The Complete Mapp & Lucia (150 page)

Elizabeth was doubtful as to what to do next. In the course of their married life, there had been occasional squalls, and she had tried sarcasm and vituperation with but small success. Benjy-boy had answered her back or sulked, and she was left with a sense of imperfect mastery. This policy of being hurt was a new one, and since the first signal had not been noticed she hoisted a second one and sniffed.

“Got a bit of a cold?” he asked pacifically.

No answer, and he turned round.

“Why, what’s wrong?” he said.

“And there’s a
jolie chose
to ask,” said Elizabeth with strangled shrillness. “You tell me I want you to catch pneumonia, and then ask what’s wrong. You wound me deeply.”

“Well, I got annoyed with your nagging at me that I couldn’t count. You implied I was squiffy just because I had a jolly good dinner. And there were fifty-one candles.”

“It doesn’t matter if there were fifty-one million,” cried Elizabeth. “What matters is that you spoke to me very cruelly. I planned to make you so happy, Benjy, by giving up my best room to you and all sorts of things, and all the reward I get is to be told one day that I ought to have let Lucia lead me by the nose and almost the next that I hoped you would die of pneumonia.”

He came across to the window.

“Well, I didn’t mean that,” he said. “You’re sarcastic, too, at times and say monstrously disagreeable things to me.”

“Oh, that’s a wicked lie,” said Elizabeth violently. “Never have I spoken disagreeably to you.
Jamais!
Firmly sometimes, but always for your good.
Toujours!
Never another thought in my head but your true happiness.”

Benjy was rather alarmed: hysterics seemed imminent.

“Yes, girlie, I know that,” he said soothingly. “Nothing the matter? Nothing wrong?”

She opened her mouth once or twice like a gasping fish, and recovered her self-control.

“Nothing, dear, that I can tell you yet,” she said. “Don’t ask me. But never say I want you to get pneumonia again. It hurt me cruelly. There! All over! Look, there’s Mr. Georgie coming out in this pelting rain. Do you know, I like his beard, though I couldn’t tell him so, except for that odd sort of sheen on it, like the colours on cold boiled beef. But I daresay that’ll pass off. Oh, let’s put up the window and ask him how many candles there were… Good morning, Mr. Georgie. What a lovely, no, disgusting morning, but what a lovely evening yesterday! Do you happen to know for certain how many candles there were on Lucia’s beautiful cake?”

“Yes, fifty-one,” said Georgie, “though she’s only fifty. She put an extra one, so that she may get used to being fifty-one before she is.”

“What a pretty idea! So like her,” said Elizabeth, and shut the window again.

Benjy with great tact pretended not to have heard, for he had no wish to bring back those hysterical symptoms. A sensational surmise as to the cause of them had dimly occurred to him, but surely it was impossible. So tranquillity being restored, they sat together “ever so cosily,” said Elizabeth, by the fire (which meant that she appropriated his hip-bath chair and got nearly all the heat) and began plotting out the campaign for the coming municipal elections.

“Better just get quietly to work, love,” said she, “and not say much about it at first, for Lucia’s sadly capable of standing, too, if she knows you are.”

“I’m afraid I told her last night,” said Benjy.

“Oh, what a blabbing boy! Well, it can’t be helped now. Let’s hope it’ll put no jealous ambitions into her head. Now,
l’Économie
is the right slogan for you. Anything more reckless than the way the Corporation has been spending money I can’t conceive. Just as if Tilling was Eldorado. Think of pulling down all those pretty little slums by the railway and building new houses! Fearfully expensive, and spoiling the town: taking all its quaintness away.”

“And then there’s that new road they’re making that skirts the town,” said Benjy, “to relieve the congestion in the High Street.”

“Just so,” chimed in Elizabeth. “They’d relieve it much more effectually if they didn’t allow Susan to park her car, positively across the street, wherever she pleases, and as long as she pleases. It’s throwing money about like that which sends up the rates by leaps and bounds; why, they’re nearly double of what they were when I inherited Mallards from sweet Aunt Caroline. And nothing to shew for it except a road that nobody wants and some ugly new houses instead of those picturesque old cottages. They may be a little damp, perhaps, but, after all, there was a dreadful patch of damp in my bedroom last year, and I didn’t ask the Town Council to rebuild Mallards at the public expense. And I’m told all those new houses have got a bathroom in which the tenants will probably keep poultry. Then, they say, there are the unemployed. Rubbish, Benjy! There’s plenty of work for everybody, only those lazy fellows prefer the dole and idleness. We’ve got to pinch and squeeze so that the so-called poor may live in the lap of luxury. If I didn’t get a good let for Mallards every year we shouldn’t be able to live in it at all, and you may take that from me. Economy! That’s the ticket! Talk to them like that and you’ll head the poll.”

A brilliant notion struck Benjy as he listened to this impassioned speech. Though he liked the idea of holding public office and of the dignity it conferred, he knew that his golf would be much curtailed by his canvassing, and, if he was elected, by his duties. Moreover, he could not talk in that vivid and vitriolic manner…

He jumped up.

“Upon my word, Liz, I wish you’d stand instead of me,” he said. “You’ve got the gift of the gab; you can put things clearly and forcibly, and you’ve got it all at your fingers’ ends. Besides, you’re the owner of Mallards, and these rates and taxes press harder on you than on me. What do you say to that?”

The idea had never occurred to her before: she wondered why. How she would enjoy paying calls on all the numerous householders who felt the burden of increasing rates, and securing their votes for her programme of economy! She saw herself triumphantly heading the poll. She saw herself sitting in the Council Room, the only woman present, with sheaves of statistics to confute this spendthrift policy. Eloquence, compliments, processions to church on certain official occasions, a status, a doctorial-looking gown, position, power. All these enticements beckoned her, and from on high, she seemed to look down on poor Lucia as if at the bottom of a disused well, fifty years old, playing duets with Georgie, and gabbling away about all the Aristophanes she read and the callisthenics she practised, and the principles of psychic bidding, and the advice she gave her broker, while Councillor Mapp-Flint was as busy with the interests of the Borough. A lesson for the self-styled Queen of Tilling.

“Really, dear,” she said, “I hardly know what to say. Such a new idea to me, for all this was the future I planned for you, and how I’ve lain awake at night thinking of it. I must adjust my mind to such a revolution of our plans. But there is something in what you suggest. That house to house canvassing: perhaps a woman is more suited to that than a man. A cup of tea, you know, with the mother and a peep at baby. It’s true again that as owner of Mallards, I have a solider stake in property than you. Dear me, yes, I begin to see your point of view. Sound, as a man’s always is. Then again what you call the gift of the gab—such a rude expression—perhaps forcible words do come more easily to me, and they’ll be needful indeed when it comes to fighting the spendthrifts. But first you would have to promise to help me, for you know how I shall depend on you. I hope my health will stand the strain, and I’ll gladly work myself to the bone in such a cause. Better to wear oneself out than rust in the scabbard.”

“You’re cut out for the job,” said Benjy enthusiastically. “As for wearing yourself out, hubby won’t permit that!”

Once more Elizabeth recalled her bright visions of power and the reduction of rates. The prospect was irresistible.

“I give you your way as usual, Benjy-boy,” she said. “How I spoil you! Such a bully! What?
Dejeuner
already, Withers? Hasn’t the morning flown?”

The morning had flown with equal speed for Lucia. She had gone to her office after breakfast, the passage to which had now been laid with india-rubber felting, so that no noise of footsteps outside could distract her when she was engaged in financial operations. This insured perfect tranquillity, unless it so happened that she was urgently wanted, in which case Grosvenor’s tap on the door startled her very much since she had not heard her approach; this risk, however, was now minimised because she had a telephone extension to the office. To-day there were entries to be made in the ledger, for she had sold her Southern Prefs at a scandalous profit, and there was a list of recommendations from that intelligent Mammoncash for the re-investment of the capital released.

She drew her chair up to the fire to study this. High-priced shares did not interest her much: you got so few for your money. “The sort of thing I want,” she thought, “is quantities of low-priced shares, like those angelic Siriamis, which nearly doubled their value in a few weeks,” but the list contained nothing to which Mammoncash thought this likely to happen. He even suggested that she might do worse than put half her capital into gilt-edged stock. He could not have made a duller suggestion: Dame Catherine Winterglass, Lucia felt sure, would not have touched Government Loans with the end of a barge-pole. Then there was “London Transport ‘C.’” Taking a long view, Mammoncash thought that in a year’s time there should be a considerable capital appreciation…

Lucia found her power of concentration slipping from her, and her thoughts drifted away to her party last night. She had observed that Benjy had seldom any wine in his glass for more than a moment, and that Elizabeth’s eye was on him. Though she had forsworn any interest in such petty concerns, food for serious thought had sprung out of this, for, getting expansive towards the end of dinner, he had told her that he was standing for the Town Council. He and Elizabeth both thought it was his duty. “It’ll mean a lot of work,” he said, “but thank God, I’m not afraid of that, and something must be done to check this monstrous municipal extravagance. Less golf for me, Mrs. Lucas, but duty comes before pleasure. I shall hope to call on you before long and ask your support.”

Lucia had not taken much interest in this project at the time, but now ideas began to bubble in her brain. She need not consider the idea of his being elected—for who in his senses could conceivably vote for him?—and she found herself in violent opposition to the programme of economy which he had indicated. Exactly the contrary policy recommended itself: more work must somehow be found for the unemployed: the building of decent houses for the poor ought to be quickened up. There was urgent and serious work to be done, and, as she gazed meditatively at the fire, personal and ambitious day-dreams began to form themselves. Surely there was a worthy career here for an energetic and middle-aged widow. Then the telephone rang and she picked it off the table. Georgie.

“Such a filthy day: no chance of its clearing,” he said. “Do come and lunch and we’ll play duets.”

“Yes, Georgie, that will be lovely. What about my party last night?”

“Perfect. And weren’t they all astonished when I told them about my shingles. Major Benjy was a bit squiffy. Doesn’t get a chance at home.”

“I rather like to see people a little, just a little squiffy at my expense,” observed Lucia. “It makes me feel I’m being a good hostess. Any news?”

“I passed there an hour ago,” said Georgie, “and she suddenly threw the window up and asked me how many candles there were on your cake, and when I said there were fifty-one she banged it down again quite sharply.”

“No! I wonder why she wanted to know that and didn’t like it when you told her,” said Lucia, intrigued beyond measure, and forgetting that such gossip could not be worth a moment’s thought.

“Can’t imagine. I’ve been puzzling over it,” said Georgie.

Lucia recollected her principles.

“Such a triviality in any case,” she said, “whatever the explanation may be. I’ll be with you at one-thirty. And I’ve got something very important to discuss with you. Something quite new: you can’t guess.”

“My dear, how exciting! More money?”

“Probably less for all of us if it comes off,” said Lucia enigmatically. “But I must get back to my affairs. I rather think, from my first glance at the report, that there ought to be capital appreciation in Transport ‘C’.”

“Transport by sea?” asked Georgie.

“No, the other sort of sea. A. B. C.”

“Those tea-shops?” asked the intelligent Georgie.

“No, trams, buses, tubes.”

She rang off, but the moment afterwards so brilliant an idea struck her that she called him up again.

“Georgie: about the candles. I’m sure I’ve got it. Elizabeth believed that there were fifty. That’s a clue for you.”

She rang off again, and meditated furiously on the future.

Georgie ran to the door when Lucia arrived and opened it himself before Foljambe could get there.

“—and Benjy said there were fifty-one and she thought he wasn’t in a state to count properly,” he said all in one breath. “Come in, and tell me at once about the other important thing. Lunch is ready. Is it about Benjy?”

Georgie at once perceived that Lucia was charged with weighty matter. She was rather overwhelming in these humours: sometimes he wished he had a piece of green baize to throw over her as over a canary, when it will not stop singing. (“Foljambe, fetch Mrs. Lucas’s baize,” he thought to himself.) “Yes, indirectly about him, and directly about the elections to the Town Council. I think it’s my duty to stand, Georgie, and when I see my duty clearly, I do it. Major Benjy is standing, you see; he told me so last night, and he’s all out for the reduction of rates and taxes—”

“So am I,” said Georgie.