Christmas Pudding and Pigeon Pie (45 page)

Moushka was old Mrs Bagg. In Olga’s pre-Russian days she had been known as Mummie, which had been all right for the mother of Baby Bagg. Princess Olga Gogothsky required a Moushka. Serge, on the other hand, always called his parents Pa and Ma; but then he pronounced his own name, as did all his friends, like the stuff of which schoolgirls’ skirts are made. Olga gave it a very different sound – ‘Sairgay’.

‘I suppose, now that Sophia has caught all the spies in London, there is nothing much left for you to do here,’ said Rudolph, loyally.

‘Spies!’ The Princess gave a scornful twist to her lips as though spies were enormously beneath her attention, nowadays. ‘No, I have important business to do there, for my Chief, with the Kahns.’

Nobody asked who the Kahns were.

Serge was in the seventh heaven. It seemed that, by dint of enlisting under an assumed name and as a private, he had
managed to get back to his Blossom. Determined not to lose his love a second time, he was now on the water-waggon, but even this experiment had not dampened his spirits, and he appeared to be the happiest living Russian.

Fred and Ned had once more reversed positions. Ned had proved to be even more of a failure at the Ministry than Britain had expected he would, and there had been, the day before Sophia’s dinner, a Cabinet purge during which Ned was sent off to try his luck in another place. As we do not yet live under a totalitarian régime, this other place, was, of course, that English equivalent of the grave, the House of Lords. Meanwhile, Fred, reinstated in both popular and Ministerial esteem by the triumphant return of Sir Ivor King, was back at his old job. This change was, luckily, to the satisfaction of both parties. Ned’s wife had for some time been making his nights hideous with her complaints and assertions that at her age (she was nearly thirty) it was quite unheard of not to be a peeress and made her look ridiculous, while Fred had never taken to Blossom with Serge’s ardour and had really been hankering after that Cabinet key all the time.

Fred and Sir Ivor were soon discussing the campaign of Song Propaganda which was to be launched the following week.

‘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 under-estimated 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 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?’

Nancy Mitford
, daughter of Lord and Lady Redesdale and the eldest of the six legendary Mitford sisters, was born in 1904 and educated at home on the family estate in Oxfordshire. She made her debut in London and soon became one of the bright young things of the 1920s, a close friend of Henry Green, Evelyn Waugh, John Betjeman, and their circle. A beauty and a wit, she began writing for magazines and writing novels while she was still in her twenties. In all, she wrote eight novels as well as biographies of Madame de Pompadour, Voltaire, Louis XIV, and Frederick the Great. She died in 1973. More information can be found at
www.nancymitford.com
.

Jane Smiley
won the Pulitzer Prize for
A Thousand Acres
. Her most recent novel for adults is
Private Life
. She is also the author of
Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel, The Man Who Invented the Computer
, and a series of young adult novels,
The Horses of Oak Valley Ranch
.

Highland Fling
(1931)

Christmas Pudding & Pigeon Pie
(1932 and 1940)

Wigs on the Green
(1935)

The Pursuit of Love
(1945)

Love in a Cold Climate
(1949)

The Blessing
(1951)

Don’t Tell Alfred
(1960)