Lucia Victrix (5 page)

‘I will take it for August and September,' said Lucia.

‘And I'm sure I hope you'll be as pleased with it,' said Miss Mapp, ‘as I'm sure I shall be with my tenant.'

A bright idea struck her, and she smiled more widely than ever.

‘That would not include, of course, the wages of my gardener, such a nice steady man,' she said, ‘or garden-produce.
Flowers for the house by all means, but not fruit or vegetables.'

At that moment Lucia, blinded by passion for Mallards, Tilling and the Tillingites, would have willingly agreed to pay the water-rate as well. If Miss Mapp had guessed that, she would certainly have named this unusual condition.

Miss Mapp, as requested by Lucia, had engaged rooms for her and Georgie at a pleasant hostelry near by, called the Trader's Arms, and she accompanied them there with Lucia's car following, like an empty carriage at a funeral, to see that all was ready for them. There must have been some misunderstanding of the message, for Georgie found that a double bedroom had been provided for them. Luckily Lucia had lingered outside with Miss Mapp, looking at the view over the marsh, and Georgie with embarrassed blushes explained at the bureau that this would not do at all, and the palms of his hands got cold and wet until the mistake was erased and remedied. Then Miss Mapp left them and they went out to wander about the town. But Mallards was the magnet for Lucia's enamoured eye, and presently they stole back towards it. Many houses apparently were to be let furnished in Tilling just now, and Georgie too grew infected with the desire to have one. Riseholme would be very dismal without Lucia, for the moment the fête was over he felt sure that an appalling reaction after the excitement would settle on it; he might even miss being knighted. He had sketched everything sketchable, there would be nobody to play duets with, and the whole place would stagnate again until Lucia's return, just as it had stagnated during her impenetrable widowhood. Whereas here there were innumerable subjects for his brush, and Lucia would be installed in Mallards with a Blumenfelt in the garden-room, and, as was already obvious, a maelstrom of activities whirling in her brain. Major Benjy interested her, so did quaint Irene and the Padre, all the group, in fact, which had seen them drive up with such pre-knowledge, so it seemed, of their destination.

The wall of Miss Mapp's garden, now known to them from inside, ran up to where they now stood, regarding the front of Mallards, and Georgie suddenly observed that just beside
them was the sweetest little gabled cottage with the board announcing that it was to be let furnished.

‘Look, Lucia,' he said. ‘How perfectly fascinating! If it wasn't for that blasted fête, I believe I should be tempted to take it, if I could get it for the couple of months when you are here.'

Lucia had been waiting just for that. She was intending to hint something of the sort before long unless he did, and had made up her mind to stand treat for a bottle of champagne at dinner, so that when they strolled about again afterwards, as she was quite determined to do, Georgie, adventurous with wine, might find the light of the late sunset glowing on Georgian fronts in the town and on the levels of the surrounding country, quite irresistible. But how wise to have waited, so that Georgie should make the suggestion himself.

‘My dear, what a delicious idea!' she said. ‘Are you really thinking of it? Heavenly for me to have a friend here instead of being planted among strangers. And certainly it is a darling little house. It doesn't seem to be occupied, no smoke from any of the chimneys. I think we might really peep in through the windows and get some idea of what it's like.'

They had to stand on tiptoe to do this, but by shading their eyes from the westerly sun they could get a very decent idea of the interior.

This must be the dining-room,' said Georgie, peering in.

‘A lovely open fireplace,' said Lucia. ‘So cosy.'

They moved on sideways like crabs.

‘A little hall,' said Lucia. ‘Pretty staircase going up out of it.'

More crab-like movements.

‘The sitting-room,' said Georgie. ‘Quite charming, and if you press your nose close you can see out of the other window into a tiny garden beyond. The wooden paling must be that of your kitchen-garden.'

They stepped back into the street to get a better idea of the topography, and at this moment Miss Mapp looked out of the bow-window of her garden-room and saw them there. She was as intensely interested in this as they in the house.

‘And three bedrooms I should think upstairs,' said Lucia, ‘and two attics above. Heaps.'

‘I shall go and see the agent to-morrow morning,' said Georgie. ‘I can imagine myself being very comfortable there!'

They strolled off into the disused graveyard round the church. Lucia turned to have one more look at the front of Mallards, and Miss Mapp made a low swift curtsey, remaining down so that she disappeared completely.

‘About that old fête,' said Georgie, ‘I don't want to throw Daisy over, because she'll never get another Drake.'

‘But you can go down there for the week,' said Lucia who had thought it all out, ‘and come back as soon as it's over. You know how to be knighted by now. You needn't go to all those endless rehearsals. Georgie, look at that wonderful clock on the church.'

‘Lovely,' said Georgie absently. ‘I told Daisy I simply would not be knighted every day. I shall have no shoulder left.'

‘And I think that must be the Town Hall,' said Lucia. ‘Quite right about not being knighted so often. What a perfect sketch you could do of that.'

‘Heaps of room for us all in the cottage,' said Georgie. ‘I hope there's a servants' sitting-room.'

‘They'll be in and out of Mallards all day,' said Lucia. ‘A lovely servants' hall there.'

‘If I can get it, I will,' said Georgie. ‘I shall try to let my house at Riseholme, though I shall take my bibelots away. I've often had applications for it in other years. I hope Foljambe will like Tilling. She will make me miserable if she doesn't. Tepid water, fluff on my clothes.'

It was time to get back to their inn to unpack, but Georgie longed for one more look at his cottage, and Lucia for one at Mallards. Just as they turned the corner that brought them in sight of these there was thrust out of the window of Miss Mapp's garden-room a hand that waved a white handkerchief. It might have been samite.

‘Georgie, what can that be?' whispered Lucia. ‘It must be a signal of some sort. Or was it Miss Mapp waving us good night?'

‘Not very likely,' said he. ‘Let's wait one second.'

He had hardly spoken when Miss Coles, followed by the
breathless Mrs Plaistow hurried up the three steps leading to the front door of Mallards and entered.

‘Diva and quaint Irene,' said Lucia. ‘It must have been a signal.'

‘It might be a coincidence,' said Georgie. To which puerile suggestion Lucia felt it was not worth while to reply.

Of course it was a signal and one long prearranged, for it was a matter of the deepest concern to several householders in Tilling, whether Miss Mapp found a tenant for Mallards, and she had promised Diva and quaint Irene to wave a handkerchief from the window of the garden-room at six o'clock precisely, by which hour it was reasonable to suppose that her visitors would have left her. These two ladies, who would be prowling about the street below, on the look-out, would then hasten to hear the best or the worst.

Their interest in the business was vivid, for if Miss Mapp succeeded in letting Mallards, she had promised to take Diva's house, Wasters, for two months at eight guineas a week (the house being much smaller) and Diva would take Irene's house, Taormina (smaller still) at five guineas a week, and Irene would take a four-roomed labourer's cottage (unnamed) just outside the town at two guineas a week, and the labourer, who, with his family would be harvesting in August and hop-picking in September, would live in some sort of shanty and pay no rent at all. Thus from top to bottom of this ladder of lessors and lessees they all scored, for they all received more than they paid, and all would enjoy the benefit of a change without the worry and expense of travel and hotels. Each of these ladies would wake in the morning in an unfamiliar room, would sit in unaccustomed chairs, read each other's books (and possibly letters), look at each other's pictures, imbibe all the stimulus of new surroundings, without the wrench of leaving Tilling at all. No true Tillingite was ever really happy away from her town; foreigners were very queer untrustworthy people, and if you did not like the food it was impossible to engage another cook for an hotel of which you were not the proprietor. Annually in the summer this sort of ladder of house-letting was set up in Tilling and was justly popular. But it all depended on a
successful letting of Mallards, for if Elizabeth Mapp did not let Mallards, she would not take Diva's Wasters nor Diva Irene's Taormina.

Diva and Irene therefore hurried to the garden-room where they would hear their fate; Irene forging on ahead with that long masculine stride that easily kept pace with Major Benjy's, the short-legged Diva with that twinkle of feet that was like the scudding of a thrush over the lawn.

‘Well, Mapp, what luck?' asked Irene.

Miss Mapp waited till Diva had shot in.

‘I think I shall tease you both,' said she playfully with her widest smile.

‘Oh, hurry up,' said Irene. ‘I know perfectly well from your face that you've let it. Otherwise it would be all screwed up.'

Miss Mapp, though there was no question about her being the social queen of Tilling, sometimes felt that there were ugly Bolshevistic symptoms in the air, when quaint Irene spoke to her like that. And Irene had a dreadful gift of mimicry, which was a very low weapon, but formidable. It was always wise to be polite to mimics.

‘Patience, a little patience, dear,' said Miss Mapp soothingly. ‘If you know I've let it, why wait?'

‘Because I should like a cocktail,' said Irene. ‘If you'll just send for one, you can go on teasing.'

‘Well, I've let it for August and September,' said Miss Mapp, preferring to abandon her teasing than give Irene a cocktail. ‘And I'm lucky in my tenant. I never met a sweeter woman than dear Mrs Lucas.'

‘Thank God,' said Diva, drawing up her chair to the still uncleared table. ‘Give me a cup of tea, Elizabeth. I could eat nothing till I knew.'

‘How much did you stick her for it? asked Irene.

‘Beg your pardon, dear?' asked Miss Mapp, who could not be expected to understand such a vulgar expression.

‘What price did you screw her up to? What's she got to pay you?' said Irene impatiently. ‘Damage: dibs.'

‘She instantly closed with the price I suggested,' said Miss
Mapp. ‘I'm not sure, quaint one, that anything beyond that is what might be called your business.'

‘I disagree about that,' said the quaint one. ‘There ought to be a sliding-scale. If you've made her pay through the nose, Diva ought to make you pay through the nose for her house, and I ought to make her pay through the nose for mine. Equality, Fraternity, Nosality.'

Miss Mapp bubbled with disarming laughter and rang the bell for Irene's cocktail, which might stop her pursuing this subject, for the sliding-scale of twelve, eight and five guineas a week had been the basis of previous calculations. Yet if Lucia so willingly consented to pay more, surely that was nobody's affair but that of the high contracting parties. Irene, soothed by the prospect of her cocktail, pursued the dangerous topic no further, but sat down at Miss Mapp's piano and picked out God Save the King, with one uncertain finger. Her cocktail arrived just as she finished it.

‘Thank you, dear,' said Miss Mapp. ‘Sweet music.'

‘Cheerio!' said Irene. ‘Are you charging Lucas anything extra for use of a fine old instrument?'

Miss Mapp was goaded into a direct and emphatic reply.

‘No, darling, I am not,' she said, ‘as you are so interested in matters that don't concern you.'

‘Well, well, no offence meant,' said Irene. ‘Thanks for the cocktail. Look in to-morrow between twelve and one at my studio, if you want to see far the greater part of a well-made man. I'll be off now to cook my supper. Au reservoir.'

Miss Mapp finished the few strawberries that Diva had spared and sighed.

‘Our dear Irene has a very coarse side to her nature, Diva,' she said. ‘No harm in her, but just common. Sad! Such a contrast to dear Mrs Lucas. So refined: scraps of Italian beautifully pronounced. And so delighted with everything.'

‘Ought we to call on her?' asked Diva. ‘Widow's mourning, you know.'

Miss Mapp considered this. One plan would be that she should take Lucia under her wing (provided she was willing to go there), another to let it be known in Tilling (if she wasn't)
that she did not want to be called upon. That would set Tilling's back up, for if there was one thing it hated it was anything that (in spite of widow's weeds) might be interpreted into superiority. Though Lucia would only be two months in Tilling, Miss Mapp did not want her to be too popular on her own account, independently. She wanted … she wanted to have Lucia in her pocket, to take her by the hand and show her to Tilling, but to be in control. It all had to be thought out.

‘I'll find out when she comes,' she said. ‘I'll ask her, for indeed I feel quite an old friend already.'

‘And who's the man?' asked Diva.

‘Dear Mr Georgie Pillson. He entertained me so charmingly when I was at Riseholme for a night or two some years ago. They are staying at the Trader's Arms, and off again to-morrow.'

‘What? Staying there together?' asked Diva.

Miss Mapp turned her head slightly aside as if to avoid some faint unpleasant smell.

‘Diva dear,' she said. ‘Old friends as we are, I should be sorry to have a mind like yours. Horrid. You've been reading too many novels. If widow's weeds are not a sufficient protection against such innuendoes, a baby girl in its christening-robe wouldn't be safe.'