Lucia Victrix (35 page)

Lucia leaned forward and regarded Georgie steadfastly.

‘I couldn't fathom her simply because she was so superficial,' she said. ‘But I feel sure that there was something on her mind all the time. She used often to seem to be screwing herself up to confess something to me, and then not to be able to get it out. No courage. And though I can make no guess as to what it actually was, I believe I know its general nature.'

‘How thrilling!' cried Georgie. ‘Tell me!'

Lucia's eye ceased to bore, and became of far-off focus, keen still but speculative, as if she was Einstein concentrating on some cosmic deduction.

‘Georgie, why did she come into my kitchen like a burglar on Boxing Day?' she asked. ‘She told me she had come to thank me for that
pâté
I sent her. But that wasn't true: anyone could see that it wasn't. Nobody goes into kitchens to thank people for
pâtés.
'

‘Diva guessed that she had gone there to see the Christmas-tree,' said Georgie. ‘You weren't on very good terms at the time. We all thought that brilliant of her.'

‘Then why shouldn't she have said so?' asked Lucia.

‘I believe it was something much meaner and more underhand than that. And I am convinced – I have those perceptions sometimes, as you know very well – that all through the months of our Odyssey she wanted to tell me why she was there, and was ashamed of doing so. Naturally I never asked her, because if she didn't choose to tell me, it would be beneath me to force a confidence. There we were together on the Gallagher Banks, she all to bits all the time, and I should have scorned myself for attempting to worm it out of her. But the more I think of it, Georgie, the more convinced I am, that what she had to tell me and couldn't, concerned that. After all, I had unmasked every single plot she made against me before, and I knew the worst of her up till that moment. She had something on her mind, and that something was why she was in my kitchen.'

Lucia's far-away prophetic aspect cleared.

‘I shall find out all right,' she said. ‘Poor Elizabeth will betray herself some time. But, Georgie, how in those weeks I missed my music! Not a piano on board any of the trawlers assembled there! Just a few concertinas and otherwise nothing except cod. Let us go, in a minute, into my music-room and have some Mozartino again. But first I want to say one thing.'

Georgie took a rapid survey of all he had done in his conviction that Lucia had long ago been drowned. But if she knew about the memorial service and the cenotaph there could be nothing more except the kitchen-table, and that was now in its place again. She knew all that mattered. Lucia began to speak baby-talk.

‘Georgie,' she said. ‘'Oo have had dweffel disappointy –'

That was too much. Georgie thumped the table quite hard.

‘I haven't,' he cried. ‘How dare you say that?'

‘Ickle joke, Georgie,' piped Lucia. ‘Haven't had joke for so long with that melancholy Liblib. 'Pologize. 'Oo not angry wif Lucia?'

‘No, but don't do it again,' said Georgie. ‘I won't have it.'

‘You shan't then,' said Lucia, relapsing into the vernacular of adults. ‘Now all this house is spick and span, and Grosvenor tells me you've been paying all their wages, week by week.'

‘Naturally,' said Georgie.

‘It was very dear and thoughtful of you. You saw that my house was ready to welcome my return, and you must send me in all the bills and everything to-morrow and I'll pay them at once, and I thank you enormously for your care of it. And send me in the bill for the cenotaph too. I want to pay for it, I do indeed. It was a loving impulse of yours, Georgie, though, thank goodness, a hasty one. But I can't bear to think that you're out of pocket because I'm alive. Don't answer: I shan't listen. And now let's go straight to the piano and have one of our duets, the one we played last, that heavenly Mozartino.'

They went into the next room. There was the duet ready on the piano, which much looked as if Lucia had been at it already, and she slid on to the top music-stool.

‘We both come in on the third beat,' said she. ‘Are you ready? Now!
Uno, due, TRE
!'

The wretched Major Benjy, who had not been out all day except for interviews with agents and miserable traverses between his house and the doorsteps of Mallards, dined alone that night (if you could call it dinner) on a pork pie and a bottle of Burgundy. A day's hard work had restored the lots of his abandoned sale to their proper places, and a little glue had restored its eye to the bald tiger. He felt worse than bald himself, he felt flayed, and God above alone knew what fresh skinnings were in store for him. All Tilling must have had its telephone-bells (as well as the church bells) ringing from morning till night with messages of congratulation and suitable acknowledgments between the returned ladies and their friends, and he had never felt so much like a pariah before. Diva had just passed his windows (clearly visible in the lamplight, for he had not put up the curtains of his snuggery yet) and he had heard her knock on the door of Mallards. She must have gone to dine with the fatal Elizabeth, and what were they talking about now? Too well he knew, for he knew Elizabeth.

If in spirit he could have been present in the dining-room, where only last night he had so sumptuously entertained Diva and Georgie and Mrs Bartlett, and had bidden them punish the port, he would not have felt much more cheerful.

‘In my best spare room, Diva, would you believe it?' said Elizabeth, ‘with all the drawers full of socks and shirts and false teeth, wasn't it so, Withers? and the cellar full of wine. What he has consumed of my things, goodness only knows. There was that
pâté
which Lucia gave me only the day before we were whisked out to sea –'

‘But that was three months ago,' said Diva.

‘– and he used my coal and my electric light as if they were his own, not to mention firing,' said Elizabeth, going on exactly where she had left off, ‘and a whole row of beetroot.'

Diva was bursting to hear the story of the voyage. She knew that Georgie was dining with Lucia, and he would be telling everybody about it to-morrow, but if only Elizabeth would leave the beetroot alone and speak of the other she herself would be another focus of information instead of being obliged to listen to Georgie.

‘Dear Elizabeth,' she said, ‘what does a bit of beetroot matter compared to what you've been through? When an old friend like you has had such marvellous experiences as I'm sure you must have, nothing else counts. Of course I'm sorry about your beetroot: most annoying, but I do want to hear about your adventures.'

‘You'll hear all about them soon,' said Elizabeth, ‘for to-morrow I'm going to begin a full history of it all. Then, as soon as it's finished, I shall have a big tea-party, and instead of bridge afterwards I shall read it to you. That's absolutely confidential, Diva. Don't say a word about it, or Lucia may steal my idea or do it first.'

‘Not a word,' said Diva. ‘But surely you can tell me some bits.'

‘Yes, there is a certain amount which I shan't mention publicly,' Elizabeth said. ‘Things about Lucia which I should never dream of stating openly.'

‘Those are just the ones I should like to hear about most,' said Diva. ‘Just a few little titbits.'

Elizabeth reflected a moment.

‘I don't want to be hard on her,' she said, ‘for after all we were together, and what would have happened if I had not been there, I can't think. A little off her head perhaps with panic: that is the most charitable explanation. As we swept by the town on our way out to sea she shrieked out – “Au reservoir: just wait till we come back.” Diva, I am not easily shocked, but I must say I was appalled. Death stared us in the face and all she could do was to make jokes! There was I sitting quiet and calm, preparing myself to meet the solemn moment as a Christian should, with this screaming hyena for my companion. Then out we went to sea, in that blinding fog, tossing and pitching on the waves, till we went crash into the side of a ship which was invisible in the darkness.'

‘How awful!' said Diva. ‘I wonder you didn't upset.'

‘Certainly it was miraculous,' said Elizabeth. ‘We were battered about, the blows against the table were awful, and if I hadn't kept my head and clung on to the ship's side, we must have upset. They had heard our calls by then, and I sprang on to the rope-ladder they put down, without a moment's pause, so as to lighten the table for Lucia, and then she came up too.'

Elizabeth paused a moment.

‘Diva, you will bear me witness that I always said, in spite of Amelia Faraglione, that Lucia didn't know a word of Italian, and it was proved I was right. It was an Italian boat, and our great Italian scholar was absolutely flummoxed, and the Captain had to talk to us in English. There!'

‘Go on,' said Diva breathlessly.

‘The ship was a fishing trawler bound for the Gallagher Banks, and we were there for two months, and then we found another trawler on its way home to Tilling, and it was from that we landed this morning. But I shan't tell you of our life and adventures, for I'm reserving that for my reading to you.'

‘No, never mind then,' said Diva. ‘Tell me intimate things about Lucia.'

Elizabeth sighed.

‘We mustn't judge anybody,' she said, ‘and I won't: but oh, the nature that revealed itself! The Italians were a set of coarse, lascivious men of the lowest type, and Lucia positively revelled in their society. Every day she used to walk about the deck, often with bare feet, and skip and do her callisthenics, and learn a few words of Italian; she sat with this one or that, with her fingers actually entwined with his, while he pretended to teach her to tie a knot or a clove-hitch or something that probably had an improper meaning as well. Such flirtation (at her age too), such promiscuousness, I have never seen. But I don't judge her, and I beg you won't.'

‘But didn't you speak to her about it?' asked Diva.

‘I used to try to screw myself up to it,' said Elizabeth, ‘but her lightness positively repelled me. We shared a cabin about as big as a dog kennel, and oh, the sleepless nights when I used to be thrown from the shelf where I lay! Even then she wanted
to instruct me, and show me how to wedge myself in. Always that dreadful superior attitude, that mania to teach everybody everything except Italian, which we have so often deplored. But that was nothing. It was her levity from the time when the flood poured into the kitchen at Grebe –'

‘Do tell me about that,' cried Diva. ‘That's almost the most interesting thing of all. Why had she taken you into the kitchen?'

Elizabeth laughed.

‘Dear thing!' she said. ‘What a lovely appetite you have for details! You might as well expect me to remember what I had for breakfast that morning. She and I had both gone into the kitchen; there we were, and we were looking at the Christmas-tree. Such a tawdry tinselly tree! Rather like her. Then the flood poured in, and I saw that our only chance was to embark on the kitchen-table. By the way, was it ever washed up?'

‘Oh yes, without a scratch on it,' said Diva, thinking of the battering it was supposed to have undergone against the side of the trawler …

Elizabeth had evidently not reckoned on its having come ashore, and rose.

‘I am surprised that it didn't go to bits,' she said. ‘But let us go into the garden-room. We must really talk about that wretched sponger next door. Is it true he's bought a motor-car out of the money he hoped my death would bring him? And all that wine: bottles and bottles, so Withers told me. Oceans of champagne. How is he to pay for it all now with his miserable little income on which he used to pinch and scrape along before?'

‘That's what nobody knows,' said Diva. ‘An awful crash for him. So rash and hasty, as we all felt.'

They settled themselves comfortably by the fire, after Elizabeth had had one peep between the curtains.

‘I'm not the least sorry for having been a little severe with him this morning,' she said. ‘Any woman would have done the same.'

Withers entered with a note. Elizabeth glanced at the handwriting, and turned pale beneath the tan acquired on the cod-banks.

‘From him,' she said. ‘No answer, Withers.'

‘Shall I read it?' said Elizabeth, when Withers had left the room, ‘or throw it, as it deserves, straight into the fire.'

‘Oh, read it,' said Diva, longing to know what was in it. ‘You must see what he has to say for himself.'

Elizabeth adjusted her pince-nez and read it in silence.

‘Poor wretch,' she said. ‘But very proper as far as it goes. Shall I read it you?'

‘Do, do, do,' said Diva.

Elizabeth read:

‘My Dear Miss Elizabeth (if you will still permit me to call you so) –'

‘Very proper,' said Diva.

‘Don't interrupt, dear, or I shan't read it,' said Elizabeth.

‘– call you so. I want first of all to congratulate you with all my heart on your return after adventures and privations which I know you bore with Christian courage.

‘Secondly I want to tender you my most humble apologies for my atrocious conduct in your absence, which was unworthy of a soldier and Christian, and, in spite of all, a gentleman. Your forgiveness, should you be so gracious as to extend it to me, will much mitigate my present situation.

‘Most sincerely yours (if you will allow me to say so),

‘Benjamin Flint'

‘I call that very nice,' said Diva. ‘He didn't find that easy to write!'

‘And I don't find it very easy to forgive him,' retorted Elizabeth.

‘Elizabeth, you must make an effort,' said Diva energetically. ‘Tilling society will all fly to smithereens if we don't take care. You and Lucia have come back from the dead, so that's a very good opportunity for showing a forgiving spirit and beginning again. He really can't say more than he has said.'

‘Nor could he possibly, if he's a soldier, a Christian and a gentleman, have said less,' observed Elizabeth.

‘No, but he's done the right thing.'

Elizabeth rose and had one more peep out of the window.

‘I forgive him,' she said. ‘I shall ask him to tea to-morrow.'

Elizabeth carried up to bed with her quantities of food for thought and lay munching it till a very late hour. She had got rid of a good deal of spite against Lucia, which left her head the clearer, and she would be very busy tomorrow writing her account of the great adventure. But it was the thought of Major Benjy that most occupied her. Time had been when he had certainly come very near making honourable proposals to her which she always was more than ready to accept. They used to play golf together in those days before that firebrand Lucia descended on Tilling; he used to drop in casually, and she used to put flowers in his buttonhole for him. Tilling had expected their union, and Major Benjy had without doubt been on the brink. Now, she reflected, was the precise moment to extend to him a forgiveness so plenary that it would start a new chapter in the golden book of pardon. Though only this morning she had ejected his golf-clubs and his socks and his false teeth with every demonstration of contempt, this appeal of his revived in her hopes that had hitherto found no fruition. There should be fatted calves for him as for a prodigal son, he should find in this house that he had violated a cordiality and a welcome for the future and an oblivion of the past that could not fail to undermine his celibate propensities. Discredited owing to his precipitate occupation of Mallards, humiliated by his degrading expulsion from it, and impoverished by the imprudent purchase of wines, motor-car and steel-shafted drivers, he would surely take advantage of the wonderful opportunity which she presented to him. He might be timid at first, unable to believe the magnitude of his good fortune, but with a little tact, a proffering of saucers of milk, so to speak, as to a stray and friendless cat, with comfortable invitations to sweet Pussie to be fed and stroked, with stealthy butterings of his paws, and with, frankly, a sudden slam of the door when sweet Pussie had begun to make himself at home, it seemed that unless Pussie was a lunatic, he could not fail to wish to domesticate himself. ‘I think I can manage it,' thought Elizabeth, ‘and then poor Lulu will only be a widow, and I a
married woman with a well-controlled husband. How will she like that?'

Such sweet thoughts as these gradually lulled her to sleep.

It was soon evident that the return of the lost, an event in itself of the first magnitude, was instantly to cause a revival of those rivalries which during the autumn had rendered life at Tilling so thrilling a business. Georgie, walking down to see Lucia three days after her return, found a bill-poster placarding the High Street with notices of a lecture to be delivered at the Institute in two days' time by Mrs Lucas, admission free and no collection of any sort before, during or after. ‘A modern Odyssey' was the title of the discourse. He hurried on to Grebe, and found her busy correcting the typewritten manuscript which she had been dictating to her secretary all yesterday with scarcely a pause for meals.

‘Why, I thought it was to be just an after-dinner reading,' he said, straight off, without any explanation of what he was talking about.

Lucia put a paper-knife in the page she was at, and turned back to the first.

‘My little room would not accommodate all the people who, I understand, are most eager to hear about what I went through,' she said. ‘You see, Georgie, I think it is a duty laid upon those who have been privileged to pass unscathed through tremendous adventures to let others share, as far as is possible, their experiences. In fact that is how I propose to open my lecture. I was reading the first sentence. What do you think of it?'

‘Splendid,' said Georgie. ‘So well expressed.'

‘Then I make some allusion to Nansen, and Stanley and Amundsen,' said Lucia, ‘who have all written long books about their travels, and say that as I do not dream of comparing my adventure to theirs, a short verbal recital of some of the strange things that happened to me will suffice. I calculate that it will not take much more than two hours, or at most two and a half. I finished it about one o'clock this morning.'