The Complete Mapp & Lucia (143 page)

The evening post had come in but there was nothing for her except a packet covered with seals which she knew must be her pass-book returned from the bank. She did not trouble to open it, and after a tray (for she had made a substantial tea) she picked up the evening paper, to see if she could find any hints about a career for a woman of fifty. Women seemed to be much to the fore: there was one flying backwards and forwards across the Atlantic, but Lucia felt it was a little late for her to take up flying: probably it required an immense amount of practice before you could, with any degree of confidence, start for New York alone, two or three thousand feet up in the air.

Then eight others were making a tour of pavilions and assembly rooms in towns on the South Coast, and entrancing everybody by their graceful exhibitions (in tights, or were their legs bare?) of physical drill; but on thinking it over, Lucia could not imagine herself heading a team of Tilling ladies, Diva and Elizabeth and Susan Wyse, with any reasonable hope of entrancing anybody. The pages of reviews of books seemed to deal entirely with novels by women, all of which were works of high genius. Lucia had long felt that she could write a marvellous novel, but perhaps there were enough geniuses already. Then there was a woman who, though it was winter, was in training to swim the Channel, but Lucia hated sea-bathing and could not swim. Certainly women were making a stir in the world, but none of their achievements seemed suited to the ambitions of a middle-aged widow.

Lucia turned the page. Dame Catherine Winterglass was dead at the age of fifty-five, and there was a long obituary notice of this remarkable spinster. For many years she had been governess to the children of a solicitor who lived at Balham, but at the age of forty-five she had been dismissed to make way for somebody younger. She had a capital of £500, and had embarked on operations on the Stock Exchange, making a vast fortune. At the time of her death she had a house in Grosvenor Square where she entertained Royalty, an estate at Mocomb Regis in Norfolk for partridge shooting, a deer forest in Scotland, and a sumptuous yacht for cruising in the Mediterranean; and from London, Norfolk, Ross-shire and the Riviera she was always in touch with the centres of finance. An admirable woman, too: hospitals, girl-guides, dogs’ homes, indigent parsons, preventions of cruelty and propagations of the Gospel were the recipients of her noble bounty. No deserving case (and many undeserving) ever appealed to her in vain and her benefactions were innumerable. Right up to the end of her life, in spite of her colossal expenditure, it was believed that she grew richer and richer.

Lucia forgot all about nocturnal arrangements at Mallards, and read this account through again. What an extraordinary power money had! It enabled you not only to have everything you could possibly want yourself, but to do so much good, to relieve suffering, to make the world (as the Padre had said last Sunday) “a better place.” Hitherto she had taken very little interest in money, being quite content every six months or so to invest a few hundred pounds from her constantly accruing balance in some gilt-edged security, the dividends from which added some negligible sum to her already ample income. But here was this woman who, starting with a total capital of a paltry five hundred pounds, had for years lived in Sybaritic luxury and done no end of good as well. “To be sure,” thought Lucia, “she had the start of me by five years, for she was only forty-five when she began, but still…”

Grosvenor entered.

“Foljambe’s back from Mr. Georgie’s ma’am,” she said. “You told me you wanted to see her.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Lucia, deep in meditation about Dame Catherine. “To-morrow will do.”

She let the paper drop, and fixed her gimlet eyes on the bust of Beethoven, for this conduced to concentration. She did not covet yachts and deer forests, but there were many things she would like to do for Tilling: a new organ was wanted at the church, a new operating theatre was wanted at the hospital and she herself wanted Mallards. She intended to pass the rest of her days here, and it would be wonderful to be a great benefactress to the town, a notable figure, a civic power and not only the Queen (she had no doubt about that) of its small social life. These benefactions and the ambitions for herself, which she had been unable to visualize before, outlined themselves with distinctness and seemed wreathed together: the one twined round the other. Then the parable of the talents occurred to her. She had been like the unprofitable servant who, distrusting his financial ability, had wrapped it up in a napkin, for really to invest money in Government Stock was comparable with that, such meagre interest did it produce.

She picked up her paper again and turned to the page of financial news, and strenuously applied her vigorous mind to an article on the trend of markets by the City Editor. Those tedious gilt-edged stocks had fallen a little (as he had foreseen) but there was great activity in Industrials and in gold shares. Then there was a list of the shares which the City Editor had recommended to his readers a month ago. All of them (at least all that he quoted) had experienced a handsome rise: one had doubled in price. Lucia ripped open the sealed envelope containing her pass-book and observed with a pang of retrospective remorse that it revealed that she had the almost indecent balance of twelve hundred pounds. If only, a month ago, she had invested a thousand of it in that share recommended by this clever City Editor each pound would have made another pound!

But it was no use repining, and she turned to see what the wizard recommended now. Goldfields of West Africa were very promising, notably Siriami, and the price was eight to nine shillings. She did not quite know what that meant: probably there were two grades of shares, the best costing nine shillings, and a slightly inferior kind costing eight. Supposing she bought five hundred shares of Siriami and they behaved as those others had done, she would in a month’s time have doubled the sum she had invested.

“I’m beginning to see my way,” she thought, and the way was so absorbing that she had not heard the telephone bell ring, and now Grosvenor came in to say that Georgie wanted to speak to her. Lucia wondered whether Foljambe had seen her peeping in at his window this afternoon and had reported this intrusion, and was prepared, if this was the case and Georgie resented it, not exactly to lie about it, but to fail to understand what he was talking about until he got tired of explaining. She adopted that intimate dialect of baby-language with a peppering of Italian words in which they often spoke together.

“Is zat ‘oo, Georgino mio?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Georgie in plain English.

“Lubly to hear your voice again.
Come sta?
Better I hope.”

“Yes, going on all right, but very slow. All too tarsome. And I’m getting dreadfully depressed seeing nobody and hearing nothing.”

Lucia dropped dialect.

“But, my dear, why didn’t you let me come and see you before? You’ve always refused.”

“I know.”

There was a long pause. Lucia with her psychic faculties alert after so much Bridge felt sure he had something more to say, and like a wise woman she refrained from pressing him. Clearly he had rung her up to tell her something, but found it difficult to bring himself to the point.

At last it came.

“Will you come in to-morrow then?”

“Of course I will. Delighted. What time?”

“Any time is the same to me,” said Georgie gloomily. “I sit in this beastly little room all day.”

“About twelve then, after church?” she asked.

“Do. And I must warn you that I’m very much changed.”

(“That’s the beard,” thought Lucia.) She made her voice register deep concern.

“My dear, what do you mean?” she asked with a clever tremolo.

“Nothing to be anxious about at all, though it’s frightful. I won’t tell you because it’s so hard to explain it all. Any news?”

That sounded better: in spite of this frightful change Georgie had his human interests alive.

“Lots: quantities. For instance, Elizabeth says
n’est ce pas
and
chérie,
because she’s been to France.”

“No!” said Georgie with a livelier inflexion. “We’ll have a good talk: lots must have happened. But remember there’s a shocking change.”

“It won’t shock
me,”
said Lucia. “Twelve then, to-morrow. Good night, Georgino.”

“
Buona notte,”
said he.

Major Benjy was in church with his wife next morning: this was weighty evidence as regards her influence over him, for never yet had he been known to spend a fine Sunday morning except on the golf links. He sat with her among the auxiliary choir sharing her hymn-book and making an underground sort of noise during the hymns. The Padre preached a long sermon in Scotch about early Christianity in Ireland which was somehow confusing to the geographical sense. After service Lucia walked away a little ahead of the Mapp-Flints, so that they certainly saw her ring the bell at Mallards Cottage and be admitted, and Elizabeth did not fail to remember that Georgie had said only yesterday afternoon that he was not up to seeing anybody. Lucia smiled and waved her hand as she went in to make sure Elizabeth saw, and Elizabeth gave a singularly mirthless smile in answer. As it was Sunday, she tried to feel pleased that he must be better this morning, but with only partial success. However, she would sit in the window of the garden-room and see how long Lucia stayed.

Georgie was not yet down and Lucia had a few minutes alone in his sitting-room among the tokens of his handiwork. There were dozens of his water-colour sketches on the walls, the sofa was covered with a charming piece of
gros-point
from his nimble needle, and his new piece in
petit point,
not yet finished, lay on one of the numerous little tables. One window looked on to the street, the other on to a tiny square of flower garden with a patch of crazy pavement surrounding a brick pillar on the top of which stood a replica of the Neapolitan Narcissus. Georgie had once told Lucia that he had just that figure when he was a boy, and with her usual tact she had assured him he had it still. There were large soft cushions in all the chairs, there was a copy of
Vogue,
a work-basket containing wools, a feather brush for dusting, a screen to shut off all draughts from the door, and a glass case containing his bibelots, including a rather naughty enamelled snuff-box: two young people—Then she heard his slippered tread on the stairs and in he came.

He had on his new blue suit: round his neck was a pink silk scarf with an amethyst pin to keep it in place, and above the scarf his face, a shade plumper than Narcissus’s, thatched by his luxuriant auburn hair and decorated with an auburn moustache turned up at the ends, was now framed in a short grey, almost white beard.

“My dear, it’s too dreadful,” he said. “I know I’m perfectly hidjus, but I shan’t be able to shave for weeks to come, and I couldn’t bear being alone any longer. I tried to shave yesterday. Agonies!”

Dialectic encouragement was clearly the first thing to administer.

“Georgino! ‘Oo vewy naughty boy not to send for me before,” said Lucia. “If I’d been growing a
barba
—my dear, not
at all
disfiguring: rather dignified—do you think I should have said I wouldn’t see you? But tell me all about it. I know nothing.”

“Shingles on my face and neck,” said Georgie. “Blisters. Bandages. Ointments. Aspirin. Don’t tell anybody. So degrading!”

“
Povero!
But I’m sure you’ve borne it wonderfully. And you’re over the attack?”

“So they say. But it will be weeks before I can shave, and I can’t go about before I do that. Tell me the news. Elizabeth rang me up yesterday, and offered to come and sit with me after dinner.”

“I know. I was there playing Bridge and you, or Foljambe rather, said you weren’t up to seeing people. But she saw me come in this morning.”

“No!” said Georgie. “She’ll hate that.”

Lucia sighed.

“An unhappy nature, I’m
afraid,”
she said. “I waggled my hand and smiled at her as I stepped in, and she smiled back—how shall I say it?—as if she had been lunching on soused mackerel and pickles instead of going to church. And all those
n’est ce pas
-s as I told you yesterday.”

“But what about her and Benjy?” asked Georgie. “Who wears the trousers?”

“Georgie: it’s difficult to say: I felt a man’s eye was needed. It looked to me as if they wore one trouser each. He’s got the garden-room as his sitting-room: horns and savage aprons on the wall and bald tiger-skins on the floor. On the other hand he had tea instead of whisky and soda at tea-time in an enormous cup, and he was in church this morning. They dab at each other about equally.”

“How disgusting!” said Georgie. “You don’t know how you cheer me up.”

“So glad, Georgie. That’s what I’m here for. And now I’ve got a plan. No, it isn’t a plan, it’s an order. I’m not going to leave you here alone. You’re coming to stay with me at Grebe. You needn’t see anybody but me and me only when you feel inclined. It’s ridiculous your being cooped up here with no one to talk to. Have your lunch and tell Foljambe to pack your bags and order your car.”

Georgie required very little persuasion. It was a daring proceeding to stay all alone with Lucia but that was not in its disfavour. He was the professional
jeune premier
in social circles at Tilling, smart and beautifully dressed and going to more tea-parties than anybody else, and it was not at all amiss that he should imperil his reputation and hers by these gay audacities. Very possibly Tilling would never know, as the plan was that he should be quite invisible till his clandestine beard was removed, but if Tilling did then or later find out, he had no objection. Besides, it would make an excellent opportunity for his cook to have her holiday, and she should go off to-morrow morning, leaving the house shut up. Foljambe would come up every other day or so to open windows and air it.