Lucia Triumphant (9 page)

It was the Wyses' turn to host the day's sitting of the Monopolists. The privilege was jealously sought after, for the host naturally had first choice of counters. Mr. Wyse had a particular fondness for the top hat, while the motor-car, appropriately enough, generally seemed to fall to Elizabeth. Georgie, as Tilling's best-dressed man, was accorded the flat-iron, Diva claimed the thimble and the Bartletts and Irene would be left to decide who got the battleship and who would be left with the boot. Since there were always fewer counters than would-be players, it had been agreed that married couples, being one in the sight of God, should also be regarded as one player for the purposes of the game. The Wyses made their decisions jointly, with the result that play was often held up for some minutes; but the Bartletts and the Mapp-Flints tended to take alternate throws. This happy device enabled the most attractive feature of Bridge, failing to understand what your partner was up to and falling out as a result, to be introduced into the game. If the required element of dissent was not forthcoming from this particular convention there were always the rules, in their splendid complexity, to fall out over.

With the set under her arm, therefore, Elizabeth rang the bell of Starling Cottage with a light heart. The door was answered by Figgis, the Wyses' grim-faced butler, and Elizabeth was ushered into the presence of her hosts. The company had long since assembled, and a buzz of tactical discussion died down; Elizabeth felt rather like a senior officer entering a briefing session, and had to restrain herself from saying ‘Carry on, gentlemen.' Major Benjy would probably have done so, but she had sent him like a schoolboy unwillingly to golf, for despite his enthusiasm for the game he was at times a hindrance to her. He could never resist buying the railway stations, at whatever cost. The Great War, he would claim, was won through control of the railways; railways had hamstrung the Boers and India had been largely pacified by their construction.

The board was set out; Georgie threw highest and was thereby entitled to the first move.

‘
Oh look!' he exclamined. ‘I've thrown a double five. That's lucky.' He advanced the flat-iron ten places, while Mr. Wyse, as banker, counted out his initial £200. He put down his counter and his face fell. ‘In jail—oh, just visiting, that's all right. Do I throw again now? Nine. Vine Street.'

‘
A cousin of mine lived in Vine Street once,' said Diva.

‘
No!' said Georgie. ‘What a coincidence! I'd better buy it in that case. It must be a very select area.'

Diva did not mention that her cousin had kept an umbrella shop, and Georgie disbursed £200 into the exchequer.

Susan Wyse was next to throw; she recorded three and landed on Whitechapel Road. ‘Where,' she enquired, ‘is Whitechapel Road?' Irene told her, and she decided not to buy it. As a result it went to auction and eventually was knocked down to Diva for £120. It was well known that Diva could not resist an auction with its possibilities for getting bargains, and Elizabeth exploited this weakness to the full. Elizabeth's own throw landed her on Chance, and she drew a speeding fine of £15. She regarded this as rather unjust, for she never exceeded the speed limits ....

Diva threw a double six and promptly bought the Electric Company. ‘I can't see how that could fail to be profitable,' she said. ‘I had my last quarter's bill last week. Scandalous.' She threw again and landed on Chance. Fate, merciless and arbitrary, sent her back three spaces to Vine Street. She claimed that she was only visiting her cousin, but the rules were inflexible on that point and she was separated from rent. Irene landed on Income Tax and handed over £200. She did not complain, however, for she was a good Socialist and said that she only wished there were more taxes to pay; best of all, she suggested, why not nationalise all Elizabeth's properties and build workers' co-operatives on them? The Bartletts landed on King's Cross Station, which suited them admirably.

Georgie's next throw landed him on the Water Works, and he felt obliged to buy them, for they were a public amenity and ought to be run for the good of the community. That was what Lucia would say, were she present. Mr. Wyse threw three and one which brought him to Chance. He selected a card, read it and put it down, stony-faced, on the table. Then he paid some money to the Bank. When he was not looking Georgie turned it up to see what it was. ‘Drunk in Charge,' it read, ‘Fine £20.' The fortunes of the Wyses did not prosper thereafter. Susan was compelled to pay super-tax, which she did with a proud flourish, and Mr. Wyse was sent to jail. Elizabeth soon gained control of all the yellow and green properties, and began buying hotels with reckless abandon, whereupon Irene called her a slum landlord and threatened her with dire punishments come the Revolution. Diva, after a great deal of tortured indecision, added the Old Kent Road to Whitechapel and built a house on each, only to be assessed for street repairs and deprived of £80. The Wyses eventually got out of jail and were promptly sent back again. The Padre, with canny Scottish good sense, gained control of all the red properties but no one landed on them, while Evie, drawing on the Community Chest, won second prize in a beauty competition.

The game was won, as usual, by Elizabeth. She seized control of London as quickly and as absolutely as she had captured Tilling, and the parallel did not go unmarked, especially at Mallards.

‘
I expect she'll buy Porpoise Street and West Street and Church Square,' remarked Lucia bitterly, ‘and smother them in little green houses and little red hotels. Then we shall all have to throw a die in the mornings before we leave our homes. A four will permit us to go to Twemlow's; a five will entitle us to visit Mr. Worthington's and buy some meat. But should we only be vouchsafed a two, we must perforce go to Mr. Hopkins and eat fish for our supper, whether we like it or not. Should we be so fortunate as to throw a six we will be permitted to trudge out to Grebe to partake of Monopoly and potted-meat sandwiches. A throw of one—'

Georgie interrupted this fantastical monologue. ‘But Lucia,' he said imploringly, ‘you should join in too. It's such fun, you know, so much better than tedious old Bridge, and there's no gambling, which should appeal to your principles. I remember there was a time when you declared that gambling was at the root of half the social problems in England. And it's not just a game, it's training for commerce. It sharpens your mind. If ever I went in for property developing' (now there was a thought to conjure with!) ‘I should have a very good idea of how to go about it. Buying places cheap, improving them, and then letting them at a profit. Why, it's good business practice.'

Lucia turned her head away and her eye fell on the piano. They had not played their duets together for three weeks now, what with the Tapestry and then Monopoly. She was silent for a moment and Georgie could see that a Tilling thought had struck her. When she turned back she was smiling her bright, innocent smile that generally marked the emergence of some devious strategy.

‘
Alas!' she exclaimed. ‘My poor pianoforte. How I have neglected you—
cattiva
Lucia. No wonder my soul seems so arid and dry without sweet
Mozartino
to water it.'

Music hath charms, Georgie recalled, and he suggested that they dispel the dark clouds of discord with a little duet. But Lucia seemed strangely evasive.

‘
No, Georgie, not just now. I am so much out of practice. An hour tomorrow at my scales will be scarcely time enough to ease these negligent fingers.'

‘
But I'm just as much out of practice as you are,' Georgie protested, anxious to pin down the reason for the reluctance. ‘We can get back into shape together.'

‘
How sweet of you, Georgie, to offer to keep me company. But I should be so ashamed to make horrible noises in your presence. You would find out what an indifferent musician I really am.'

‘
Oh, very well then,' he said obediently, for he was anxious to preserve this apparent reconciliation between them. He had cause to be penitent, for he had betrayed his wife and (what was surely worse) his Mayor by joining the Monopolists, and had been surprised by the overall lack of hostile reaction.

‘
Now
Georgino,'
crooned Lucia in her arcane dialect of baby-talk spiked with Italian, and Georgie prepared to be made to do something. ‘Lucia have ickle task for clever hubby Georgie. Me so, so tired of seeing dwefful Tapestry lying about so sad and unwanted in
giardino-room.
So untidy it is, to be sure. So will'oo be kindest
Georgino
and make Tapestry into nice pair of curtains for Lucia to hang in the
fenestri
?'

‘
Why, of course I will!' cried Georgie, relieved and delighted. ‘So sensible of you not to waste all that material. They'll do splendidly for the scullery.'

‘
No, caro, not the scullery,' continued Lucia sweetly, ‘the garden-room. Those old damask curtains are so frayed at the edge that I can't bear the sight of them any longer.'

Georgie gasped. To flaunt the ruins of her great project, like a flag of surrender, in the windows of her erstwhile seat of power was a most remarkable act. And yet—it would be a subtle reproach to the weak flesh of Tilling, to pass by that reminder of dereliction of duty every day, and so reflect on what might have been.

‘
You're right, of course,' he said. ‘Just the very thing. They could have been made for the purpose.'

That was not entirely tactful, but Lucia's demeanour did not change. ‘Splendid!' she said. ‘So kind of you. It shouldn't take long with Grosvenor and Foljambe to help you. And now be a dear and tell me all about Elizabeth's Monopoly this afternoon. So sorry to have been such a shrill, shrewish Lucia when you were about to tell me before.'

Curiouser and curiouser. Dimly Georgie could perceive a purpose behind this mercurial change, afar off and shrouded in mist, but his rational mind could not make out its shape, and so attributed the peripeteia to simple friendliness.

‘
Elizabeth won,' he said briefly. ‘I didn't get much, only the Water Works and Vine Street.'

‘
Oh dear,' cooed his wife. ‘And how exactly did Elizabeth win? It sounds like a terribly complicated game, and I've only the vaguest idea of how you play it.'

So Georgie told her all about it. He made several mistakes but Lucia did not correct him, for to do so would betray the fact that she had that morning received from a leading London toy-shop a Monopoly set and a book on tactics by the current South-Eastern Area champion, study of which had helped while away her solitary afternoon. In fact, so engrossed had she been in rehearsing the ploys and gambits suggested in the book that when Georgie had returned from the battlefield she had been compelled to find
extempore
hiding places for book and Monopoly set. The latter was under the cushion of the sofa, the former under the lid of the piano ....

‘
A strangely fascinating game,' she opined when his confused and rather inaccurate summary was concluded, ‘and one with distinct possibilities for self-improvement, as you so rightly pointed out. As in Bridge the bidding helps one to learn how to communicate indirectly with one's partner, to understand without words, to tune in, so to speak, to a fellow-human's thought and feelings, so in Monopoly one learns how to plan ahead, to create a strategy far-reaching enough to ensure victory, yet flexible enough to adapt to the vicissitudes of fortune.'

‘
You could put it like that,' said Georgie cautiously.

‘
Thank you, dear. How foolish I have been,' she continued, ‘how arrogant, to stand aloof so, simply because my tiresome little pet project has come to naught. How annoying it must have been for you all to be cooped up in this little room, with me being such a severe task-mistress. I see now that I took far too much for granted. I only hope I have not irretrievably alienated all my dear, dear friends. So I must try and undo some of the damage if I can. Would you be terribly sweet and ask Elizabeth for me if I could join in? I hope I have been punished enough for my wickedness by missing so much delightful entertainment.'

Georgie was dumbstruck. Had his eloquent description of the game of Monopoly so impressed his wife that she was prepared, like an Apostle, to cast away everything and follow it only? Unlikely, for he was aware that as a storyteller and narrator he lacked a certain amount of skill. Then what was behind this second, even more mercurial change? Whatever it was, it marked Lucia's return to the lists, and so it would be prudent as well as loyal to be unmistakably on her side from now on. He had no wish to share the terrible fate that must soon be inflicted on the disloyal.

 

In the High Street, sheltered from the rain by Twistevant's ample awning, Tilling debated Lucia's extraordinary declaration of penitence with all the gravity of an Aeschylean chorus discussing the ways of Zeus.

‘
She knows when she's beaten,' said Evie hesitantly.

‘
She never has before,' replied Georgie. ‘That's why she's never been beaten. I really don't know what to make of it.'

‘ '
Tes a far, far better thing she does now than she has ever done before,' intoned the Padre. ‘Blessed are the meek, and the peacemakers.'

‘
Exactly,' said Evie. ‘But it's too fascinating. She was nice to Elizabeth when Elizabeth bought her motor-car, and Elizabeth was nice to her when she was doing the Tapestry. Now Lucia's being nice to Elizabeth over Monopoly and being apologetic about cooping us all up in the garden-room. It looks as though they've both turned over a new leaf.' There was a hint, more than a hint, of disappointment in Evie's voice as she said this.