Lucia Victrix (80 page)

‘
Si, si
,' he cried, ‘it is the lady who came to hear the first trial of
Lucrezia
at your Riseholme, and spoke Italian with so pure an accent.
Come sta, signora?
' And he continued to prattle in Italian.

Lucia had a horrid feeling that all this had happened before, and that in a moment it would be rediscovered that she could not speak Italian. Lunch, anyhow, was over, and she could say a reluctant farewell. She summoned up a few words in that abhorred tongue.

‘Cara,'
she said to Olga, ‘we must tear ourselves away.
A rivederci, non e vero, dopo domani.
But we must go to catch our train. A poor hard-worked Mayor must get back to the call of duty.'

‘Oh, is he a Mayor?' asked Poppy with interest. ‘How very distinguished.'

There was no time to explain; it was better that Georgie should be temporarily enthroned in Poppy's mind as Mayor, rather than run any further risks, and Lucia threaded her way through the narrow passage between the tables. After all she had got plenty of material to work up into noble narrative at Tilling. Georgie followed and slammed the door of the taxi quite crossly.

‘I can't think why you were in such a hurry,' he said. ‘I was enjoying myself, and we shall only be kicking our heels at the station.'

‘Better to run no risk of missing our train,' she said. ‘And we have to pick up Foljambe and our luggage.'

‘Not at all,' said Georgie. ‘We particularly arranged that she should meet us with it at Victoria.'

‘Georgie, how stupid of me!' said the shameless Lucia. ‘Forgive me.'

Lucia found that she had no engagement for the next evening, and got up a party for dinner and bridge in order casually to disseminate these magnificent experiences. Mr Wyse and Diva (Susan being indisposed), the Mapp-Flints and the Padre and Evie were her guests. It rather surprised her that nobody asked any questions at dinner, about her visit to London, but, had she only known it, Tilling had seen in the paper that she and a Duke and Duchess had been in Olga's box, and had entered into a fell conspiracy, for Lucia's good, not to show the slightest curiosity about it. Thus, though her guests were
starving for information, conversation at dinner had been entirely confined to other topics, and whenever Lucia made a casual allusion to the opera, somebody spoke loudly about something else. But when the ladies retired into the garden-room the strain on their curiosity began to tell, and Lucia tried again.

‘So delightful to get back to peaceful Tilling,' she said, as if she had been away for thirty-six weeks instead of thirty-six hours, ‘though I fear it is not for long. London was such a terrible rush. Of course the first thing we did was to go to the Academy to see the Picture of the Year, dear Elizabeth.'

That was crafty: Elizabeth could not help being interested in that.

‘And could you get near it, dear?' she asked.

‘Easily. Not such a great crowd. Technically I was a wee bit disappointed. Very vigorous, of course, and great
bravura
–'

‘What does that mean?' asked Diva.

‘How shall I say it? Dash, sensational effect, a too obvious dexterity,' said Lucia, gesticulating like a painter doing bold brush-work. ‘I should have liked more time to look at it, for Irene will long to know what I think about it, but we had to dress and dine before the opera. Dear Olga had given us an excellent box, a little too near the stage perhaps.'

It was more than flesh and blood could stand: the conspiracy of silence broke down.

‘I saw in the paper that the Duke and Duchess of Sheffield were there, too,' said Evie.

‘In the paper was it?' asked Lucia with an air of great surprise. ‘How the press ferrets things out! He and Poppy Sheffield came in in the middle of the second act. I was rather cross, I'm afraid, for I hate such interruptions.'

Elizabeth was goaded into speech.

‘Most inconsiderate,' she said. ‘I hope you told her so, Worship.'

Lucia smiled indulgently.

‘Ah, people who aren't
really
musical – poor Poppy Sheffield is not – have no idea of the pain they give. And what has happened here since Georgie and I left?'

‘Seventeen to tea yesterday,' said Diva. ‘What was the opera like?'

‘Superb. Olga sang the great scene to me years ago and I confess I did not do it justice. A little modern for my classical taste, but a very great work. Very. And her voice is still magnificent; perhaps a little sign of forcing in the top register, but then I am terribly critical.'

The conspiracy of silence had become a cross-examination of questions. These admissions were being forced from her.

‘And then did you go out to supper?' asked Evie.

‘Ah no! Music takes too much out of me. Back to the hotel and so to bed, as Pepys says.'

‘And next morning, Worship, after such an exciting evening?' asked Elizabeth.

‘Poor me! A bundle of agenda for the Council meeting on Monday. I had to slave at them until nearly lunch-time.'

‘You and Mr Georgie in your hotel?' asked Diva.

‘No: dear Olga insisted that we should lunch with her at the Ritz,' said Lucia in the slow drawling voice which she adopted when her audience were on tenterhooks. ‘No party, just the four of us.'

‘Who was the fourth?'

‘The Duchess. She was very late, just as she had been at the opera. A positive obsession with her. So we didn't wait.'

Not waiting for a Duchess produced a stunning effect.

Diva recovered first.

‘Good food?' she asked.

‘Fair, I should have called it. Or do you mean Poppy's food? How you will laugh! A dressed crab and oceans of black coffee. The only diet on which she feels really well.'

‘Sounds most indigestible,' said Diva. ‘What an odd sort of stomach. And then?'

‘How you all catechize me! Then Cortese came in. He is the composer, I must explain, of
Lucrezia
, and conducted it. Italian, with all the vivaciousness of the South –'

‘So you had a good talk in Italian to him, dear,' said Elizabeth viciously.

‘Alas, no. We had to rush off almost immediately to catch our train. Hardly a word with him.'

‘What a pity!' said Elizabeth. ‘And just now you told us you were not going to be here long. Gadding off again?'

‘Alas, yes; though how ungrateful of me to say “alas”,' said Lucia still drawling. ‘Dear Olga implored Georgie and me to spend the week-end with her at Riseholme. She would not take a refusal. It will be delicious to see the dear old place again. I shall make her sing to us. These great singers are always at their best with a small
intime
sympathetic audience.'

‘And will there be some Duchesses there?' asked Elizabeth, unable to suppress her bitterness.

‘Chi lo sa?'
said Lucia with superb indifference. ‘Ah, here come the men. Let us get to our bridge.'

The men, who were members of this conspiracy, had shown a stronger self-control than the women, and had not asked Georgie a single question about high-life, but they knew now about his new ties. Evie could not resist saying in an aside to her husband:

‘Fancy, Kenneth, the Duchess of Sheffield lives on dressed crab and black coffee.'

Who could resist such an alluring fragment? Certainly not the Padre.

‘Eh, that's a singular diet,' he said, ‘and has Mistress Mayor been telling you a' about it? An' what does she do when there's no crab to be had?'

From the eagerness in his voice, Lucia instantly guessed that the men had heard nothing, and were consumed with curiosity.

‘Enough of my silly tittle-tattle,' she said. ‘More important matters lie before us. Elizabeth, will you and the Padre and Mr Wyse play at my table?'

For a while cards overrode all other interest, but it was evident that the men were longing to know all that their vow of self-control had hidden from them: first one and then another, during the deals, alluded to shellfish and Borgias. But Lucia was adamant: they had certainly conspired to show no interest in the great events of the London visit, and they must be
punished. But when the party broke up, Mr Wyse insisted on driving Diva back in the Royce, and plied her with questions, and Major Benjy and the Padre, by the time they got home, knew as much as their wives.

Lucia and Georgie, with Grosvenor as maid (for it was only fair that she should have her share in these magnificent excursions) motored to Riseholme next morning. Lucia took among her luggage the tin box labelled ‘Housing', in order to keep abreast of municipal work, but in the hurry of departure forgot to put any municipal papers inside it. She would have liked to take Mrs Simpson as well, but Grosvenor occupied the seat next her chauffeur, and three inside would have been uncomfortable. Olga gave a garden-party in her honour in the afternoon, and Lucia was most gracious to all her old friends, in the manner of a Dowager Queen who has somehow come into a far vaster kingdom, but who has a tender remembrance of her former subjects, however humble, and she had a kind word for them all. After the party had dispersed, she and Georgie and Olga sat on in the garden, and her smiles were touched with sadness.

‘Such a joy to see all the dear, quaint folk again,' she said, ‘but what a sad change has come over the place! Riseholme, which in old days used to be seething with every sort of interest, has become just like any other vegetating little village –'

‘I don't agree at all,' said Georgie loudly. ‘It's seething still. Daisy Quantock's got a French parlourmaid who's an atheist, and Mrs Antrobus has learned the deaf and dumb alphabet, as she's got so deaf that the most expensive ear-trumpet isn't any use to her. Everybody has been learning it, too, and when Mrs Boucher gave a birthday-party for her only last week, they all talked deaf and dumb to each other, so that Mrs Antrobus could understand what was being said. I call that marvellous manners.'

The old flame flickered for a moment in Lucia's breast.

‘No!' she cried. ‘What else?'

‘I haven't finished this yet,' said Georgie. ‘And they were all
using their hands so much to talk, that they couldn't get on with their dinner, and it took an hour and a half, though it was only four courses.'

‘Georgie, how thrilling!' said Olga. ‘Go on.'

Georgie turned to the more sympathetic listener.

‘You see, they couldn't talk fast, because they were only learning, but when Mrs Antrobus replied, she was so quick, being an expert, that nobody except Piggie and Goosie –'

Lucia tilted her head sideways, with a sidelong glance at Olga, busy with a looking-glass and lipstick.

‘Ah; I recollect. Her daughters,' she said.

‘Yes, of course. They could tell you what she said if they were looking, but if they weren't looking you had to guess, like when somebody talks fast in a foreign language which you don't know much of, and you make a shot at what he's saying.'

Lucia gave him a gimlet glance. But of course, Georgie couldn't have been thinking of her and the Italian crisis.

‘Their dear, funny little ways!' she said. ‘But everyone I talked to was so eager to hear about Tilling and my Mayoral work, that I learned nothing about what was going on here. How they besieged me with questions! What else, Georgie?'

‘Well, the people who have got your house now have made a swimming-bath in the garden and have lovely mixed bathing-parties.'

Lucia repressed a pang of regret that she had never thought of doing that, and uttered a shocked sort of noise.

‘Oh, what a sad desecration!' she said. ‘Where is it? In my pleached alley, or in Perdita's garden?'

‘In the pleached alley, and it's a great success. I wish I'd brought my bathing-suit.'

‘And do they keep up my tableaux and Elizabethan fêtes and literary circles?' she asked.

‘I didn't hear anything about them, but there's a great deal going on. Very gay, and lots of people come down for weekends from town.'

Lucia rose.

‘And cocktail-parties, I suppose,' she said. ‘Well, well, one must expect one traces to be removed by the hand of time.
That wonderful sonnet of Shakespeare's about it.
Olga mia
, will you excuse me till dinner-time? Some housing plans I have got to study, or I shall never be able to face my Council on Monday.'

Lucia came down to dinner steeped in the supposed contents of her tin box and with a troubled face.

‘Those riband-developments!' she said. ‘They form one of the greatest problems I have to tackle.'

Olga looked utterly bewildered.

‘Ribands?' she asked. ‘Things in hats.'

Lucia gave a bright laugh.

‘Stupid of me not to explain, dear,' she said. ‘How could you know? Building developments: dreadful hideous dwellings along the sweet country roads leading into Tilling. Red-brick villas instead of hedges of hawthorn and eglantine. It seems such desecration.'

Georgie sighed. Lucia had already told him what she meant to say to her Council on Monday afternoon, and would assuredly tell him what she had said on Monday evening.

‘Caterpillars!' she cried with a sudden inspiration. ‘I shall compare those lines of houses to caterpillars, hungry red caterpillars wriggling out across the marsh and devouring its verdant loveliness. A vivid metaphor like that is needed. But I know, dear Olga, that nothing I say to you will go any further. My Councillors have a right to know my views before anybody else.'

‘My lips are sealed,' said Olga.

‘And yet we must build these new houses,' said the Mayor, putting both her elbows on the table and disregarding her plate of chicken. ‘We must abolish the slums in Tilling, and that means building on the roads outside. Such a multiplicity of conflicting interests.'

‘I suppose the work is tremendous,' said Olga.

‘Yes, I think we might call it tremendous, mightn't we, Georgie?' asked Lucia.