‘We must especially concentrate, of course, on bigger and better Pets’ Programmes than ever before,’ said the Minister.
‘You’re joking!’
‘What? Indeed I am not.’
‘Of course the Pets’ Programmes were simply put in to tease the Germans,’ said Sir Ivor, ‘and I also hoped they would show people here that the whole thing was bogus.’
‘Then you very much underestimated our English love for dumb animals,’ Fred replied pompously. ‘Let me tell you that the Pets’ Programmes were the only ones the Government were really worried about – why, every man, woman and dog in the whole country listened to those wretched programmes. You should have seen, for instance, how much Abbie and Milly enjoyed them. They never missed one. Why, entirely owing to you, there is now a Pets’ League of Peace and Slavery, with literally thousands of members. The Pets wear awful little badges and pay half-a-crown. They had a mammoth meeting last week in the Dell at Hyde Park.’
‘We’ll soon alter that,’ said the old gentleman. ‘I will start a Society for Patriotic Pets and make them pay five bob.’
‘Please will you two come in to dinner.’
Sophia sat between the King of Song and Luke, because, as she explained, she had not yet had a word with Luke since his return. ‘We shall have to have the Clipper,’ she said in an undertone to her godfather, who quite understood. They had it. After a bit they were able to leave Luke and Ruth having it together, with Lady Beech, who, like the Athenians, loved new things, lending an occasional ear. The pink sunrise, the pink sunset, the next pink sunrise and the food.
Sophia asked Sir Ivor about Agony 22, but he was quite as much in the dark about the great egg mystery as Heatherley had been.
‘Come now, pretty young lady,’ he said. ‘How could I get at your egg?’
‘I know, but in spy stories people seem to manage these things.’
Ned here chimed in with the news that many eggs nowadays have things written on them.
‘I expect there is a farm called Agony, and that egg was laid in 1922,’ he said.
‘But why should there be a farm called Agony?’
‘You never can tell; farms are called some very queer things. When I was Under-Secretary for Agriculture –’
‘By the way, Sophie, you must be feeling a bit easier on the subject of parachutists, eh?’ asked Fred. Anything to stop Ned from telling about when he was Under-Secretary for Agriculture.
‘Well, yes, but there’s such an awful new horror; I think of nothing else. I read in some paper that the Germans are employing midget spies, so small that they can hide in a drawer, and the result is I simply daren’t look for a hanky nowadays.’
‘Don’t worry; we’ve caught nearly all of them. The Government are issuing an appeal tomorrow for old dolls’ houses to keep them in.’
Lady Beech, having heard the Clipper out to the last throb of its engines, now collected a few eyes, for she liked general conversation, leant across the table, and said to her brother-in-law, ‘Tell me, Ivor, dear, what sort of a life did you have under the First Aid Post?’
‘Oh yes,’ said all the others, ‘do tell us how it was.’
‘Spiffing,’ said the old Edwardian. ‘They fitted up a Turkish bath for me, and I spent hours of every day in that. Then one member of the gang (I expect you would remember him, Sophie, a stretcher-bearer called Wolf) used to be a hairdresser on one of those liners, and he brushed my – er – scalp in quite a special way, to induce baby growth. And by jingo he induced it!’ And sure enough Sir Ivor snatched off his wig and proudly exhibited some horrible little bits of white fluff. ‘After all these years,’ he said. ‘I was stone bald at thirty, you know; the man must be a genius. He is now in the Tower and I am making an application at the Home Office to be allowed to visit him once a week, for treatment. It is all I ask in return for my, not inconsiderable, services.’
‘Tell me, Ivor, did you not feel most fearfully anxious when the weeks passed and you had no communication with the outside world?’
‘Rather not. I know how stupid Germans are, you see – felt certain they would give themselves away sooner or later, and sure enough they did and everything was O.K. just as I always guessed it would be.’
‘Bit touch and go?’ said Luke.
‘Keep your hair on,’ said the old Singer. ‘A miss is as good as a mile, ain’t it?’
THE PURSUIT OF LOVE
TO GASTON PALEWSKI
1
There is a photograph in existence of Aunt Sadie and her six children sitting round the tea-table at Alconleigh. The table is situated, as it was, is now, and ever shall be, in the hall, in front of a huge open fire of logs. Over the chimney piece plainly visible in the photograph hangs an entrenching tool, with which, in 1915, Uncle Matthew had whacked to death eight Germans one by one as they crawled out of a dug-out. It is still covered with blood and hairs, an object of fascination to us as children. In the photograph Aunt Sadie’s face, always beautiful, appears strangely round, her hair strangely fluffy, and her clothes strangely dowdy, but it is unmistakably she who sits there with Robin, in oceans of lace, lolling on her knee. She seems uncertain what to do with his head, and the presence of Nanny waiting to take him away is felt though not seen. The other children, between Louisa’s eleven and Matt’s two years, sit round the table in party dresses or frilly bibs, holding cups or mugs according to age, all of them gazing at the camera with large eyes opened wide by the flash, and all looking as if butter would not melt in their round pursed-up mouths. There they are, held
