Au Reservoir Page 12

  He felt a sudden spurt of a very unchristian instinct, but resisted the temptation to make more specific disclosure. In the event it proved unnecessary, Tilling society being remarkably quick on the uptake when dirty work at the crossroads was suspected.

  ‘No!’ chorused everyone.

  ‘The evil old bat!’ Irene cried. ‘I should have known it! This is all one of Mapp’s schemes to make mischief.’

  ‘Talking of news,’ Mr Wyse cut in diplomatically, ‘has anyone seen the reference to the inhabitants of Mallards in the newspapers this morning?’

  ‘There’s nothing in the Mirror,’ said Irene promptly.

  Mr Wyse winced.

  ‘Nor in the Gazette, I don’t think,’ Diva said doubtfully.

  ‘I was not referring to such publications,’ he explained, carefully avoiding the use of the word ‘newspapers’, ‘but to The Times, though I am sure it has been reported elsewhere as well.’

  ‘Oh, do tell,’ implored Diva, agog.

  ‘A major contribution to the Covent Garden Opera Company,’ Mr Wyse said majestically. ‘Though “contribution” seems hardly an adequate word, for the sums involved must be prodigious. Perhaps “endowment” might be more appropriate.’

  ‘New dressing rooms,’ Susan went on, ‘new stage machinery and lighting, and a whole new extension as a rehearsal area. Why, one can’t even begin to imagine what it must all be costing.’

  ‘Noble generosity indeed,’ Mr Wyse commented approvingly, with a bow towards Mallards.

  ‘But how typical of her!’ Irene said at once. ‘She is the sweetest, most charitable creature it is possible to meet.’

  ‘Quite so,’ Mr Wyse agreed, ‘though in this case the donation is apparently being made by Mister Pillson.’

  Everyone stared blankly at him.

  ‘But how can he afford it?’ Evie Bartlett asked, posing the question which was already in all their minds and then, perhaps realising that such a query might seem in slightly bad taste, squeaking a little ‘Oh’ and falling silent.

  ‘But why?’ Diva demanded, posing yet another question which was being mentally asked by all. ‘Why would she do it in Mr Georgie’s name? It doesn’t make sense. We all know it’s her money, after all.’

  The others tried to look scandalised.

  ‘Well, we do, don’t we?’ Diva said, ploughing on regardless. ‘And usually she’s jolly careful to get her name in the papers whenever she does something like this – her name, mind you. So why should she be doing things differently this time?’

  ‘Perhaps because it’s for the opera, and Olga Bracely is really Mr Georgie’s friend rather than Lucia’s?’ Susan suggested.

  ‘Perhaps it’s a mistake?’ Irene contributed. ‘Perhaps it was meant to say Mrs George Pillson but they put Mr instead?’

  ‘I’m not sure it is for us to speculate either on the motive or the mechanics, is it?’ Mr Wyse cut in, wrinkling his nose in gentle rebuke.

  Being rebuked by Mr Wyse was akin to having your hand nuzzled by a cocker spaniel, but the others felt it nonetheless, and all murmured ‘Oh, quite’ and looked embarrassed.

  ‘Well, whatever it is,’ Diva remarked unrepentantly, ‘I’m sure we’ll all hear about it sooner or later. After all, it’s not something Lucia will want to keep to herself, is it?’

  Irene suddenly gave a wicked cackle.

  ‘I say, what do you think Mapp will say when she finds out? Wouldn’t you like to be a fly on the wall when that happens?’

  Even Mr Wyse struggled to find a reply to this question.

  ‘I’m sure,’ he ventured cautiously, ‘that Mrs Mapp-Flint will be just as appreciative of this magnanimous gesture as the rest of us.’

  The others started at him with open incredulity. The Padre cleared his throat.

  ‘Weel,’ he mused, ‘it does bring honour to the whole of Tilling, does it not?’

  It was generally felt that this struck the right note, and an appropriate one upon which to disperse.

  Amid a general chorus of ‘Au reservoir’, the Padre raised his hat, Mr Wyse bowed gravely, and the parties split up to go about their respective business.

  * * *

  At Mallards, where The Times was of course both taken and read avidly, though in Lucia’s case following the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal, the same subject was under discussion, as Georgie read and re-read the article repeatedly.

  ‘I say, it’s really jolly good, isn’t it?’ he asked excitedly. ‘I particularly like the bit at the end where they say: the Board of the Covent Garden Opera Company have let it be known that they intend to name the new wing of the building “the Pillson wing” in honour of their gracious benefactor. Oh, Lucia, just think of it.’

  ‘Indeed, Georgie, it is a very fine article,’ she agreed.

  Then she looked up from the stock prices page of the Wall Street Journal and looked at him severely over her pince-nez.

  ‘Though, let us remember that it is a particularly magnificent gift, and thus surely meriting “a good spread”, as I’m sure Olga would say.’

  ‘Well, yes it is, of course,’ Georgie conceded readily, ‘but also a rather good idea of Olga’s, don’t you think?’

  This time it was his turn to look at her over his reading glasses.

  Lucia chose to ignore this feeble riposte and instead said absently, ‘Really, caro mio, you will have to start a scrapbook, you know, one of your very own I mean. I think you will find some blank ones in the bureau,’ and then turned back to her paper.

  At this moment there came a knock on the living room door and Foljambe entered, said, ‘Post please, mum,’ and gave a little bob as she put it on Lucia’s desk.

  ‘Thank you, Foljambe,’ Lucia said languidly and laid aside her newspaper. She sorted through the letters.

  ‘One for you, Georgie, boldly and erratically addressed. From Olga, doubtless.’

  ‘Oh, wonderful,’ he murmured contentedly. ‘I wonder what she has to say? I do so enjoy her letters, you know.’

  Lucia was about to make one of her little noises combining mild disapproval with severe lack of interest, but was distracted by the next letter in her hand.

  ‘Roedean copperplate, I fancy,’ she said, inspecting the handwriting intently, ‘ah, and a Tenterden postmark.’

  Georgie put down his own letter unopened.

  ‘Oh!’ he said.

  ‘Oh, indeed,’ Lucia concurred. ‘Let’s see what the woman has to say this time.’

  She made use of the paperknife and extracted a single folded sheet of notepaper, which she read quickly and passed to Georgie without comment.

  ‘Dear Mrs Pillson,’ he read aloud. ‘I really cannot thank you enough for your sterling efforts on behalf of a group of total strangers, and we are obviously devastated that Mr Coward will be unable to attend. May we extend our sincere thanks in any event for having taken the trouble to contact him at our behest.’

  He stopped to draw breath, and Lucia said, ‘And if it stopped there that would be the end of the matter.’

  ‘However,’ Georgie read on, ‘the Committee was wondering if it would be too great a liberty to ask if we might re-extend to you our original invitation to come and open our poor little fête yourself. We do realise that in the circumstances this request may seem a little “cheeky” but both we and your own dear vicar would count it a very great honour and favour should you nonetheless feel able to accept.’

  Lucia gave a little smile.

  ‘Well!’ Georgie exclaimed. ‘She got the “cheek” bit right anyway. What a nerve!’

  ‘Yes,’ his wife agreed sweetly, ‘isn’t it?’

  She gave that little smile again.

  Georgie looked at her admiringly.

  ‘You’ve got a plan!’ he said.

  ‘Mm,’ she cooed, ‘just ickle plan, Georgie. Oo want to hear Lucia’s ickle plan?’

  ‘Oh, yes please,’ he urged her eagerly.

  ‘Well, of course,’ she said, returning from the r
ealm of baby-talk, ‘what I should do is simply write back and announce that in view of the withdrawal of her earlier invitation I have naturally arranged to attend another function that day, perhaps hinting at some formal engagement, perhaps in London and involving royalty.’

  ‘And what are you going to do?’

  She looked at him archly.

  ‘I shall propose you, Georgie.’

  ‘Me?’ he gasped. ‘But it’s you they want. And anyway, what do I know about opening fêtes, or anything else for that matter? You do it all the time, and you’re so good at it. You know all the right things to say.’

  ‘Mm,’ she said, ‘but remember, Georgie, the article in The Times came out after she sent her letter. The wretched woman is probably already regretting that she didn’t ask you instead.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’ he asked in surprise. ‘Oh, well, perhaps, I suppose.’

  ‘And even if she’s not,’ Lucia went on briskly, ‘she can hardly refuse, can she? A further snub would be out of the question and anyway, you are now a nationally recognised public benefactor.’

  ‘Well, if you say so,’ he said, his former doubts resurfacing. ‘But what shall I say, Lucia? What happens if I meet some obscure rank of clergyman and don’t know the proper form of address? Or if I mistake the Mayor for the Town Clerk, or something like that?’

  ‘Stuff and nonsense, Georgie,’ Lucia said, in the sort of voice which she used to employ as Queen Elizabeth in her pageants in Tilling. ‘You’ve seen me do it a thousand times. Everything will be fine, you’ll see.’

  She turned back to her desk to reach for writing paper but, sensing his lingering uncertainty, she murmured as if thinking already of something else. ‘You do complain of not having enough occasions to wear morning dress – and of course you could wear that nice lilac waistcoat of yours, I’ve always thought it very dashing.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ Georgie admitted.

  He rose and crossed the room to gaze at himself in the mirror. The knot of his tie was slightly out of place and he adjusted it.

  ‘Dashing? Yes, I suppose so,’ he murmured, and then, more resolutely, ‘Well then, I must see about having my top hat brushed and my spats re-elasticated.’

  The same news was being discussed at Grebe, though in understandably less laudatory terms, for the story also featured in the Daily Telegraph, which was the Major’s morning reading of choice. That this was so was perhaps not surprising since its recurrent themes struck several resonant chords within Major Mapp-Flint’s manly breast. Rousing enthusiasm for the Empire (or whatever one was now supposed to call it), the King (‘God bless him’), and corporal punishment mingled with equally rousing distaste for socialism and high income tax (which might conveniently be grouped together as necessary concomitants), and muted sympathy for retired army officers when charged with a certain kind of conduct towards ladies in railway compartments, conduct which was capable of being sadly misinterpreted.

  ‘It’s so typical!’ his wife was saying, and not for the first time that day either. ‘Here I am on the brink of exposing her for the charlatan that she is, and she goes off and throws a lot of money about, hoping everyone will quietly forget about her …’ she struggled to finish the sentence, such was the depth of her emotion, ‘… her lies!’

  It will hopefully be clearly understood by the reader from the context, without resort to such vulgar, though occasionally useful, devices as italics or Comic Capitals, that certain words, such as ‘typical’, ‘exposing’, ‘charlatan’ and ‘lies’, were uttered with considerable emphasis.

  The Major looked up from a letter to the editor advocating the compulsory sterilisation of the unemployed, and gazed thoughtfully into the distance.

  ‘What you need, Liz,’ he observed, ‘is a flank attack.’

  His wife gazed at him blankly.

  ‘What on earth are you talking about now?’ she asked, though such an enquiry was unnecessary since her look had already adequately conveyed her sentiments.

  ‘Well,’ he replied slowly. ‘You’ve made a frontal assault on this Noël Coward thing, which she is defending resolutely.’

  ‘But I shall win!’ Elizabeth exclaimed hotly.

  ‘Well, that’s all right then,’ he said, and returned to his newspaper.

  A pause ensued, during which Mrs Benjamin Mapp-Flint turned over her husband’s words in her mind.

  ‘Very well, Benjy,’ she said, ‘what were you going to say?’

  Though the invitation was somewhat ungraciously uttered, the Major decided to accept it.

  ‘I’m sure you’re right of course,’ he began, ‘about being able to show that Lucia had lied about Noël Coward, but I was just thinking …’

  ‘Yes?’ she prompted impatiently.

  ‘Well, in the army you might mount a direct attack to make the other chap focus all his attention on what’s happening right in front of him and commit all his resources to it, while you send another force out on a sweep on one flank – to one side, that is – and hit him where he’s not expecting it.’

  ‘And you think we should do something like that with Lucia?’ Mapp asked.

  ‘Don’t see why not,’ he said briskly. ‘After all, you’ve jolly well got all her attention focussed on this Tenterden thing, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘And you’re suggesting that at the same time I should be preparing something else entirely? Something that I can choose to launch just when she might think she’s winning? Just when she thinks she’s safe?’

  ‘That’s the idea,’ the Major confirmed.

  ‘Something that she won’t have thought to mount any defence against? Something so devastating that it will destroy her utterly for ever and ever?’

  ‘Don’t see why not, old girl.’

  A broad beam spread slowly across Elizabeth Mapp-Flint’s face.

  ‘Why, Benjy-boy,’ she cried delightedly, ‘how positively brilliant!’

  He smiled that twinkling smile which she had always found so attractive, tapped the side of his nose and said ‘Ah’ very meaningfully.

  She clapped her hands for pure joy and giggled girlishly.

  ‘And what is it?’ she asked, gazing at him archly.

  ‘What’s what?’

  ‘The thing, this surprise attack. What is it?’

  He looked startled suddenly, and said ‘Ah’ again, but this time in a very different tone of voice. The beam faded from his wife’s face more quickly than it had arrived.

  ‘I see,’ she said coldly. ‘There was me thinking you were being clever, and all the time you were just building my hopes up only to dash them.’

  She rang the bell for Withers in a particularly vicious fashion and swept majestically out of the room.

  The Major sat crestfallen with his newspaper raised halfway.

  ‘I’m sure you’ll be able to think of something, old thing,’ he shouted hopefully after her departing figure.

  She turned on her heel and put her clearly exasperated head back round the door.

  ‘Oh, why don’t you go and play golf?’ she demanded.

  Chapter 11

  As fate would have it, Lucia and Georgie went up to town for a few days before the news of her response to the new invitation broke in Tilling, and so the morning news round was left guessing at the likely outcome of the Tenterden fête saga.

  The pair were of course much in demand in and around the opera house at Covent Garden, meeting designers and architects, and being shown plans and numbers with lots of noughts on the end which Georgie found rather frightening but with which Lucia seemed quite comfortable. So Georgie said ‘Quite’ and ‘Parfect’ at regular intervals, and wondered when he could decently get away to Jermyn Street to look at silk ties and buckskin boots. He had never realised just how tiring the life of a philanthropist and patron of the arts could be.

  Both were invited to a very grand dinner party with David Webster and Norman Brook at the Café Royal. Lucia found herself seat
ed next to a cabinet minister, but of who he was and what his responsibilities might be she remained entirely ignorant since he spoke in an impenetrable accent which, she learned later, was in common usage in the north-east of England; at the time she wondered if he might be confused about her nationality and therefore attempting to communicate with her in Serbo-Croat.

  So she took the lead, and ventured safely guarded opinions on some of the issues of the day. She was in favour of the nationalisation of the railways, though making it clear that such approval was predicated on the Railways Board in future taking a more enlightened attitude towards the provision of express services to picturesque towns on the south coast. She paused meaningfully at this juncture but was disappointed to see that he did not produce a notebook and pencil to write down the salient points of her carefully argued case for a daily Tilling Special.

  Of the Malayan Emergency she was also broadly supportive, since she understood that some Malayans were actually communist and that would never do. Also it was interfering with the supply of rubber, and surely rubber was very useful, wasn’t it? Again she paused, but the minister merely nodded vaguely and consumed the last of his soup rather noisily. Clearly his portfolio was neither transport nor trade.

  Becoming more desperate in her choice of subject, she wandered into the wisdom of putting monkeys on rockets, on which she was broadly negative, for one never knew where such things might lead. The minster finished his soup and then said something which sounded apologetic about having to voot, rose and left the restaurant. It seemed that this was not unexpected, since another gentleman departed at the same time, the waiters took away their chairs and place settings, and everyone moved a little closer together, so that Lucia now found herself sitting next to the Cabinet Secretary.

  ‘Really, Mr Brook, how busy all you important people in government must be,’ she commented. ‘Why, the minister had no sooner finished his soup than he said he had to scoot and simply disappeared.’

  ‘There is a division in the House, I’m afraid,’ he replied gravely. ‘A common problem when dining with politicians. Though I’m surprised the Secretary of State for War should use a word like “scoot”. It doesn’t sound his usual style at all.’