In any case, the King of Song had now soared to such an exalted position in the hearts of his fellow-countrymen that there would hardly have been room for anybody else. Wherever he showed his face in public, even in the Turkish bath, he was snatched up and carried shoulder high; the taxi he had modestly hired to take him from the Ritz, where he had spent the night after being rescued, to Vocal Lodge, was harnessed with laurel ropes to a team of A.T.S., who dragged him there through dense, hysterical crowds. The journey took two and a half hours. He arrived at Vocal Lodge simultaneously with Lady Beech’s three van-loads of furniture which she was most thoughtfully re-lending him. Larch, overcome with shame at the recollection of his own Peter-like behaviour, was sobbing on the doorstep; the glaziers were still at work on the windows, and in fact, the whole place was so disorganised that Sir Ivor got back into the taxi, very much hoping that it would be allowed to return under its own steam. The taxi man, however, glad of the opportunity to save petrol, signalled to the local decontamination squad who seized the ropes and dragged it back to the Ritz. This journey, owing to the fact that the decontamination squad was in full gas-proof clothing and service masks, took three and a half hours, and one of them died of heart failure in the bar soon after the arrival.
All the secrets of the German espionage system were now as an open book to the astute old singer, who had had the opportunity of looking through many secret documents during the course of his captivity and had committed everything of importance to memory. Not for nothing had he the reputation of being able to learn a whole opera between tea and dinner. Codes, maps of air bases, army plans, naval dispositions, all were now in the hands of the M.I.; while the arrangements for the occupation of England, perfect to every detail, were issued in a White Paper, much to the delight of the general public.
It was universally admitted that Sir Ivor had played his cards brillantly. When Winthrop, alias Gustav, had approached him, shortly before the outbreak of war, with the offer of a huge sum if he would lend his services to Germany, he had seen at once that here was a wonderful opportunity to help his country. He had accepted, partly, as he told Winthrop, because he needed the money, and partly because he was a firm believer in slavery. Then, very cleverly, he had resisted the temptation to communicate with Scotland Yard before disappearing; had he done so, the Eiweisses, through certain highly-placed officials now languishing in the Tower, would inevitably have found out, and the ‘murder’ of the old gentleman would have been one indeed.
The Eiweisses, close friends of Hitler, had been preparing their position since the Munich putsch of 1923, and as Heatherley Egg and Florence Turnbull were quite well-known citizens of the United States, and the most trusted lieutenants of Brother Bones. They were known to be bores, on both sides of the Atlantic; more sinister attributes had never been suspected, least of all by the worthy Brother himself. In the end they seemed to have been undone by a sort of childish naïveté. Sir Ivor could always dispel, as soon as they arose, any doubts of his bona fides by talking to them of his old music teacher at Düsseldorf, of the German Christmas which he loved so much, of the duel he had fought as a student, and his memories of the old beer cellar. He aroused a nostalgia in their souls for the fatherland, and thus he lulled any suspicions which they might otherwise have had. Picture the delight with which his fellow-citizens now learnt of this duplicity. The old music teacher (long since dead, the broadcast, like the duet with Frau Goering, had been a hoax) was really a Polish Jew, the ‘King’ detested beer, he had never spent a Christmas in Germany, and the scar on his temple, which, so he had told the von Eiweisses, was the result of a duel, had really been acquired in a bicycling accident many years ago when he had toured the Isle of Wight with the posthumous Duchess and Lady Beech, in bloomers.
As for Rudolph, while everybody admitted the value of his work, nobody could forbear to smile; the public took him to their hearts as a sort of Charley’s Aunt, and he soon figured in many a music-hall joke. His colonel sent for him and drew his attention to the rule that officers should not appear in mufti during war-time.
Sophia gave a dinner party in honour of the King of Song and of Luke’s safe return from America. It was a large party. The guests included Lady Beech, Fred and Ned and their wives, Mary Pencill, Sister Wordsworth, the Gogothskas, Rudolph, a girl called Ruth whom Luke had met on the clipper and who was now staying in Florence’s room at 98 Granby Gate, and, of course, the King of Song himself in the very wig which had been found by the innocent gambollers of Kew Green, and which he had borrowed for the evening from the Scotland Yard museum of horrors.
Olga arrived late enough to be certain of being last, but not so late that dinner would have been started without her.
Years of practice enabled her to hit off at the right moment. She was in the uniform of her important war work, and wore a small tiara which she had bought back from the American who had bought it from Serge’s father. It bore historic associations, having belonged, so she alleged, to Catherine the Great, one of whose lovers one of Serge’s ancestors, of course, had been. Sophia had once caused very bad feeling by asking whether the diamonds were yellow with age or whether Catherine the Great had been disappointed in Serge’s ancestor. Olga now made herself the centre of attention by the announcement that she was leaving almost at once for Kurdistan, on a very important mission.
‘Tomorrow,’ she said, ‘I go down to Suffolk to say adieu to Moushka; early next week I leave.’
Moushka was old Mrs Bagg. In Olga’s pre-Russian days she had been known as Mummie, which had been all right for the mother of Baby Bagg. Princess Olga Gogothsky required a Moushka. Serge, on the other hand, always called his parents Pa and Ma; but then he pronounced his own name, as did all his friends, like the stuff of which schoolgirls’ skirts are made. Olga gave it a very different sound – ‘Sairgay’.
‘I suppose, now that Sophia has caught all the spies in London, there is nothing much left for you to do here,’ said Rudolph, loyally.
‘Spies!’ The Princess gave a scornful twist to her lips as though spies were enormously beneath her attention, nowadays. ‘No, I have important business to do there, for my Chief, with the Kahns.’
Nobody asked who the Kahns were.
Serge was in the seventh heaven. It seemed that, by dint of enlisting under an assumed name and as a private, he had managed to get back to his Blossom. Determined not to lose his love a second time, he was now on the water-waggon, but even this experiment had not dampened his spirits, and he appeared to be the happiest living Russian.
Fred and Ned had once more reversed positions. Ned had proved to be even more of a failure at the Ministry than Britain had expected he would, and there had been, the day before Sophia’s dinner, a Cabinet purge during which Ned was sent off to try his luck in another place. As we do not yet live under a totalitarian régime, this other place, was, of course, that English equivalent of the grave, the House of Lords. Meanwhile, Fred, reinstated in both popular and Ministerial esteem by the triumphant return of Sir Ivor King, was back at his old job. This change was, luckily, to the satisfaction of both parties. Ned’s wife had for some time been making his nights hideous with her complaints and assertions that at her age (she was nearly thirty) it was quite unheard of not to be a peeress and made her look ridiculous, while Fred had never taken to Blossom with Serge’s ardour and had really been hankering after that Cabinet key all the time.
Fred and Sir Ivor were soon discussing the campaign of Song Propaganda which was to be launched the following week.
‘We must especially concentrate, of course, on bigger and better Pets’ Programmes than ever before,’ said the Minister.
‘You’re joking!’
‘What? Indeed I am not.’
‘Of course the Pets’ Programmes were simply put in to tease the Germans,’ said Sir Ivor, ‘and I also hoped they would show people here that the whole thing was bogus.’
‘Then you very much under-estimated our English love for dumb animals,’ Fr
ed replied pompously. ‘Let me tell you that the Pets’ Programmes were the only ones the Government were really worried about – why, every man, woman and dog in the whole country listened to those wretched programmes. You should have seen, for instance, how much Abbie and Milly enjoyed them. They never missed one. Why, entirely owing to you, there is now a Pets’ League of Peace and Slavery, with literally thousands of members. The Pets wear awful little badges and pay half-a-crown. They had a mammoth meeting last week in the Dell at Hyde Park.’
‘We’ll soon alter that,’ said the old gentleman. ‘I will start a Society for Patriotic Pets and make them pay five bob.’
‘Please will you two come in to dinner.’
Sophia sat between the King of Song and Luke, because, as she explained, she had not yet had a word with Luke since his return. ‘We shall have to have the Clipper,’ she said in an undertone to her godfather, who quite understood. They had it. After a bit they were able to leave Luke and Ruth having it together, with Lady Beech, who, like the Athenians, loved new things, lending an occasional ear. The pink sunrise, the pink sunset, the next sunrise and the food.
Sophia asked Sir Ivor about Agony 22, but he was quite as much in the dark about the great egg mystery as Heatherley had been.
‘Come now, pretty young lady,’ he said. ‘How could I get at your egg?’
‘I know, but in spy stories people seem to manage these things.’
Ned here chimed in with the news that many eggs nowadays have things written on them.
‘I expect there is a farm called Agony, and that egg was laid in 1922,’ he said.
‘But why should there be a farm called Agony?’
‘You never can tell; farms are called some very queer things. When I was Under-Secretary for Agriculture——’
‘By the way, Sophie, you must be feeling a bit easier on the subject of parachutists, eh?’ asked Fred. Anything to stop Ned from telling about when he was Under-Secretary for Agriculture.
‘Well, yes, but there’s such an awful new horror; I think of nothing else. I read in some paper that the Germans are employing midget spies, so small that they can hide in a drawer, and the result is I simply daren’t look for a hanky nowadays.’
‘Don’t worry; we’ve caught nearly all of them. The Government are issuing an appeal tomorrow for old dolls’ houses to keep them in.’
Lady Beech, having heard the Clipper out to the last throb of its engines, now collected a few eyes, for she liked general conversation, leant across the table, and said to her brother-in-law, ‘Tell me, Ivor, dear, what sort of a life did you have under the First Aid Post?’
‘Oh yes,’ said all the others, ‘do tell us how it was.’
‘Spiffing,’ said the old Edwardian. ‘They fitted up a Turkish bath for me, and I spent hours of every day in that. Then one member of the gang (I expect you would remember him, Sophie, a stretcher-bearer called Wolf) used to be a hairdresser on one of those liners, and he brushed my – er – scalp in quite a special way, to induce baby growth. And by jingo he induced it!’ And sure enough Sir Ivor snatched off his wig and proudly exhibited some horrible little bits of white fluff. ‘After all these years,’ he said. ‘I was stone bald at thirty, you know; the man must be a genius. He is now in the Tower and I am making an application at the Home Office to be allowed to visit him once a week, for treatment. It is all I ask in return for my, not inconsiderable, services.’
‘Tell me, Ivor, did you not feel most fearfully anxious when the weeks passed and you had no communication with the outside world?’
‘Rather not. I know how stupid Germans are, you see – felt certain they would give themselves away sooner or later, and sure enough they did and everything was O.K. just as I always guessed it would be.’
‘Bit touch and go?’ said Luke.
‘Keep your hair on,’ said the old Singer. ‘A miss is as good as a mile, ain’t it?’
Nancy Mitford
Christmas Pudding
&
Pigeon Pie
Nancy Mitford, daughter of Lord and Lady Redesdale and the eldest of the six legendary Mitford sisters, was born in 1904 and educated at home on the family estate in Oxfordshire. She made her debut in London and soon became one of the bright young things of the 1920s, a close friend of Henry Green, Evelyn Waugh, John Betjeman, and their circle. A beauty and a wit, she began writing for magazines and writing novels while she was still in her twenties. In all, she wrote eight novels as well as biographies of Madame de Pompadour, Voltaire, Louis XIV, and Frederick the Great. She died in 1973. More information can be found at www.nancymitford.com.
Jane Smiley won the Pulitzer Prize for A Thousand Acres. Her most recent novel for adults is Private Life. She is also the author of Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel, The Man Who Invented the Computer, and a series of young adult novels, The Horses of Oak Valley Ranch.
NOVELS BY NANCY MITFORD AVAILABLE FROM VINTAGE BOOKS
Highland Fling (1931)
Christmas Pudding & Pigeon Pie (1932 and 1940)
Wigs on the Green (1935)
The Pursuit of Love (1945)
Love in a Cold Climate (1949)
The Blessing (1951)
Don’t Tell Alfred (1960)
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