Sophia agreed with him really. The huns must be fought.
‘How strange everything seems now that the war is here,’ she said. ‘I suppose it is unreal because we have been expecting it for so long now, and have known that it must be got over before we can go on with our lives. Like in the night when you want to go to the loo and it is miles away down a freezing cold passage and yet you know you have to go down that passage before you can be happy and sleep again. We are starting down it now. Oh, darling, I wish it was over and we were back in bed. What shall I do when you’ve gone?’
‘Don’t you anticipate,’ said Rudolph severely; ‘you never have, so don’t begin now. You are the only person I know who lives entirely in the present, it is one of the attractive things about you.’
‘If you are killed,’ said Sophia, paying no attention.
‘You are one of those lucky women with two strings to their bow. If I am killed, there is always old Luke.’
‘Yes, but the point is I shall have such an awful grudge against Luke, don’t you see? I do so fearfully think the war is the result of people like him, always rushing off abroad and pretending to those wretched foreigners that England will stand for anything. Cracking them up over here, too; Herr Hitler this, and Herr von Ribbentrop that, and bulwarks against Bolshevism and so on. Of course, the old fellow thought he was making good feeling, and probably he never even realized that the chief reason he loved the Germans was because they buttered him up so much. All those free rides in motors and aeroplanes.’
‘You can’t blame him,’ said Rudolph, ‘he never cut any ice over here, but as soon as he set foot in Germany he was treated as a minor royalty or something. Of course it was lovely for him. Why, Berlin has been full of people like that for years. The Germans were told to make a fuss of English people, so of course masses of English stampeded over there to be made a fuss of. But it never occurred to them that they were doing definite harm to their own country; they just got a kick out of saying “mein Führer” and being taken round in Mercedes-Benzes. All the same they weren’t directly responsible for the war. Old Luke is all right, he’s a decent old fellow at heart. I feel quite happy leaving you in his hands. I believe he’s getting over the Brotherhood, too, you’ll see.’
As they strolled across Kew Green to get a taxi, an unearthly yelp announced to them that they had been observed by Sophia’s godfather, Sir Ivor King, and sure enough, there he was, the old fellow, waving a curly, butter-coloured wig at them out of his bedroom window. He invited them to come in for a cup of tea.
This faintly farcical old figure was the idol of the British race, and reigned supreme in the hearts of his fellow-countrymen, indeed of music lovers all over the world, as the King of Song. In his heyday, he had been most famous as a singer of those sexy ballads which were adored by our grandparents, and for which most of us have a secret partiality. He was unrivalled, too, in opera. The unique quality of his voice was the fact that it could reach higher and also lower notes than have ever been reached before by any human being, some of which were so high that only bats, others so low that only horses, could hear them. When he was a very young man studying in Germany, his music teacher said to him, ‘Herr King, you shall make, with that voice of yours, musical history. I hope I may live to hear you at your zenith.’
The prophecy came true. Ivor King was knighted at an early age, he made a large fortune, gained an unassailable position and the nickname by which he was always known, ‘The King of Song’, largely on the strength of this enormous range of voice. Largely, but not solely. A lovable and very strong personality, a genial quality of good fellowship, and latterly his enormous age, had played their part, and combined with his magnificent notes to make him not only one of the best known but also one of the best loved men of several successive generations. Among particular achievements he was the only man ever to sing the name part in the opera Norma, the script of which had been re-written especially for him, and re-named Norman.
The King of Song had toured the world, and particularly the Empire, dozens of times and these tours were indeed like royal progresses. In very remote parts of Africa the natives often mistook him for Queen Victoria’s husband, and it was universally admitted that he had done more towards welding the Empire in the cultural sphere than any other individual. Quite bald, although with a marvellous selection of wigs, and finally quite toothless, he still maintained a gallant fight against old age, although some two years previously he had succumbed to the extent of giving a final farewell concert at the Albert Hall. He had then retired to a charming house on Kew Green, which he named Vocal Lodge, and devoted himself to botany; in the pursuit of this science, however, he was more keen than lucky.
‘She wore a wreath of roses the day that first we met,’ he chanted, cutting a seed cake. It was what the most vulgar of the many generations which had passed over his head would call his signature tune, and he sang it in a piercing soprano.
Sophia poured out tea, and asked after his Lesbian irises.
‘They were not what they seemed,’ he said, ‘wretched things. I brought the roots all the way from Lesbos, as you know, and when they came up,
