Rudolph was in the drawing-room making a cocktail.
‘I say, have you seen Florence? God has guided her to dye her hair.’
‘No – what colour – where is she?’
‘Orange. Downstairs,’ he said, pulling Sophia towards him with the hand which did not hold the cocktail shaker, and kissing her. ‘How are you?’
‘Very pleased to see you, my darling. It seemed a long time.’
Florence appeared, followed by Luke. Her hair, which had been brown, was indeed a rich marmalade, and she was rather smartly dressed in printed crêpe-de-chine, though the dress did not look much when seen near Sophia’s.
‘Have a drink,’ said Rudolph, pouring them out. Florence gave him a tortured, jolly smile, and said that drinking gave her extraordinarily little pleasure nowadays. Luke, who hated being offered drinks in his own house, refused more shortly. ‘Lunch is ready,’ he said.
They went downstairs.
‘Has the war begun?’ asked Sophia, wondering who could have ordered soup for luncheon, and seeing in this the God-guided hand of Florence. She guessed that Florence was staying in the house.
‘No,’ said Rudolph. ‘I don’t know what we’re waiting for.’
‘My information is,’ said Luke, at which Rudolph gave a great wink, because Luke so often used those words and his information was so often not quite correct, ‘my information is that Our Premier (his voice here took on a reverent note) is going to be able to save the peace again. At a cost, naturally. We shall have to sacrifice Poland, of course, but I hear that the Poles are in a very bad way, rotten with Communism, you know, and they will be lucky to have Herr Hitler to put things right there. Then we may have to give him some colony or other, and of course a big loan.’
‘What about the Russian pact?’ said Rudolph.
‘Means nothing – absolutely nothing. Herr Hitler will never allow the Bolsheviks into Europe. No, I don’t feel any alarm. We have no quarrel with Germany that Our Premier and Herr Hitler together cannot settle peacefully.’
Sophia said shortly, ‘Well, if they do, and there isn’t a revolution here as the result, I shall leave this country for ever and live somewhere else, that’s all. But I won’t believe it.’
Then, remembering from past experience that such conversations were not only useless but also led to ill-feeling, she changed the subject. She had never been so near parting from Luke as at the time of Munich, when, in his eyes, Our Premier had moved upon the same exalted sphere as Brother Bones, founder of the Boston Brotherhood, and almost you might say, God. His information then had been that the Czechs were in a very bad way, rotten with Communism, and would be lucky to have Herr Hitler to put things right. It also led him to believe that universal disarmament would follow the Munich agreement, and that the Sudetenland was positively Hitler’s last territorial demand in Europe. Carlyle has said that identity of sentiment but difference of opinion are the known elements of pleasant dialogue. The dialogue in many English homes at that time was very far from pleasant.
‘Then a silly old welfare-worker came up to a woman with eight coal-black children and said, “You haven’t got a yellow label, so you can’t be pregnant,” and the woman said, “Can’t I? Won’t the dad be pleased to hear that now?” And when we got to the village green the parson was waiting to meet us, and he looked at the pregnant ladies and said, very sadly, “To think that one man is responsible for all this.” It’s absolutely true.’
Rudolph watched her with admiration. He enjoyed Sophia’s talent for embroidering on her own experiences, and the way she rushed from hyperbole to hyperbole, ending upon a wild climax of improbability with the words ‘It’s absolutely true.’ According to Sophia, she could hardly move outside her house without encountering the sort of adventure that only befalls the ordinary person once in a lifetime. Her narrative always had a basis of truth, and this was an added fascination for Rudolph who amused himself by trying to separate fact from fiction.
‘Darling Sophia,’ he said, as she came to the end of a real tour de force about her father, whom she had left, she said, blackening the pebbles of his drive which he considered would be particularly visible from the air, ‘I know what your job will be in the war – taking German spies out to luncheon and telling them what you believe to be the truth. When you look them in the eye and say “I promise it’s absolutely true”, they’ll think it’s gospel because it’ll be so obvious that you do yourself. The authorities will simply tell you the real truth, and you’ll do the rest for them.’
‘Oh, Rudolph, what a glamorous idea!’
She took Florence upstairs. Florence wriggled a good deal which she always did if she felt embarrassed, and in spite of her conscious superiority in the moral sphere she often felt embarrassed with Sophia. Presently she said in a loud, frank voice, ‘I hope it’s all right, Sophia. I’m staying here.’
‘Oh, good. I hope you’re comfortable. If you want any ironing done, just tell Greta.’
Florence said she required extraordinarily little maiding, but this did not for a moment deceive Sophia, who had been told by Greta, in a burst of confidence, that Fraulein Turnbull gave more trouble than three of the Frau Gräfin.
Florence now drew a deep breath, always with her the prelude to an outburst of Christianity, and said that the times were very grave and that it made her feel sad to see people pay so little attention to their souls as Sophia and Rudolph.
‘We don’t think our rotten little souls so important as all that.’
‘Ah but you see it isn’t only your souls. Each person has a quantity of other souls converging upon his – that’s what makes this life such a frightfully jolly adventure. In your
