Au Reservoir E-Book

Guy Fraser-Sampson

• Herausgeber: Elliott & Thompson
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Seitenzahl: 434

Beschreibung

The final part of Guy Fraser-Sampson's trilogy of sequels to E.F. Benson's hugely popular Mapp and Lucia series,Au Reservoir finds the residents of Tilling on fine form.The War has wrought great changes, and Lucia struggles to come to terms with rationing, exchange controls and, worst of all, a Labour Government. While Georgie and Olga hobnob with the stars in London, Lucia comforts herself with the thought that a title would nicely round off a life of dedicated charitable giving. 'Dame Lucia' does have a certain ring to it. However, even Lucia's best-laid plans are not guaranteed success, especially with the redoubtable Mapp poised for any opportunity to frustrate them. So determined is she finally to gain the upper hand that she even resorts to military strategy under the slightly less than expert guidance of her husband, Major Benjy.Perfect reading for followers of Benson's original novels and sure to be equally loved by P.G. Wodehouse fans, this is a pitch-perfect and deliciously enjoyable social satire of an England long gone but not forgotten.

Leseprobe

Au Reservoir

A Mapp and Lucia novel

Guy Fraser-Sampson

Chapter 1

Mrs Emmeline Pillson stood outside Tilling railway station and calmly regarded her chauffeur, Cadman, who had touched his cap on her arrival and placed her suitcase in the boot of the Rolls-Royce. Now he opened the door and looked at her expectantly. Having calmly regarded him, she turned, for it was a fine sunny day, and calmly regarded in turn the road rising the short distance into the old walled town, the tower of the church clearly visible above the rooftops, and the flower beds on each side of the station approach. These owed their very existence to her, both in her capacity as Mayor – since she had championed their creation – and as benefactor – since she it was who paid for the gardener to weed and water them during the summer months, thus regally overriding the pettifogging objections of those on her town council who had looked at each other doubtfully and rumbled mutinously about another tuppence on the rates.

Having done quite enough calm regarding for the moment, she came to a decision.

‘Thank you, Cadman, but I believe I shall walk,’ she said languidly. ‘It is such a lovely day.’

‘Very good, ma’am,’ that worthy retainer replied and, touching his cap once more, climbed into the gleaming machine and set it in motion towards Mallards, by far the finest house in what was by common consent the finest town in all England. Since consent was far from common among the denizens of Tilling, such accord was notable. In particular, it was about the only thing upon which Mrs Pillson, commonly referred to as Lucia, and her deadly rival Mrs Mapp-Flint, commonly referred to as Mapp, had ever agreed.

Lucia’s steady tread carried her towards the Landgate; though it was not the most direct route to Mallards, which lay beyond the church, it was the most appealing, and she was well known for her aesthetic sensibility. For it was she who kept alive the cultural flame in Tilling almost single-handed, what with her Dante lessons in the garden during the summer months, her historical tableaux vivants and her carefully rehearsed impromptu evening concerts (self-deprecatingly described as ‘po’ di mu’, which term would in turn be expanded by an explanation for those who chose to enquire, and frequently also for those who did not, that it was of course an abbreviation of un po’ di musica, for Lucia’s facility in the Italian language was widely praised, not least by herself).

It was in fact her sympathy with all things Italian that had given rise to her own name. Her late husband’s name had been Philip Lucas, and so it had seemed natural for he to become known as Pepino, and she Lucia. She reflected briefly upon dear Pepino as she paused by the observation platform, which she had endowed some hundred yards or so inside the Landgate, and gazed out over the cricket flats that lay below, outside the town wall. In truth this was a quite unremarkable stretch of reclaimed marshland, which in addition to the cricket pitch also bore a bowling green and a car park for the charabanc parties that increasingly had been returning to Tilling since the end of the war. However, there were two reasons why she always paused at this point and looked contemplatively out at the expanse below, and both of them were compelling.

The first was that, should anyone pass within earshot, they would hear her dreamily say, ‘Ah, Drake, how noble,’ while watching, trancelike, the measured stamp of Elizabethan halberdiers marching off to deter the dastardly Spaniards, passing their Admiral calmly finishing his game of bowls, before sighing and dragging herself with difficulty back to the present day disadvantages of rationing, power shortages and, worst of all, a Labour Government.

The second was that after the short but hard climb from the station, Lucia would now be short of breath, and this brief but deeply meaningful sojourn with the glorious past (for had she not played Queen Elizabeth in many a pageant?) gave her ample chance to regain it so that she might toss the customary ‘Any news?’ to any acquaintance upon whom she might chance during the remaining, more level, part of her journey without being seen to gasp in an unladylike fashion, as Elizabeth Mapp-Flint was wont to do these days. Lucia had resolutely inhabited her mid-thirties for at least the last two decades, having previously lingered reluctantly for some time in her late twenties; perhaps, she wondered, she might at last safely venture upon a fortieth birthday party?

Pepino had been her soulmate for all the years in which they had lived in Riseholme and before that in London, while fulfilling what Lucia saw as his essential objective, namely amassing enough of a fortune that she would be entirely absolved from ever having to undertake the slightest menial task for the rest of her life. He had also shared her cultural interests, writing heartfelt poems on subjects such as ‘Loneliness’, which were collected and published at Ye Signe of Ye Daffodil – a private press in Riseholme financed entirely, and most generously, by Pepino himself.

He had also shared her musical tastes, adopting an expression of deep spiritual catharsis as her fingers roamed over the first movement of the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata. The following movements she eschewed, proclaiming them of slightly lesser quality; besides, they went very much more quickly and the divine Beethoven’s soulful depths could clearly be enjoyed all the more languorously at adagio sostenuto than at allegretto, let alone the horrors of presto agitato.

Best of all, Pepino’s own fingers never sought to roam anywhere at all, whether at presto agitato or otherwise, and in this as in everything he proved the perfect husband, leaving her mercifully entirely free from any attentions of an unwelcome nature.

Her current husband, Georgie Pillson, had been her devoted admirer for all the many, many years, during which he had trodden the boards as Riseholme’s dashing young man, a part played all the more convincingly in advancing years with the aid of hair dye and a toupee. He was the bass part to her treble during piano duets, the Drake to her Elizabeth during pageants and tableaux vivants, and her staunchest supporter for almost all of the time they had known each other.

The ‘almost’ was important though, for while only occasionally had Georgie been tempted into the mutiny of independent thought and action, it had always been in the company of his own soulmate, the opera singer Olga Bracely.

In respect of Olga, Lucia maintained a guarded neutrality, regarding her in much the same way that the newspapers now showed soldiers gazing at each other suspiciously across barbed wire barriers in different zones of Berlin. The possibility of physical infidelity worried her not at all, for she was well aware that Georgie was as blissfully free from such tedious urges as had been Pepino; had she not been very sure of that fact, she would never have consented to marry him in the first place. More worrisome was that periodically, as Georgie was drawn back into Olga’s orbit, he would begin to exhibit troubling signs of gratuitous enjoyment of life, such as dancing to gramophone records, partying the night away with Olga’s friends in London and, worst of all, listening to Wagner.

Lucia was prepared magnanimously to agree that people should be allowed to enjoy themselves in moderation. Yet such behaviour should be strictly limited in both time and scope. The most seemly time was clearly when Lucia was present herself as the sparkling fount of such pleasures, and the most obvious scope was to be found in the many diversions she provided for her friends, be it her po’ di mu, her cucumber salad, her tableaux vivants, her gracious patronage of the Tilling art show and summer fête, or her improving lectures on a whole variety of topics which she usually delivered herself from a sheaf of closely handwritten notes, gazing disapprovingly over her glasses at Major Benjamin Flint, late of His Majesty’s Indian Army, as he snored, entirely unimproved, in the front row.

To the gramophone Lucia would never be reconciled. All her friends in Riseholme, with the notable exception of Olga, who had gone so far as to purchase a house there and become a rival social magnet, had the good grace to hide their gramophone away when Lucia visited, for it was well known that she could not bring herself to set foot inside a house which contained one. Yet Olga had not only set hers playing at what she called a ‘romp’, but had drawn Georgie into dancing tangos and jitterbugs (Lucia still shuddered at the very thought) with every appearance of enjoyment.

Georgie had at times had the temerity to suggest that, as Lucia did not enjoy Olga’s parties, it made sense for her to stay at home while he attended alone, and though she had received such remarks with a silvery laugh which she was sure must quite adequately have conveyed her scorn and derision, this had obviously been lost upon Georgie, so strongly was he under dear Olga’s sway. So deeply lost upon him, in fact, that not only did he frequently attend her parties on his own but weekends away to boot. Now that the war was over, there was even talk of Olga’s circle reviving their regular jaunts to Le Touquet.

To rub salt into the wound, Lucia harboured dark suspicions that Olga’s own particular Hellfire Club included within its membership many of those whom Lucia had been lengthily and unsuccessfully importuning to come and address Tilling as part of her lecture programme. Could Olga’s friend ‘Noël’, for example, be the egregious Noël Coward, who had refused no less than five invitations, thus visiting extreme social embarrassment upon her?

The fact that the embarrassment had arisen only because, goaded by Elizabeth Mapp-Flint, she had professed to a deep and long-standing acquaintance with Noël Coward shortly before the unspeakable Mapp had stumbled upon his most recent reply (‘Stop pestering me, you wretched woman!’) served only to compound her sense of grievance. In the circumstances, her exasperated reaction was, she felt sure, entirely justified. ‘Really, Georgie!’ she had exclaimed, placing the latest missive most unwisely on to her desk rather than consigning it to the wastepaper basket where it would have lain undiscovered. ‘You would have thought that the dreadful little man would welcome an opportunity to become better known.’

Similarly, what if ‘dear Johnnie’ was actually Olga’s way of referring to that same John Gielgud who had spurned her offer to enlighten the glitterati of Tilling with his thoughts on Shakespearean acting? She had been forced to deputise herself, the derisive snorts of the Mapp-Flints serving to draw from her a performance of Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene which was still the stuff of Tilling legend, though a legend usually discussed only when neither Lucia nor Georgie was present.

As to her long-standing aversion to Wagner, had Lucia ever been taxed with the need to justify it, she would simply have stared glacially at her interlocutor and responded that clearly he or she had never sat through even a small part of the Ring Cycle.

As she turned into the High Street she chanced upon the Mapp-Flints and Diva Plaistow, who were standing outside Twistevant’s, shopping baskets worn on the left forearm in proper Tilling fashion. Seeing her, Major Benjy raised his hat and said, ‘Ah, dear lady, a welcome return.’ His wife attempted to show similar pleasure at Lucia’s reappearance but succeeded only in baring her teeth, which gave an impression of carnivorous anticipation rather at odds with her ejaculation of ‘Joy, joy,’ uttered while lightly clapping her hands.

‘Hello, Lucia, any news?’ asked Diva.

‘Just back from Riseholme, Diva dear. Rather fatiguing, but one must make the effort. All one’s old friends there are always so happy to see one again.’

As so often with Lucia, she was being a trifle economical with the truth. The passing years had taken their toll on ‘one’s old friends’. The Antrobus sisters still lived together in their late mother’s home, resolutely girlish as they lurched through middle age and out the other side, but they were about all that was left of her old life. Robert Quantock had been claimed by the grim reaper just before the war, and Daisy had gone to live with a cousin in the Lake District. Colonel and Mrs Boucher (formerly Weston) were long gone too.

So it was that Lucia’s occasional visits to Riseholme now took the form of staying at the Ambermere Arms and walking repeatedly around the village green in the hope of being recognised and greeted as the long-lost friend that she was. When passers-by resolutely declined to accord her such recognition, despite her fixed smile of long-lost friendly greeting, she sat outside the Hurst on a canvas stool, sketching her former home while looking sad yet winsome. Once she had exhausted the dramatic possibilities afforded by sadness and winsomeness she returned to Tilling. Politeness to one’s audience therefore made it necessary to employ a little dramatic licence to embellish what might understandably, but misleadingly, appear a somewhat drab episode in an otherwise rewarding existence.

‘And what of dear Mr Georgie?’ Elizabeth Mapp-Flint enquired.

‘Up in town, Elizabeth, with Olga Bracely,’ Lucia enlightened her as Mr and Mrs Wyse joined the party, Mr Wyse raising his hat and bowing gravely. ‘The opera once or twice, I believe, and an exhibition at the Royal Academy. They did press me to join them, of course, but sadly it just wasn’t possible given my busy schedule.’

‘Not too busy for Riseholme, though?’ Mapp pointed out.

Lucia sighed deeply.

‘I could just fit in one, but not both, and I thought I should not be selfish. Of course I would have loved to sit at Covent Garden and listen to Olga, but then I would have had to disappoint all my old friends in Riseholme, and that would have been very hard for them to bear.’

The truth of the matter was that Lucia’s visit to Riseholme had been born of a certain mixture of boredom and desperation; she had felt strangely restless with Georgie away from Mallards, not that she would ever have admitted this to anyone, least of all to Georgie.

‘Just think,’ Diva marvelled, ‘of Mr Georgie sitting there in the royal box surrounded by all sorts of glamorous people – and going somewhere for dinner afterwards, I shouldn’t wonder.’

Lucia waved a deprecating hand.

‘He doesn’t always sit in the royal box, of course. Only when the King isn’t there.’

They all looked at Mapp, rather startled, as from the back of her throat there came a little snarling noise.

‘Though of course,’ Lucia went on smoothly, ‘Georgie is no stranger to royal company.’

Uncertain glances were exchanged. It was true that Georgie wore with his evening dress (‘hitum’ in Lucia’s social patois) a dashing order of Albanian knighthood, and there were rumours – on which he modestly refused to comment – that he had been given it by a grateful king whose life he had once saved. However, given Georgie’s well-known interest in needlepoint, this startling evidence – if evidence it be – of a secret existence as a man of action was treated with varying degrees of scepticism, ranging from ‘Pshaw!’ from the Major to a grave bow on the part of Mr Wyse, usually in the general direction of Bellagio, where the anti-regicidal services in question were said to have been performed. Since both had actually been present at roughly the time the events in question were supposed to have taken place, surely even the eternally accommodating Mr Wyse was entitled to entertain certain doubts on the matter.

‘Ah, yes,’ said Diva non-committally.

‘Surprised you didn’t go yourself, dear,’ Mapp ventured, with her head to one side, ‘if Mr Georgie was going to be meeting lots of famous people. Why, you might be in the society pages again and have lots of cuttings to put in your scrap book. So nice, I always think, to leave them lying around at Mallards so … comfortably.’

The pause made clear, as it was intended to, that she had been on the verge of saying ‘ostentatiously’ but had been prevented from doing so by her natural good manners. Unfortunately the effect of this narrowly avoided social solecism was somewhat lessened by her next dart, which was to prove the old adage that one should never take aim at two targets at once.

‘Comoda, isn’t it, dear, in your lovely Italian?’

Even as she uttered the word, Mapp felt a flash of uncertainty and cursed herself for having been unable to refrain from attempting to administer a particularly effective coup de grâce, rather than simply walking off, leaving her victim seriously wounded. Mr Wyse’s immediate glance of surprise and distress to his wife confirmed her fears.

‘Comodo, actually, Elizabeth,’ Lucia purred. A shame indeed that Georgie was not present, she reflected, since he always said that it was such fun to be able to speak a language just well enough to correct other people’s mistakes.

‘I was of course employing the female form,’ Mapp countered.

‘Really, dear?’ Lucia replied, arching her eyebrows.

Mr Wyse remained resolutely silent. He already found the idea of a commode quite disturbing enough without it being linked in his mind with the female form. He recalled a boyhood visit to an elderly aunt in Godalming, and shuddered inwardly.

‘Stick to English, I should,’ Diva broke in, lapsing into her customary telegraphese. ‘Much better all round.’

‘Like the dragon,’ Mr Wyse proffered suddenly, rousing himself from his reverie. ‘Though with a ‘k’ of course. Why yes, I remember a crossword clue last week about a comfortable reptile.’

There was the customary pause to digest this, since Mr Wyse usually said such terribly clever things. The pause gave the redoubtable Elizabeth Mapp-Flint an opportunity to reload and fire another volley.

‘Perhaps Mr Georgie will be seeing that nice Noël Coward, as he is such a good friend of yours?’ she enquired innocently. ‘Goodness, now I come to think of it what a pity that you’ve never invited him to stay at Mallards. Why, I can just imagine the two of you sitting there at the piano playing Mozartino duets.’

‘Dear Noël,’ Lucia said dreamily. ‘Such a great talent and yet what a lovely man – so unaffected, you know.’

‘Such a shame, then, dear one, that you haven’t been able to entice him down for the weekend,’ Mapp pushed on, sensing victory.

‘Yes, isn’t it?’ Lucia cried. ‘It would indeed be wonderful, as you say, Elizabeth, but sadly the poor man is so busy he hardly knows what day of the week it is most of the time. Why, he told me as much in his last letter.’

There came the hiss of a collective sharp intake of breath. The story of Noël Coward’s curt dismissal had of course been widely disseminated (Elizabeth had felt it no less than her duty, painful though it was to suggest that Lulu might not be entirely truthful).

‘His letter?’ Elizabeth echoed. ‘Was that the one in which he told you to leave him alone?’

Lucia gave one of her little silvery laughs.

‘Elizabeth, dear,’ she said, elongating the name playfully. ‘You really must learn to read other people’s letters more thoroughly.’

There was another group gasp.

‘Darling Noël is so temperamental that he has spats with all his friends on a regular basis. Why he wrote to me a few days later to apologise most charmingly and say that he was so taken up with writing his new play that he sometimes forgot to whom he was writing halfway through a letter. “But I just put it in the envelope, send it anyway and hope for the best,” he said. So like him, don’t you think?’

‘No idea, I’m sure, dear,’ Elizabeth said venomously. ‘After all, we don’t know him as well as you do, do we?’

Lucia was rapt in thought and therefore able simply to ignore this impious riposte.

‘Let me see,’ she said, weighing her words judiciously, ‘did he mention Georgie’s visit in his last letter? No, it’s no good, I simply can’t remember. Perhaps they will be able to get together and perhaps they won’t. After all, in London society so much happens spontaneously, you know. Why I remember one day Babs Shyton –’

She cut herself off abruptly and raised a gloved hand to her mouth, clearly signalling that she recognised that she had been about to divulge something terribly scandalous to which only a small and highly select social group were privy.

It was time to turn towards Mallards and make a gracious exit, and turn towards Mallards and make a gracious exit she duly did, waving that same gloved hand and bestowing upon her friends a serene but slightly mischievous smile that was all her own.

‘Goodbye, dear ones,’ she called as she departed the scene, an almost tangible curtain falling as she did so.

‘Au reservoir.’

Chapter 2

Late that same evening Olga and Georgie arrived at Sheekey’s and swept through the door to the usual burst of spontaneous applause from the assembled diners, most of whom had come straight from the Royal Opera House where they had thrilled to Olga’s Walküre. Lucia would doubtless have savoured the moment to the full, murmuring, ‘Grazie tante,’ and allowing a regal smile to play around her lips. Olga simply shouted, ‘Evening, everybody!’ before seizing the manager in a firm embrace and demanding a glass of champagne before she expired.

‘Always such a pleasure to see you, Miss Bracely,’ said that worthy gentleman, while attempting to disentangle himself. ‘You have a reservation, of course?’

‘Don’t be silly, Alfredo,’ she hooted, ‘when do I ever make a reservation?’

Alfredo gestured rather helplessly at the full restaurant.

‘Perhaps if you take a seat in the bar for a few moments …?’ he ventured.

‘All right, you old rascal, but mind you don’t keep us waiting long – I’m famished.’ Then, releasing the manager but only in order to take a firm hold of Georgie’s arm, ‘This is Mr Pillson, by the way, Alfredo, an especially good friend of mine.’

Alfredo pretended to remember Georgie, which the latter found very gratifying. The crowd of people around the bar parted as if by magic as Olga approached and two empty bar stools materialised. Like an ocean liner she seemed to create her own bow wave, which swept lesser vessels majestically but beautifully to either side.

Two glasses of champagne appeared equally quickly and mysteriously.

‘Oh, Olga!’ breathed Georgie in rapture. ‘This is simply wonderful. To be here, with you, and to have listened to you singing that wonderful music.’

‘Georgie, darling,’ replied Olga, ‘you know that it’s the biggest thrill in the world for me to see you too.’

She leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the lips, which took him so totally by surprise that it was like suddenly being in the presence of an immensely bright flash of light. As much as surprising, Georgie found it distinctly exciting in a very unaccustomed sort of way, as well as highly embarrassing, since various people around them said ‘Ah!’ and started clapping.

He tried to adopt the expression of a sophisticated man of the world who was kissed publicly by glamorous women several times an evening but, still unsettled by the experience, found himself overbalancing and only just managed not to fall straight off his bar stool, which would have been very tiresome indeed.

‘Now, tell me all about Lucia,’ demanded Olga, as he tried wriggling his posterior from side to side in an effort to squirm back into an upright position. However, as he teetered precariously he ended up doing something very painful on the edge of the stool, let out an involuntary gasp and had to put a foot down on the floor. As he blinked back the tears that sprang unbidden to his eyes, he struggled to reply to Olga and at the same time scramble back into position again, trying to look as unconcerned as possible, as if he fell off bar stools on a regular basis.

‘Oh, Olga,’ he protested as he did so, ‘do we really have to talk about Lucia? I’d much rather talk about you and what you’ve been doing, and what your plans are, and –’

At this point he was interrupted by the manager, who informed them that a table had just become free. The bar waiter picked up their glasses to carry them into the next room. Strangely, all the other people who had been waiting for tables much longer than they had did not seem to mind this at all.

‘Oh gosh, Alfredo,’ Olga said, suddenly stopping at the door of the bar, ‘did I mention that I needed a table for four? I’m hoping that a couple of friends can join us. I didn’t? Oh, I’m sorry. How wretched of me.’

Alfredo gave a heavy sigh and returned them to their bar stools, their glasses of champagne also making a welcome reappearance.

‘But Lucia is such enormous fun,’ said Olga, continuing their conversation as if nothing had happened. ‘She is one of life’s truly remarkable characters. I sometimes believe that if she did not exist we would have to invent her. Everything she does is on an epic scale and she endows it all with such drama and grandeur that one can only stand back and admire.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ Georgie demurred. ‘What about that time you dressed up as a member of the choir to sing carols with them, and she said afterwards that one of them had stood out above all the others and sung out of tune?’

‘Now, now, Georgie,’ she chided, ‘anybody can make a mistake.’

‘And talking of mistakes,’ he continued unabashed, ‘what about the time she mistook Schubert’s cradle song for Lucrezia?’

‘Ah,’ Olga countered in triumph, ‘but then, as she pointed out herself, she was listening from outside the window.’

At this both fell victim to a paroxysm of mirth, which threatened to dethrone Georgie from his precarious perch once more. Happily, Alfredo intervened and led them to a table for four, handily situated in full view of the door. Hardly had they been handed the menus when two distinguished-looking gentlemen came through the door, recognised Olga and came straight over. Georgie thought they both looked familiar but could not quite place them.

‘Olga, my sweet,’ murmured the first, taking his cigarette out of his mouth to kiss her tenderly on each cheek.

‘Noël, how lovely to see you!’ shrieked Olga. ‘I’m so glad I could get a table – and Johnnie too, what a treat!’

‘The treat is all mine, my dear,’ said the other rather wearily.

They both looked at Georgie, and Olga grabbed his arm.

‘This is my very special friend, Georgie Pillson,’ she informed them. ‘You must have heard me talk about him dozens of times. He’s just up from Tilling, and came to see my Brünnhilde at the House.’

They all shook hands, with both the newcomers nodding ‘Charmed’ in Georgie’s direction.

‘And Georgie,’ said Olga, ‘I’m sure I don’t need to introduce Noël Coward and John Gielgud.’

They all sat down and Noël Coward extended one languid hand for a menu and a second languid hand for a dry martini, which seemed to have arrived unbidden.

‘Tilling,’ he mused, rolling the word around his mouth to see if he liked the taste. ‘Oh God, isn’t that where that dreadful woman lives, the one who keeps writing to invite me to her amateur dramatics or something?’

‘Oh, my dears,’ gasped Gielgud in horror, ‘yes, it is. She writes to me too. Ghastly! I remember when she did the season in London a few years back and went around collecting duchesses as if they were postage stamps. Now, what was her name? Really, my memory is so shocking.’

‘I, on the other hand,’ said Coward firmly, ‘have a memory like an elephant. In fact, elephants frequently consult me when they have forgotten something.’

‘Her name is Lucia,’ Olga replied firmly before Georgie might feel forced to say something. ‘I know her. I can assure you that her heart is in the right place. It’s just that she’s a little …’

‘Over-enthusiastic, perhaps?’ ventured Georgie.

‘Why, how clever of you to find absolutely the right word, Georgie,’ said Olga admiringly. ‘That’s it exactly’.

‘And she does do a great deal for charity,’ continued Georgie rather awkwardly.

‘Oh, my dear boy,’ said Coward, ‘so do I. In fact, I am never happier than when in the company of those less fortunate than myself.’

Olga screamed with laughter and clapped her hands.

‘Noël, you are wonderful the way you come out with these things. Give us something else, do.’

‘He may not be able to,’ said Gielgud. ‘After all, there is a limit to the number of ad libs one can prepare carefully in advance – even for Noël, whose powers are prodigious in that respect.’

Coward sighed deeply.

‘Professional jealousy is a dreadful thing. Always remember, being an actor is easy; you simply have to learn your lines and not fall over the furniture. I, on the other hand, am something much greater. I am a writer; I am creative.’

Gielgud appeared unimpressed, but Olga urged them to order as it was growing late (though she might equally as truthfully have said because she was hungry).

Georgie felt the dinner pass as if in a dream. He could hardly believe that he was dining not only with Olga, his idol, but also with two internationally acclaimed celebrities. He knew that Gielgud was currently appearing as Richard III, yet both he and Coward seemed much more interested in swapping show business gossip of a particularly salacious kind. Gielgud also seemed to be taking an unusual interest in the young waiter who was serving them so attentively.

‘Nice boy,’ he commented, as the waiter set off once again to fetch something. ‘I wonder if I should give him something?’

‘Really, Johnnie,’ said Coward, ‘what a very naughty matinee idol you are.’

Olga screamed with laughter again, and Georgie found himself laughing with her. There were many times when she laughed and he wasn’t sure that he should, or even why he should, but there was something infinitely infectious about her laugh that made it impossible not to join in. Coming from the lungs of one of the world’s greatest singers, it was loud and doubtless had she been there Lucia would have described it as vulgar, but it came from the heart, and was part of that particular, indefinable magic that was just, well, Olga.

Three bottles of champagne later, the four walked rather unsteadily into St Martin’s Lane to where the doorman had procured them some taxis. As they made their way along the passageway past Wyndham’s Theatre, Noël said, ‘I expect Herbert Marshall is appearing here in something or other.’

‘How do you know?’ asked Gielgud, peering into the darkness in a vain attempt to see the billboards.

‘He’s always appearing in something at the Wyndham’s,’ replied Coward wearily. At that moment a volley of flashbulbs went off from a group of photographers who had been waiting in ambush at the end of the passage, leaving them completely blinded, though as Georgie followed Olga into the taxi he did hear them calling out, ‘Good night, Miss Bracely.’

It was scandalously late by the time they got to Olga’s flat, nearly two in the morning in fact, and Georgie went to sleep as soon as he climbed into bed. He fell to dreaming that Noël Coward had come to perform in the church hall at Tilling as a conjurer and had locked Lucia in a cabinet, from which he had made her disappear. But Lucia, though out of sight, obviously had no intention of being also out of mind, and from wherever she was concealed had started knocking vigorously to be released.

‘Oh dash it all, Georgie, do wake up!’ wailed Olga, who had given up knocking on the door and simply entered his room, throwing back the curtains as she spoke.

Georgie blinked helplessly in the sudden sunlight and then, remembering his toupee, started to grope for it on the chair next to him but succeeded only in knocking it on to the floor.

‘Never mind that, you darling,’ said Olga with a smile that he could not quite make out but which melted his heart nonetheless. ‘Look at this.’

He took the proffered Daily Telegraph, folded open at the society page. Above a large photograph of the four of them walking arm in arm past Wyndham’s Theatre was the caption ‘Miss Olga Bracely, fresh from her triumph at the Royal Opera House, relaxes with Mr Noël Coward, Mr John Gielgud and Mr George Pillson.’

‘Well,’ gasped Georgie, rather gratified since he had to admit it was a very good likeness of himself, ‘I can’t see that there’s anything to be upset about.’

‘Not even when both Noël and Johnnie have refused Lucia’s invitations several times?’

‘Not so much invitations,’ mused Georgie, beginning to see that all might after all not be well, ‘more like royal commands.’

‘Exactly,’ said Olga firmly, ‘the fact that they have snubbed her but dined with you was not one I was intending to have brought to her attention. Stupid of me! I should have guessed the photographers would be waiting for us outside.’

‘Well,’ ventured Georgie, ‘I suppose they were only doing their jobs.’

‘I’m glad that’s the way you feel,’ replied Olga in a rather strange tone of voice, ‘because I haven’t shown you the wretched Daily Mirror.’

He took the wretched Daily Mirror and stared at it in horror and disbelief. There was no need to open it. Covering half the front page was a photograph of Olga and Georgie locked in what appeared to be a passionate embrace in the bar at Sheekey’s. As he over-balanced on his stool, Georgie must have put out a hand for support and he now saw that it had come to rest, quite inadvertently, on what could only be described as Olga’s thigh. This time the caption read ‘Miss Olga Bracely, enjoying an intimate night out with her long-time friend and companion Mr George Pillson, the Mayor of Tilling.’

Georgie’s piteous gaze moved backwards and forwards from the newspaper to Olga’s face for several seconds, while his mouth opened and closed in a passable imitation of a goldfish. What felt like a severe attack of butterflies erupted in his midriff. Without a doubt this was the worst moment of his life.

‘Oh, my hat!’ finally came the faint bleat. On reflection he felt this did not fully reflect the enormity of the situation, so he repeated it for good measure. ‘Oh, my hat!’

‘Never mind your damned hat,’ came the brisk response, ‘we need to think what to do, Georgie. Think like we’ve never thought before. Oh, yes, come in, Céline.’

She broke off and sat absent-mindedly on the bed while her maid poured out two cups of extremely strong coffee. Georgie did not normally drink coffee in the morning for fear of heartburn but today he drained the cup eagerly and happily accepted another. Even under the extreme stimulus of this unaccustomed barrage of caffeine, however, his brain obstinately refused to work. Fortunately Olga’s mind was not similarly hampered.

‘Céline,’ she ordered, ‘take the telephone off the hook and leave it off. If anybody asks, it has been out of order since yesterday and we are waiting for a man to come and fix it.’

‘Oui, madame,’ acknowledged the maid with a bob, and left the room to do her mistress’s bidding.

‘What time is it?’ Olga demanded. Georgie lifted his half-hunter off the chair beside him and gazed at it rather short-sightedly.

‘Just after nine,’ he said.

‘When will Lucia see this?’

Georgie turned things over in his mind, which was finally showing faint signs of activity. Perhaps not springing into action, but definitely limping towards it.

‘She takes the Telegraph but usually reads the Financial Times first, followed by The Times,’ he said slowly. ‘She usually just flicks through the Telegraph after breakfast to see if there is anything nasty about anyone she knows. If there is, she cuts it out and puts it in one of her scrapbooks.’

‘The society page, then?’

‘Yes,’ acknowledged Georgie ruefully, ‘she goes straight to it.’

He glanced again at his watch and added, ‘About now, in fact.’

‘What about the Mirror?’

‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Georgie, thinking aloud. ‘I’m not sure if any of the servants take a newspaper; they probably make do with ours once we’ve finished them. I’ve certainly caught Foljambe reading the Telegraph.

‘I say,’ he said, with a sudden flush of optimism, ‘perhaps she won’t see it at all.’

‘Not a chance, I’m afraid,’ replied Olga. ‘Cadman probably takes a paper and the Mirror’s a dead ringer for a chauffeur. Anyway, someone somehow will see it and then it will be all round Tilling within minutes.’

Georgie knew in his heart that she was right. Come to think of it, he was pretty sure that Quaint Irene read the Mirror.

‘What will she do?’ Olga asked, as much to focus her mind as to quiz Georgie.

‘She’ll phone of course, so jolly well done you for thinking of that and taking it off the hook.’

‘And what about when she can’t get an answer?’

‘That rather depends,’ he pondered. ‘If she’s only seen the Telegraph then she’ll go shopping as if nothing has happened and try to turn it all to her advantage by saying she knew all about it.’

‘And when some kind unselfish soul shows her the Mirror?’

They looked at each other and both came to the same conclusion at the same moment.

‘Get up,’ hissed Olga. ‘Get up quickly and let’s go. Don’t even worry about shaving – you can go to the barber at Waterloo. Céline!’ she shouted as she ran from the room. ‘Bring me the Bradshaw.’

As Sherlock Holmes once observed, the vocabulary of Bradshaw is terse and nervous, but limited. As a tool for avoiding former mayors of Tilling bent on vengeful visits, it may however be found most efficacious, as was to prove the case on this occasion. As Georgie came into the living room, Olga was pouring over it.

‘I think I’ve got it,’ she muttered, jotting things down in a small notebook. ‘Yes, I’m sure I’ve got it.’

‘Got what?’ Georgie enquired.

‘No time to explain,’ she said briskly, ‘I’ll tell you as we go along. Céline!’

‘Oui, madame?’

Olga rattled off a string of very precise instructions, and then she and Georgie left the building in search of a taxi to take them to Waterloo Station.

At about the same time, Lucia put down the Daily Telegraph with a very disagreeable expression on her face. What could Georgie have been thinking of, to hob-nob openly with those two men – she would not dignify them with the epithet ‘gentlemen’ – who had snubbed her so caddishly? ‘Oh, really, Georgie,’ she thought, ‘how could you?’

Georgie could be so thoughtless, especially when in Olga’s company. It was almost as though the moment he saw her all decent sentiments, such as altruism and solicitude, vanished from his otherwise unimpeachable character. Why, she wouldn’t mind betting that it had been Olga who had set the whole thing up just to spite her.

She gazed unhappily at the photograph once again, and as she did so the glimmerings of an idea began to form in her mind. She narrowed her eyes intently, as though to make out more clearly this half-formed shape which was lurking tantalisingly in the mists of her sub-conscious, and suddenly she saw at once what was to be done. She got up from the drawing room table with a silvery laugh and rang for Foljambe to fetch her hat, gloves and shopping basket.

A few minutes later she was in the High Street. A small knot of Tillingites was already formed and loitering casually in front of Twistevant’s. So, she thought grimly, the story had already been spread. Well, she was equal to the challenge.

‘Good morning, good morning,’ she called merrily as she approached. Major Flint, Mr Wyse and the Reverend Kenneth Bartlett (known universally as the Padre) raised their hats respectfully.

‘Any news?’ asked Diva Plaistow, with what in a less transparent person might almost have passed for guile.

‘Oh, nothing really, just a call from Georgie, who’s enjoying himself up in town. He rang me yesterday evening to tell me he was going out to dinner with Noël Coward and John Gielgud. I had suggested it to Noël too, of course, once I knew my Georgino was going to be up in town, but I was so glad they managed it. Nice of them to include Olga, as well. I’m sure that’s the main reason Georgie arranged it, poor lamb. He is so fond of her, you know.’

The group gazed at her blankly, and none more so than Diva.

‘So it was all Georgie’s idea?’ she asked lamely.

‘Mine actually, dear,’ Lucia said with another of those silvery little laughs for which she was justly famous. ‘I would have gone too myself, of course, but as you know I decided to go to darling Riseholme instead, and now I’m so frightfully busy here in Tilling with all my committees. How you all work me so!’

Elizabeth Mapp-Flint was, however, made of sterner stuff than Diva Plaistow.

‘So,’ she said with her usual heavy irony, ‘Georgie, who lives in Tilling and has never met these two actors before, arranges to introduce them to a fellow performer who lives in London and attends show business parties every night of the week?’

‘Something like that, yes,’ Lucia replied airily. ‘Of course, I’m sure it’s always possible that she might have been on nodding terms with them already, but dinner, a chance to exchange ideas, discuss the opera and so forth – oh, yes, that sounds so like Georgino. Why I recognised his hand in it at once.’

Mapp appeared unconvinced.

‘But of course, he had already called and told me all about it in advance, so I knew anyway,’ Lucia concluded with a winning smile.

‘I say, how thrilling,’ enthused Diva. ‘To think of our own Mr Georgie dining with such famous people!’

‘Famous perhaps,’ commented Mapp, who still fondly believed that her Thursday afternoon visits to the Plaza Cinema in Hastings when she was supposed to be changing her book at Boots’ lending library remained a closely guarded secret, ‘but hardly royal.’

‘No indeed,’ Mr Wyse agreed, with a bow out over the marshes in the direction of Grebe, where the Mapp-Flints lived. ‘We must not forget that Major and Mrs Mapp-Flint have entertained a Maharajah, no less.’

‘An honour to us all, ye ken,’ the Padre concurred rather warily. The Maharajah was still a bone of contention between Mapp and Lucia, the latter having gone so far as to doubt His Royal Highness’s existence when the former failed to produce him on cue for tea at Mallards.

‘Yes, of course, Padre,’ Lucia said firmly. ‘An honour indeed. Such a shame, Elizabeth, that you were not able to entice him over to Mallards. Why, you could have shown him where you used to live.’

Mr Wyse winced. It was still a sore point with the Mapp-Flints that they had been unable to afford to continue living in Mallards after Mapp’s experiments on the stock exchange proved rather less fruitful than Lucia’s, and thus had been forced to exchange Mallards for Grebe (a house then occupied by Lucia and Georgie which, though a fine, stylish residence, was on the marshes and prone to flooding) together with what everyone except Elizabeth considered a very generous sum of money.

‘So kind, Lulu dear,’ countered Mapp, ‘how very like you. Unfortunately he had to drive back to London straight after lunch, after he had discussed his business with Benjy, that is. Royalty have such pressing schedules, you know. Much like your own, perhaps – but more so, naturally.’

The group looked around in some embarrassment and the Wyses and the Bartletts showed distressing signs of wanting to be about their business. Even more unfortunately, Mapp somehow managed to get in the last word, calling, ‘Do be sure to invite Mr Coward to Mallards, Lucia, next time you write to him, so we can all meet him.’

As she returned home Lucia felt that the proceedings had gone at least as well as could have been expected. While it was most unlikely that anyone believed her version of events, nobody could actually prove it to be untrue. How like Mapp to have succumbed to the temptation of dragging the Maharajah into any and every conversation rather than probing Lucia’s story more deeply.

‘So jealous, poor woman,’ she thought as she took off her hat and gloves and put them on the hall table. ‘How sad.’ She was still shaking her head sorrowfully as Grosvenor bobbed a curtsey and said, ‘If you please, mum, Miss Coles is waiting for you in the living room. She seems rather upset.’

‘Thank you, Grosvenor,’ Lucia said and then, sweeping into the living room, ‘Irene, dear, what’s amiss? This is very early to be calling.’

Irene Coles, generally known as Quaint Irene, staunch in her devotion to Lucia, was standing in the middle of the room looking very distressed and holding a newspaper, which appeared to be of a type commonly bought by the lower orders.

Chapter 3

‘Angel!’ cried Quaint Irene, who was indeed clearly very upset. ‘How simply septic for you!’

‘Irene, dear,’ said Lucia calmly, as she put down her basket, ‘do tell me what on earth you are talking about.’

‘So you haven’t heard. I’m so glad. I was worried that somebody would have ambushed you with this while you were shopping.’

She thrust ‘this’ at Lucia, ‘this’ of course being the Daily Mirror.

Lucia gazed at the newspaper in blank disbelief. As Irene watched her helplessly, it was almost as though for a moment Lucia’s mask had slipped, and she found herself looking at an old woman. But no, surely that was just a passing fancy. Lucia looked up, once more perfectly composed, and put the paper down as though she had been reading nothing more disturbing than the weather forecast.

‘Clearly there must be some perfectly innocent explanation,’ she said, but in a voice which trembled slightly. ‘I will telephone Olga at once and find out just what has been going on.’

She was hoping that Irene would take the hint and depart but she stayed in the living room, gazing wretchedly at Lucia with a look of pure anguish on her face. Lucia left the room and went down the hall to the little telephone room, from where she attempted to call Olga’s flat, but without success.

The couple of minutes which this entailed had nonetheless been all that she needed to regain fully her sangfroid.

‘Olga’s phone must be out of order,’ she informed Irene. ‘What a bore!’

‘What will you do, then?’ asked Irene.

‘As it happens, I was already intending to go up to town today. I will simply drop in on Olga and talk to her in person instead. Would you be so kind as to ring the bell? I must just have a look at my Bradshaw.’

So it was that when Foljambe answered her mistress’s summons she found her studying exactly the same page of railway timetables that Olga had perused so recently in her flat in London.

‘I can just catch the 11.04 if I hurry,’ said Lucia to nobody in particular. ‘Ah, Foljambe, I must go up to London this morning. Will you please pack me an overnight bag quickly – just small, nothing formal – and ask Cadman to bring the Rolls round to run me to the station?’

‘Yes, mum,’ said Foljambe with a bob, and scurried from the room.

A few minutes later, Cadman held the door open as Lucia got into the car, and so began the first leg of what Georgie and Olga would later refer to privately as the Great Southern Railway Handicap.

At about one o’clock, Georgie and Olga arrived at Mallards having caught the 10.34 from Waterloo, and expressed great vexation at having missed Lucia. Though pressed by Grosvenor and Foljambe to stay to lunch, they instead asked Cadman to run them straight back to the station so they could be sure of catching Lucia at Olga’s flat in London. Waving serenely to one or two goggling Tillingites from the back of the Rolls, they caught the 2.04 to Waterloo, asking Cadman to drive on to the post office after he dropped them, and despatch a telegram addressed to Lucia at Olga’s London address explaining what had happened and asking her to wait for them.

At about 1.30 Lucia arrived at Olga’s flat and was greeted with great surprise by Céline, who exclaimed that her mistress and Mr Pillson had left town earlier that morning to go and stay with Mrs Pillson at Mallards. Lucia, with some irritation, asked to use the telephone only to be informed that the instrument was out of order, and that Céline was even now awaiting an engineer who was due to come and repair it.

Lucia then decided, exactly as Olga had predicted she would, that there was nothing for it but to return to Tilling, and she duly asked Céline to go out into the street to procure a taxi for her. While she waited, she jotted down the text of a telegram on a piece of Olga’s notepaper from her writing desk and, as she got into the taxi, gave it to Céline together with half a crown and enjoined her to send it without delay. Céline, remembering her mistress’s instructions, checked her watch when she reached the post office and, seeing that it was safe to do so, sent the missive, which of course explained what had happened and asked Georgie and Olga to wait for Lucia in Tilling.

Lucia managed to catch the 2.34 from Waterloo, and arrived back at Mallards shortly after five o’clock, to find her telegram to Georgie lying unopened on the hall table. As she sat in her living room wondering rather sourly what on earth she should do now, there was a knock at the door and shortly afterwards Foljambe came into the room with a further telegram on a salver. Slitting it open, Lucia read, ‘All too tiresome. You stay Tilling. We join you tomorrow. Georgie.’

‘No reply, Foljambe,’ she said coolly.

She waited for Foljambe to dismiss the postman and then called her back into the room.

‘What time did Mr Georgie get here, Foljambe?’ she enquired.

‘About lunchtime if you please, mum,’ came the answer but then, perhaps feeling that a fuller explanation was required. Foljambe went on in a rush, ‘Oh, madam, Mr Georgie was so upset to miss you. He and Miss Bracely wouldn’t even stay for lunch. They got Cadman to take them straight back to the station and they asked him to send you a telegram asking you to wait for them in London. I hope you won’t think it was his fault – he went straight to the post office from the station.’

‘It’s nobody’s fault, Foljambe,’ Lucia decided magnanimously, ‘except perhaps Miss Bracely’s telephone’s fault for being out of order.

Please tell Cadman not to worry himself.’