As soon as Fred had shaken off Olga she came floating up to us in her veil and began hinting that she knew more than she cared to reveal about Ivor’s death. I’m afraid I was rather rude to her but really I’m getting tired of Olga in the rôle of beautiful female spy – it’s becoming a bore. I’ve just sent her a telegram saying ‘Proceed John o’ Groats and await further instructions. F.69.’ Hope she proceeds, that’s all. Darling, what a heavenly idea that Floss might be a B.F.S. – so teasing for Olga if she were. Now get some leave soon and we’ll proceed to her bedroom and investigate.
Love my darling from your darling
Sophia.
PS. Did I tell you Luke is proceeding to America on a very secret mission for the F.O.? Fancy choosing that old Fascist. I must get him some Horlick’s malted tablets for the 100 hours in an open boat which will almost certainly be his fate – I keep advising him to go rowing on the Serpentine to get his hand in. So here I shall be, left all alone with Florrie and her gang, isn’t it terrifying for me? Should you say Heatherley and Winthrop are ones too?
6
Sophia was now designated by the newspapers as ‘Wig Heiress’. The reporters pursued her from the pillars of her own front door to the Post, where Sister Wordsworth finally routed them with a hypodermic needle, in an effort to find out how she intended to dispose of her legacy. As she refused to make any statement, they invented every kind of thing. Ninety-eight Granby Gate was for sale, and Sir Luke and Lady Sophia Garfield would take up their residence at Vocal Lodge. They were only going to use it as a summer residence. They were going to pull it down and build a block of flats. (The Georgian Group, wrapped in dreams of Federal Union, stirred in its sleep on hearing this, and groaned.) They were shutting it up to avoid the rates. They were digging for victory among the Lesbian Irises. Only the truth was not told.
Luke, who really hated publicity, even when it took the form of a beautiful studio portrait of Sophia in Vogue, because, he said, it did him harm in the City, became very restive, and speeded up his arrangements for leaving England. Sophia spent a busy day shopping for him. Her heart smote her for not having been much nicer to him, as it did periodically, so she tried to atone in Harrods’ man’s shop, and he left England fully equipped as a U-boat victim. Florence saw him off at his front door and presented him with the balaclava helmet, but Sophia, who accompanied him to the station, threw it out of the taxi window explaining that there was a proper machine-made one in his valise. She kissed him good-bye on the platform to the accompaniment of magnesium flares which, rather to her disappointment (because although she always looked like an elderly negress in them, she liked to see photographs of herself in the papers), were prevented by the Ministry of Information from bearing any fruit. Luke’s mission was a very secret one. As a final parting present she gave him a pocket Shakespeare to read, she explained, on the desert island where his open boat would probably deposit him.
‘And if you hear a loud bang in the night,’ she added, as the train drew out of the station, ‘don’t turn over and go to sleep again.’
‘Luke hates jokes and hates the war,’ she said to Mary Pencill who was also on the platform, seeing off one of Trotsky’s lieutenants, ‘so isn’t he lucky to be going to America where they have neither?’
Mary carried Sophia off to her flat when the train had gone, and they had a long and amicable talk during which they managed to avoid the subject of politics. Sophia, who was considered absolutely red by those supporters of Munich, apologists for Mussolini and lovers of Franco, Fred and Ned, was apt to feel the truest of blue Tories when in the presence of Mary whose attitude of suspicion and obstruction always annoyed her.
‘Still writing on foreheads?’ Mary inquired when they were settled down in front of her gas stove.
‘It’s all very well for you to laugh, just wait until you’ve got a crushed tongue and slight oozing hæmorrhage like one of the patients we had in yesterday – you’ll be only too glad to have me writing on your forehead.’
‘How d’you mean, yesterday? Was there an air raid – I never noticed a thing.’
‘Darling, you are so dense. Practice of course. The telephone bell rings, and I answer it and it says “Southern Control speaking. Practice air raid warning Red, expect casualties.” Then, some time later, a lot of unhappy-looking people are brought in out of the street in return for threepence and a cup of tea. They are labelled with a description of their injuries, then we treat them, at least the nurses do, and I write on their foreheads and take them up to the canteen for their cup of tea.’
‘With their foreheads still written on?’
‘Well, they get threepence, don’t they? First of all, we used to practise on each other, but then Mr Stone very sensibly pointed out what a shambles it would be if there were a real raid and real casualties were brought in and found all the personnel tied up in Thomas’s splints, and so on. Think of it! So they work on this other scheme now; it seems much more professional too.’
‘Well, all I can say is, if there’s a raid I hope I shall be allowed to die quietly where I am.’
‘Don’t be defeatist, darling,’ said Sophia.
The next day Sophia, looking, she thought, really very pretty and wearing another new black hat, went off to the Horse Guards Parade where, in the
