other ways identified herself with the great country of Serge’s forbears, she rather liked to be able to sing an occasional folk-song from the Steppes in its original tongue. She felt that it put the finishing touches to her part of temperamental Slav.

  ‘I wonder they don’t send you to Russia. I hear they find it very difficult to get reliable information.’

  ‘Darling, it would be certain death.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I forgot. You would be handed over to the grandchildren of Serge’s grandfather’s peasantry, wouldn’t you? Very unpleasant. But couldn’t you go disguised as a member of the proletariat in no silk stockings and drab clothes? I could give you lots of hints. You share a room with about seven other people and their bulldogs if they have any, and you have no pleasures of any kind. I really think, speaking Russian as you do, that you ought to volunteer.’

  ‘Far, far too dangerous. The Chief would never let me. I may of course have to go abroad later – to Egypt, Turkestan or Waziristan perhaps, but Russia is entirely out of the question.’

  ‘I call it very cowardly of you,’ said Sophia, ‘your country should come first. Well, good-bye, I must be going,’ and she winked out rather inaccurately A, B and C. ‘I’m sure the Chief would raise your screw if you knew a bit of Morse,’ she said, and got up to go, followed by Rudolph who quite shamelessly left Olga to pay for the drinks.

  ‘Think how rich she must be with all that spying,’ he said happily, and kissed Sophia a great deal in the taxi. ‘Darling, heavenly to see you. I’ve got a fortnight’s leave.’

  ‘What were you doing with Baby Bagg?’

  ‘Just met her in the Ritz.’

  ‘After you had telephoned to tell her to go there, I suppose.’

  ‘Well, darling, in point of fact, I do feel rather intrigued about Olga’s job. I have a sort of feeling that there may be more in that little woman than meets the eye, and I must say she’s remarkably secretive. Now if you were a beautiful female spy, my own precious poppet, we should all know all about it in two days. For one thing of course, you would never be able to resist telling funny stories about your Chief. But Olga is as close as an oyster. I must have another go at her before my leave comes to an end.’

  Sophia was very much nettled by the unfairness of all this. Had she told a single funny story about her Chief? Had she not been a counter-spy for a whole day without hinting a word of it to anybody? Of course, she had been about to take Rudolph into her confidence; now nothing would induce her to do so. She would pay him out for being so horrid to her. Besides he must be broken of this new predilection for Olga; it was becoming a bore.

  ‘Yes, do,’ she said; ‘have another go at her. Have it now, won’t you – much more convenient for me actually because I want to dine with Heatherley.’

  ‘Heatherley? You don’t mean Egg? You don’t mean that fearful red-headed brute who told us what the President said? Darling Sophia – besides, you’re dining with me, you said
you would. I haven’t seen you for weeks.’

  ‘Darling, I’m terribly sorry, but I haven’t seen Heth all day and there are masses of things I want to talk over with him.’

  Rudolph said no more. He stopped the cab, got out into the street, told the man to go on to Granby Gate, hailed another cab going in the opposite direction, jumped into it and disappeared.

  Sophia minded rather. She had been pleased to see Rudolph, and excited at the idea of spending an evening with him, more pleased and more excited even than she generally was when she had been separated from him for some time, but he must be taught a lesson. It was quite bad enough for him not to say that he was coming on leave, and to let her find him sitting at the Ritz with Olga. But to have him comparing her in a denigrating manner with that pseudo-Muscovite was altogether intolerable. Women are divided into two categories: those who can deal with the men they are in love with, and those who cannot. Sophia was one of those who can.

  When she arrived at her house she found a merry meeting of the Brotherhood was in full and joyous progress. Brothers and Sisters were overflowing from all the reception rooms, and the downstairs lavatory was in constant use. A large photograph of Brother Bones was propped up on the drawing-room piano with a bunch of lilies in front of it, for it was the Brother’s birthday. Sophia hurried into the lift, and going to the top floor she got the key of her bedroom from Elsie, who had instructions always to lock it on these occasions against the quiet-timers. Sophia had a very hot bath and changed her clothes. Then she went to look for Heth. It was rather a long search, ending in the coal-hole where he was in earnest converse with one of the thin-haired young ladies. Being members of the Brotherhood they were, of course, not at all abashed at being found in such curious circumstances; they merely showed their gums.

  Sophia beckoned to Heatherley and whispered in his ear, ‘There will be dinner for two in my small sitting-room in about half an hour. I hope you will join me there.’

  Heatherley accepted at once. There was always, at these meetings, a large brotherly buffet-meal in the dining-room for which the food was always ordered by Florence, was cold, of the fork variety, non-alcoholic, and very dull. Sophia had an exquisite cook and a pretty taste in food herself, and Luke’s wine was not to be sniffed at.

  Exactly at the appointed time Heatherley tried the door of the small sitting-room. It was locked. Sophia knew all about the Brothers by now. They would come into her room, and brightly assuring her that she did not disturb them, begin an all-in wrestling match with their souls. She had told Florence that meetings could only take place at 98 Granby Gate, on condition that the Brothers were neither to use the lift nor be guided to force open any doors which they might find locked.

  Heatherley announced himself, upon which Sophia let him in. Dinner was waiting on a hot plate, and they helped themselves. Sophia thought he looked like Uriah Heap, and wished she had a more attractive counter-spy to work with, somebody, say, like the ruthless young German in The Thirty-Nine Steps; it was impossible to take much pleasure in the company of Heth. How fortunate she loved her work for its own sake (and that of Olga).

  With an alluring smile she gave him some soup.

  ‘What was agony 22 for?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘The word, or letters, or code, or whatever it was you wrote on my egg, of course. I took ages trying to decode it, and I wondered if I had the right solution.’

  ‘On your egg?’ Heatherley put down his soup-spoon and looked completely blank.

  ‘Yes, yes. Think. Of course it must have been you. This morning I had a boiled egg for breakfast, and written on the shell, in pencil, it had agony 22.’

  ‘Sophia, now, why would I write on your egg when I could so easily call you, come round and see you, or leave a note for you here?’

  Why indeed? Sophia felt that she had been a fool.

  ‘Well, you said that we must be so careful, that our letters would be opened, and our telephone tapped –’

  ‘If your telephone can be tapped, so could your egg be. No, Sophia, we need to be very, very careful, but there’s no sense in writing on eggs, no sense at all, when we can meet all we want to both at the Post and in this house.’

  ‘Anyway, what is our next move? I want to start work,’ said Sophia, to change the painful subject.

  ‘I was just coming to that.’ Heatherley paused and seemed to consider her. ‘How are your nerves?’ he said. ‘Pretty good? Fine. I have a very delicate job that I wish to entrust to you, delicate, and it may be dangerous. Are you game?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Heatherley, I think so.’

  ‘O.K. Well, presently, when you have quite finished your dinner, I want you to go back to the Post.’

  Sophia was not pleased. She had spent eight hours in the Post that day, and had left, as she always did, with a feeling of immense thankfulness and relief. The idea of going back there after dinner did not appeal to her at all.

  Heatherley went on, ‘You are to make a list of all the nurses there on night duty. Then I want a copy of every word that is written on the notice-board. When you have done that, go to the Regal Cinema and pin an envelope containing the copy to the second stall in the third row on the left-hand side of the centre gangway. You can give me the list of the nurses tomorrow; that is less important. One last word of instruction – on no account take a taxi, that might be fatal. You will be safe enough if you walk it.’

  ‘Well, really,’ said Sophia, ‘that is far sillier than writing on eggs. Why can’t whoever is going to the third stall in the second row walk into the Post and see for himself what is written on the notice-board?’

  ‘Sophia.’ Heatherley gave a fish-like look which for a moment, and until she remembered it was only old Heth, quite struck a chill into her heart. ‘Are you, or are you not going to help me in clearing out a nest of dangerous spies? Let me tell you that Florence communicates with the rest of her gang by means of that notice-board. My friend cannot go to the Post himself, it would be as much as his life is worth to venture near it. If I were seen to be in communication with him, I too would have short shrift, but it is of vital importance that he should know what is on the board tonight. I can’t get away from this Brotherhood meeting without arousing Florence’s suspicions, but I thought I had seen a way of fixing things. I thought you would go for me.’

  ‘Oh, all right, Heth, I will. I only meant it sounded rather silly, but I see now that it has to be done. Have some apple flan.’

  11

  Now although Sophia supposed herself to be such a keen and enthusiastic spy, she had not really the temperament best suited to the work. It was not in her nature, for instance, to relish being sent out on a cold and foggy evening, after she had had her bath and changed her clothes, in order to do an apparently pointless job for somebody who could quite well do it for himself. Obviously if Heatherley could be closeted for ages in the coal-hole, if he could dine for more than an hour behind a locked door, he could easily escape from the house without Florence or anybody else noticing that he had gone, and do his own dreary work. So she determined that somehow or another she would wriggle out of going, but of course without annoying her Chief as she had not the least intention of being excluded from the delights of counter-espionage, and this might well happen should she be caught out disobeying orders. Sophia was very good at not doing things she disliked, and soon her plans were laid. She remembered that, exasperated by her long and unequal struggle with the overalls, she had herself, that very evening, written out a notice to the effect that those nurses who wanted to have their overalls sorted when they came back from the wash, should write their names clearly both on the overalls themselves and on their pigeonholes so that Sophia should know where to put them. When she had pinned this to the board, there had been no other notice there, and she had been particularly pleased, thinking that more attention would be paid to it on this account. Now a notic
e written out by Sophia could not, in the nature of things, contain Florence’s secret instructions to her corps of spies. Sophia therefore decided that she would explain to Heatherley that there had been nothing on the notice-board; impossible to make a copy of nothing, so she had done no more about it. That disposed of the notice-board. As for the list of nurses on night duty, she could find that out from Sister Wordsworth’s ledger in the morning. And in order to make perfectly certain of not seeing Heatherley before she arrived at the Post she decided to go immediately after breakfast to Phyllis Earle and have her hair done.

  As soon as she had reached these comfortable decisions, and with the prospect now of a delicious evening with Caroline of England in her warm bed, she became extremely nice, indeed almost flirtatious to Heatherley during the rest of their meal together. When it was over, and Heth had enjoyed brandy and a huge cigar (unlike Florence he did not despise his creature comforts at all), she went upstairs most cheerfully, put on her fur coat with its pretty, scarlet-lined hood, and then was shepherded by a quite unusually genial Heth, through a few Brothers who had finished eating, to the front door.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s rather foggy,’ he said, peering out with his pale eyes into a solid curtain of fog.

  ‘All the better. I am less likely to be followed,’ said Sophia.

  ‘And cold.’

  ‘Ssh. Think of our cause, dear Heatherley.’

  ‘You understand that on no account must you take a taxi,’ he reminded her. A more competent spy, she thought, would have seen the impossibility of walking more than two steps in her high-heeled velvet sandals. Anyhow, what did the man think she was, for heaven’s sake, a marathon walker?