Sophia saw that she was in for a sermon, and resigned herself. She knew from sad experience that to answer back merely encouraged the Brotherhood to fresh efforts.
‘You know, dear, Luke feels it very much. It hurts him when you talk as you did at lunch, flippantly and with exaggeration. I wish you could realize how much happier it makes one to be perfectly truthful, even in little ways. Truth is a thing that adds so greatly to the value of human relationships.’
‘Some,’ said Sophia carelessly. ‘Now it adds to the value of my relationship with Rudolph to tell more and funnier lies. He likes it.’
‘I wonder if that sort of relationship is of much value. Personally the only people I care to be very intimate with are the ones you feel would make a good third if God asked you out to dinner.’
Sophia wished that Florence would not talk about the Almighty as if his real name was Godfrey, and God was just Florence’s nickname for him.
‘Oh, God would get on with Rudolph,’ she said.
Florence smiled her bright, crucified smile, and said that she was sure there was good material in Rudolph if one knew where to look for it. Then she wriggled about and said, very loudly, ‘Oh, Sophia, how much happier it would be for you, and for those about you, if you would give your sins to God. I feel there would be, oh! such a gay atmosphere in this house if you could learn to do just that.’
‘Only one sin, Florence, such a harmless one. I don’t steal, I honour my father, I don’t covet, and I don’t commit murder.’
‘Perhaps flippancy is the worst sin of all.’
‘I’m not flippant but I’m not religious and I never will be, not if I live to a hundred. It’s a matter of temperament, you know.’
This was a false step. Florence now embarked on a rigmarole of bogus philosophy which no power short of an explosion could have stopped. Poor Sophia lay back and let it flow, which it did until the men came into the drawing-room, when Florence gave Luke a flash of her white and even teeth which all too clearly said ‘I have failed again.’
‘I’m just going up for a little quiet time,’ she said. ‘I’ll be ready in half an hour.’ She and Luke played golf on Saturday afternoons.
‘I’m just going down for a little quiet time and I’ll be ready in about half an hour,’ said Rudolph, picking up the Tatler. When he got back, he said, ‘Come along, Sophia, I’m taking you to the local A.R.P. office to get a job.’
‘There won’t be any war,’ said Luke comfortably, as he settled down to his Times.
Sophia and Rudolph strolled out into the sunshine.
‘Let’s go to Kew,’ said Sophia.
‘Yes, we will when you have got your job.’
‘Oh darling, oh dear, do I have to have a job?’
‘Yes, you do, or I shall be through with you. You know that I think it’s perfectly shameful the way you haven’t done any training the last few months. Now you must get on with it quickly. There is only one justification for people like you in a community, and that is that they should pull their weight in a war. The men must fight and the women must be nurses.’
‘Darling, I couldn’t be a nurse. Florence has a first aid book and I looked inside and saw a picture of a knee. I nearly fainted. I can’t bear knees, I’ve got a thing about them. I don’t like ill people, either, and then I’m not so very strong, I should cockle. Tell you what – could I be a précis writer at the Foreign Office?’
‘There haven’t been précis writers at the Foreign Office since Lord Palmerston. Anyway, you couldn’t work in a Government Department, you’re far too mooney. If you can’t bear knees and don’t like ill people, you can scrub floors and wash up for those that can and do. Now here we are, go along and fix yourself up.’
Sophia found herself in a large empty house, empty, that is, of furniture, but full of would-be workers. She had to wait in a queue before being interviewed by a lady at a desk. The young man in front of her announced that he was a Czech, and not afraid of bombs. The lady said nor are British women afraid of bombs, which Sophia thought was going too far. She gave the young man an address to go to, and turned briskly to Sophia.
‘Yes?’ she said.
Sophia felt the shades of the prison-house closing in on her. She explained that she would do full-time voluntary work, but that she had no qualifications. For one wild moment of optimism she thought that the lady was going to turn her down. After looking through some papers, she said, however, ‘Could you do office work in a First Aid Post?’
‘I could try,’ said Sophia doubtfully.
‘Then take this note to Sister Wordsworth at St Anne’s Hospital First Aid Post. Thank you. Good day.’
Rudolph was in earnest conversation with a German Jew when she came out. On hearing that she was fixed up, he said that she might have a holiday before beginning her job. ‘You can go to St Anne’s tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I’m taking you down to Kew now.’
They sat on a bench at the end of the ilex avenue and stared at Syon House across the river. Sophia asked Rudolph what he planned to do, now that the war had begun.
‘I hope for a commission, of course,’ he said; ‘failing that I shall enlist.’
‘Somebody who knows all those languages could get a job at home – I mean not a fighting job. Perhaps it is your duty to do that,’ she said hopefully.
‘Can’t help my duty; I’m going to fight Germans in this war – not Nazis,
