Lucia Victrix (51 page)

Elizabeth drew in her breath, wincing with a stab of mental anguish when she saw the dear old dingy panels in the hall, once adorned with her water-colour sketches, gleaming with garish white paint, and she and Benjy followed Grosvenor out to the garden-room. The spacious cupboard in the wall once concealed behind a false book-case of shelves ranged with leather simulacra of book-backs, ‘Elegant Extracts' and ‘Poems' and ‘Commentaries', had been converted into a real book-case,
and Lucia's library of standard and classical works filled it from top to bottom. A glass chandelier hung from the ceiling, Persian rugs had supplanted the tiger-skins and the walls were of dappled blue.

Lucia welcomed them.

‘So glad you could come,' she said. ‘Dear Elizabeth, what lovely fur! Tiger, surely.'

‘So glad you like it,' said Elizabeth. ‘And sweet of you to ask us. So here I am in my dear garden-room again. Quite a change.'

She gave Benjy's hand a sympathetic squeeze, for he must be feeling the desecration of his room, and in came the Padre and Evie, who after some mouse-like squeals of rapture began to talk very fast.

‘What a beautiful room!' she said. ‘I shouldn't have known it again, would you, Kenneth? How de do, Elizabeth. Bits of Major Benjy's tiger-skins, isn't it? Why that used to be the cupboard where you had been hoarding all sorts of things to eat in case the coal strike went on, and one day the door flew open and all the corned beef and dried apricots came bumping out. I remember it as if it was yesterday.'

Lucia hastened to interrupt that embarrassing reminiscence.

‘Dear Elizabeth, pray don't stand,' she said. ‘There's a chair in the window by the curtain, just where you used to sit.'

‘Thanks, dear,' said Elizabeth, continuing slowly to revolve, and take in the full horror of the scene. ‘I should like just to look round. So clean, so fresh.'

Diva trundled in. Elizabeth's tiger-trimmings at once caught her eye, but as Elizabeth had not noticed her cropped hair the other day, she looked at them hard and was totally blind to them.

‘You've made the room lovely, Lucia,' she said. ‘I never saw such an improvement, did you, Elizabeth? What a library, Lucia! Why that used to be a cupboard behind a false book-case. Of course, I remember –'

‘And such a big chandelier,' interrupted Elizabeth, fearful of another recitation of that frightful incident. ‘I should find it a little dazzling, but then my eyes are wonderful.'

‘Mr and Mrs Wyse,' said Grosvenor at the door.

‘Grosvenor, sherry at once,' whispered Lucia, feeling the tension. ‘Nice of you to come, Susan.
Buon giono, Signor Sapiente
.'

Elizabeth, remembering her promise to Diva, just checked herself from saying ‘
Bon jour, Monsieur Sage
,' and Mr Wyse kissed Lucia's hand, Italian-fashion, as a proper reply to this elegant salutation, and put up his eye-glass.

‘Genius!' he said. ‘Artistic genius! Never did I appreciate the beautiful proportions of this room before; it was smothered – ah, Mrs Mapp-Flint! Such a pleasure, and a lovely costume if I may say so. That poem of Blake's: “Tiger, tiger, burning bright”. I am writing to my sister Amelia to-day, and I must crave your permission to tell her about it. How she scolds me if I do not describe to her the latest fashions of the ladies of Tilling.'

‘A glass of sherry, dear Elizabeth,' said Lucia.

‘No, dear, not a drop, thanks. Poison to me,' said Elizabeth fiercely.

Georgie arrived last. He, of course, had assisted at the transformation of the garden-room, but naturally he added his voice to the chorus of congratulation which Elizabeth found so trying.

‘My dear, how beautiful you've got the room!' he said. ‘You'd have made a fortune over house-decorating. When I think what it was like – oh, good morning, Mrs Major Benjy. What a charming frock, and how ingenious. It's bits of the tiger that used to be the hearth-rug here. I always admired it so much.'

But none of these compliments soothed Elizabeth's savagery, for the universal admiration of the garden-room was poisoning her worse than sherry. Then lunch was announced, and it was with difficulty she was persuaded to lead the way, so used was she to follow other ladies as hostess, into the dining-room. Then, urged to proceed, she went down the steps with astonishing alacrity, but paused in the hall as if uncertain where to go next.

‘All these changes,' she said. ‘Quite bewildering. Perhaps Lucia has turned another room into the dining-room.'

‘No, ma'am, the same room,' said Grosvenor.

More shocks. There was a refectory-table where her own round table had been, and a bust of Beethoven on the chimneypiece. The walls were of apple-green, and instead of being profusely hung with Elizabeth's best water-colours, there was nothing on them but a sconce or two for electric light. She determined to eat not more than one mouthful of any dish that might be offered her, and conceal the rest below her knife and fork. She sat down, stubbing her toes against the rail that ran round the table, and gave a little squeal of anguish.

‘So stupid of me,' she said. ‘I'm not accustomed to this sort of table. Ah, I see. I must put my feet over the little railing. That will be quite comfortable.'

Lobster
à la Riseholme
was handed round, and a meditative silence followed in its wake, for who could help dwelling for a moment on the memory of how Elizabeth, unable to obtain the recipe by honourable means, stole it from Lucia's kitchen? She took a mouthful, and then, according to plan, hid the rest of it under her fork and fish-knife. But her mouth began to water for this irresistible delicacy, and she surreptitiously gobbled up the rest, and then with a wistful smile looked round the desecrated room.

‘An admirable shade of green,' said Mr Wyse, bowing to the walls. ‘Susan, we must memorize this for the time when we do up our little
salle à manger
.'

‘Begorra, it's the true Oirish colour,' said the Padre. ‘I canna mind me what was the way of it before.'

‘I can tell you, dear Padre,' said Elizabeth eagerly. ‘Biscuit-colour, such a favourite tint of mine, and some of my little paintings on the walls. Quite plain and homely. Benjy, dear, how naughty you are: hock always punishes you.'

‘Dear lady,' said Mr Wyse, ‘surely not such nectar as we are now enjoying. How I should like to know the vintage. Delicious!'

Elizabeth turned to Georgie.

‘You must be very careful of these treacherous spring days, Mr Georgie,' she said. ‘Shingles are terribly liable to return, and the second attack is always much worse than the first. People often lose their eyesight altogether.'

‘That's encouraging,' said Georgie.

Luckily Elizabeth thought that she had now sufficiently impressed on everybody what a searing experience it was to her to re-visit her ancestral home, and see the melancholy changes that had been wrought on it, and under the spell of the nectar her extreme acidity mellowed. The nectar served another purpose also: it bucked her up for the anti-maternal revelation which she had determined to make that very day. She walked very briskly about the garden after lunch. She tripped across the lawn to the
giardino segreto
: she made a swift tour of the kitchen-garden under her own steam, untowed by Benjy, and perceived that the ladies were regarding her with a faintly puzzled air: they were beginning to see what she meant them to see. Then with Diva she lightly descended the steps into the greenhouse and, diverted from her main purpose for the moment, felt herself bound to say a few words about Lucia's renovations in general, and the peach-trees in particular.

‘Poor things, they'll come to nothing,' she said. ‘I could have told dear hostess that, if she had asked me. You might as well plant cedars of Lebanon. And the dining-room, Diva! The colour of green apples, enough to give anybody indigestion before you begin! The glaring white paint in the hall! The garden-room! I feel that the most, and so does poor Benjy. I was prepared for something pretty frightful, but not as bad as this!'

‘Don't agree,' said Diva. ‘It's all beautiful. Should hardly have known it again. You'd got accustomed to see the house all dingy, Elizabeth, and smothered in cobwebs and your own water-colours and muck –'

That was sufficient rudeness for Elizabeth to turn her back on Diva, but it was for a further purpose that she whisked round and positively twinkled up those steep steps again. Diva gasped. For weeks now Elizabeth had leant on Benjy if there were steps to mount, and had walked with a slow and dignified gait, and all of a sudden she had resumed her nimble and rapid movement. And then the light broke. Diva felt she would burst unless she at once poured her interpretation of these
phenomena into some feminine ear, and she hurried out of the greenhouse nearly tripping up on the steps that Elizabeth had so lightly ascended.

The rest of the party had gathered again in the garden-room, and by some feminine intuition Diva perceived in the eyes of the other women the knowledge which had just dawned on her. Presently the Mapp-Flints said good-bye, and Mr Wyse, who, with the obtuseness of a man, had noticed nothing, was pressing Elizabeth to take the Royce and go for a drive. Then came the first-hand authentic disclosure.

‘So good for you,' said she, ‘but Benjy and I have promised ourselves a long walk. Lovely party, Lucia: some day you must come and see your old house. Just looked at your peach-trees: I hope you'll have quantities of fruit. Come along, Benjy, or there won't be time for our tramp. Good-bye, sweet garden-room.'

They went out, and instantly there took place a species of manoeuvre which partook of the nature of a conjuring trick and a conspiracy. Evie whispered something to her Padre, and he found that he had some urgent district-visiting to do: Susan had a quiet word with her husband, and he recollected that he must get off his letter to Contessa Amelia Faraglione by the next post and Lucia told Georgie that if he could come back in half an hour she would be at leisure to try that new duet. The four ladies therefore were left, and Evie and Diva, as soon as the door of the garden-room was shut, broke into a crisp, unrehearsed dialogue of alternate sentences, like a couple of clergymen intoning the Commination service.

‘She's given it up,' chanted Diva. ‘She nipped up those steep steps from the greenhouse, as if it was on the flat.'

‘But such a sell, isn't it,' cried Evie. ‘It
would
have been exciting. Ought we to say anything about it to her? She must feel terribly disappointed –'

‘Not a bit,' said Diva. ‘I don't believe she ever believed it. Wanted us to believe it: that's all. Most deceitful.'

‘And Kenneth had been going through the Churching of Women.'

‘And she had no end of drives in your motor, Susan. False pretences, I call it. You'd never have lent her it at all, unless –'

‘And all that nutritious honey from the Contessa.'

‘And I think she's taken in the old green skirt again, but the strips of tiger-skin make it hard to be certain.'

‘And I'm sure she was crocheting a baby-cap in white wool, and she must have pulled a lot of it out and begun again. She was wearing it.'

‘And while I think of it,' said Diva in parenthesis, ‘there'll be a fine mess of tiger-hairs on your dining-room carpet, Lucia. I saw clouds of them fly when she banged her foot.'

Susan Wyse had not had any chance at present of joining in this vindictive chant. Sometimes she had opened her mouth to speak, but one of the others had been quicker. At this point, as Diva and Evie were both a little out of breath, she managed to contribute.

‘I don't grudge her her drives,' she said, ‘but I do feel strongly about that honey. It was very special honey. My sister-in-law, the Contessa, took it daily when she was expecting her baby, and it weighed eleven pounds.'

‘Eleven pounds of honey? O dear me, that is a lot!' said Evie.

‘No, the baby –'

The chant broke out afresh.

‘And so rude about the sherry,' said Diva, ‘saying it was poison.'

‘And pretending not to know where the dining-room was.'

‘And saying that the colour of the walls gave her indigestion like green apples. She's enough to give anybody indigestion herself.'

The torrent spent itself: Lucia had been sitting with eyes half-closed and eyebrows drawn together as if trying to recollect something, and then took down a volume from her bookshelves of classical literature and rapidly turned over the pages. She appeared to find what she wanted, for she read on in silence a moment, and then replaced the book with a far-away sigh.

‘I was saying to Georgie the other day,' she said, ‘how marvellously modern Aristophanes was. I seemed to remember a scene in one of his plays – the
Thesmophoriazusae
– where a
somewhat similar situation occurred. A woman, a dear, kind creature really, of middle-age or a little more, had persuaded her friends (or thought she had) that she was going to have a baby. Such Attic wit – there is nothing in English like it. I won't quote the Greek to you, but the conclusion was that it was only a “wind-egg”. Delicious phrase, really untranslatable, but that is what it comes to. Shan't we all leave it at that? Poor dear Elizabeth! Just a wind-egg. So concise.'

She gave a little puff with her pursed lips, as if blowing the wind-egg away.

Rather awed by this superhuman magnanimity the conductors of the Commination service dispersed, and Lucia went into the dining-room to see if there was any serious deposit of tiger-hairs on her new carpet beside Elizabeth's place. Certainly there were some, though not quite the clouds of which Diva had spoken. Probably then that new pretty decoration would not be often seen again since it was moulting so badly.

‘Everything seems to go wrong with the poor soul,' thought Lucia in a spasm of most pleasurable compassion, ‘owing to her deplorable lack of foresight. She bought Siriami without ascertaining whether it paid dividends: she tried to make us all believe that she was going to have a baby without ascertaining whether there was the smallest reason to suppose she would, and with just the same blind recklessness she trimmed the old green skirt with tiger without observing how heavily it would moult when she moved.'