Au Reservoir (22 page)

Diva had, by a supreme effort of will, now drawn level with Elizabeth and between them they had attracted the attention of two delivery boys, who had abandoned their missions and were shouting encouragement, one favouring the early leader on the rails, and the other the late challenger on the outside. Attracted by the commotion, passing shoppers also turned to watch events unfold.

Elizabeth tried to respond with a fresh acceleration but she began to feel an agonising shortness of breath, and deeply regretted the unyielding efficiency of her foundation garment. As if by divine intervention, however, the object of her quest – the Reverend Kenneth Bartlett, the best bridge player in Tilling – suddenly hove into view at the top of the hill. The sight of him drove her to persevere in a fresh effort, her elbows pumping vigorously and her breath making great hissing noises as she forcibly expelled it.

Needless to say the Padre was also Diva’s objective, and she locked on to him like a battle cruiser tracking a pocket battleship. Their mutual target meantime came to a halt and stared open-mouthed at the scene which met his eyes. Luckily there was little time for his reaction to progress beyond simple surprise, as the prospect of two formidably endowed ladies bearing down on him with expressions of grim determination might otherwise quite understandably have been found highly distressing.

It was at this point that a riderless horse intervened in the shape of a small blue van which, having come around Church Square, turned into the street and came face to face with Diva Plaistow charging uphill as if storming an enemy redoubt. For a moment, disaster threatened and the Padre was not alone in experiencing an involuntary sharp intake of breath.

Fortunately the lorry was proceeding slowly, in accordance with the town council’s traffic ordinances, the driver was alert and the van’s brakes had recently been attended to. As Diva gazed in horror at the approaching radiator grille, the van slithered to a halt inches in front of her. Overcome by a mixture of shock and her exertions, she leaned forward and placed her hands on the bonnet, gasping and whooping.

This of course left her rival a free run at the Padre. Seeing that her primacy was no longer threatened, Elizabeth slowed to a walk but her breathing refused to return to normal. She staggered the last dozen steps, but by the time she reached him was still incapable of speech. Indeed she seemed to be having trouble focusing her eyes, let alone speaking, and started to sag towards him. Reluctantly, for he was unsure whether even the wiry frame of a former amateur boxing champion was equal to such a task, he reached out his hands to support her.

Physical intervention was luckily to prove unnecessary. By a supreme effort of will she managed to hold herself upright and stare at him. Normal speech, though, was still beyond her. Conscious that Diva might yet prove a late arrival and steal her thunder, she gazed at him with a deeply beseeching expression and made plaintive little whimpering noises.

Diva had indeed finally crossed to the pavement after her narrow escape and was once again labouring upwards, though still a few lengths from the finishing post. In the meantime, Major Benjy, himself very red in the face, had put in an appearance at Mapp’s shoulder, saying, ‘My God, Liz-girl, are you all right?’

The Major’s overpowering sentiment, other than natural concern for his wife’s well-being, was one of puzzlement, since he had no idea what his wife had been thinking about when she launched her reckless uphill dash. The last time that a woman had suddenly run away from him without a word had been in a cinema in Eastbourne, after she had chosen to disregard his perfectly reasonable explanation that he had dropped his fob watch and was looking for it under her seat.

His wife now directed her whimpering noises to him, which after some delay he managed to comprehend, and as Diva finally arrived she was just in time to hear his interpretation.

‘I think the memsahib is asking if you would join our team for the bridge tournament, Padre,’ he ventured.

Coming up behind him, Diva could have uttered a scream of rage and frustration, had she been capable of any utterance other than a vague gasping sound. However, as if she had offered up a silent prayer which had instantly been answered, she listened to the Padre’s response with a mixture of wonder and disbelief.

‘I’m afraid I must decline, Major. I just met Mistress Coles the noo, and she asked me to join her and Mistress Plaistow. Naturally, I accepted.’

S
o it was that the morrow found the Mapp-Flints still two members short of a bridge team. Upon visiting the library they discovered that the application list for the bridge club was indeed already fully subscribed, but they contrived to slip their names in at an awkward angle halfway up. As for the separate list for the bridge tournament, Irene had wasted no time: ‘Rev. and Mrs Bartlett’ had been inserted after ‘Mrs Plaistow and Miss Coles’. Intriguingly, though, both ‘Mr and Mrs Wyse’ and ‘Mr and Mrs Pillson’ simply had ‘+2’ written after each entry.

‘What the devil does that mean?’ the Major demanded.

‘I’m not sure,’ Elizabeth admitted reluctantly, for to be unsure of the intentions of others was as near intolerable as made no difference.

‘I s’pose it means they each have a team, but haven’t got around to putting in the names,’ her husband proffered.

‘It may do. There again it may just be Lulu up to her tricks again. I smell a rat.’

Still pondering the possible sinister ramifications of these cryptic entries, they wandered away. Major Benjy eyed the inviting prospect of the Trader’s Arms, but quickly abandoned any hopes which might lie in that direction. While he was still shaking his head ruefully at the thought of what might have been, they rounded a corner and came face to face with the Wyses.

‘Such a pleasure,’ Mr Wyse commented gallantly as he bowed to Elizabeth.

‘Any news?’ Susan asked, and then, before anybody could suggest any alternative topic, ‘Isn’t it exciting about the bridge tournament, though? Everybody’s talking about it.’

‘So they should be,’ Elizabeth replied earnestly. ‘Goodness me, I can’t remember when something so wonderful last happened in Tilling.’

Unfortunately her attempts at sincerity were scarcely more successful than her experiments with irony, but this was by now so well understood among her regular interlocutors that they aroused little comment. In consequence, her occasional messages of sympathy and support tended to be mentally filed away by her audience in that same category as claims by residents of just about anywhere in North London actually to reside in Hampstead.

‘Indeed,’ murmured Mr Wyse, ‘quite capital.’

‘Talking of which,’ she went on, breaking out once more her sweetest of smiles, the one which displayed an alarming expanse of teeth, ‘Benjy-boy and I were just in the library adding our own poor names to the roll of honour which seems to be intent on entering the tournament, and we weren’t sure whether you and Susan had teammates yet or not?’

Mr and Mrs Wyse flashed a quick glance of alarm at each other.

‘Because if not,’ Elizabeth pressed on, ‘we would be very honoured to have your company.’

‘A charming idea,’ Mr Wyse said smilingly, ‘but unfortunately we are already promised elsewhere.’

Susan squeezed his arm in a brief yet significant manner, and they both quickly moved on.

The Mapp-Flints proceeded along the High Street and paused by Elizabeth’s favourite observation platform (the one
not
endowed by Lucia). They sat on the bench and gazed out over the salt flats to the marshes beyond, where Grebe lurked in perpetual danger of flooding, and to which in Elizabeth’s mind they had been banished to reluctant exile by Lucia.

‘Of course!’ she said suddenly. ‘I think I’ve got it, Benjy.’

‘Ah yes?’ he asked, abandoning his efforts to squint sideways at the fine female form of a lingering hiker.

‘I’ve seen through her little plan,’ she told him. ‘She is persuading everybody to pair off, leaving us without anybody to play with.’

‘But to what end, old girl?’ asked the Major.

Really the man could be quite dense sometimes, his wife thought.

‘So that only they and we will be left, silly, and we’ll have to agree to play with them. That way she gets the best of both worlds. If our team does well she’ll tell everyone that she and Georgie did very well indeed because they had to carry us, and if we do badly they’ll blame us and say they could have done much better by themselves.’

‘But supposing you’re right, old girl,’ the Major said, ‘and I’m sure you are, of course, but that still leaves the question of who we are bally well going to play with, doesn’t it?’

There was silence for a while as they sat side by side.

‘Suppose we don’t play at all?’ he said suddenly. ‘We can say that we can’t find any teammates – which is true after all – and pull out. Regrets, can’t be helped, looking forward to next year, all that sort of thing, what?’

For a moment his wife was tempted but then she shook her head.

‘No, it won’t do. If we pull out then Lulu will put it about that we are running scared, and anyway do we really want it to be known that we can’t find any teammates? Then she’d really go to town, saying that we were such horrible people that nobody wanted to play with us.’

‘Ah,’ he said sadly. ‘Hadn’t thought of that.’

‘So what are we to do?’ she asked.

‘Tell you what,’ he said decisively, ‘why don’t we discuss it over a drink, what? Glass of sherry would buck you up no end, Liz. Why, you’ve been looking quite peaky really these last few days. All this nonsense with Lucia, I don’t doubt. Now the King’s Arms does a particularly good schooner of sherry …’

He became aware that his wife was looking at him in a manner that clearly indicated that a schooner of sherry had not been among her envisaged courses of action.

‘Ah,’ he said sadly again. ‘Perhaps a cup of tea, what?’

His face brightened.

‘Yes, a nice cup of tea with one of those currant buns. That would be grand now, wouldn’t it?’

‘Oh, do stop blithering, Benjy,’ Elizabeth commanded.

She rose to her feet in a determined fashion.

‘There is nothing for it,’ she said resignedly, ‘but to play along with her little game. Come along, let us go home and telephone Lucia. At least that will be better than calling on her in person. This way I can stick my tongue out at her and she won’t even know it.’

Finding this thought strangely comforting, she tucked her hand through Major Benjy’s arm and they set off on the long walk back to Grebe.

The telephone call did not, however, go entirely to plan.

‘But Elizabeth,’ said Lucia in a surprised tone of voice, ‘Georgie and I have already made our arrangements. Didn’t it say “+2” on the list of entries?’

‘Well yes,’ Mapp said lamely, ‘but I thought that may just mean that you hadn’t decided yet on whom to choose.’

‘No, dear, not at all,’ Lucia said briskly. ‘We’re suited, I’m afraid.’

‘So with whom, may I ask,’ said Mapp, her inveterate curiosity getting the better of her, ‘are you playing?’

‘Well, we have a number of offers, actually, as I’m sure you’d expect, Elizabeth,’ Lucia said vaguely, ‘and to be honest we’re not entirely sure yet which one to accept. But we’re definitely taken, so to speak.’

Mapp’s antennae were twitching furiously and she desperately sought a rejoinder which would keep this avenue of enquiry open.

‘So sorry to hear that you’re having problems finding anyone to play with you,’ Lucia said blandly. ‘Most unfortunate. This is where the bridge club will come in so useful, you see. People will come from all sorts of places and we’ll all make lots of new friends.’

‘I hope you’re not suggesting, dear, that Benjy and I have no friends?’

‘Not at all, but we can all get in a bit of a rut now, can’t we, seeing the same people all the time? And it can’t be easy for you stuck out at Grebe like that. You know, there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t count my blessings that I’m not at Grebe any more but back here in the heart of Tilling – when I’m not up in London of course.’

Mapp had long since forgotten about sticking her tongue out.

‘You would remember Grebe of course, dear,’ she said, ‘since you and I were there together when it flooded.’

‘Yes, weren’t we?’ marvelled Lucia. ‘How long ago it all seems, and how lucky we were to drift safely out to sea on the kitchen table. Though I never was quite sure what you were doing in my kitchen that day, Elizabeth. Something about copying a recipe, wasn’t it?’

This was not a direction in which Elizabeth Mapp-Flint was prepared to be taken.

‘Still, we do a pretty good job, I think you’ll agree, in staying part of what’s going on in Tilling, stuck out here, as you say, at Grebe.’

‘A wonderful job indeed’ Lucia agreed. ‘I take my hat off to you both. After all, when Georgie and I were at Grebe at least we had Cadman and the Rolls, whereas all you and the poor Major have is Shanks’s pony.

‘Anyway, dear,’ she said before Mapp had a chance to reply, ‘so sorry you’re struggling to find some teammates. Hope the situation resolves itself soon.’

Elizabeth Mapp-Flint replaced the handset with considerable force and went in search of her husband, who was dozing in the living room, using a raised hand over his face for cover.

‘Got it wrong,’ she said abruptly.

‘Eh, what?’ he asked, struggling into wakefulness.

‘Got it wrong,’ she repeated. ‘Lucia and Georgie already have someone to play with.’

‘Who?’

‘Wouldn’t say,’ she replied. ‘All very mysterious. Said they had “a number of offers” if you please.’

‘Perhaps they have?’ suggested the Major. ‘After all, they’re not bad players.’

‘Oh, don’t be so stupid,’ his wife said forcefully. ‘Of course they don’t. They just want to make a big secret of who they’re playing with, for some reason. Goodness knows why.’

‘Doesn’t solve our problem, anyway,’ he said in an irritatingly matter-of-fact way. ‘We still need someone to play with.’

‘Yes, I’m well aware of that. Who else is there?’

‘Nobody, what? After all, there are usually ten of us when we play, and so if eight out of ten are taken then it stands to reason there must be two left over. That’s us. We’re the two.’