Right up the Limp Po-Po part VII

Our story of the British Ascendancy in Africa continues. If you’ve missed any parts you can catch up here:

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six

Meanwhile Millicent Trimmough-Jones the Deputy District Medical Officer and Chief Midwife pulled up a wicker armchair next to Lavinia Forbes-Mainwaring and dumped down noisily. She looked hot and flustered as she wiped her brow with a daintily embroidered hankie. At thirty-five years of age she still looked good. Tall, alabaster skinned, teeth fashionably bucked and blonde she still had a certain something, although no-one was totally sure where she kept it. Finishing school deportment allied to a feline grace somebody once said. A hint of freckles around her neck seemed to draw you inexorably down to her still pert breasts which many thought were her best feature. ‘What a day!’ she intoned more to herself. Turning around she shouted:

‘Lucy! Where are you?’ and then turning back to her friend. ‘You will join me in a cream tea and pot of Darjeeling won’t you Lavinia?’

The District Medical Officer put down The Times and smiled benignly. ‘Having a tough day are we Millie? A pot of Darjeeling sounds divine.’

‘Absolutely ghastly dahling.’ I’ve had had more deliveries than the GPO*. Where is that Lucy?’

‘She’ll be deep in something,’ Lavinia opined with what would prove almost uncanny clairvoyance. ‘Nothing good will come of sending her to St. Andrews, you mark my words!’ Pushing her glasses onto her forehead she looked down and frowned. ‘Millie Dahling you know it’s a club rule that women members must always wear knickers in the lounge, even the Major wears a pair these days I hear.’

‘I am… I am’ Millie flustered ‘I’m wearing those nice French silk knickers with the Fleur de Lys motif you bought me for my birthday - what on earth makes you think I’m not?’

‘You’ve got dandruff on your shoes dear,’ replied Lavinia gesticulating with a long, perfectly manicured and elegant finger.

Millie looked down and smiled. ‘That’s talcum powder silly I’ve just had a shower after that bloody marathon childbirth. One of the Kikuyu women has just delivered a bloody fourteen pounder.’

‘Gosh that would make your eyes water!’

‘Not really,’ Millie replied, ‘I brought in a chair for most of it, besides I had a couple of Kaffirs with a rope to help. Twenty stitches without anaesthetic is nothing to these people.’

‘A long delivery was it?’ Lavinia enquired, returning to discretely scratching her crotch underneath her copy of The Times.

‘Long! Long?’ Millie laughed. ‘We had to shave her twice!’

There was a brief interlude as the two women allowed themselves a titter of upper-class only mirth. Lavinia returned to The Times crossword. ‘Number twelve down is pigging me off,’ she complained…. ‘Only a hypocrite would sing while bent over - ten letters…I just don’t get it.

‘Simple!’ smirked Millie ‘Humbuggery!’ Turning again she shouted ‘Lucy! For God’s sake where is that dam girl?’ Turning back to her friend she yawned. ‘I’m tired I could do with a spot of Egyptian gymnastics.’

‘Mmmm maybe I could join you later for a spot of leg wrestling?’ Lavina whispered unable to contain a very lascivious smirk. ‘Bit of the ouvre les jambes Greco style?’

‘You naughty Fricatrice,’ giggled Mille. ‘But only when we’ve had our cream tea dahling,’ I’m not doing that on a empty stomach. For God’s sake we are English!’

Giving way to the irrefutable logic Lavinia returned to her crossword. ‘Constipation - ten letters begins and ends in ‘n’.’

That’s easy Millie laughed ‘Nnnnnnnnnn!’

To be continued.
Glossary: GPO -General Post Office the people who used to deliver British Mail in the 1930s.