N Or M – Agatha Christie
“Well, why don’t you ask? No need to be so damned tactful.”
“I know,” admitted Tuppence. “There is something about conscious tact that is very irritating. But then it irritates you if I do ask. And anyway I don’t need to ask. It’s written all over you.”
“I wasn’t conscious of looking a Dismal Desmond.”
“No, darling,” said Tuppence. “You had a kind of nailed to the mast smile which was one of the most heart-rending I have ever seen.”
Tommy said with a grin:
“No, was it really as bad as all that?”
“And more! Oh, come on, out with it. Nothing doing?”
“Nothing doing They don’t want me in any capacity. I tell you, Tuppence, it’s pretty thick when a man of forty-six is made to feel like a doddering grandfather. Army, Navy, Air Force, Foreign Office, all say the same thing – I’m too old. I may be required later.”
Tuppence said:
“Well, it’s the same for me. They don’t want people of my age for nursing – no, thank you. Nor for anything else. They’d rather have a fluffy chit who’s never seen a wound or sterilized a dressing than they would have me who worked for three years, 1915 to 1918, in various capacities, nurse in the surgical ward operating theatre, driver to a trade delivery van and later of a General. This, that and the other – all, I assert firmly, with conspicuous success. And now I’m a poor, pushing, tiresome, middle-aged woman who won’t sit at home quietly and knit as she ought to do.”
Tommy said gloomily:
“This war is Hell.”
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