Au Reservoir Read online

  ‘It turns out,’ she explained, lowering her voice to a stage whisper, leaning towards Diva and casting a meaningful glance in the direction of the church, ‘that the Padre has become a little, well, confused. You know how it is sometimes, dear, as people get older.’

  Diva instantly tried to look somewhat less confused herself, and nearly succeeded.

  ‘You mean,’ and now it was her turn to whisper, ‘dementia?’

  ‘Sadly, yes. The poor man went in intending to say something particular, became a little bewildered, presumably as a result of Lucia prattling on and on about other things, and in the end she was able to persuade him that he had actually meant to say something completely different. So like her, of course.’

  ‘But why would she do that?’ Diva asked.

  ‘Because she no more knows Noël Coward than she knows the Archbishop of Canterbury,’ Mapp hissed viciously. ‘It’s all lies, just one of her stories, like speaking Italian, or finding Roman remains in the garden. She knew she couldn’t produce him, so she tricked the Padre into asking her to do it instead.’

  ‘No!’ Diva responded.

  ‘Yes!’ Mapp affirmed. ‘That’s why the Padre seemed so happy, don’t you see, when we met him in the street? He thought he’d accomplished his mission, poor man, not realising for a moment that he’d actually been tricked by Lucia.’

  ‘Come to think of it,’ Diva said thoughtfully, ‘he did seem to have problems remembering what he’d just done, didn’t he?’

  ‘He did indeed,’ Mapp agreed enthusiastically.

  ‘And then he started babbling on about the church at Tenterden for no apparent reason.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Diva, looking very upset. ‘Poor Padre, how dreadful for him, and for poor Evie too, of course.’

  At this point the Major said ‘Ah’ again rather uncomfortably. The Padre was a regular golf partner and surely the little woman was pitching things a trifle too strong? Sensing his thoughts, the little woman quelled them with a single gaze.

  ‘Dreadful for both of them, of course,’ she concurred briskly. ‘Though you may find that he is not among us for much longer,’ she added, taking a wild stab in the dark.

  ‘No!’ ejaculated Diva in horror. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, it’s difficult to imagine him being able to carry on for much longer, isn’t it? Imagine if he forgot the Lord’s Prayer halfway through, or something like that?’

  The Major now said ‘Ah’ in a more determined fashion, and simultaneously Quaint Irene hove into view, shopping basket swinging nonchalantly and pipe in mouth. Since Mapp had no wish to be called an evil old witch, nor any of Irene Coles’s choicer epithets, she said a hasty ‘Au reservoir’ and left Diva open-mouthed at this latest news.

  As she and the Major reached the end of the street, Elizabeth Mapp-Flint looked back and saw with deep satisfaction that Diva was now deeply engrossed in conversation not just with Irene but also with the Wyses. Filled with the contentment of a job well done, she clutched her husband’s arm more firmly and pressed on with a new spring in her step.

  The late afternoon brought Georgie back to Tilling courtesy of the Southern Railway, and the evening brought the promised phone call from Olga, but little joy.

  ‘I can’t get him to commit to coming,’ she reported. ‘He says that he’d like to, of course, but then goes all coy when I try to pin him down.’

  ‘Bother!’ Georgie said in exasperation. ‘How very tarsome.’

  There was a silence at the other end. Each could feel the other’s disappointment.

  ‘There’s something else,’ Olga informed him mournfully.

  ‘And from the tone of your voice I’m not going to like it,’ Georgie lamented.

  ‘Well, you may as well know that I managed to have tea with Norman Brook, as promised, and put the idea of Lucia’s damery thing to him as gently as I could. He said he’d ask around to see if the name meant anything to anyone. He’s just rung back.’

  ‘Go on, I’m listening.’

  ‘No go, I’m afraid,’ she said flatly. ‘Apparently there are some people with long memories who remember how she tried to take London society by storm and ruffled quite a few feather in the process. Some of them are now in very senior positions – the Lord Chamberlain for one.’

  ‘Well, really!’ Georgie protested. ‘That was all years ago.’

  ‘There’s more. She’s apparently been writing to both the Palace and Downing Street for years trying to arrange a state visit to Tilling by the King.’

  ‘Which king?’ Georgie asked rather helplessly. This was the first he had heard of such correspondence, though it bore all the hallmarks of one of Lucia’s grand schemes.

  ‘All three. She’s still at it apparently, and Norman says that some of her recent letters have been quite sharply worded. You know how she gets when she has her heart set on something and then gets thwarted.’

  ‘I knew nothing about any of this,’ Georgie said sadly. ‘Though I do remember something about a train.’

  ‘Ah yes, there’s that as well. She spent ages pestering the directors of the Southern Railway to arrange an express to Tilling once a day. They pointed out that there was already the fish wagon, which takes the catch up to Billingsgate in the morning, and she wasn’t amused. She wrote to the Prime Minister about that too, apparently. It was Baldwin back then, of course, but they’ve still got everything on file, and one of the civil servants at Downing Street remembers it all very well.’

  ‘Oh, how dreadful,’ Georgie remarked. ‘I was hoping that there might be at least something I could tell her that would cheer her up. I suppose I’d better break the sad tidings over sherry.’

  ‘No! Don’t do that yet,’ Olga adjured him.

  ‘You mean about Noël, or the title?’

  ‘Both,’ she said decidedly. ‘I’m going to spend another day rooting around up here in town just to make sure there’s nothing that can be done on either front. Then I’ll come down and we’ll tell her together, if you like.’

  ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,’ Georgie intoned ruefully.

  ‘Something like that, yes. Cheerio.’

  Dinner that evening was a rather sombre affair. Georgie tried hard to make idle small talk about his night at the opera, but he could sense that Lucia’s mind was elsewhere. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry for you,’ he ventured at last after she had rung for the desert plates to be taken away. ‘Are you very wretched?’

  ‘Yes, I am rather,’ she replied with a sad little smile as they got up from the table.

  ‘That awful woman,’ he said. ‘I could cheerfully strangle her.’

  ‘Thank you, Georgie,’ Lucia responded with a little of her old warmth, ‘but I fear we cannot rely on such a dramatic outcome.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps Major Benjy will strangle her for us the next time she starts sounding off at him.’

  ‘Hardly very likely, caro mio,’ she said. ‘I think by now he is almost certainly immune to her charms.’

  They both cast a glance in passing at the piano, but neither felt in the mood for music.

  ‘How about a game of cut-throat?’ Georgie suggested. ‘Don’t forget, you still owe me one and six from last time.’

  Lucia considered this proposition for a moment and then pronounced herself content with it. Anxious to do things properly, Georgie pulled the card table out into the middle of the room in front of the fireplace and they sat down and busied themselves with shuffling and dealing.

  ‘Do you know, I heard the most interesting thing at the opera,’ Georgie suddenly said as he looked at his hand. ‘There is a new form of bridge that’s come over from America. Apparently it’s all the rage over there. I was wondering if we should try it out here in Tilling.’

  ‘Different how, pray?’ Lucia asked, looking over her glasses. ‘Fourteen cards instead of thirteen, perhaps?’

  ‘No, silly,’ Georgie chuckled, ‘how could that be? Fourteen
doesn’t divide into fifty-two.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure I don’t know then. Georgie,’ Lucia replied, a little sharply. ‘Perhaps you play it while dressed in bathing suits, or in sixes instead of fours or something.’

  ‘No, it’s nothing like that,’ he said absently as he gazed at his hand. ‘Two hearts, by the way.’

  ‘Two spades.’

  ‘Oh bother, how tarsome, I was hoping you wouldn’t do that. Oh, very well then, three hearts.’

  ‘Three spades,’ came the immediate response, for Lucia was as rarely to be outbid at cut-throat as in most forms of social manoeuvring.

  ‘Oh, how very tarsome. All right, pass.’

  ‘So tell me about it while I play, Georgie. What’s so special about it?’

  ‘Well, as you know, with contract bridge you sit down in two pairs, deal a hand, play it, score it, then shuffle the cards and play another hand.’

  ‘I am familiar with the general principles,’ Lucia reminded him, while pulling off an outrageous double finesse.

  ‘Yes, quite, well the important thing is that each hand is only played once.’

  ‘Naturally, Georgie,’ she commented, crossing to the table for her final trick. ‘How could it be otherwise?’

  ‘Ah, but that’s just the point, you see,’ he said. ‘In Duplicate Bridge – that’s what it’s called by the way – each hand is played several times. In fact each pair plays every hand. Then you score not on how well you did on the hand, but on how well you did relative to everyone else.’

  ‘I don’t understand. How can everyone play each hand, and how can you score except counting up the points you make?’

  ‘As to the first,’ Georgie said authoritatively, ‘for each hand you keep the cards together in a wallet or something, and there are special movements that you can use which show you how the different pairs and hands move around the room so that at the end it all works out. They’re like dance steps really. I think you can buy a book of them.’

  ‘I see,’ she mused. ‘Choreographed bridge. It sounds positively ghastly.’

  ‘As to the second,’ Georgie went on, rather nettled, ‘I’m not sure exactly, but say you make two hearts plus one while everyone just makes two hearts, you get all the points, well, most of them anyway.’

  ‘And nobody else gets any?’

  ‘Well, that’s the bit I’m not sure about,’ he admitted. ‘Something like that, though.’

  ‘I have heard of this game,’ she said. ‘Brabazon Lodge described it to me. He’s a very keen player actually – he knows Ely Culbertson and sometimes plays with him.’

  ‘Does he really?’ marvelled Georgie.

  ‘But I don’t see how it would work in Tilling, Georgie. The way Brabazon described it to me it’s usually played in great big rooms with fifty or sixty pairs.’

  He considered this for a moment, and then had a brainwave.

  ‘You could always mount a bridge tournament right here in Tilling,’ he suggested innocently. ‘You could do it in the town hall, or a function room in one of the hotels. Just think – one of the very first Duplicate Bridge tournaments in England, right here in Tilling. Why, that would really put us on the map, wouldn’t it?’

  Lucia looked momentarily very interested indeed in the idea, and then affected not to be.

  ‘It may merit further consideration,’ she conceded. ‘Of course, I’m no longer Mayor, so I can’t speak for the town council.’

  ‘Oh dear, what a shame,’ Georgie said, playing along with her. ‘Well, that’s no good then.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that necessarily, Georgie,’ she replied, reaching for her famous notebook. ‘I suppose there’s nothing to stop me from putting the thing on in my private capacity.’

  ‘As a public benefactress of Tilling, you mean?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ she agreed, looking surprised at such an idea. ‘I shall have to give the matter some thought.’

  She jotted something down and then put the notebook back on her desk. As she removed her pince-nez she allowed a brief smile to cross her face.

  ‘How you all work me so,’ she said.

  Chapter 9

  Olga arrived at Mallards the following afternoon; the letter from Tenterden meanwhile remained unanswered. Lucia was sitting at her desk rather moodily going through her scrapbooks and Georgie was engaged in some very intricate needlepoint, gazing fixedly at his work through his glasses from a distance of only about an inch or so. ‘Really, how old we are all becoming,’ Olga reflected, and then banished the thought with distaste. Its occurrence could perhaps be ascribed to the time of day, which was just advanced enough to be able to yearn for one’s first cocktail, but not sufficiently so to be able decently to ask for it.

  ‘Olga, how nice,’ said Lucia, rather unenthusiastically.

  Georgie was sufficiently overcome by Olga’s arrival to remove his thimble and put away the doily which he was embroidering.

  ‘If you please, mum,’ announced Foljambe, who had followed the visitor into the room, ‘there was a telephone call from your maid. A Mr Norman Brook wondered if you could call him at your convenience.’

  ‘Oh, yes, thank you, Foljambe.’

  ‘Norman Brook?’ Lucia asked, pricking up her ears. ‘The Norman Brook – the Cabinet Secretary?’

  How typical, Georgie thought, that Lucia should know the name of the Cabinet Secretary, and so lovable too.

  ‘Yes,’ Olga replied a little awkwardly. ‘Oh hell, I was going to talk to you about it all, Lucia, but perhaps I’d better just call him first.’

  ‘Pray do, dear,’ Lucia concurred. ‘You know where the phone is.’

  While she was out of the room, Lucia gave a profound sigh and took out her writing paper. She gazed at it irresolutely for a while and then put it back in the desk drawer. In the meantime Georgie slipped his thimble back on and attacked the doily again. He was working a double alternating nobuko stitch into the design, and was anxious that the rows should be quite even.

  By the time Olga came back into the room he had just finished and was putting his materials away with a sigh that was much more contented than the one recently uttered by his wife.

  Olga crossed to the chesterfield and sat down. Lucia looked at her enquiringly. It was the first telephone call to the cabinet office in the long history of Mallards and she was anxious to know the outcome, without of course wishing to pry.

  ‘Bit of a turn up for the books,’ Olga informed the room cryptically.

  Had Elizabeth Mapp-Flint been present, she would doubtless have said, ‘Dear one, thou speakest in riddles.’ To display her infinitely better breeding, Lucia merely arched an eyebrow and waited for Olga to elucidate.

  ‘I should start at the beginning, I suppose,’ Olga went on, ‘so I’d better give you the bad news first. Your damery’s a non-starter, I’m afraid. I’m sorry, Lucia, I know you had your heart set on it.’

  ‘Was any reason given, perchance?’ Lucia enquired glacially.

  Various emotions flitted across Olga’s face as she wondered what to say.

  ‘Everyone was truly appreciative of everything you’ve done,’ she said tactfully, ‘but the problem is, Lucia, that although they’ve been big, wonderful things, they’ve all been local to Tilling. So while here you are rightly celebrated and famous, up in London fewer people have heard of you – of your deeds, I mean.’

  Lucia looked hurt.

  ‘Perhaps I should have gone up to town for the season every year,’ she said rather disagreeably, ‘instead of devoting my time to improving the lives of others in this provincial little backwater.’

  ‘Yes,’ Olga agreed, thinking that just for a moment Lucia had sounded awfully like Elizabeth, ‘and then I’m sure everything would have been different, because you would probably have ended up entertaining Mr Chamberlain for dinner, or even the Queen before anybody had any idea that she would ever become Queen, and things would just have fallen out quite naturally for you to be honoured.’

  �
�But then nobody would have been able to enjoy your company and your hospitality here in Tilling,’ Georgie pointed out gently.

  Lucia reflected, nodded briefly in acknowledgement and then said in a matter-of-fact sort of way, ‘So that’s that, then.’

  ‘Well, not quite, perhaps,’ Olga said. ‘That’s the “turn up for the books” bit.’

  They both looked at her expectantly.

  ‘Norman said that when I mentioned the name Pillson he knew he’d heard it before, but couldn’t place it. Then it suddenly came to him, and that call was to ask if there was any connection with the man who, in his words, “made those marvellous radio broadcasts during the war”.’

  ‘No!’ Lucia and Georgie both said together.

  ‘Yes! Norman said how he’d always thought that they were wonderful for morale, showing housewives, again in his words, “how to make pies out of potato peel and stuff”.’

  ‘Well, really!’ Georgie protested. ‘I was rather proud of those programmes. Still, it’s nice to know that they were appreciated, I suppose.’

  ‘Appreciated they certainly were. Hang on, you haven’t heard the best bit yet. He says that Churchill was so impressed by them that there was talk at the end of the war of honouring the man who made them with an MBE, but then the government changed and it all got lost in the system when Attlee’s lot took over. Apparently Churchill didn’t expect to lose the election and he was out of the country at Yalta anyway, and everything ended up happening in a dreadful rush.’

  ‘No!’ they both said again.

  ‘Yes! Norman says that he’d be happy to try to right what he sees as an injustice and have the award made anyway in the next honours list, albeit a few years late.’

  ‘Fancy!’ Georgie exclaimed. ‘Me an MBE.’

  Lucia looked troubled.

  ‘It is of course entirely right and proper that Georgie’s efforts for his country should be rewarded, but the MBE is a rather common award, isn’t it? After all, even Susan Wyse has one.’

  Olga smiled her secret smile.

  ‘Somehow I thought you’d say that,’ she said, ‘so you’ll be very happy to know that at that point I had a brainwave.’