The Complete Mapp & Lucia (136 page)

As regards the last sad scene, he need not say much about it, for never would any of them forget that touching, that ennobling, that teaching sight of the two, gallant in the face of death as they had ever been in that of life, being whirled out to sea. Mrs Lucas in the ordeal which they would all have to face one day, giving that humorous greeting of hers, ‘au reservoir’, which they all knew so well, to her friends standing in safety on the shore, and then turning again to her womanly work of comforting and encouraging her weaker sister. ‘May we all,’ said the Padre, with a voice trembling with emotion, ‘go to meet death in that serene and untroubled spirit, doing our duty to the last. And now—’

This sermon, at the request of a few friends, he had printed in the Parish Magazine next week, and copies were sent to everybody.

It was only natural that Tilling should feel relieved when the ceremony was over, for the weeks since the stranding of the kitchen-table had been like the period between a death and a funeral. The blinds were up again now, and life gradually resumed a more normal complexion. January ebbed away into February, February into March, and as the days lengthened with the returning sun, so the mirths and squabbles of Tilling grew longer and brighter.

But a certain stimulus which had enlivened them all since Lucia’s advent from Riseholme was lacking. It was not wholly that there was no Lucia, nor, wholly, that there was no Elizabeth, it was the intense reactions which they had produced together that everyone missed so fearfully. Day after day those who were left met and talked in the High Street, but never was there news of that thrilling kind which since the summer had keyed existence up to so exciting a level. But it was interesting to see Major Benjy in his new motor, which he drove himself, and watch his hairbreadth escapes from collisions at sharp corners and to hear the appalling explosions of military language if any other vehicle came within a yard of his green bonnet.

‘He seems to think,’ said Diva to Mrs Bartlett, as they met on shopping errands one morning, ‘that now he has got a motor nobody else may use the road at all.’

‘A trumpery little car,’ said Mrs Bartlett, ‘I should have thought, with ten thousand pounds as good as in his pocket, he might have got himself something better.’

They were standing at the corner looking up towards Mallards, and Diva suddenly caught sight of a board on Major Benjy’s house, announcing that it was for sale.

‘Why, whatever’s that?’ she cried. ‘That must have been put up only to-day. Good morning, Mr Georgie. What about Major Benjy’s house?’

Georgie still wore a broad black band on his sleeve.

‘Yes, he told me yesterday that he was going to move into Mallards next week,’ he said. ‘And he’s going to have a sale of his furniture almost immediately.’

‘That won’t be much to write home about,’ said Diva scornfully. ‘A few moth-eaten tiger-skins which he said he shot in India.’

‘I think he wants some money,’ said Georgie. ‘He’s bought a motor, you see, and he has to keep up Mallards as well as his own house.’

‘I call that very rash,’ said Mrs Bartlett. ‘I call that counting your chickens before they’re hatched. Oh dear me, what a thing to have said! Dreadful!’

Georgie tactfully covered this up by a change of subject.

‘I’ve made up my mind,’ he said, ‘and I’m going to put up a cenotaph in the churchyard to dear Lucia and Elizabeth.’

‘What? Both?’ asked Diva.

‘Yes, I’ve thought it carefully over, and it’s going to be both.’

‘Major Benjy ought to go halves with you then,’ said Diva.

‘Well, I told him I was intending to do it,’ said Georgie, ‘and he didn’t catch on. He only said “Capital idea,” and took some whisky and soda. So I shan’t say any more. I would really just as soon do it all myself.’

‘Well, I do think that’s mean of him,’ said Diva. ‘He ought anyhow to bear some part of the expense, considering everything. Instead of which he buys a motor-car which he can’t drive. Go on about the cenotaph.’

‘I saw it down at the stonemason’s yard,’ said Georgie, ‘and that put the idea into my head. Beautiful white marble on the lines, though of course much smaller, of the one in London. It had been ordered, I found, as a tombstone, but then the man who ordered it went bankrupt, and it was on the stonemason’s hands.’

‘I’ve heard about it,’ said Mrs Bartlett, in rather a superior voice. ‘Kenneth told me you’d told him, and we both think that it’s a lovely idea.’

‘The stonemason ought to let you have it cheap then,’ said Diva.

‘It wasn’t very cheap,’ said Georgie, ‘but I’ve bought it, and they’ll put it in its place to-day, just outside the south transept, and the Padre is going to dedicate it. Then there’s the inscription. I shall have in loving memory of them, by me, and a bit of the Padre’s text at the memorial service. Just “In death they were not divided.”’

‘Quite right. Don’t put in about the eagles and the lions,’ said Diva.

‘No, I thought I would leave that out. Though I like that part,’ said Georgie for the sake of Mrs Bartlett.

‘Talking of whisky,’ said Diva, flying back, as her manner was, to a remote allusion, ‘Major Benjy’s finished all the pre-war whisky that Lucia gave him. At least I heard him ordering some more yesterday. Oh, and there’s the notice of his sale. Old English furniture—yes, that may mean two things, and I know which of them it is. Valuable works of Art. Well I never! A print of the “Monarch of the Glen” and a photograph of the “Soul’s Awakening”. Rubbish! Fine tiger-skins! The skins may be all right, but they’re bald.’

‘My dear, how severe you are,’ said Georgie. ‘Now I must go and see how they’re getting on with the inscription. Au reservoir.’

Diva nodded at Evie Bartlett.

‘Nice to hear that again,’ she said. ‘I’ve not heard it—well, since.’

The cenotaph with its inscription in bold leaded letters to say that Georgie had erected it in memory of the two undivided ladies, roused much admiration, and a full-page reproduction of it appeared in the Parish Magazine for April, which appeared on the last day of March. The stone-cutter had slightly miscalculated the space at his disposal for the inscription, and the words ‘Elizabeth Mapp’ were considerably smaller than the words ‘Emmeline Lucas’ in order to get them into the line. Though Tilling said nothing about that, it was felt that the error was productive of a very suitable effect, if a symbolic meaning was interpreted into it. Georgie was considered to have done it very handsomely and to be behaving in a way that contrasted most favourably with the conduct of Major Benjy, for whereas Georgie was keeping up Grebe at great expense, and restoring, all at his own charge, the havoc the flood had wrought in the garden, Major Benjy, after unsuccessfully trying to let Mallards at ten guineas a week, had moved into the house, and, with a precipitation that was as rash as it was indelicate, was already negotiating about the disposal of his own, and was to have a sale of his furniture on April the first. He had bought a motor, he had replenished the cellars of Mallards with strong wines and more pre-war whisky, he was spending money like water and on the evening of this last day of March he gave a bridge-party in the garden-room.

Georgie and Diva and Mrs Padre were the guests at this party: there had been dinner first, a rich elaborate dinner, and bridge afterwards up till midnight. It had been an uncomfortable evening, and before it was over they all wished they had not come, for Major Benjy had alluded to it as a house-warming, which showed that either his memory was going, or that his was a very callous nature, for no one whose perceptions were not of the commonest could possibly have used that word so soon. He had spoken of his benefactress with fulsome warmth, but it was painfully evident from what source this posthumous affection sprang. He thought of having the garden-room redecorated, the house wanted brightening up a bit, he even offered each of them one of Miss Mapp’s water-colour sketches, of which was a profusion on the walls, as a memento of their friend, God bless her… There he was straddling in the doorway with the air of a vulgar
nouveau riche
owner of an ancestral property, as they went their ways homeward into the night, and they heard him bolt and lock the door and put up the chain which Lucia in her tenancy had had repaired in order to keep out the uninvited and informal visits of Miss Mapp. ‘It would serve him jolly well right,’ thought Georgie, ‘if she came back.’

It was a calm and beautiful night with a high tide that overflowed the channel of the river. There was spread a great sheet of moonlit water over the submerged meadows at the margin, and it came up to the foot of the rebuilt bank opposite Grebe. Between four and five of the morning of April the first, a trawler entered the mouth of the river, and just at the time when the stars were growing pale and the sky growing red with the coming dawn, it drew up at the little quay to the east of the town, and was moored to the shore. There stepped out of it two figures clad in overalls and tarpaulin jackets.

‘I think we had better go straight to Mallards, dear,’ said Elizabeth, ‘as it’s so close, and have a nice cup of tea to warm ourselves. Then you can telephone from there to Grebe, and tell them to send the motor up for you.’

‘I shall ring up Georgie too,’ said Lucia. ‘I can’t bear to think that his suspense should last a minute more than is necessary.’

Elizabeth pointed upwards.

‘See, there’s the sun catching the top of the church tower,’ she said. ‘Little did I think I should ever see dear Tilling again.’

‘I never had the slightest doubt about it,’ said Lucia. ‘Look, there are the fields we floated across on the kitchen-table. I wonder what happened to it.’

They climbed the steps at the south-east angle of the town, and up the slope to the path across the churchyard. This path led close by the south side of the church, and the white marble of the cenotaph gleamed in the early sunlight.

‘What a handsome tomb,’ said Elizabeth. ‘It’s quite new. But how does it come here? No one has been buried in the churchyard for a hundred years.’

Lucia gave a gasp as the polished lead letters caught her eye.

‘But it’s us!’ she said.

They stood side by side in their tarpaulins, and together in a sort of chant read the inscription aloud.

THIS STONE WAS ERECTED BY

GEORGE PILLSON

IN LOVING MEMORY OF

EMMELINE LUCAS AND ELIZABETH MAPP

LOST AT SEA ON BOXING DAY, 1930

————————

‘IN DEATH THEY WERE NOT DIVIDED.’

‘I’ve never heard of such a thing,’ cried Lucia. ‘I call it most premature of Georgie, assuming that I was dead like that. The inscription must be removed instantly. All the same it was kind of him and what a lot of money it must have cost him! Gracious me, I suppose he thought—Let us hurry, Elizabeth.’

Elizabeth was still staring at the stone.

‘I am puzzled to know why my name is put in such exceedingly small letters,’ she said acidly. ‘You can hardly read it. As you say, dear, it was most premature of him. I should call it impertinent, and I’m very glad dear Major Benjy had nothing to do with it. There’s an indelicacy about it.’

They went quickly on past Mallards Cottage where the blinds were still down, and there was the window of the garden-room from which each had made so many thrilling observations, and the red-brick front, glowing in the sunlight, of Mallards itself. As they crossed the cobbled way to the front door, Elizabeth looked down towards the High Street and saw on Major Benjy’s house next door the house-agents’ board announcing that the freehold of this desirable residence was for disposal. There were bills pasted on the walls announcing the sale of furniture to take place there that very day.

Her face turned white, and she laid a quaking hand on Lucia’s arm.

‘Look, Major Benjy’s house is for sale,’ she faltered. ‘Oh, Lucia, what has happened? Have we come back from the dead, as it were, to find that it’s our dear old friend instead? And to think—’ She could not complete the sentence.

‘My dear, you mustn’t jump at any such terrible conclusions,’ said Lucia. ‘He may, have changed his house—’

Elizabeth shook her head; she was determined to believe the worst, and indeed it seemed most unlikely that Major Benjy who had lived in the same house for a full quarter of a century could have gone to any new abode but one. Meantime, eager to put an end to this suspense, Elizabeth kept pressing the bell, and Lucia plying the knocker of Mallards.

‘They all sleep on the attic floor,’ said Elizabeth, ‘but I think they must hear us soon if we go on. Ah, there’s a step on the stairs. Someone is coming down.’

They heard the numerous bolts on the door shot back, they heard the rattle of the released chain. The door was opened and there within stood Major Benjy. He had put on his dinner jacket over his Jaeger pyjamas, and had carpet slippers on his feet. He was sleepy and bristly and very cross.

‘Now what’s all this about, my men,’ he said, seeing two tarpaulined figures on the threshold. ‘What do you mean by waking me up with that infernal—’

Elizabeth’s suspense was quite over.

‘You wretch,’ she cried in a fury. ‘What do
you
mean? Why are you in my house? Ah, I guess! He! He! He! You learned about my will, did you? You thought you wouldn’t wait to step into a dead woman’s shoes, but positively tear them off my living feet. My will shall be revoked this day: I promise you that… Now out you go, you horrid supplanter! Off to your own house with you, for you shan’t spend another minute in mine.’

During this impassioned address Major Benjy’s face changed to an expression of the blankest dismay, as if he had seen something much worse (as indeed he had) than a ghost. He pulled pieces of himself together.

‘But, my dear Miss Elizabeth,’ he said. ‘You’ll allow me surely, to get my clothes on, and above all to say one word of my deep thankfulness that you and Mrs Lucas—it is Mrs Lucas, isn’t it?—’