Au Reservoir (12 page)

‘It really is too much,’ Lucia continued, ignoring his proffered comment completely. ‘I shall reply saying that I am in no doubt as to the Padre’s mental capacity, that I am much offended by having my invitation withdrawn so summarily, and suggest that courtesy and politeness are clearly on the wane in less civilised parts of the world than Tilling.’

‘No, don’t do that,’ Georgie advised at once.

‘And why not, pray?’ Lucia enquired coldly.

Georgie thought quickly.

‘Well, for one thing, we all know who’s behind this.’

‘Mapp, of course, though quite how she managed it I can’t imagine.’

‘No matter how she did it,’ said Georgie briskly. ‘Mapp it must be for sure, and that’s almost certainly the reaction she is hoping for. For another, this woman in Tenterden is equally certainly expecting a speedy response – she must be if she went to the trouble of sending the letter by chauffeur rather than putting it in the post – so why not do what she doesn’t want, rather than what she does?’

There was a noise of grudging approval from the Tilling end of the line.

‘Anyway,’ Georgie pressed on, ‘I’m planning to come back this evening in time for dinner, so why not wait and discuss it then? That way we can both have a jolly good think in the meantime.’

‘All white, Georgie,’ Lucia said, lapsing into baby talk, ‘oo ’ave little fink.’

‘Oh, I will,’ he assured her fervently.

He hung up in the knowledge that his breakfast had now been quite spoiled and when he went back into the room it was all he could do to force himself to take another helping of scrambled egg.

‘What’s wrong?’ Olga said at once, seeing perturbation in his face.

‘Oh, it’s that blister Mapp again,’ he said in great irritation. ‘She really is the limit!’

‘Tell me,’ she commanded, pouring herself another cup of black coffee.

‘Somehow, don’t ask me how, she seems to have been in contact with the fête committee in Tenterden, got Lucia’s invitation revoked and Noël’s reinstated. So now we’re back where we started, only probably rather worse.’

‘But how can they withdraw the invitation?’ Olga asked. ‘Surely the Padre had the committee’s authority to make it, and Lucia accepted.’

Georgie struggled for words to express his indignation.

‘I can’t quite believe that even Mapp would stoop so low,’ he got out at last, ‘but she has apparently spread the story that the Padre is in the grip of senile dementia and didn’t know what he was doing or saying at the time.’

‘No!’ exclaimed Olga.

‘Yes she jolly well has, or so Lucia says. I haven’t seen the letter for myself of course. But it sounds like Mapp. I suppose she thought it was the only way she could get round what had already been agreed.’

‘And I suppose it is, too,’ Olga reluctantly agreed. ‘Poor Padre! Such a nice man.’

‘Poor Padre indeed,’ Georgie concurred.

As he raised a forkful of scrambled egg to his mouth, he noticed that his hands were trembling. Olga noticed it too, and briefly leaned across the table and squeezed his hand.

‘Poor darling,’ she murmured.

‘Oh,’ Georgie said, suddenly feeling butterflies in his stomach, ‘it’s all so tarsome.’

They gazed at each other for what felt like a very long moment, one of those moments when you both know what it is that each of you would like to say but never will. Then Olga withdrew her hand from where it had been resting gently on his.

‘Well,’ she said briskly, ‘that settles it. I’m off to see Noël and tell him to buck his ideas up a bit and get himself down to Tilling.’

‘I wonder …’ Georgie pondered.

‘What?’

‘It’s just –’ he got no further.

‘The fête!’ she cried. ‘Oh, Georgie, aren’t you brilliant? Of course, that’s it! Mapp will be sitting there smugly, confident that Lucia has got herself into a frightful mess, and then who should turn up to open the fête but Noël himself!’

‘Hang on,’ Georgie enjoined, though he was of course enjoying being the object of adulation, ‘that doesn’t work, does it?’

‘What do you mean?’ Olga demanded.

‘Well, Lucia would have to write back saying yes, Noël can open the fête, and then Mapp would know all about it, and surely she would know that even in her most desperate moment Lucia wouldn’t do anything as silly as promising faithfully to deliver Noël Coward when she knows that she can’t.’

‘Gosh yes, you’re right, you blighter,’ Olga moaned, sinking her head theatrically into her hands.

‘Never mind,’ Georgie sought to comfort her, ‘it was very nearly a jolly good plan.’

‘And could be still,’ she said, looking up suddenly, her eyes gleaming. ‘I think I’ve got it.’

Georgie raised his eyebrows invitingly.

‘Lucia writes to this committee woman saying that Noël would be delighted to open the damned fête but that he lives in mortal fear of being mobbed by fans and reporters and so must impose total secrecy as a condition of his acceptance. The committee must simply announce that a mystery celebrity will do the honours and nobody except the woman herself will be allowed to know his or her true identity, not even –’

‘Not even dear, sweet Mrs Mapp-Flint,’ Georgie finished for her. ‘Brilliant!’

‘Of course,’ Olga went on, getting up from the table, ‘Lucia must know nothing of any of this until we are sure we’ve got Noël nailed down. I’ll telephone you at Mallards this evening, in any event.’

‘Oh, you are wonderful,’ Georgie said admiringly.

*   *   *

‘Any news?’ Diva enquired hopefully as she encountered Major and Mrs Benjamin Mapp-Flint in the High Street.

‘There certainly is,’ Mapp replied sweetly. ‘Dear Lulu has been told by the committee that the invitation to open the fête over in Tenterden was extended to her in error, and that the real intention had been to ask her to invite her friend Noël Coward.’ She settled her shopping basket on her arm in a combative manner and added, ‘As well she knew, of course,’ as an afterthought.

‘Don’t understand,’ Diva replied, rather unnecessarily as she already looked completely blank. ‘The Padre told us it was all settled and that Lucia was going to do it.’

‘Ah yes, the Padre,’ Mapp said, tapping the side of her nose meaningfully. Irritatingly, whatever meaning it was that she thought was adequately conveyed by such a gesture entirely failed to register with Godiva Plaistow, who still gazed at her, blank and uncomprehending.

‘Oh, come on, Diva,’ Mapp swept on, ‘haven’t you noticed how forgetful the man has become recently, how he sometimes tells you a story, forgetting that he already told it to you the week before?’

Diva switched her puzzled gaze instantly to Major Benjy, who had been exhibiting exactly this characteristic for the last twenty years. Catching her drift, he said ‘Ah’, and stroked his moustache defensively.

Suddenly the gears, which had been freewheeling within Diva’s mind, meshed and engaged with each other.

‘But he’d only just been in to see her when he ran into us,’ she protested. ‘Surely he couldn’t have forgotten something that quickly? And anyway, he told us that she had accepted, so he hadn’t forgotten, had he?’

She tailed off as fresh clouds of confusion began to swirl around her.

Mapp sighed in exasperation.

‘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.