Au Reservoir (34 page)

A forest of hands shot up, including the Mapp-Flints’. Carried,
nem. con
.

‘So now we move to the adoption of the constitution,’ Mr Wyse said.

‘Point of order!’ Mapp was up once more. ‘I would like to propose certain amendments to the constitution before it is put to the vote.’

A murmur of disapproval ran through the room, during which Mapp attempted to drag the Major, who was following proceedings with a slightly puzzled expression, to his feet to second her motion, but she was fractionally too late.

‘Mr Chairman, I move that the meeting proceeds to a vote whether to adopt the proposed constitution,’ the Padre intoned as if beginning the responses, gazing benignly at Elizabeth Mapp-Flint.

‘Seconded!’ shouted Irene.

Once more a forest of hands shot up, without even being called for. The motion was carried with two votes against, as was the vote to adopt the constitution a few moments later. Faced with such overwhelming evidence of the final collapse of all her hopes, Elizabeth Mapp-Flint rose to her feet, gazed venomously around the room and stalked out of the building. As Major Benjy stiffly followed her, a catcall from Irene was promptly hushed by Susan.

When Mr Wyse went to report the result of the meeting to Lucia he was met instead by Georgie, with the news that Lucia begged to be excused but had been ordered to bed by the doctor as she was now running a slight fever; he had given her a mild sedative to help her sleep.

‘Poor lady,’ said Mr Wyse, ‘please do give her our best wishes for a speedy recovery. In the circumstances I won’t stay, but you can tell her that the Mapp-Flints attended the meeting and voted to make themselves members. Also the constitution was adopted as drafted, so she can write that letter with an easy conscience whenever she decides to.’

‘I really don’t know what to say,’ Georgie marvelled. ‘It’s as if you have just waved a magic wand and made everything as it should be. I know Lucia will be terribly grateful, Mr Wyse. Why, if I had tried something like that I would have made a dreadful hash of it, I’m sure.’

‘Not at all,’ Mr Wyse protested. ‘Anyway, from what we read in the newspapers, you’re going to have to get used to sitting on committees, eh? Covent Garden, and now the British Museum, and who knows what else in the future?’

‘Oh well, I don’t know about that,’ Georgie replied awkwardly. ‘I’d much rather just be in the background, as it were.’

‘Talking of the British Museum,’ Mr Wyse said, ‘I am sure it will not have escaped your notice that there have been groups of men with cameras getting off almost every London train today and taking photographs, particularly of Mallards. This must mean that the story will be all over the newspapers tomorrow morning.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Georgie said distractedly. ‘I’ve had them on the phone all day, and the museum too. I even had to let some of them photograph me on the front steps. So tarsome, what with Lucia being ill and everything. I tried to send them away, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Said I had to think of my public from now on. “My public” indeed! It’s not as if I’m some big star like Olga or Noël.’

‘Nonetheless,’ Mr Wyse pronounced, ‘a certain celebrity is now inevitable, I am afraid. After all, you are not only a well-known sponsor of the arts, but also the discoverer of the rarest Roman coin ever found in Britain. Just consider those facts from the point of view of a newspaper editor and I’m sure you will appreciate that you are now “newsworthy”, as they say.’

Georgie wasn’t sure he liked the idea of being newsworthy, although he supposed that it might justify a few new waistcoats. There was a particularly fetching mustard one, which he had been considering for a few days now.

‘Well, I cannot linger,’ said Mr Wyse with a respectful bow. ‘Au reservoir.’

‘Au reservoir,’ Georgie replied, ‘and thank you again.’

The next morning the news of the discovery of the Pillson aureus and its gift by its generous discoverer to the nation was indeed on the front page of every newspaper. Most had a picture of Georgie standing rather awkwardly on the steps of Mallards, and all carried a statement from the Chief Curator of the British Museum hailing the staggering significance of the find and the munificence of Mr Pillson in not only donating the priceless coin but also agreeing to fund an exhibition on Roman Britain, of which the aureus would form the centrepiece.

The Times
noted with approval that Mr Pillson had been invited to join the board of trustees of the museum. His consent was confidently anticipated. The
Telegraph
pointed out in an editorial that this was the second major donation to issue forth from the same source in rapid succession, and expressed the hope that some official recognition might be forthcoming. The
Express
had got hold of some of the
Radio Times
’ details of Georgie’s broadcasts during the war and ran a story under the headline ‘Radio chef finds the right recipe’. The
Mirror
, needless to say, remained true to type and reran their photograph of Georgie apparently stroking Olga’s bottom under the headline, ‘The man with the Midas touch – will it rub off?’

For once Tilling, the place where every chance greeting began with the rather desperate enquiry ‘Any news?’, was not only replete with news but positively awash with the stuff. In ordinary circumstances, the story of the coin would have been the sole topic of conversation for weeks, with everyone rehashing their own recollections of the original excavations, speculating as to whether hordes of archaeologists might now descend on Tilling in the hope of emulating Georgie’s feat – and, if so, whether this would be a good thing – and planning trips to London to visit the exhibition in the hope that one might be overheard (if one spoke sufficiently loudly) talking about actually being a resident of Tilling, now the centre of the numismatic world, and so on. Seizing the moment, the
Tilling Gazette
ran a special eight-page edition, reprinting its original story retrieved from the archives under the inevitable headline ‘As exclusively revealed by the
Gazette
’, together with lengthy sections on the life stories of Lucia and Georgie, and a long list of all their generous gifts over the years.

But now the story had to jostle for space with two other momentous pieces of news, and the impromptu basket-carrying gatherings which occurred in the High Street in the same sort of spirit as they once spontaneously did in a Roman forum or a Greek agora, stretched dramatically beyond their normal time span and spilled over into tea shops and living rooms as the day went on, even at the risk of spoiled lunches.

First there was of course the question of the Mapp-Flints and their rousing defeat at the bridge club meeting the day before. Today they were conspicuous by their absence and there was general consensus that their position was now a very difficult one indeed, given recent events – referred to more stylishly but obliquely by Mr Wyse as ‘a concatenation of unfortunate circumstances’, and upon hearing which everyone as usual said ‘Ah, yes’ and tried to look very knowledgeable.

The question was, of course, how should the good people of Tilling react if the reprobates did indeed decide to come into town, as they had for the meeting the day before? Opinions varied from pelting them with eggs (Irene Coles) to extending the hand of Christian friendship (the Bartletts), with others weighing in somewhere in between with suggestions of an initial period of coolness.

Yet even this conundrum, which also would have been sufficient to occupy everyone for days entirely by itself, paled into insignificance beside the really big news story of the day. For Lucia’s fever had grown markedly worse during the night: the doctor had been roused from his bed, and had immediately advised that she should be moved to hospital, ‘just as a precaution, mind,’ as he wanted to have her under direct nursing observation. In the interests of urgency, instead of waiting for an ambulance, she had been helped gently into the Rolls and Cadman had driven her the short distance to the hospital.

Georgie was even now in conference with the doctors at the hospital.

‘And how is the patient this morning?’ Doctor Mackay asked. As Lucia’s GP his role had ended officially the moment she entered the hospital, but he and Doctor Haddows were old friends and usually continued to consult together after patients were admitted.

‘She’s still running a high temperature – very high, in fact,’ Haddows said slowly. ‘We’ve tried sponging her to bring it down, but it hasn’t made any appreciable difference.’

He showed Mackay a chart of Lucia’s temperature and pulse readings, which the latter studied expressionlessly.

‘Also, I’m a bit worried about dehydration, but of course we’ve taken care of that with a drip.’

‘I’m wondering,’ Mackay said slowly, ‘whether we may be looking at something other than an allergic reaction. Septicaemia, for example.’

‘You mean blood poisoning, don’t you?’ Georgie cried in alarm. ‘Isn’t that terribly serious?’

‘Not necessarily,’ Mackay said soothingly. ‘It often happens when a lad falls over in the playground and cuts his knee, for example, but you don’t hear of people dying of a gashed knee now, do you?’

Georgie thought about it and had to admit that he hadn’t heard any such story.

‘I’m inclined to agree with Doctor Mackay,’ Haddows said. ‘Apparently there was a similar case here before the war. In fact I had already decided upon some steps based on that supposition, just as a precaution you understand.’

‘What are they?’ asked Georgie.

‘First, I am sending up to London to get some of this new wonder drug, penicillin. Our Doctor Kendrick, who is on leave today, is something of an expert on septicaemia – he served in Italy during the war, you know – and I have spoken to him on the telephone. He has had great results with penicillin. Swears by it, in fact.’

‘Very sensible,’ Mackay said, nodding sagely. ‘But isn’t it in very short supply? I thought it was reserved mostly for children.’

‘It is,’ admitted Haddows, ‘but I was at medical school with one of the senior surgeons at Great Ormond Street. I also spoke to him on the telephone, and he will have one of the porters give it to the guard on the Brighton express at Victoria. All we have to do is pick it up from there, and the local police have kindly agreed to send a motorcycle for it. That will prove much quicker, I fancy, than waiting for the slow train to Tilling from Charing Cross.’

‘Oh, how kind everyone is being,’ Georgie murmured, feeling suddenly close to tears. ‘I must remember to thank them all.’

‘Mrs Pillson will be able to do that for herself,’ Mackay said briskly. ‘It sounds as though she’ll have her penicillin by about three o’clock at the latest, and it usually works within about twenty-four hours.’

T
he issue of the Mapp-Flints’ new status and whether they would find themselves still welcome in Tilling took a new turn when Elizabeth Mapp-Flint slipped into Wasters, Diva Plaistow’s little house, early the next morning after the slightest of knocks.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ Diva said, uncertain of what to do.

‘Diva, dear,’ Mapp said, sitting down unbidden. ‘Old friends as we are, I just thought I’d pop in for a chat.’

‘To find out if you’re still welcome, more like,’ she riposted robustly.

Mapp pinched the bridge of her nose and looked pained.

‘One had hoped,’ she said sadly, ‘that one’s oldest friend would not be swayed by the vile lies being put about. You know perfectly well that Lulu has been scheming to eject me from Tilling society for years. First she takes Mallards, which has been in my family for generations –’

‘She
bought
Mallards from you,’ Diva cut in, ‘and at a very fair price too, given the rotten old state it was in because you were always too mean to spend any money on it.’

Mapp flapped her hands hopelessly with the air of Saint Sebastian feeling one more arrow thudding into his body.

‘As for lies,’ Diva went on, warming to her task, ‘well, maybe she has been a bit imaginative from time to time but no more than you, and every time you’ve tried to catch her out you’ve failed. Whereas when you tell lies – which you do, Elizabeth, don’t deny it – you
do
get caught out. That silly family portrait of yours, for example.’

Mapp produced a handkerchief from her handbag as if to staunch an imminent flow of tears, and muttered something brokenly in which the words ‘my oldest friend’ could faintly be discerned.

‘Why is it you can’t just let things go, Elizabeth?’ she pressed on remorselessly. ‘Why is it everything has to turn into a personal contest between you and her? You know she’s always going to win. She always has, and she always will. Look at that Roman remains nonsense. You thought you had her, but you didn’t. You just ended up making yourself look ridiculous.’

At this Mapp gave a little cry, though whether of sorrow or protest it was hard to tell, and raised her handkerchief to her mouth.

‘Well, you’ve gone too far this time, as you very well know, and you’ve brought it entirely on yourself, so don’t look to me for any sympathy. You’re about to be thrown out of the bridge club by the way, or suspended, which I suppose amounts to pretty much the same thing.’

This time Mapp did actually manage quite a credible supply of tears along with her now rather regular refrain of, ‘Life can be so unfair.’

‘It’s not life that’s unfair,’ Diva countered stoutly, ‘but you that’s unreasonable, yes, and bitter and twisted too. You blame everyone but yourself for your misfortunes, just like you always have, but the truth is you bring them upon yourself. Now, if you want my advice …’

She paused, and Mapp gave a little up and down jerk of the head, which Diva took to mean ‘Yes’.

‘If you want my advice, then as soon as Lucia comes out of hospital, you’ll go and see her, make a full apology for your recent conduct and throw yourself on her mercy. It’s possible, just possible mind, that she might be persuaded to write to the bridge authorities recommending clemency. She might even feel able to invite you into her house again for tea, though God help me I wouldn’t, Christian though I try to be.’