Lucia Victrix (67 page)

‘'Pon my soul, amazingly stupid of us to have come so early,' he said, closing the dining-room door behind him. ‘I told Liz we should be too early – ah, our clocks were fast. Don't let me interrupt you; charming flowers, and, dear me, what a handsome suit. Just the colour of my wife's dress. However, that's neither here nor there. What I should like to urge on you is to persuade your wife to take advantage of Elizabeth's willingness to become Mayoress, for the good of the town. She's willing, I gather, to sacrifice her time and her leisure for that. Mrs Pillson and Mrs Mapp-Flint would be an alliance indeed. But Elizabeth feels that her offer can't remain open indefinitely, and she rather expected to have heard from your wife to-day.'

‘But didn't you tell me, Major,' asked Georgie, ‘that your wife knew nothing about your letter to me? I understood that it was only your opinion that if properly approached –'

There was a tap at the door, and Mr Wyse entered. He was dressed in a brand new suit, never before seen in Tilling, of sapphire blue velvet, with a soft pleated shirt, a sapphire solitaire and bright blue socks. The two looked like two middle-aged male mannequins.

Mr Wyse began bowing.

‘Mr Georgie!' he said. ‘Major Benjy! The noise of voices. It occurred to me that perhaps we men were assembling here according to that pretty Italian custom, for a glass of vermouth, so my wife went straight out to the garden-room. I am afraid we are some minutes early. The Royce makes nothing of the steep hill from Starling Cottage.'

Georgie was disappointed at the ruby velvet not being the only sartorial sensation of the evening, but he took it very well.

‘Good evening,' he said. ‘Well, I do call that a lovely suit. I
was just finishing the flowers, when Major Benjy popped in. Let us go out to the garden-room, where we shall find some sherry.'

Once again the door opened.

‘Eh, here be all the laddies,' said the Padre. ‘Mr Wyse; a handsome costume, sir. Just the colour of the dress wee wifie's donned for this evening. She's ganged awa' to the garden-room. I wanted a bit word wi' ye, Mr Pillson, and your parlourmaid told me you were here.'

‘I'm afraid we must go out now to the garden-room, Padre,' said Georgie, rather fussed. ‘They'll all be waiting for us.'

It was difficult to get them to move, for each of the men stood aside to let the others pass, and thus secure a word with Georgie. Eventually the Church unwillingly headed the procession, followed by the Army, lured by the thought of sherry, and Mr Wyse deftly closed the dining-room door again and stood in front of it.

‘A word, Mr Georgie,' he said. ‘I had the honour yesterday to write a note to your wife about a private matter – not private from you, of course – and I wondered whether she had spoken to you about it. I have since ascertained from my dear Susan –'

The door opened again, and bumped against his heels and the back of his head with a dull thud. Foljambe's face looked in.

‘Beg your pardon, sir,' she said. ‘Thought I heard you go.'

‘We must follow the others,' said Georgie. ‘Lucia will wonder what's happened to us.'

The wives looked inquiringly into the faces of their husbands as they filed into the garden-room to see if there was any news. Georgie shook hands with the women and Lucia with the men. He saw how well his suit matched Elizabeth's gown, and Mr Wyse's might have been cut from the same piece as that of the Padre's wife. Another brilliant point of colour was furnished by Susan Wyse's budgerigar. The wing that had been flipped off yesterday had been re-stitched, and the head, as Diva had predicted, had been stuffed and completed the bird. She wore this notable decoration as a centrepiece on her ample bosom. Would it be tactful, wondered Georgie, to
admire it, or would it be tearing open old wounds again? But surely when Susan displayed her wound so conspicuously, she would be disappointed if he appeared not to see it. He gave her a glass of sherry and moved aside with her.

‘Perfectly charming, Mrs Wyse,' he said, looking pointedly at it. ‘Lovely! Most successful!'

He had done right; Susan's great watery smile spread across her face.

‘So glad you like it,' she said, ‘and since I've worn it, Mr Georgie, I've felt comforted for Blue Birdie. He seems to be with me still. A very strong impression. Quite psychical.'

‘Very interesting and touching,' said Georgie sympathetically.

‘Is it not? I am hoping to get into rapport with him again. His pretty sweet ways! And may I congratulate you, too? Such a lovely suit!'

‘Lucia's present to me,' said Georgie, ‘though I chose it.'

‘What a coincidence!' said Susan. ‘Algernon's new suit is my present to him and he chose it. There are brain-waves everywhere, Mr Georgie, beyond the farthest stars.'

Foljambe announced dinner. Never before had conversation, even at Lucia's table, maintained so serious and solid a tone. The ladies in particular, though the word Mayoress was never mentioned, vied with each other in weighty observations bearing on municipal matters, in order to show the deep interest they took in them. It was as if they even engaged on a self-imposed viva voce examination to exhibit their qualifications for the unmentioned post. They addressed their answers to Lucia and of each other they were highly critical.

‘No, dear Evie,' said Elizabeth, ‘I cannot share your views about girl-guides. Boy-scouts I whole-heartedly support. All that drill teaches them discipline, but the best discipline for girls is to help mother at home. Cooking, housework, lighting the fire, father's slippers. Don't you agree, dear hostess?'

‘Eh, Mistress Mapp-Flint,' said the Padre, strongly upholding his wife. ‘Ye havena' the tithe of my Evie's experience among the bairns of the parish. Half the ailments o' the lassies come from being kept at home without enough exercise and air
and chance to fend for themselves. Easy to have too much of mother's apron-strings, and as fur father's slippers I disapprove of corporal punishment for the young of whatever sex.'

‘Oh, Padre, how could you think I meant that!' exclaimed Elizabeth.

‘And as for letting a child light a fire,' put in Susan, ‘that's most dangerous. No match-box should ever be allowed within a child's reach. I must say too, that I wish the fire-brigade in Tilling was better organized and more efficient. If once a fire broke out here the whole town would be burned to the ground.'

‘Dear Susan, is it possible you haven't heard that there was a fire in Ford Place last week? Fancy! And you're strangely in error about the brigade's efficiency, for they were there in three minutes from the time the alarm was given, and the fire was extinguished in five minutes more.'

‘Lucia, what is really wanted in Tilling,' said Susan, ‘is better lighting of the streets. Coming home sometimes in the evening my Royce has to crawl down Porpoise Street.'

‘More powerful lamps to your car would make that all right, dear,' said Elizabeth. ‘Not a very great expense. The paving of the streets, to my mind, wants the most immediate attention. I nearly fell down the other day, stepping in a great hole. The roads, too: the road opposite my house is little better than a snipe-bog. Again and again I have written to the
Hampshire Argus
about it.'

Mr Wyse bowed across the table to her.

‘I regret to say I have missed seeing your letters,' he said. ‘Very careless of me. Was there one last week?'

Evie emitted the mouse-like squeak which denoted intense private amusement.

‘I've missed them, too,' she said. ‘I expect we all have. In any case, Elizabeth, Grebe is outside the parish boundaries. Nothing to do with Tilling. It's a County Council road you will find if you look at a map. Now the overcrowding in the town itself, Lucia, is another matter which does concern us. I have it very much at heart, as anybody must have who knows anything about it. And then there are the postal deliveries. Shocking. I wrote a letter the other day –'

This was one of the subjects which Susan Wyse had specially mugged up. By leaning forward and putting an enormous elbow on the table she interposed a mountain of healthy animal tissue between Evie and Lucia, and the mouse was obliterated behind the mountain.

‘And only two posts a day, Lucia,' she said. ‘You will find it terribly inconvenient to get only two and the second is never anything but circulars. There's not a borough in England so ill served. I'm told that if a petition is sent to the Postmaster-General signed by fifty per cent of the population he is bound by law to give us a third delivery. Algernon and I would be only too happy to get up this petition –'

Algernon from the other side of the table suddenly interrupted her.

‘Susan, take care!' he cried. ‘Your budgerigar: your raspberry soufflé!'

He was too late. The budgerigar dropped into the middle of Susan's bountifully supplied plate. She took it out, dripping with hot raspberry juice and wrapped it in her napkin, moaning softly to herself. The raspberry juice stained it red, as if Blue Birdie had been sat on again, and Foljambe very tactfully handed a plate to Susan on which she deposited it. After so sad and irrelevant an incident, it was hard to get back to high topics, and the Padre started on a lower level.

‘A cosy little establishment will Mistress Diva Plaistow be running presently,' he said. ‘She tells me that the opening of it will be the first function of our new Mayor. A fine send-off indeed.'

A simultaneous suspicion shot through the minds of the candidates present that Diva (incredible as it seemed) might be in the running. Like vultures they swooped on the absent prey.

‘A little too cosy for my tastes,' said Elizabeth. ‘If all the tables she means to put into her tea-room were full, sardines in a tin wouldn't be the word. Not to mention that the occupants of two of the tables would be being kippered up the chimney, and two others in a gale every time the door was opened. And are you going to open it officially, dear Lucia?'

‘Certainly not,' said Lucia. ‘I told her I would drink the first cup of tea with pleasure, but as Mrs Pillson, not as Mayor.'

‘Poor Diva can't
make
tea,' squeaked Evie. ‘She never could. It's either hot water or pure tannin.'

‘And she intends to make all the fancy pastry herself,' said Susan sorrowfully. ‘Much better to stick to bread and butter and a plain cake. Very ambitious, I call it, but nowadays Diva's like that. More plans for all we know.'

‘And quite a reformer,' said Elizabeth. ‘She talks about a quicker train service to London. She knows a brother-in-law of one of the directors. Of course the thing is as good as done with a word from Diva. It looks terribly like paranoia coming on.'

The ladies left. Major Benjy drunk off his port in a great hurry, so as to get a full glass when it came round again.

‘A very good glass of port,' he said. ‘Well, I don't mind if I fill up. The longer I live with my Liz, Pillson, the more I am astonished at her masculine grasp of new ideas.'

‘My Susan's remarks about an additional postal delivery and lighting of the streets showed a very keen perception of the reforms of which our town most stands in need,' said Algernon. ‘Her judgment is never at fault. I have often been struck –'

The Padre, speaking to Major Benjy, raised his voice for Georgie to hear and thumped the table.

‘Wee wifie's energy is unbounded,' he said. ‘Often I say to her: “Spare yourself a bitty” I've said, and always she's replied “Heaven fits the back to the burden” quo' she, and if there's more work and responsibility to be undertaken, Evie's ready for it.'

‘You mustn't let her overtax herself, Padre,' said Benjy with great earnestness. ‘She's got her hands over full already. Not so young as she was.'

‘Eh, that's what ails all the ladies of Tilling,' retorted the Padre, ‘an' she'll be younger than many I could mention. An abounding vitality. If they made me Lord Archbishop to-morrow, she'd be a mother in Israel to the province, and no mistake.'

This was too much for Benjy. It would have been a gross dereliction of duty not to let loose his withering powers of satire.

‘No no, Padre,' he said. ‘Tilling can't spare you. Canterbury must find someone else.'

‘Eh, well, and if the War Office tries to entice you away, Major, you must say no. That'll be a bargain. But the point of my observation was that my Evie is aye ready and willing for any call that may come to her. That's what I'm getting at.'

‘Ha, ha, Padre; let me know when you've got it, and then I'll talk to you. Well, if the port is standing idle in front of you –'

Georgie rose. He had had enough of these unsolicited testimonials, and when Benjy became satirical it was a symptom that he should have no more port.

‘I think it's time we got to our bridge,' he said. ‘Lucia will scold me if I keep you here too long.'

They marched in a compact body to the garden-room, where Lucia had been keeping hopeful Mayoresses at bay with music, and two tables were instantly formed. Georgie and Elizabeth, rubies, played against the sapphires, Mr Wyse and Evie, and the other table was drab in comparison. The evening ended unusually late, and it was on the stroke of midnight when the three pairs of guests, unable to get a private word with either of their hosts, moved sadly away like a vanquished army. The Royce conveyed the Wyses to Porpoise Street, just round the corner, with Susan, faintly suggesting Salome, holding the plate with the blood-stained handkerchief containing the budgerigar; a taxi that had long been ticking conveyed the Mapp-Flints to the snipe-bog, and two pairs of galoshes took the Padre and his wife to the Vicarage.

Lucia's tactful letters were received next morning. Mr Wyse thought that all was not yet lost, though it surprised him that Lucia had not taken Susan aside last night and implored her to be Mayoress. Diva, on the other hand, with a more correct estimate of the purport of Lucia's tact, was instantly sure that all was lost, and exclaiming, ‘Drat it, so that's that,' gave Lucia's note to Paddy to worry, and started out for her morning's shopping. There were plenty of absorbing interests to distract her. Susan, with the budgerigar cockade in her hat, looked out of the window of the Royce, but to Diva's amazement
the colour of the bird's plumage had changed; it was flushed with red like a stormy sunset with patches of blue sky behind. Could Susan, for some psychical reason, have dyed it? … Georgie and Lucia were approaching from Mallards, but Diva, after that tactful note, did not want to see her friend till she had thought of something pretty sharp to say. Turning towards the High Street she bumped baskets sharply with Elizabeth.