Christmas Pudding and Pigeon Pie (43 page)

Heatherley gave a loathsome snigger.

‘I beg your pardon? Of course, Mr Egg, as you come from the United States of America, you can tell us all about Federal Union from experience, I am sure you must think highly of it?’

‘It works very badly over there, and would be quite useless in Europe. In Europe you have one Power so far in advance of all the rest that ethical sense as well as common sense would put the other countries in complete submission to its dictates.’

‘Yes, that’s what I always say,’ said Sophia, ‘but, of course, it will be an awful bore having to rule over those fiendish foreigners,
and I rather doubt if we can be bothered. Perhaps we could make the French do it for us.’

Heatherley smiled in a superior way. He seemed far too comfortable to please Sophia and she greatly feared that his plans, whatever they were, must be maturing satisfactorily for him. She made no attempt to communicate in any way with Fred, knowing that, quite alone and uninterrupted, it would have taken her a good hour to explain the whole matter to him. Fred liked to get to the bottom of things, to ask a hundred questions and to write a great deal in his notebook; his particular temperament rendered such devices as tapping on his leg in Morse Code (even had Sophia been sufficiently expert to do so) much worse than useless. She very wisely left the whole thing alone.

The evening was not a great success. Fred asked where Milly was, and when told about the vet, reminded Sophia that she and Abbie had been wormed together less than two months before. He went on to tell her what a strain it was on a dog’s inside, asking what evidence she had of Milly’s worms, until poor Sophia could have screamed. Then they listened to the King of Song, but he was not really much in form. At the end of his programme, however, there was a drop of comfort for Sophia when he sang, very distinctly, ‘Milly is my darling, my darling, my darling, Milly is my darling, the young bow wow dear,’ after which she heard, or thought she heard, a rumbling snore. If Milly was with the old gentleman that would be nice for both of them, and especially, of course, for the old gentleman. At last Fred took his leave, after which Heatherley escorted Sophia, who was by now very sleepy in spite of all her cares, to join Florence in her bedroom.

This was the end of the first day.

The next morning Sophia, having enjoyed from sheer exhaustion, an excellent night’s rest, awoke feeling more resolute. She had often heard that the Germans are the stupidest people in the world; when she remembered this and also the fact that, until she had found out that they were spies, she had always looked upon Florence, Heatherley and Winthrop as being the greatest bores she knew, it seemed to her that it should be possible to outwit Truda, Otto and Gustav, even if they were three to one against her. She stayed in bed until it was time to go to St. Anne’s, thinking very hard.

Clearly the first thing to be done was to write out a concise report of her situation, and this she must keep handy in case she had an opportunity, unobserved, of giving it to some reliable person. Hatred of Heatherley, even more than fear, lent her courage and cunning, and when she had been at the Post a little while, she put down her handkerchief over a stump of pencil on the table. Presently she picked up both handkerchief and pencil and went off to the lavatory, the only place where she could be out of sight of the unholy trinity, one of whose members followed her to its very door. Here she wrote, very quickly, on her handkerchief, ‘Spies. Milly and Ivor King imprisoned below Post. Tell police but act carefully. I am watched. No joke.’ She had to waste valuable space and time in saying ‘no joke’ because she knew that if this missive should happen to reach any of her friends they would be sure to think it was one and act accordingly. The trouble now was
to think of somebody to give it to, as, although she felt certain that Heatherley was bluffing when he said that nearly all the nurses were his fellow-spies, she did not know any of them well enough, now that Sister Wordsworth was away, to be positive beyond doubt of their integrity. She thought that if, by the next day, nothing else had turned up, she would, as a last resort, give the handkerchief to one of them; meanwhile she hoped for luck.

The sister in charge of the Treatment Room brought a Mrs Twitchett into the office. She was one of those fat women whose greatly overpowdered faces look like plasticine, and whose bosoms, if pricked, would surely subside with a loud bang and a gust of air. The sister introduced her to Sophia, saying that she had already been taken on at the local A.R.P. headquarters as a part time worker for St. Anne’s; Sophia’s business was to note down all particulars on the card index.

‘Emma Twitchett,’ she wrote, ‘144 The Boltons. Qualifications, First Aid, Home Nursing and Gas Certificates. Next of kin, Bishop of the Antarctic. Religion, The Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion.’

Here Sophia looked up sharply and saw, what in her preoccupation had not hitherto dawned on her, that Emma Twitchett was none other than Rudolph. For the first moment of crazy relief she thought that he must know everything and have come to rescue her, Milly and Sir Ivor. Then she realised that this could not be the case. He was merely bored and lonely without her, and was hoping that he would get back into favour by means of an elaborate joke. It was absolutely important to prevent him from giving himself away in the office, while under the impression that they were alone. As soon as she had scribbled down Mrs Twitchett’s particulars, she hurried him out of the Post.

Although it could not be said that Sophia had hitherto proved herself to be a very clever or successful counter-spy, she now made
up for all her former mistakes by perfectly sensible behaviour. The luck, of which she had been so hopeful, had come her way at last and she did not allow it to slip through her fingers. She conducted Mrs Twitchett, as she always did new people, round the Post, chatting most amicably. She was careful to omit nothing, neither the rest room upstairs, the canteen, the ladies’ cloakroom nor the room with the nurses’ lockers. She hoped that Rudolph would notice, and remember afterwards, how Winthrop, without giving himself the trouble to dissimulate his movements, was following them closely during this perambulation. Sophia was only too thankful that it was Winthrop who, she estimated, was about half as intelligent as Heatherley. At last she took Mrs Twitchett to the exit and showed her out, saying ‘Very well then, that will be splendid; tomorrow at twelve. Oh yes, of course,’ she said rather hesitatingly and shyly, ‘Yes, naturally, Mrs Twitchett, I’ll lend you mine.’ She took out her handkerchief and offered it to Rudolph with a smile. ‘No, of course, bring it back any time. I have another in my bag; it’s quite all right. Good, then, see you tomorrow; that will be very nice. So glad you are coming; we are rather short-handed, you know.’

She went back without even glancing at Winthrop who was hovering about inside the Post, and who followed her to the office. Then she sat for a while at her table trembling very much and expecting that any moment she would be summoned to the drain, but as time went on and nothing had happened, she took up her knitting. If she had a certain feeling of relief that, at any rate, she had been able to take a step towards communication with the outside world, she was also tortured with doubts as to whether Rudolph would ever see what was written on the handkerchief and whether, if he did, he would not merely say that women were bores in wars. Olga had certainly queered the pitch for her rivals in the world of espionage as far as Rudolph was concerned. Also, if he did have the luck to read and the sense to follow her directions,
would he be in time? He must hurry; she felt sure that after tomorrow any action which might be taken would be too late to save Milly and the old gentleman, certainly too late to catch Florence. Tomorrow was what the posters call zero hour. The rest of that day dragged by even more horribly slowly than the preceding one, and there was no sign from Rudolph. She could not help half expecting that he would have got some kind of a message through to her; when seven o’clock arrived and there was nothing, she was bitterly disappointed. Heatherley conducted her home in a taxi, dined with her and never let her out of his sight until Florence was ready to take charge of her. Sophia did not sleep a single wink; she lay strenuously willing Rudolph to read her handkerchief.

On the morning of the third and last day, Sophia would have been ready to construe anything which seemed at all mysterious into a code message from Rudolph. But nothing of the sort came her way. She eagerly scanned her egg for a sign of calligraphy, however faint; it was innocent, however, of any mark. The agony column of
The Times
was equally unproductive nor had Milly contributed to the dog advertisements; there was not even a mention of French bulldogs. Her morning post consisted of nothing more hopeful than
Harrod’s Food News
. In fact, it became obvious to Sophia that Rudolph had never read her S O S at all, or if he had that he did not believe in it. Two large tears trickled down her cheeks. She decided that if nothing had materialised to show that Rudolph was helping by four o’clock, she would abandon Milly and the old gentleman to death and worse in the main drain, and dash out of the Post on the chance of finding a policeman before she too was liquidated.

Having made up her mind to some definite action, she felt happier. She jumped out of bed, dressed in a great hurry and led poor Florence, who suffered a good deal from fallen arches, round and round Kensington Gardens for two hours at least.

When Sophia arrived at the Post, accompanied by a limping Florence, the first person she saw was Mrs Twitchett. Her doubts were dispersed in a moment and great was her relief. Rudolph must certainly be working on her side; it would be unnatural for anybody to go to the trouble of dressing up like that, twice, for a joke. Mrs Twitchett was busily employed in the Labour Ward, but found time, when Sophia came down from her luncheon in the canteen, to go round to the office and give back the borrowed handkerchief. Sophia put it away in her bag without even looking at it.

‘So kind of you,’ said Mrs Twitchett. ‘I have had it washed and ironed for you, of course. And now you must forgive me if I run back to the Labour Ward. I am in the middle of a most fascinating argument with Sister Turnbull about umbilical cords. Thank you again, very much, for the handkerchief.’

Rudolph’s disguise was perfect, and Sophia did not feel at all nervous that Florence would see through it; he had, in his time, brought off much more difficult hoaxes, and she herself had not seen who it was yesterday until he began to make a joke of the card index.

Presently Sophia gave a loud sniff, rummaged about in her bag and pulled out the handkerchief. Rudolph really did seem to have had it washed and ironed, unless it was a new one. Slowly she spread it out, gave it a little shake and blew her nose on it. The letters ‘O.K.’ were printed in one corner, so that was all right. She began to do her knitting. An almost unnatural calm seemed to have descended on the Post. Several people, as well as Sister Wordsworth, were on the sick list, and the personnel were so depleted that it was not even possible to hold the usual practice in the Treatment Room. The wireless, joy of joys, was out of order. One nurse came in and asked Sophia for a clean overall in which to go to the theatre, and Sophia felt guilty because she had known that this girl’s own overall was lost in the wash and she ought to have sent a postcard about it to the laundry. As she got
a clean one out of the general store, she assured the girl that she had done so and was eagerly awaiting the reply. It seemed that today was to be a gala at the theatre, with two cerebral tumours and a mastoid. This nurse had been looking forward to it all the week. Sophia helped her with her cap, and she dashed away to her treat, singing happily.

Sophia felt very restless, and wandered into the Treatment Room where, done out of the ordinary practice, the nurses, in an excess of zeal, were giving each other bed pans. Further on, in the Labour Ward, Sister Turnbull and Mrs Twitchett sat on the floor counting over the contents of the poison cupboard. Mrs Twitchett was enlarging on the most horrid aspects of childbirth. Then Sophia went back to the office, and hour upon hour went by with absolutely nothing happening until she thought she would scream.

Suddenly, just before it was time for her to go off duty, all the lights went out. This was always happening at the Post; nevertheless Sophia found herself under the table before she had time consciously to control her actions. A moment later she heard Winthrop push his way through the sacking curtain and he began to flash a powerful torch round the office, evidently looking for her. In one more minute he must see her. Sophia experienced a spasm of sick terror, like a child playing a too realistic game of hide and seek, and then, almost before she had time to remember that this was no game at all, two more torches appeared in the doorway, and, by the light of Winthrop’s which was now flashed on to them, she could see Mrs Twitchett, accompanied by the reassuring form of a tin-hatted policeman. For a few moments the office resembled the scene of a gangster play in which it is impossible to discover what is happening; however, when the shooting and scuffling was over, she saw Winthrop being led away with gyves upon his wrists, and this gave her great confidence.

‘Sophia, where are you?’ shouted Rudolph.

Sophia crawled out from under her table feeling unheroic, but relieved.

‘Good girl,’ he said. ‘You all right?’

He took her hand, and together they ran through the Post, which seemed to be quite full of men with torches, shouting and running, towards the museum. This was also full of policemen. They went past the Siamese twins, past the brains and came to where the case of bladders lay in pieces on the floor; beyond it the door stood open. Framed in the doorway, with the light behind him making an aura of his golden hair, stood the old gentleman with Milly in his arms.

‘We’ve got Winthrop all right,’ said Rudolph, ‘what about your two?’

Sophia was busy kissing Milly, who showed enthusiasm at the sight of her owner.