‘I see, the old gentleman is your answer to Hitler’s secret weapon.’
‘I wouldn’t go quite so far as that, but I can tell you we are expecting some pretty fruity results. I mean it’s a world-wide scheme you see, not just a pettifogging little affair confined to England. And by the way,’ he got out a notebook, ‘I must remember to tell the police they had better keep an eye on the chap. Think what a coup for the Huns if he got bumped off or anything; I should never get over it.’
Sophia rang up her enemy. Olga Gogothsky (née Baby Bagg) had been her enemy since they were both aged ten. It was an intimate enmity which gave Sophia more pleasure than most friendships; she made sacrifices upon its altar and fanned the flames with assiduity.
‘Hullo, my darling Sophie,’ Olga purred, in the foreign accent which she had cultivated since just before her marriage and which was in striking contrast with the Eton and Oxford tones (often blurred by drink but always unmistakable) of Prince Gogothsky. ‘Yes, I have been back a fortnight; such a journey, darling. And where did you go for the summer? Just quietly with dear Lord Maida Vale? Delicious. Me? Oh, poor little me, I had a very banal time with Pauline Mallory you know, the poetess, in her villa at Antibes. Crowds and crowds of people, parties, nothing else. You can imagine how that palled on me, dearest. Happily my beloved old Ambassador was there. He has her little villa, in the garden, and there he writes his memories. He is sweet enough to say that I inspire him in his work; he read it to me – so interesting, and written, how can I express it, with such art. The old days at the Montenegrin court – so picturesque. You can imagine. Then Baroness von Bülop was a great friend of his, and he told me some fascinating things about her and her beautiful aunt which were rather too intime for cold, cold print. Well, what else – oh yes, Torchon was painting my portrait – he sees me as a Turkish slave girl which is very interesting because when Fromenti cast my horoscope he said that is what I used to be in one of my former lives. (In the Sultan’s harem, I was his favourite wife.) Besides all this, I managed to get in a little writing, so you see my time was not quite wasted after all.’
Olga’s writing was an interesting phenomenon, rather like the Emperor’s new clothes. She let it be known that she was a poetess, and whenever, which was often, her photograph appeared in the illustrated press, the caption underneath would announce that very soon a slender volume might be expected from her pen. Sometimes even the subject-matter would be touched upon: ‘Princess Serge Gogothsky, who is at present engaged upon a series of bird studies in verse.’
‘This beautiful visitor to our shores is a lady of great talent. The long epic poem on Savonarola from her pen will soon be ready for publication,’ and so on.
Once, for several weeks on end, Olga sat alone every evening at a special table at the Café Royal and wrote feverishly upon sheets of foolscap which she tore up, with an expression of agony on her face, just before closing time. Her work always seemed to be in progress rather than in print.
Sophia asked what she was doing as war work.
‘Dearest, I must tell you that it’s a secret. However, when you hear that I have an appointment under the Government, that I have to undertake great responsibilities, and that I may often be called out in the middle of the night without any idea of where I am to go, you may guess the kind of thing it is. More I cannot say.’
‘Sounds to me like a certified midwife,’ said Sophia crossly. It was really too much if old Baby Bagg was going to assume the rôle of beautiful female spy, while she herself had drearily admitted to working in a First Aid Post, all boredom and no glamour. Olga lied with such accomplishment that there were some people who believed in her tarradiddles, and Sophia had often been told what a talent for verse, what a delightful touch the Princess had.
‘No, darling – what a charming joke, by the way, I must remember to tell my dear Chief. No, not a midwife. Though I’m sure it must be far far more exhausting, my Chief is a regular slave driver.’
‘Oh, you have a Chief?’
‘I only wish I could tell you Who it is. But there must be no leakage. What a wonderful man to work with – what magnetism, what finesse and what a brain! I must allow I am fortunate to be with him, and then the work is fascinating, vital. What if it does half kill me? There, I mustn’t talk about myself. Tell me, what are you doing in this cruel war?’
Sophia said that she too had an important job under the Government.
‘Really, my darling, have you? A First Aid Post, or something like that, I suppose?’
‘Ah well, that’s only what I tell people, actually of course it is an excellent blind for my real work. I wonder you don’t adopt this idea, say you are working in a canteen, for instance. I’ll forget what you’ve just told me if you like, and spread it round about the canteen!’
‘Delicate little me!’ cried Olga, ‘in a canteen! But darling, who would ever believe such an unlikely thing –
