‘It’s called the Labour Ward,’ said Sophia; ‘don’t listen to him, he had 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 Report 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 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 fountainhead, 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 the 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 sterilised 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 anything 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.
‘Darling, how is camp life, and do you miss me? Florence quite misses you, you know, perhaps she is in love with you. She keeps on coming into my room to ask what your address is, and what battalion you have joined, and how long you will be training, and who your commanding officer is and all sorts of things. I expect you’ll get a balaclava for Christmas; she is knitting one for some lucky fellow, but I think he must be one of those African pigmies with a top knot by the shape of it.
‘Oh dear, I do love you, love from your darling
‘SOPHIA.
‘PS. Olga is really putting on a most peculiar act. She lunched alone at the Ritz yesterday in a black wig, a battle bowler and her sables, and pretended not to know any of her friends. Half-way through lunch a page-boy (she had bribed him no doubt) brought her a note, and she gave a sort of shriek, put a veil over the whole thing, battle bowler and all, and scrammed. So now of course everyone knows for certain she is a beautiful female spy. Poor old Serge has been dismissed from his B
lossom because he passed out and so did it; I here they looked too indecent lying side by side in the Park.’
As Sophia finished her letter Sister Wordsworth came in.
‘Oh, Lady Sophia,’ she said, ‘I forgot to tell you that a friend of yours came to see me yesterday morning. She is joining the Post tomorrow for the night shift, full time. It is lucky as we are so very short-handed on that shift.’
‘A friend of mine – what’s she called?’
‘Miss – I have it written down here, wait a minute – oh, yes, Miss Turnbull.’
‘Gracious,’ said Sophia, ‘you surprise me. I never would have thought it of Florence. She hasn’t said a word about it to me. Can I go now?’
‘Yes, do. I shall be here the whole evening.’
Sophia found herself, for the first time since the beginning of the war, dining alone with Luke. It struck her that he wanted to have an intimate conversation with her, but did not quite know how to begin. Sophia would have been willing to help him; she was feeling quite soft towards Luke these days, he looked so ill and unhappy, but intimate conversations, except very occasionally with Rudolph, were not much in her line.
Luke began by saying that he was going back to the Foreign Office.
‘How about your business?’
‘There isn’t any,’ he said shortly, ‘and I must tell you, my dear Sophia, that you and I are going to be very much poorer.’
‘So I supposed. Well, you must decide what we ought to do. We could move into the garage at the back of the house very easily, and I could manage with a daily maid, or none at all. I should probably have to work shorter hours at the Post in that case.’
Luke, who was always put out by Sophia’s apparent indifference to the advantages his money had brought her, shook his head impatiently. ‘We shall be forced to make various radical economies by the very fact of there being a war. I shall not travel as I used to, we shall not entertain, there will be no question of any shooting or fishing, and you I presume will not be wanting much in the way of new clothes. There is absolutely no need to reduce our standard of living any further for the present. Besides, I should think it very wrong to send away any servants.’
‘Except Greta,’ said Sophia. ‘I wish to goodness we could get rid of her. I simply hate having a German about the place, and so do the others. Mrs Round keeps on saying to me, “Not to be able to talk world politics in one’s own servants’ hall is very upsetting for all of us.” I’m sure it must be. And yet I haven’t the heart to put her in the street, poor thing. It’s all my own fault, I never liked her but I was too lazy to give her notice, you know how it is.’
‘Better keep her on for a time, now she is here.’
‘Oh yes, I know. We must really.’
They ate on in a polite and not very comfortable silence.
Luke said presently, ‘Sophia, I hope you don’t object to Florence staying on here.’
‘Of course not.’
‘She is very poor, you know. I don’t know what would become of her unless we could help her.’
Sophia’s eyebrows went up. She thought that the Brotherhood must really be improving Luke’s character. Hitherto he had despised, disliked and mistrusted people for no better reason than that they were poor.
“Well then, of course we must help her,’ she said warmly. ‘I wonder – perhaps she would think it awful cheek if I offered to give her my silver-fox coat. I never wear it now, and I know they are not fashionable, but it is extremely warm.’
‘That is very good of you, my dear Sophia, and I am sure if you were guided to share it with her she would be only too happy to accept.’
Sophia stifled the temptation to say that she would arrange for it to come clean at Sketchley’s first.
‘I’m very glad Florence is here to keep you company when I’m at the Post,’ she said; ‘actually she has joined the Post too now, did you know, but our shifts only overlap by about an hour. It’s really very good of her; she is going to do a twelve hour night shift, simply horrible I should think.’
‘Florence is, of course, one of the people who believed, as I did, that Herr Hitler and Our Premier between them could make a very wonderful thing of world relationships. Like me, she is bitterly disillusioned by Herr Hitler’s treacherous (yes it is the only word) treacherous behaviour to Our Premier. But like me, she feels that this cruel war is not the proper solution, it can only cause a deterioration in world affairs and will settle nothing. People who think as we do are ploughing a lone furrow just now, you know, Sophia.’
‘What I can’t see is why you think that the behaviour of the Germans has been any worse, or different, during the past few months from what it always is. Anybody who can read print knows what they are like, cruel and treacherous, they have always been the same since the days of the Roman Empire. I can’t see why we have to wait for Government Blue Books and White Papers to tell us all this – oh well,’ she said, ‘what’s the good of talking about it now? I really do feel awfully sorry for you, Luke, as you have so many friends over there and thought everything was going to be rosy.’
‘Don’t misunderstand me,’ said Luke, earnestly, ‘I consider that Herr Hitler has treated Our Premier most outrageously. At the same time, I feel that if the British people had gone all out for moral rearmament and real appeasement, things need never have reached this pass.’
‘The British people indeed, that’s a good one, I must say. However, it’s now quite obvious to any thinking man that our lot in life is to fight the huns about once in every twenty years. I’m beginning to consider having a baby; we shall need all we can muster to cope with the 1942 class in 1960, who, if there is anything in heredity, will be the most awful brutes.’
Luke, who belonged to the ‘We have no quarrel with the German people’ school of thought, looked wistful, and presently went off to his smoking-room.
Rudolph wrote:
‘It is exactly like one’s private here. One of the masters gave us bayonet drill this morning – this is how it goes:
‘ “The first thing we ’ave got to consider is wot are the parts of a soldier? First you ’ave the ’ead. Now, the ’ead of a soldier is covered with a tin ’at, so it ain’t of no good to go sloshing it with a bay’net becos all yer gits is a rattle. Wot ave we next – the throat, and the throat is a very different proposition. Two inches of bay’net there, and yer gits the wind-pipe and the jugular. Very good. Next we comes to wot yer might call the united dairies. A soldier’s dairies are well covered with ammunition pouches and for this reason should be left alone, and also becos a very little lower down yer gits the belly. Now it only requires three inches of bayonet in the belly, twist it well, and out they comes, liver and lights and all. Etc. (I spare you the rest of the anatomical analysis.) Now, when pursuing a retreating enemy, you should always make a jab for ’is kidneys becos it will then go in like butter and come out like butter. When the——is wounded, you should kneel on ’is chest and bash his face with the butt end, thus keeping the bay’net ready in case you want it to jab at some other——with. You’ve got to ’ate the——s or yer won’t git nowhere with them.” (Tremendous pantomine.) If it wasn’t so heavenly, I might easily have felt sick.
‘How are you? If you ask me, I think Florence is more of a beautiful female spy than Olga; I call all this bird-life extremely suspicious. I shall be having some leave soon and intend to conduct a rigid investigation in Flossie’s bedroom. Meanwhile you be on the look-out for suspicious behaviour – cameras, for instance, people lurking on stairs, false bottoms to trunks and all the other paraphernalia.
‘I don’t get along without you very well.
‘Love and xxxx Rudolph.’
5
The newspapers suddenly awoke from the wartime hibernation and were able to splash their pages with a story which all their readers could enjoy. The idol of the British people, the envy of all civilised nations, the hero of a thousand programmes, The Grand Old Gentleman of Vocal Lodge, in short none other
than the famous King of Song, Sir Ivor King himself, had been found brutally done to death in the Pagoda at Kew Gardens. Here was a tale to arouse interest in the bosoms of all but the most hardened cynics, and indeed the poor old man’s compatriots, as they chewed their bacon and eggs the following morning, were convulsed with rather delicious shudder’s. The naked corpse, they learnt, surmounted by that beloved old bald head, had been mutilated and battered with instruments ranging from the bluntness of a croquet mallet to the sharpness of a butcher’s knife. This treatment had rendered the face unrecognizable, and only the cranium had been left untouched. His clothes had been removed and there was no trace of them, but his favourite wig, dishevelled and bloodstained, was found, late in the evening, by two little children innocently playing on Kew Green. Those lucky ones among the breakfasting citizens who subscribed to the Daily Runner began their day with
WIGLESS HEAD ON KEW PAGODA, HEADLESS WIG ON GREEN
Later, when they issued forth into the streets it was to find that the placards of the evening papers had entirely abandoned ‘U-Boat Believed Sunk’, ‘Nazi Planes Believed Down’, ‘Hitler’s Demands’, ‘Stalin’s Demands’, and the reactions of the U.S.A., and were devoting themselves to what soon became known as the Wig Outrage. ‘Wig on Green Sensation, Latest.’ ‘Pagoda Corpse – Foul Play?’ ‘Wig Mystery, Police Baffled.’
When the inquest was held, the police were obliged to issue an appeal to the great crowds that were expected, begging them to stay at home in view of the target which they would represent to enemy bombers. In spite of this warning, the Wig Inquest was all too well attended, and the Wig Coroner had a few words to say about this generation’s love of the horrible. Indeed, Chiswick High Road had the aspect of Epsom Heath at Derby Day’s most scintillating moment.
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