Unconditional surrender by Evelyn Waugh

– these people sitting with electric fires behind their chairs talking of what? ‘Ruby, tell us about Boni de Castellane.’ ‘Tell us about the Marchesa Casati.’ ‘Tell us about Pavlova.’ Virginia had never sought to impose herself. She had given parties, too; highly successful ones, all over Europe and in certain select parts of America. She could not remember the names of her guests; many she had not known at the time. As she ate her greasy bread in the kitchen she did not contrast her present lot with her past. Now, as it had been for the past month, she was aghast at the future.
     
    Next morning Kerstie came early to Virginia’s room.
    ‘Mrs Bristow’s here,’ she said. ‘I can hear her banging about. I’ll go down and tackle her. You keep out of it.’
    Virginia did not take long preparing herself for these days. There was no longer the wide choice in her wardrobe or the expensive confusion on her dressing-table. She was ready dressed, sitting on her bed waiting, fiddling with her file at a broken fingernail, when Kerstie at length came back to her.
    ‘Well, that was all right.’
    ‘Mrs Bristow can save me?’
    ‘I didn’t let on it was you. I rather think she suspects Brenda and she’s always had a soft spot for her. She was most sympathetic. Not at all like Dr Puttock. She knows just the man. Several of her circle have been to him and say he’s entirely reliable. What’s more he only charges twenty-five pounds. I’m afraid he’s a foreigner.’
    ‘A refugee?’
    ‘Well, rather more foreign than that. In fact he’s black.’
    ‘Why should I mind?’ asked Virginia.
    ‘Some people might. Anyway, here’s the name and address. Dr Akonanga, 14 Blight Street, W2. That’s off the Edgware Road.’
    ‘Different from Brook Street.’
    ‘Yes and quarter the price. Mrs Bristow doesn’t think he has a telephone. The thing to do is go to his surgery early. He’s very popular in his district, Mrs Bristow says.’
    An hour later Virginia was on the doorstep of number fourteen. No bombs had fallen in Blight Street. It was a place of lodging houses and mean tobacconists, that should have been alive with children. Now the Pied Piper of the state schools had led them all away to billets and ‘homes’ in the country, and only the elderly and the slatternly remained of its inhabitants. The word ‘Surgery’ was lettered on what had once been a shop window. A trousered woman, with her hair in a turban, was smoking at the door.
    ‘Do you know if Dr Akonanga is at home?’
    ‘He’s gone.’
    ‘Oh dear.’ Virginia suffered again all the despair of the previous evening. Her hopes had never been firm or high. It was Fate. For weeks now she had been haunted by the belief that in a world devoted to destruction and slaughter this one odious life was destined to survive.
    ‘Been gone nearly a year. The government took him.’
    ‘You mean he’s in prison?’
    ‘Not him. Work of national importance. He’s a clever one, black as he may be. What it is, there’s things them blacks know what them don’t that’s civilized. That’s where they put him.’ She pointed to a card on the jamb of the door which read:
DR AKONANGA, nature-therapeutist and deep psychologist, has temporarily discontinued his practice. Parcels and messages to
and there followed an address two doors from the bombed house where she had peered into the darkness the evening before. ‘Brook Street? How odd.’
    ‘Gone up in the world,’ said the woman. ‘What I say, it takes a war for the clever ones to be appreciated.’
    Virginia found a cab in the Edgware Road and drove to the new address, once a large private house, now in military occupation. A sergeant sat in the hall. ‘Can I see your pass, please?’
    ‘I’m looking for Dr Akonanga.’
    ‘Your pass, please.’
    Virginia showed an identity card issued by HOO HQ. ‘That’s OK,’ said the sergeant. ‘You can’t miss him. We always know when the doctor’s at work.