‘I had to go off duty, my head ached so badly.’
‘Oh, what bad luck. Would a Cachet Fèvre do as well? I’ve just been having such a scene with Greta; she has got it into her head that somebody is going to take her back to Germany, silly fool. I wish to goodness somebody would, I’d give anything to get rid of her.’
Florence said it was always a mistake to have foreign servants, thanked her for the Cachet Fèvre, and went upstairs. Sophia had rather been expecting that now Luke had gone perhaps Florence would be moving too, but she showed no signs of such an intention. However, the house was large, and they very rarely met, besides, she did not exactly dislike Florence; it was more that they had so little in common.
ST ANNE’S HOSPITAL FIRST AID POST
My own darling Rudolph,
Florence has joined the Post, did I tell you, and it really is rather a joke. All those terribly nice cosy ladies who have such fun with the Dowager Queen of Ruritania and whether she had Jewish blood, and whether the Crown Princess will ever have a baby and so on, are simply withered up by Flo who says she finds extraordinarily little pleasure in gossiping nowadays. They had rather fun for a time, coming clean and sharing and being guided and so on, but they never really got into it. The last straw was that Miss Edwards said she simply couldn’t tell fortunes any more when Florence was there because of the atmosphere, and Miss Edwards’ fortunes were the nicest thing in the Post, we all had ours done every day.
Anyhow, it seems that last night the nurses went to Sister Wordsworth in a body and said that although of course Florence is very, very charming and they all liked her very, very, very much, they really couldn’t stick her in the Treatment Room another moment. Sister Wordsworth is wonderful, she never turned a hair. She sent for Florence at once and asked her if, as a great favour, she would consent to take charge of the Maternity Ward, which is that little dog kennel, you know, by the Museum, with a cradle and a pair of woolly boots. As it happens, Florence is very keen on obstetrics and she was delighted. So all is honey again and the Dowager Queen of Ruritania and Miss Edwards reign supreme. Sister Wordsworth says the head A.R.P. lady in these parts is a pillar of the Brotherhood, and sent Florence with such a tremendous recommendation that she can never be sacked however much of a bore she is.
Heatherley and Winthrop have also joined as stretcher-bearers, in fact the Brotherhood seems to be doing pretty well, just like I never thought it would. I wonder if Heth isn’t a bit in love with Florence, there was a form which looked awfully like his on the half-landing when I got back late from the 400 a day or two ago. I was too terrified to look again, so I ran up to my room and locked myself in. Probably it was my imagination.
Love my darling, when are you going to have some leave,
Sophia.
The telephone bell rang and Sophia answered it. ‘Southern Control speaking. Practice RED, expect casualties.’ This meant that ‘casualties’ would be arriving from the street. She ran up to the canteen to warn Sister Wordsworth, who was having tea.
‘Thank you, Lady Sophia. Now would you go and ring up the doctor?’ said Sister Wordsworth. ‘If you hurry, you will catch him at his home address. He said he would like to come to the next practice we have here.’
Sophia ran downstairs again. On her way back to the office she nearly collided with Heth and Winthrop who were carrying a stretcher.
‘Casualties already!’ she said, and as she was going on she noticed that the ‘casualty’ under the rugs on the stretcher was her own maid, Greta. For a moment she felt surprised, and then she thought that Florence must have asked Greta to do it; probably they were short of casualties. Greta was far too superior to be bribed by threepence and a cup of tea. She had a sort of bandage over her mouth, and had evidently been treated for ‘crushed tongue’, a very favourite accident at St Anne’s. She seemed to have something in her eye, or at any rate it was winking and rolling in a very horrible way.
Sophia, as she went to the telephone, giggled to herself. ‘Typical of them,’ she thought, ‘to treat the wretched woman for crushed tongue when really she is half blinded by a grit in the eye. Let’s hope they’ll take it out and give her a cup of tea soon.’ As the practice got into full swing Sophia became very busy and forgot the incident. She never saw Greta again.
7
The sensation which was caused by the supposed murder of Sir Ivor King, the King of Song, at a time so extremely inconvenient to the British Government, had scarcely subsided when the old singer turned up, wig and all, in Germany. It happened on the very day that Vocal Lodge was opened to the public, a ceremony which, at the request of the A.R.P., was unadvertised, and which therefore consisted of Sophia, in a simple little black frock, dispensing cocktails to Fred, in his pin-stripes, and a few other friends. The house was rather bare of furniture, owing to Lady Beech. Hardly had Fred arrived when he was called to the telephone; white to the lips he announced that he had had news which compelled him to leave for the office at once.
The German Press and Radio were jubilant. The old gentleman, it seemed, was visiting that music-loving country with the express purpose of opening there a world-wide anti-British campaign of Propaganda allied to Song. This campaign, it was considered, would have a
