Christmas Pudding and Pigeon Pie (38 page)

‘Semaphore perfect,’ she said airily. ‘But I must confess my Morse needs brushing up. And anyhow, if you remember, I was running to the telephone when I passed you in that dark passage and had no time at all to see what Greta was winking about. She was such a bore, anyway, I never could stick her. So what happened to her after that?’

Heathley pursed his lips. ‘I’m afraid, my dear Sophia, that it was not very pleasant,’ he said. ‘You must remember that my job is counter-espionage, that I have to suppress my own personal feelings rigidly, and that very very often I am obliged to do things which are obnoxious to me.’

‘Like in Somerset Maugham’s books?’

‘Just like – I am glad you appreciate my point. Well, it seems that Florence wasn’t feeling any too sure about Greta, who was, of course, one of her corps, and was particularly anxious that Greta should not come up before the Alien’s tribunal as she would probably have made mistakes and given them all away, Florence and the rest of them. Also her papers were not foolproof. So, at Florence’s bidding, of course, Winthrop and I carried her on the stretcher, just as you saw her, gagged and bound, and put her into the main drain which flows, as you may not know, under the First Aid Post.’

Sophia screamed again. Heatherley went on, ‘Yes, my dear Sophia, counter-espionage is a dangerous, disagreeable profession. I should like you to remember this and be most careful, always, how you act. It is absolutely necessary for you to trust me and do exactly what I say on every occasion. We are in this together now, remember, you and I.’

Sophia did not so much care about being in anything with Heatherley, and hoped that all this would not lead to being in bed with him; she seemed to remember that such things were
part of the ordinary day’s work of beautiful female spies. On the other hand, she felt that she would, if necessary, endure even worse than death in order to be mixed up in this thrilling real life spy drama. The horrible end of poor Greta served to show that here was the genuine article. Fancy. The main drain. Sophia shuddered. No wonder Miss Edwards saw something queer going on under her feet.

‘Now, Sophia, I hope you realise,’ Heatherley said, ‘that whatever happens you are not to tell a living soul about all this. You and I are watched day and night by unseen eyes. These are evil things that we are fighting – yes, evil, and very clever. The telephone, to this house and to the Post, is tapped by Florence’s men; our letters are read and our movements followed. We may have got away with this conversation simply by daring to hold it here, in the heart of the enemy country; on the other hand, we may not. As you leave this room, masked men may seize upon us and carry us, on stretchers, to the fate which befel you know who. Of course, if you were to go to anybody in authority with this tale, the gang would know it, and would disperse like a mist before the sun – at the best my work of months would be destroyed, at the worst you and I would suffer the supreme penalty. I may tell you that the War Office and Scotland Yard are watching over us in their own way, and I have secret means of communicating with them. By the 10th November, as I told you before, I shall have all the evidence I need, and then the whole lot can be rounded up. Meanwhile, you and I, Sophia, must be a team. Now you should go back to your room; this conversation has already lasted too long. I shan’t be able to speak to you like this again until all is over, so REMEMBER.’

Heatherley squeezed back into his cupboard, and Sophia, highly elated and with her pain quite forgotten, skipped off and slid down the banisters to her own landing. They had evidently got away with that conversation all right, as no masked men pounced out on her and she was soon in bed, kicking Milly off the warm patch which she wanted for her own feet.

When Sophia awoke the next day, she had the same feeling with which, as a child, she had greeted Christmas morning, or the day of the Pantomime. A feeling of happy anticipation. At first, and this also was like when she was little, she could not even remember what it was all about; she simply knew that something particularly lively was going to happen.

Elsie, the housemaid, called her and put a breakfast tray in front of her on which there were coffee, toast and butter, and a nice brown boiled egg, besides a heap of letters and
The Times
. Sophia had woken up enough to remember that she was now a glamorous female spy; she put on a swansdown jacket, sat up properly, and admonished Milly for refusing to go downstairs.

‘Drag her,’ she said to Elsie. Elsie dragged, and they left the room with a slow, shuffling movement, accompanied by the bedside rug.

The letters looked dull; Sophia began on her egg, and was attacking it with vigour when she saw that something was written on it in pencil. Not hard-boiled, she hoped. Not at all. the writing was extremely faint, but she could make out the word
AGONY
followed by 22.

Sophia was now in agony, for this must be, of course, a code. She knew that spies and counter-spies had the most peculiar ways of communicating with each other, winking in Morse and so on; writing on eggs would be everyday work for them. She abandoned the delicious egg, done so nicely to a turn, and rolled her eyes round the pink ceiling
with blue clouds of her bedroom while she tried the word
AGONY
backwards and forwards and upside down. She made anagrams of the letters. She looked at the egg in her looking-glass bed-post, but all in vain. She would have to get hold of the Chief at once, but how was she to do that? Impossible to send Elsie upstairs with instructions to see if Mr Egg was still in Miss Turnbull’s cupboard, if so, Lady Sophia’s compliments and would he step downstairs. In any case he was unlikely to have remained in the cupboard all night, and Florence’s bed, a narrow single one, would not harbour any but impassioned lovers with the smallest degree of comfort. This, she somehow felt, Florence and Heatherley were not.

Elsie now returned with Milly, who once more dived under the eiderdown, and, with a piercing shore, resumed her slumbers.

‘Did she do anything?’

‘Yes, m’lady.’

‘Good girl. Would you be very kind,’ said Sophia, ‘and go and ask Miss Turnbull if she would give me Mr Egg’s telephone number. Say I’m short of a man for tonight.’

Florence, who had only come off duty at six, was displeased at being woken up. She was understood by Elsie to say that Mr Egg had gone to Lympne for the day, and had her ladyship remembered that there was to be a Brotherhood meeting at 98 Granby Gate that evening.

Sophia saw that she had been rather dense. Of course she might have realised that if Heth had been available to see her there would have been no need for him to write on her egg. Then she saw light.

‘He, Egg, is in agony, because he is unable 2 see me before 2 night.’ Sophia turned to her breakfast with a happy appreciation both of its quality and of her own brilliance.

She picked up
The Times
and read about the Pets’ Programme. It seemed to have fallen very flat with the musical critic. ‘Not with
Milly though.’ Then, without looking at the war news, which she guessed would be dull, she turned to the front page and read, as she always did, the agony column. She usually found one or two advertisements that made her feel happy, and today there was a particularly enjoyable one. ‘Poor old gentleman suffering from malignant disease would like to correspond with pretty young lady. Box 22
The Times.’

When Sophia had finished laughing she became quite wistful. She always called Sir Ivor the poor old gentleman, and he called her the pretty young lady. If only he were not being a dreadful old traitor in Berlin, she would have cut the advertisement out and sent it to him. ‘I never should have expected to miss him as much as I do, but the fact is there are certain jokes which I can only share with him. Funny thing too,’ she thought, ‘suffering from malignant disease, just what he is. National Socialism.’ She cut out the advertisement and put it in her jewel case, deciding that if she ever had the opportunity to do so, through neutrals, she would send it to Sir Ivor in the hopes of making him feel small. Her blood boiled as she thought again of his treachery and of the programme of Gamp song’s, which was exactly similar to one he had given before the Chief Scout some months previously, and which had included that prime and perennial favourite:

Sir Ivor and Dr Goebbels between them had altered the words of this classic to:

So queer it seemed, and so horrible, that somebody who had had the best that England can give should turn against her like that. Sir Ivor had received recognition of every kind, both public and private, from all parts of the British Empire, of his great gifts. Had he been one of those geniuses who wither in attics, it would have been much more understandable. Sophia got out of bed, and while her bath was running in she did a few exercises in order to get fit for the dangers and exactions of counter-espionage.

On the way to St. Anne’s, Sophia bought a Manual of Morse Code which she fully intended to learn that day. When she arrived however she found, greatly to her disgust, that, as it was Thursday, there was a great heap of clean washing to be counted.

She supposed that she must have a brain rather like that of a mother bird who, so the naturalists tell us, cannot count beyond three; counting the washing was her greatest trial. There would be between twenty and thirty overalls to be checked and put away in the nurses’ pigeonholes in the ‘dressing-room’ which was a sacking partition labelled, rather crudely, Female. Now Sophia, with an effort of concentration, could stagger up to twelve or thirteen; having got so far the telephone bell would ring, somebody would come and ask her a question, or her own mind would stray in some new direction. Then she would begin all over again.

It generally took her about half an hour before she could make the numbers tally twice, and even then it was far from certain that they were correct. On this occasion she made them alternately twenty-five and twenty-eight, so she assumed the more optimistic estimate to be the right one, and stowed them away in their pigeonholes. She was longing to tell Sister Wordsworth about Greta and the main drain, but of course that would never do. She did ask Mr Stone whether the drain
really flowed underneath the First Aid Post and could she see it, to which he replied that it did, and that she could, but in his opinion she would not enjoy such an experience.

‘Rats,’ he said. Sophia thought of Greta and shuddered. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he went on, ‘some fellows are going down there this evening to have a look round. I expect you could go with them if you like.’

Sophia asked what time, and when she was told at half-past ten, she declined the offer. It would require a bigger bribe than the main drain to get her back to St. Anne’s when her work there was finished.

She spent the rest of the day learning Morse Code, partly because she wished to be a well equipped counter-spy and partly (and this spurred her to enormous industry) so that she could wink at Olga in it the next time they met. There was a photograph of Olga in that week’s
Tatler
wearing a black velvet crinoline with a pearl cross, and toying with a guitar, beneath which was written the words, ‘This Society beauty does not require a uniform for her important war work.’

Sophia, thinking of this, redoubled her efforts of dot and dash. But she found it far from easy, even more difficult than counting overalls, though the reward of course was greater. She sat, winking madly into her hand looking-glass, until she was off duty, by which time she knew the letters A, B and C perfectly, and E and F when she thought very hard. The opportunity for showing off her new accomplishment came that evening. She had gone on duty at the Post earlier than usual, as Sister Wordsworth wanted to go out; leaving it correspondingly early, she was on her way home when she remembered that her house would be full of Brothers. So she looked in at the Ritz. Here the first person she saw was Rudolph, and sitting beside him was a heaving mass of sables which could only conceal the beautiful Slavonic person of La Gogothska herself, in the uniform, so to speak, of her important war-work.

‘Hullo, my darling,’ said Rudolph, fetching a chair for her. ‘You’re off very early. I’m dining with you tonight, though you may not know it. Elsie said I could, and she’s telling your cook.’

‘Good,’ said Sophia, without listening much. Her eyes were fixed upon Olga and she was working away with concentration.

‘What are you making those faces at me for?’ said Olga crossly.

‘Dear me,’ said Sophia, ‘how disappointing. It was just a bet I had with Fred. I betted him sixpence that you were in the secret service, he was so positive you couldn’t be, and I said I could prove it. Well, I have proved it, and I have lost sixpence, that’s all.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, darling, I was just telling you, in Morse Code, to proceed to the ladies’ cloakroom, and are you proceeding? No. Have you made any excuse for not doing so? No. Therefore, as you evidently don’t know Morse Code which is a sine qua non for any secret agent, you can’t be that beautiful female spy we all hoped you were.’ Actually, of course, Sophia had only been winking out, and with great trouble at that, A, B and C.

Olga said, ‘Nonsense. Morse Code is never used in this war; it’s completely out of date. Why, what would be the use of it?’ and she gave a theatrically scornful droop of the eyelids.

‘Well, as a matter of fact, dear, it would be a very great deal of use indeed under certain circumstances. Supposing one happened to be gagged, for an example, it would be possible to wink out messages to the bystanders which, if they understood Morse, would save one’s life.’