Au Reservoir (7 page)

Lucia looked pained. The circumstances of Georgie’s medal winning
¹
had not been entirely to her liking and had prompted her to issue sharp words to Georgie, which he had uncharacteristically chosen to ignore. Though the temporary rift had long since healed, she was still inclined, when Georgie’s natural modesty prevented him from revealing the details of his exploits, to say loudly, ‘All too positively Ruritanian, my dears,’ and promptly change the subject.

‘And there’s Susan Wyse too,’ he added even more unhelpfully. ‘Why, she’s had hers for years and years. I can remember it being on the hall table the first time we ever went to dinner with them.’

‘Indeed,’ came Lucia’s glacial comment on the proceedings.

Again it was Olga who, with her natural sense of the rightness of things, came to the rescue with exactly the question Lucia wanted to hear.

‘And what can we do to help?’ she asked, gazing fondly at her hostess.

Lucia smiled and it was as though at the same time she had adjusted the central heating, because the temperature in the room seemed instantly to rise by several degrees. However, she could not resist a sharp glance at Georgie, conveying a clear rebuke for the fact that his lack of natural solicitude had led to an offer of assistance being advanced by a house guest rather than by her husband. He chose mutinously not to notice, and reached for the last helping of steak and kidney pudding.

‘Oh, I don’t know, I’m sure,’ Lucia replied with a vague wave of her hand. ‘I hadn’t really given the matter much thought.’

This was palpably untrue. Olga dealt with this by looking at Lucia with an even more earnest smile than before. Georgie chose to essay a sigh as he addressed his next mouthful of steak and kidney pudding, which proved to be a mistake as he got a fine spray of gravy across his shirt front and perilously close to his Order of Skanderbeg. His natural instinct was to say ‘How tarsome’ but this too proved a mistake as he attempted to do so while swallowing and succeeded only in provoking a violent coughing fit.

While he recovered amid sips of water, streaming eyes and concerned enquiries from Olga, Lucia managed to maintain her innocent demeanour with perfect composure.

‘How does one go about such things, I wonder?’ she enquired of nobody in particular as Georgie’s barking convulsions subsided. ‘How does it all work?’

‘I believe there are two possible methods,’ Olga enlightened her. ‘On the one hand you could get some of the organisations you have benefited to write to the Prime Minister suggesting that your contribution be recognised by some suitable award.’

‘A
Labour
Prime Minister,’ Lucia interjected at once. ‘Oh dear!’

‘The other approach,’ Olga went on, ‘would be to ask one or two people who are well placed to ask one or two people who are even more highly placed to make some discreet enquiries. Take soundings, as it were.’

‘But who, I wonder?’ Lucia mused.

‘Depends where you have the best connections, really,’ Olga replied. ‘Do you know anyone in politics?’

Lucia wrinkled her nose as though experiencing an unpleasant smell.

‘The church?’

Lucia shook her head. The Bishop had been strangely unappreciative of her endowment of a new organ upon the local church and had resisted all her subsequent invitations, as well as her repeated suggestion that her generosity be marked by a commemorative plaque in the transept.

‘The palace?’

Lucia shook her head afresh and looked rather glum. ‘Toby Limpsfield?’ she proffered, perking up.

Now it was Olga’s turn to shake her head.

‘Too louche,’ she said determinedly. ‘At least for this boring old lot. If his brother had stuck around instead of running off with that Simpson woman then maybe. He was rather fun in his own way, though he could be a frightful cad. He treated poor old Thelma Morgan very badly.’

Lucia nodded sagely, as though to convey that she had known both Edward VIII and Lady Furness intimately, and concurred with Olga’s view of the situation.

‘Babs Shyton?’

‘Too fast.’

‘Adele Brixton?’

‘Too dead, Lucia.’

‘Is Adele dead?’ asked Lucia in some confusion. ‘Surely not?’

‘Yes, don’t you remember? She died when that bomb hit the Café de Paris in 1941.’

Lucia looked shocked for a moment and then shook her head sadly.

‘Isn’t there anybody else?’ Olga asked, a little desperately.

‘I say,’ Georgie interjected, ‘what about Noël Coward?’

Lucia gave him a very old-fashioned look indeed.

‘Really, Georgie,’ she said waspishly. ‘If you are not going to take this discussion seriously then perhaps Olga and I should continue it in your absence.’

‘Oh I say, look here,’ Olga cut in quickly. ‘If you’d be agreeable to the idea, Lucia, I’d be very happy to try to take a few soundings myself.’

‘Why, thank you, Olga,’ Lucia responded graciously. ‘Goodness, what an inspiration you are to us all. I would never have thought of that for myself.’

¹
See
Lucia on Holiday

O
lga loved staying in Tilling for much the same reason that she had enjoyed living in Riseholme. The ritual cry of ‘Any news?’ during the morning round of shopping did not refer to the news of the day as reported in the national newspapers, and had anyone been so crass as to reply by commenting on the end of fuel rationing or Mr Attlee’s cabinet reshuffle they would have been met with a stare of blank amazement. ‘News’ meant real news, the comings and goings of a select group of Tilling residents, which group included as honorary members the Mapp-Flints – since strictly speaking they no longer lived in Tilling itself.

It was almost as though the Landgate marked not just a physical barrier between Tilling and the rest of the world but a spiritual one as well. Outside one might be forced to take account of changes in the rate of income tax, the times of trains to London or Brighton, and other such matters of significance, but step within it and the perspective became resolutely local. Tilling was a perfect self-contained microcosm and Olga loved the gossip and petty squabbles of the little groups that ebbed and flowed spontaneously in its cobbled streets just as she had adored the gossip and petty squabbles of the corresponding little groups that had met, merged and dispersed on the Green at Riseholme.

She was in something of a unique position as far as this microcosm was concerned, for she was both of it and not of it. While she was in Tilling she was graciously and easily assimilated into the process itself and found herself naturally adopting the aforementioned local greeting and the attendant acknowledgement of ‘No!’ when any such news was in fact imparted. Yet because she was not a permanent resident but only an occasional house guest, she was also an observer of it and, she was sometimes uncomfortably aware, often part of the news itself. Though even here the local perspective asserted itself. When Olga Bracely’s name came up in conversation it was not to refer to her latest triumph at the Met or La Scala but simply to comment on the fact that she was expected at Mallards on Friday afternoon.

So it was that she waited eagerly to venture forth the next morning yet unexpectedly found Lucia sitting studiously at her desk, a pair of pince-nez already in place.

‘Are you not coming shopping this morning, Lucia?’ she asked in surprise.

‘Too busy, alas,’ Lucia replied rather absently, gesturing at a pile of papers awaiting her attention. ‘How you all work me! No, you go with Georgie – I’m sure everyone is waiting to see you.’

So it was that Olga and Georgie strolled up the High Street together, he with the statutory wicker basket on his arm.

‘What-ho, comrades!’ Irene shouted to them from a few yards further on. ‘Georgie making free with his favours again, I see.’

Georgie instinctively said, ‘Oh, well really!’ but secretly felt rather pleased, as he always did, at being recognised walking in public with the famous Olga Bracely.

Quaint Irene, the town’s resident artist, was now having to deal with the strain of fame, having progressed from selling her paintings in the pub for a few pints of beer to become a renowned Royal Academician. Some of the more pretentious critics claimed that she ‘defined the spirit of the age’ and argued amongst themselves as to whether her work was figuratively abstract, or abstractly figurative. So many students now came calling, usually unannounced, and went home again to paint determinedly in the manner of Irene Coles, that there was even talk of ‘The Tilling School’.

‘Hello, dear diva,’ she said to Olga, for she was almost as fond of her as she was of Lucia. ‘Why, you were all the talk of Tilling yesterday.’

‘Yesterday?’ Olga enquired. ‘Why not today?’

‘Because you’re here now, silly,’ Irene explained. ‘Yesterday everyone was wondering whether you really would be coming to visit, as we all heard you might be. Of course, the day
before
yesterday we were all talking about those wretched newspaper pics –’

‘Yes, well, now here we are, as you see,’ Georgie cut in quickly. He had already decided that the less conversation was exchanged about the photographs, and the one in the
Daily Mirror
in particular, the better.

‘Yes, and it’s jolly lovely to have you both back amongst us,’ Irene responded warmly. ‘Why, that poisonous Mapp said we might never see either of you again.’

‘No!’ they both chorused in good Tilling fashion.

‘She jolly well did! Said she’d heard Lucia had a blazing row with you and Georgie and had banned you both from Mallards.’

‘Well, really!’ Georgie exclaimed, but this time with a lot more passion.

‘Pretty typical, I must say,’ Olga admitted. ‘Admitted’ for she usually strove to see the best in everyone.

‘Hush, here she is,’ hissed Georgie.

The Mapp-Flints indeed hove into view at this point. The countenance of Major Benjy, who was carrying his wife’s basket, lit up at the sight of Olga, whom he greatly admired, though as a woman rather than a singer.

‘Dear lady,’ he boomed, ‘so glad you were able to get down here.’

‘Miss Bracely, always such a pleasure,’ chorused his wife with every appearance of sincerity.

‘The memsahib thought you might stay up in town,’ the Major proffered conversationally.

‘Thought you might
have
to, more like,’ Irene interjected indignantly. ‘As if an angel like Lucia would ever do a thing like that!’

‘You speak in riddles, quaint one,’ Mapp commented serenely, gazing at her indulgently. ‘But no matter, let us simply rejoice that dear Miss Bracely has come amongst us again. Shall we have singing, I wonder?’

‘I think not,’ Georgie said firmly. ‘Olga is singing Brünnhilde tomorrow and needs to conserve her voice.’

‘Oh dear,’ Mapp lamented, ‘I was hoping that Lucia might mount one of her famous
po’ di mu
.’

A muttered comment about ‘that Beethoven thing’ came from the Major at her side. This time it was his turn to receive an indulgent glance.

‘I think my Benjy-boy is saying that he was hoping Miss Bracely might substitute some of her charming Schubert for Lucia’s “Moonlight”. All very well in its own way, of course, but when one has heard it
quite
so many times it does begin to lose its appeal.’

‘Well,’ replied Georgie with some asperity, ‘since there isn’t going to be a
po’ di mu
then the question won’t arise, will it?’

Perhaps
esprit d’escalier
would suggest an equally cutting response, but on the spur of the moment all Elizabeth Mapp-Fint could think of was, ‘Indeed,
what
a shame,’ and slip away with a beaming smile fixed upon her face, husband securely in tow.

Irene, Olga and Georgie looked at each other but before they could venture any opinion on what had just transpired, Diva Plaistow appeared, rather stouter than Olga had remembered her, clutching the handle of her shopping bag firmly in both hands.

‘Olga!’ she exclaimed with obvious pleasure. ‘You came! How nice. Thought you might not.’

Diva’s customarily terse form of diction could be mistaken for the content of a telegram, particularly when she was flustered.

‘People said things,’ she went on. ‘Nasty things, I thought. Too bad of Elizabeth.’

There was a rustle of understanding, agreement and regret among the group clustered on the pavement, and then Diva, who was the only one of them genuinely engaged in a shopping expedition, said, ‘Must go – so nice,’ and waddled off determinedly in the direction of Twistevant’s.

‘Oh dear,’ Olga murmured gloomily, gazing at Diva’s retreating back. ‘Nasty things. That doesn’t sound good, does it?’

‘No nastier than you’d expect of Mapp, the old viper,’ Irene commented. Elizabeth Mapp-Flint was not one of her favourite people, a state of affairs which had long existed even before Lucia and Georgie had come to live in Tilling.

‘But what has she been saying
exactly
?’ Georgie asked.

Irene gazed longingly at the door of the Trader’s Arms and checked her watch.

‘Tell you what,’ she said. ‘You buy me a drink and I’ll spill the beans.’

So it was that the conversation broke off at this point, and resumed once the three had gathered round a table in the lounge bar and were contemplating their drinks with that glimmer of illicit pleasure which derives from preparing to imbibe alcohol at only five minutes past midday.

‘Well, it was all pretty mouldy, actually,’ Irene went on, as though there had been no interruption. ‘She said that Lucia had gone charging off to town when she saw the
Mirror
, planning to confront you both, discovered you gone and thought you’d run away to avoid her.’

Georgie and Olga looked at each other guiltily.

‘Then, according to Mapp, she discovered that you’d come here to Tilling and was absolutely certain that you were avoiding her since you “must have known” that she would go to London hotfoot and that Mallards was therefore the one place in the world where you were guaranteed not to run into her.’

‘Well, for goodness’ sake,’ Georgie interjected weakly, hoping that his protest sounded credible. Olga simply looked uncomfortable and said nothing.