Sophia then telephoned to her friend, Mary Pencill.
‘Now, Mary, listen. You’ve got to come and work in my First Aid Post,’ she said. ‘It’s perfect heaven. You can’t think what heaven Sister Wordsworth is.’
‘No, thank you, Sophie. I don’t intend to work for this war in any way. I don’t approve of it, you see.’ Mary belonged to the extreme Left.
‘Gracious, just like Luke. He doesn’t approve of it either, nor does Florence. You are in awful company. So why are you in this awful company?’
‘I can’t help it if Luke happens to be right for once. It’s sure to be for the wrong reasons if he is. All I know is that everything decent and worth supporting has been thrown away – Spain, Czechoslovakia, and now we’re supposed to be fighting for the Poles, frightful people who knout their peasants. Actually, of course, it’s simply the British Empire and our own skins as usual.’
‘I’m fond of my skin,’ said Sophia, ‘and personally I think the British Empire is worth fighting for.’
‘You can’t expect me to think so. Why, look at our Government. Your friends Fred and Ned, for instance, are just as bad as Hitler, exactly the same thing. What is the use of fighting Hitler when there are people like Ned and Fred here? We should do some cleaning up at home first.’
‘Anyway, it’s Hitler and Stalin now, don’t forget the wedding bells.’
Mary had gone P.O.U.M., so she grudgingly conceded this point. ‘Ned and Fred are practically the same people as Hitler and Stalin,’ she said.
‘I never heard anything so silly. Poor Fred and Ned. Well, I mean the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Just suppose now that the Ministry of Information had forgotten to tell us we had been beaten, and one day in Harrods we saw a little crowd gathering, and when we went to look it was Hitler and Stalin. Think how we should scream.’
‘I expect you would.’
‘So would you. Now, my point is, I often see Fred and Ned in Harrods, and I don’t scream at all, I just say “Hullo duckie” or something. See the difference?’
‘No, Sophia,’ said Mary disapprovingly, ‘I’m afraid you don’t understand the principle.’ She loved Sophia but thought her incurably frivolous.
‘Another thing,’ she said; ‘why have you left the Left Book Club?’
‘Darling, I only joined to please you.’
‘That’s no answer.’
‘Well, if you want to know it’s because the books are left.’
‘Sophia!’
‘I don’t mean because they are Left and I can’t get Evelyn Waugh or any of the things I want to read. I mean because they are left lying about the house. Ordinary libraries like Harrods take them away when one has finished with them. I don’t want the place cluttered up with books, so I have left. See?’
‘Really, your life is bounded by Harrods.’
‘Yes, it is rather. I had rather a horrid dream, though, about its being full of parachutists; my life is slightly bounded by them now, to tell you the truth, I think they are terrifying.’
‘Nonsense, they would be interned.’
‘That’s what Luke says. Still, the idea of those faces floating past one’s bedroom window is rather unpleasant, you must admit.’
‘By the way, I saw Rudolph last night coming out of the Empire with that foreign woman.’
‘Who?’
‘The one who always wears star-spangled yashmaks.’
‘Oh, you mean Olga Gogothsky; she’s no more foreign than you or me – although she does pretend to have Spanish blood, I believe.’
‘Really – Government or Franco?’
‘Baby Bagg. You must remember her at dances.’ Sophia was only fairly pleased to hear that Olga had been out with Rudolph, who had announced that he was going to play bridge at his club.
‘Anyhow, she looks too stupid.’
‘She has just told me that she has got an important job under the Government, I simply must find out what it is.’
‘First Aid Post, probably,’ said Mary. ‘You haven’t told me yet what you do in yours?’
‘Well, it sounds rather lugubrious but I absolutely love it. I have an indelible pencil, you see, and when people are brought in dying and so on, I write on their foreheads.’
‘Good gracious me, what do you write?’
‘M for male and F for female, according to which they are, and a number. That’s for the Ministry of Pensions. Then, for the doctor, how many doses of morphia and castor oil and so on they have had.’
‘What an awful idea. What happens if you get a negro – or a neanderthal type with a very low forehead? You can’t always count on having high, smooth, white brows, you know, like Luke’s.’
‘Try not to be facetious, darling, it’s quite serious. Then I put their jewels into dainty little chintz bags made out of Fortmason remnants.’
‘When you say you do all this, what exactly do you mean?’
‘Well, darling, I should do it if there was a raid. It’s rather like private theatricals, you know what I mean. “It’ll be all right on the night” kind of idea. The worse the dress rehearsal, the better the show, and so on.’
Mary became very scornful and said it was the stupidest job she had ever heard of. ‘Jewels,’ she said, ‘in chintz bags. Writing M and F. Really, Sophia, I give up.’
Sophia said it was better than doing nothing like Mary, and they rang off, each in a huff.
When Sophia saw Rudolph she said she had heard that he had been seen out with a duck-billed platypus disguised as a Sultana. (Olga’s rather long, turned-up nose was considered to be one of her great attractions.)
‘Yes, my little Puss-puss,’ he said, ‘I did take the alluring Princess to a movie what time you went whoring round with your Cabinet puddings.’
‘I thought you
