Au Reservoir Page 6

  ‘Are you not coming shopping this morning, Lucia?’ she asked in surprise.

  ‘Too busy, alas,’ Lucia replied rather absently, gesturing at a pile of papers awaiting her attention. ‘How you all work me! No, you go with Georgie – I’m sure everyone is waiting to see you.’

  So it was that Olga and Georgie strolled up the High Street together, he with the statutory wicker basket on his arm.

  ‘What-ho, comrades!’ Irene shouted to them from a few yards further on. ‘Georgie making free with his favours again, I see.’

  Georgie instinctively said, ‘Oh, well really!’ but secretly felt rather pleased, as he always did, at being recognised walking in public with the famous Olga Bracely.

  Quaint Irene, the town’s resident artist, was now having to deal with the strain of fame, having progressed from selling her paintings in the pub for a few pints of beer to become a renowned Royal Academician. Some of the more pretentious critics claimed that she ‘defined the spirit of the age’ and argued amongst themselves as to whether her work was figuratively abstract, or abstractly figurative. So many students now came calling, usually unannounced, and went home again to paint determinedly in the manner of Irene Coles, that there was even talk of ‘The Tilling School’.

  ‘Hello, dear diva,’ she said to Olga, for she was almost as fond of her as she was of Lucia. ‘Why, you were all the talk of Tilling yesterday.’

  ‘Yesterday?’ Olga enquired. ‘Why not today?’

  ‘Because you’re here now, silly,’ Irene explained. ‘Yesterday everyone was wondering whether you really would be coming to visit, as we all heard you might be. Of course, the day before yesterday we were all talking about those wretched newspaper pics –’

  ‘Yes, well, now here we are, as you see,’ Georgie cut in quickly. He had already decided that the less conversation was exchanged about the photographs, and the one in the Daily Mirror in particular, the better.

  ‘Yes, and it’s jolly lovely to have you both back amongst us,’ Irene responded warmly. ‘Why, that poisonous Mapp said we might never see either of you again.’

  ‘No!’ they both chorused in good Tilling fashion.

  ‘She jolly well did! Said she’d heard Lucia had a blazing row with you and Georgie and had banned you both from Mallards.’

  ‘Well, really!’ Georgie exclaimed, but this time with a lot more passion.

  ‘Pretty typical, I must say,’ Olga admitted. ‘Admitted’ for she usually strove to see the best in everyone.

  ‘Hush, here she is,’ hissed Georgie.

  The Mapp-Flints indeed hove into view at this point. The countenance of Major Benjy, who was carrying his wife’s basket, lit up at the sight of Olga, whom he greatly admired, though as a woman rather than a singer.

  ‘Dear lady,’ he boomed, ‘so glad you were able to get down here.’

  ‘Miss Bracely, always such a pleasure,’ chorused his wife with every appearance of sincerity.

  ‘The memsahib thought you might stay up in town,’ the Major proffered conversationally.

  ‘Thought you might have to, more like,’ Irene interjected indignantly. ‘As if an angel like Lucia would ever do a thing like that!’

  ‘You speak in riddles, quaint one,’ Mapp commented serenely, gazing at her indulgently. ‘But no matter, let us simply rejoice that dear Miss Bracely has come amongst us again. Shall we have singing, I wonder?’

  ‘I think not,’ Georgie said firmly. ‘Olga is singing Brünnhilde tomorrow and needs to conserve her voice.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Mapp lamented, ‘I was hoping that Lucia might mount one of her famous po’ di mu.’

  A muttered comment about ‘that Beethoven thing’ came from the Major at her side. This time it was his turn to receive an indulgent glance.

  ‘I think my Benjy-boy is saying that he was hoping Miss Bracely might substitute some of her charming Schubert for Lucia’s “Moonlight”. All very well in its own way, of course, but when one has heard it quite so many times it does begin to lose its appeal.’

  ‘Well,’ replied Georgie with some asperity, ‘since there isn’t going to be a po’ di mu then the question won’t arise, will it?’

  Perhaps esprit d’escalier would suggest an equally cutting response, but on the spur of the moment all Elizabeth Mapp-Fint could think of was, ‘Indeed, what a shame,’ and slip away with a beaming smile fixed upon her face, husband securely in tow.

  Irene, Olga and Georgie looked at each other but before they could venture any opinion on what had just transpired, Diva Plaistow appeared, rather stouter than Olga had remembered her, clutching the handle of her shopping bag firmly in both hands.

  ‘Olga!’ she exclaimed with obvious pleasure. ‘You came! How nice. Thought you might not.’

  Diva’s customarily terse form of diction could be mistaken for the content of a telegram, particularly when she was flustered.

  ‘People said things,’ she went on. ‘Nasty things, I thought. Too bad of Elizabeth.’

  There was a rustle of understanding, agreement and regret among the group clustered on the pavement, and then Diva, who was the only one of them genuinely engaged in a shopping expedition, said, ‘Must go – so nice,’ and waddled off determinedly in the direction of Twistevant’s.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Olga murmured gloomily, gazing at Diva’s retreating back. ‘Nasty things. That doesn’t sound good, does it?’

  ‘No nastier than you’d expect of Mapp, the old viper,’ Irene commented. Elizabeth Mapp-Flint was not one of her favourite people, a state of affairs which had long existed even before Lucia and Georgie had come to live in Tilling.

  ‘But what has she been saying exactly?’ Georgie asked.

  Irene gazed longingly at the door of the Trader’s Arms and checked her watch.

  ‘Tell you what,’ she said. ‘You buy me a drink and I’ll spill the beans.’

  So it was that the conversation broke off at this point, and resumed once the three had gathered round a table in the lounge bar and were contemplating their drinks with that glimmer of illicit pleasure which derives from preparing to imbibe alcohol at only five minutes past midday.

  ‘Well, it was all pretty mouldy, actually,’ Irene went on, as though there had been no interruption. ‘She said that Lucia had gone charging off to town when she saw the Mirror, planning to confront you both, discovered you gone and thought you’d run away to avoid her.’

  Georgie and Olga looked at each other guiltily.

  ‘Then, according to Mapp, she discovered that you’d come here to Tilling and was absolutely certain that you were avoiding her since you “must have known” that she would go to London hotfoot and that Mallards was therefore the one place in the world where you were guaranteed not to run into her.’

  ‘Well, for goodness’ sake,’ Georgie interjected weakly, hoping that his protest sounded credible. Olga simply looked uncomfortable and said nothing.

  ‘Ridiculous, I know,’ Irene agreed, taking a healthy gulp from her pint of bitter, ‘but there you are. That’s Mapp for you.’

  ‘And where did all this silly talk of banning us from Mallards come from, then?’ Olga demanded.

  ‘Oh, that came next in the gospel according to Mapp,’ Irene replied with heavy sarcasm. ‘“Darling Lulu” saw through your “pathetic little scheme” as she put it, and left an angry letter with Olga’s maid saying she was disgusted with your behaviour – both of you, that is – that she was sick and tired of you, Georgie, “gallivanting off” with Olga, and asking you to leave her to live on her own at Mallards while you “made your own arrangements”, if you please.’

  ‘Was that all?’ Olga asked quietly.

  ‘There was quite a lot more if you cared to listen to it,’ Irene responded. ‘Personally, I didn’t. I told her in front of everyone that she was a rancorous old bat, and left.’

  She drained her pint and put it down, watching little flecks of white foam sliding down the glass.

  ‘I found out later from Diva, though, t
hat Mapp waxed lyrical about the prospect of Lucia sitting all by herself in Mallards, growing old and bitter alone.’

  ‘Oh, I say!’ broke in Georgie, appalled. Olga looked close to tears.

  ‘Fortunately of course, this was going way too far, just like she always does. Apparently Diva told her she was being unchristian and Mr Wyse, who had been too polite to leave when I did, bowed and said Mapp was surely overlooking the fact that Lucia would never be lonely as she would always have lots of friends in Tilling. Then he and Susan went too.’

  Olga and Georgie could imagine only too well the malignant look of triumph with which Mapp would have gazed around at this point, seeing the departure of her audience as evidence that, thanks to her powers of perception and oratory, they were now reeling at this glimpse of truth so newly revealed to them.

  ‘Well, at least now we know everything,’ Georgie said gloomily.

  ‘I’m afraid you don’t,’ came Irene’s prompt rejoinder, as she gazed significantly at her glass.

  A new pint promptly installed in front of her, she continued with her narrative.

  ‘What I’ve just told you was the end rather than the beginning, actually. It all grew out of an earlier rant about Lucia’s “imaginary friends” like Noël Coward. In fact, I think it was getting so worked up about that when nobody wanted to believe her that made her go so far with the other thing. You know what she’s like – I could see her getting more and more excited as she went along.’

  ‘What about Noël Coward?’ Olga asked.

  ‘Well,’ Irene said sadly, ‘Lucia did rather let herself in for it. She said that she knew Noël Coward.’

  ‘But that was ages ago,’ protested Georgie.

  Olga looked at him questioningly.

  ‘Oh, you know all those silly invitations she kept sending out to people,’ Georgie explained in exasperation, ‘well, Elizabeth got to hear about it and started making fun of her asking and asking and not being able to get anyone to come.’

  Olga put her chin in her hands and looked mournful.

  ‘And of course,’ Georgie went on, ‘the more Elizabeth made fun of her, the more Lucia rose to the bait. Finally Elizabeth came across Noël’s last letter, which made it quite clear that they didn’t know each other at all, and being Elizabeth tried to show it around to everyone.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ Olga gasped.

  ‘Yes! But fortunately the first person to whom she tried to show it was Mr Wyse and he looked at the letter, then looked puzzled, and then asked Elizabeth why she was inviting him to read a letter which was clearly addressed to someone else.’

  ‘Bravo, Mr Wyse!’ breathed Olga.

  ‘Bravo, indeed,’ Georgie concurred.

  ‘And what on earth did she say?’ Olga asked.

  ‘Well, of course she was taken completely aback. She had never expected that response. She thought everyone would just read it straight off, and then tell her how clever she had been to expose poor Lucia.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And apparently Elizabeth got jolly flustered and said that she had found it lying around and that Lucia must have dropped it, and that of course she was just taking it back to her. So Mr Wyse said he could save her the trouble, folded it up, put it in his pocket and brought it round to Lucia – with a bow, naturally.’

  ‘Phew!’ said Olga in relief. ‘So nobody else read it?’

  ‘Well, I’m sure she must have shown it to the Major,’ Georgie mused doubtfully, ‘and Mr Wyse may well have read at least some of it accidentally, but of course his discretion can be relied upon absolutely.’

  ‘So can mine,’ said Irene with another meaningful glance at her glass, which seemed unaccountably to have emptied itself during Georgie’s explanation.

  As they wandered disconsolately back towards Mallards and lunch, Olga and Georgie turned over in their minds everything they had heard that morning.

  ‘It’s really quite uncanny,’ Olga remarked, ‘how Elizabeth Mapp-Flint guesses at the truth so consistently.’

  ‘Indeed it is,’ Georgie agreed, ‘but fortunately she then exaggerates it so much that nobody will believe her. Just look at what happened this time. If she’d just stuck to that silly business with the trains people might have realised there really might be something to it, but by embellishing it with ridiculous episodes about a quarrel and a split with Lucia she lost her audience.’

  ‘Poor woman,’ said Olga. ‘How very unhappy she must be to make up such wicked stories.’

  ‘Oh, she’s just bitter and twisted inside. Really, after all these years of being bested by Lucia you’d think that she would just give up and accept it, but if anything she’s getting worse.’

  ‘I thought you said a week or two back that she’d been rather quiet since the war,’ Olga pointed out.

  ‘Well, yes, actually she had, now you come to mention it. That’s what makes this latest outburst so remarkable, I suppose. It’s almost as though she’s gone back entirely to her old ways.’

  ‘Without wishing to be unduly morbid,’ reflected Olga, ‘I suppose it’s always possible that she’s gathering herself for one last effort.’

  Georgie looked blank.

  ‘Oh, come on, you dear old thing,’ Olga said gently. ‘We’re all of us now at that age when you have to come to terms with the fact that you really are going to die one day, and that it may be sooner than one would like.’

  ‘Memento mori,’ Georgie intoned gravely. ‘Yes, I know what you mean. How quickly the years seem to pass now. They did even during that dreadful war when we had bombs dropping on us and everything.’

  They walked on a few steps in silence.

  ‘But do you really think that’s what behind this … this latest bout of vituperation from Mapp?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know really,’ Olga said, trying to shake off the rather chill thoughts that had suddenly come crowding in upon her. ‘Perhaps it says more about my own feelings than hers. I really must stop drinking gin before lunch; it always makes me maudlin.’

  ‘I say,’ Georgie ventured hesitantly, ‘do you ever find yourself secretly wishing that, no matter how awful Mapp might be, once – only once mind – Mapp might actually win and Lucia lose? It does sometimes seem a little unfair the way Lucia just crushes everyone else beneath her chariot wheels.’

  ‘I know what you mean, Georgie dear, but then Mapp is so dreadful that any feeling of sympathy for her tends to get strangled at birth.’

  ‘Well, she’s jolly well going to win out now anyway, isn’t she?’ asked Georgie. ‘Perhaps it’s worth it. At least then maybe she’ll stop.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well,’ Georgie explained, ‘she’s more or less openly challenged Lucia to produce Noël here in Tilling and we know that Lucia can’t do that, so sooner or later everyone is going to realise that Mapp is right and that Lucia really has just been telling fibs about Noël all the time.’

  ‘But that would be dreadful!’ Olga cried. ‘Why, if that happened then people would begin to question everything Lucia says, even everything she has said in the past. Then she would be very unhappy.’

  ‘I know,’ Georgie said gloomily. ‘You know how angry she got when nobody would believe her about knowing Poppy – why, she turned the whole town against her for a while.’

  ‘But that was really a fib as well, wasn’t it? At least it started off that way.’

  ‘Well, of course it was. Poppy never really wanted to have anything to do with Lucia at all, you know how she was. It was just a case of any port in a storm. She needed somewhere to spend the night and knew that we lived nearby.’

  ‘So then what happened, Georgie? I can’t believe I don’t know the full story.’

  ‘Well, the next day Lucia was naturally bursting to tell the others about hosting a duchess, but because Poppy had left early in the morning nobody else had actually seen her, and because they were all upset with Lucia about something or other at the time nobody would believe her. Even Quaint Irene thought
she was making it all up; I think that hurt Lucia most of all.’

  ‘But didn’t you tell me about some sort of confrontation? Or have I remembered it all wrong?’

  ‘Yes there was, and no you haven’t,’ Georgie replied firmly. ‘She pitched into everyone after church on Sunday and told them all what she thought of them. Pitched it to them very strong, in fact.’

  ‘How awful.’

  Georgie nodded.

  ‘I don’t think she ever realised just how close she came to a total rupture, to nobody ever talking to her again, or if she did she never let on.’

  ‘But Poppy came back, didn’t she?’ Olga asked.

  ‘Yes, but it was completely by chance,’ Georgie said. ‘Poppy’s boat was delayed because of rough weather in the Channel, so she came back to stay another night, which gave Lucia a chance to invite everyone round to meet her. She’s always been lucky like that – it’s quite exasperating sometimes.’

  ‘I wonder,’ Olga said, ‘if we could completely take the wind out of Mapp’s sails once and for all, whether she would just slink back to Grebe with her tail between her legs and leave Lucia alone in future.’

  She glanced across at Georgie and saw from his expression that she already knew the answer to that question.

  ‘What do you really think about this idea of a damery for Lucia?’ he asked, changing the subject.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she replied cautiously. ‘I’m going to chat to Norman first of all and see whether this thing can fly or not.’

  ‘Norman?’

  ‘Oh, Norman Brook, silly, he’s the Cabinet Secretary. Don’t you remember, I introduced you to him one night at Covent Garden at one of those frightful supper parties that David Webster makes us all go to.’

  ‘And he would be a good person to ask, would he?’ asked Georgie, who found that he really could not remember the wretched man at all.

  ‘Of course!’ Olga cried in surprise. ‘Why, really, Georgie, don’t you ever read the papers?’

  ‘Not the political bits,’ Georgie said firmly. ‘I know that Attlee is Prime Minister and I know that budgets mean higher taxes, and that when politicians say one thing they mean another, and that’s quite enough for me.’