Au Reservoir (13 page)

‘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.

O
lga 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.’

‘Go on,’ Georgie urged her.

‘I pointed out that Georgie was now a famous patron of the arts in his own right and that perhaps the injustice might best be put right by conferring a knighthood, or even a baronetcy.’

‘Then I –’ Lucia began.

‘Then you, Lucia, would be Lady Pillson. Yes, exactly, that’s why I thought of it. This way you get your title after all.’

‘But … but …’ Georgie stammered, ‘why would anyone want to give me a knighthood? Not just for those silly radio programmes, surely?’

‘Actually, that’s more or less what Norman said,’ Olga admitted. ‘But then I asked what would be the reaction if one or two major donations were made before the next honours list, to projects which were very much in the public eye.’

‘And what did he say?’ Georgie asked, agog.

‘He went quiet for a bit and then he asked if I knew he was on the Board of the Covent Garden Opera Company, and of course I said yes. Then he asked if I knew the House was in need of major renovation and of course I said yes again. I jolly well should know, I have to change in those cold, draughty changing rooms.’

‘Yes, and last week one of the stage lights fell down and nearly hit somebody,’ Georgie chipped in.

‘Exactly. Well, anyway, then he said that the House needed a very expensive renovation and that in these times of austerity it would be very hard to have that done at public expense, and with a Labour Government which sees opera, God bless them, as elitist, probably impossible.’

‘I see,’ said Lucia thoughtfully.

‘I thought you would,’ Olga said happily. ‘And listen to this. I asked what the Prime Minister’s position was on this and Norman said that he would very much like the renovation to go ahead, but cannot be seen publicly to support it. I asked what his reaction might be if some private philanthropist came forward and dished up the spondoolicks. He said he was sure he would be very grateful.’

‘Well, I know it sounds very ungracious of me, dear, after all your efforts, but it still seems a little hard that all my works should count for naught, as it were. It would have been nice to have had some recognition personally – in my own name, I mean.’

Now it was Georgie’s turn to have a brainwave.

‘But it wouldn’t be in your own name really, would it, Lucia?’

‘Whatever do you mean, Georgie?’ she asked.

Olga too looked at him blankly and he savoured the moment before displaying his superior brainpower.

‘Well, you wouldn’t be Dame Lucia, would you, you’d be Dame Emmeline? You’d have to use your proper name, you know.’

There was a pause while Lucia digested this unwelcome news. Even before Tilling, back in Riseholme, she had never once asked anyone to call her Emmeline, and with good reason. She disliked the name intensely.

‘I am sure,’ she said grandly, ‘that custom would be allowed to prevail.’

‘Oh no,’ said Georgie firmly. ‘You can’t start messing around with titles. They’re issued under letters patent or something, signed by the King himself. If he says you’re Dame Emmeline then Dame Emmeline you are, and you jolly well just have to get on with it.’

There was a further pause.

‘Perhaps you’re right,
caro mio
,’ she said grudgingly, affecting unconcern as the idea of being Dame Lucia disappeared into one of the might-have-been parallel universes of history.

Her hand strayed across the top of her desk and, as if unconsciously registering the temporary lack of writing paper there, her mind returned to its more immediate source of perturbation.