The Complete Mapp & Lucia (78 page)

She flew into the garden, calling to Georgie, who was putting up croquet-hoops.

“Georgie, I’ve got it!” she cried. “It’s as plain as plain. What Abfou wants us to do is to start a Riseholme Museum. He wrote Riseholme Museum quite distinctly. Think how it would pay too, when we’re overrun with American tourists in the summer! They would all come to see it. A shilling admission I should put it at, and sixpence for the catalogue.”

“I wonder if Abfou meant that,” said Georgie.

“He said it,” said Daisy. “You can’t deny that!”

“But what should we put in the Museum?” asked he.

“My dear, we should fill it with antiquities and things which none of us want in our houses. There are those beautiful fragments of the Abbey which I’ve got, and which are simply wasted in my garden with no one to see them, and my drainpipe. I would present them all to the Museum, and the fossils, and perhaps some of my coins. And my Roman brickwork.”

Georgie paused with a hoop in his hand.

“That is an idea,” he said. “And I’ve got all those lovely pieces of iridescent glass, which are always tumbling about. I would give them.”

“And Colonel Boucher’s Samian ware,” cried Daisy. “He was saying only the other day how he hated it, but didn’t quite want to throw it away. It will be a question of what we leave out, not of what we put in. Besides, I’m sure that’s what Abfou meant. We must form a committee at once. You and Mrs. Boucher and I, I should think, would be enough. Large committees are a great mistake.”

“Not Lucia?” asked Georgie, with lingering loyalty.

“No. Certainly not,” said Daisy. “She would only send us orders from London, as to what we were to do and want us to undo all we had done when she came back, besides saying she had thought of it, and making herself President!”

“There’s something in that,” said Georgie.

“Of course there is, there’s sense,” said Daisy. “Now I shall go straight and see Mrs. Boucher.”

Georgie dealt a few smart blows with his mallet to the hoop he was putting in place.

“I shall come too,” he said. “Riseholme Museum! I believe Abfou did mean that. We
shall
be busy again.”

The committee met that very afternoon, and the next morning and the next afternoon, and the scheme quickly took shape. Robert, rolling in golden billows of Roumanian oil, was called in as financial adviser, and after calculation, the scheme strongly recommended itself to him. All the summer the town was thronged with visitors, and inquiring American minds would hardly leave unvisited the Museum at so Elizabethan a place.

“I don’t know what you’ll have in your Museum,” he said, “but I expect they’ll go to look, and even if they don’t find much they’ll have paid their shillings. And if Mrs. Boucher thinks her husband will let you have that big tithe-barn of his, at a small rent, I daresay you’ll have a paying proposition.”

The question of funds therefore in order to convert the tithe barn into a museum was instantly gone into. Robert professed himself perfectly ready to equip the tithe-barn with all necessary furniture and decoration, if he might collar the whole of the receipts, but his willingness to take all financial responsibilities made the committee think that they would like to have a share in them, since so shrewd a business man clearly saw the probability of making something out of it. Up till then, the sordid question of money had not really occurred to them: there was to be a museum which would make them busy again, and the committee was to run it. They were quite willing to devote practically the whole of their time to it, for Riseholme was one of those happy places where the proverb that Time is money was a flat fallacy, for nobody had ever earned a penny with it. But since Robert’s financial judgment argued that the museum would be a profitable investment, the committee naturally wished to have a hand in it, and the three members each subscribed fifty pounds, and co-opted Robert to join the board and supply the rest. Profits (if any) would be divided up between the members of the committee in proportion to their subscriptions. The financial Robert would see to all that, and the rest of them could turn their attention to the provision of curiosities.

There was evidently to be no lack of them, for everyone in Riseholme had stores of miscellaneous antiquities and “specimens” of various kinds which encumbered their houses and required a deal of dusting, but which couldn’t quite be thrown away. A very few striking objects were only lent: among these were Daisy’s box of coins, and Mrs. Antrobus’s fibula, but the most of them, like Georgie’s glass and Colonel Boucher’s pieces of Samian ware, were fervently bestowed. Objects of all sorts poured in, the greater portion of a spinning-wheel, an Elizabethan pestle and mortar, no end of Roman tiles, a large wooden post unhesitatingly called a whipping-post, some indecipherable documents on parchment with seals attached, belonging to the vicar, an ordnance map of the district, numerous collections of fossils and of carved stones from the site of the abbey, ancient quilts, a baby’s cradle, worm-eaten enough to be Anglo-Saxon, queer-shaped bottles, a tiger-ware jug, fire-irons too ponderous for use, and (by special vote of the Parish Council) the stocks which had hitherto stood at the edge of the pond on the green. All Riseholme was busy again, for fossils had to be sorted out (it was early realised that even a museum could have too many ammonites), curtains had to be stitched for the windows, labels to be written, Samian ware to be pieced together, cases arranged, a catalogue prepared. The period of flatness consequent on Lucia’s desertion had passed off, and what had certainly added zest to industry was the thought that Lucia had nothing to do with the museum. When next she deigned to visit her discarded kingdom, she would find how busily and successfully and originally they had got on without her, and that there was no place for her on the committee, and probably none in the museum for the Elizabethan turnspit which so often made the chimney of her music-room to smoke.

Riseholme, indeed, was busier than ever, for not only had it the museum feverishly to occupy it so that it might be open for the tourist season this year, and, if possible, before Lucia came down for one of her promised weekends, but it was immersed in a wave of psychical experiments. Daisy Quantock had been perfectly honest in acknowledging that the idea of the museum was not hers at all, but Abfou’s, her Egyptian guide. She had, it is true, been as ingenious as Joseph in interpreting Abfou’s directions, but it was Abfou to whom all credit was due, and who evidently took such a deep interest in the affairs of Riseholme. She even offered to present the museum with the sheet of foolscap on which the words ‘Riseholme Museum’ (not mouse) were written, but the general feeling of the committee, while thanking her for her munificence, was that it would not be tactful to display it, since the same Sibylline sheet contained those sarcastic remarks about Lucia. It was proved also that Abfou had meant the Museum to be started, for subsequently he several times said, “Much pleased with your plans for the Museum. Abfou approves.” So everybody else wanted to get into touch with Abfou too, and no less than four planchettes or ouija-boards were immediately ordered by various members of Riseholme society. At present Abfou did not manifest himself to any of them, except in what was possibly Arabic script (for it certainly bore a strong resemblance to his earlier efforts of communication with Daisy), and while she encouraged the scribes to persevere in the hope that he might soon regale them with English, she was not really very anxious that he should. With her he was getting Englisher and Englisher every day, and had not Simkinson, after having had the true meaning of the word ‘lazy’ carefully explained to him, consented to manage her garden again, it certainly would have degenerated into primeval jungle, for she absolutely had not a minute to attend to it.

Simkinson, however, was quite genial.

“Oh yes, ma’am, very pleased to come back,” he said. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to get on long without me, and I want no explanations. Now let’s have a look round and see what you’ve been doing. Why, whatever’s happened to my mulberry tree?”

That was Simkinson’s way: he always talked of ‘my flowers’ and ‘my asparagus’ when he meant hers.

“I’ve been pruning its roots,” she said.

“Well, ma’am, you’ve done your best to do it in,” said Simkinson. “I don’t think it’s dead though, I daresay it’ll pull round.”

Abfou had been understood to say it was dead, but perhaps he meant something else, thought Daisy, and they went on to the small circular bed below the dining-room windows.

“Phlox,” said Daisy hopefully.

“Broccoli,” said Simkinson examining the young green sprouts. “And the long bed there. I sowed a lot of annuals there, and I don’t see a sign of anything coming up.”

He fixed her with a merry eye.

“I believe you’ve been weeding, ma’am,” he said. “I shall have to get you a lot of young plants if you want a bit of colour there. It’s too late for me to put my seeds in again.”

Daisy rather wished she hadn’t come out with him, and changed the subject to something more cheerful.

“Well, I shan’t want the rockery,” she said. “You needn’t bother about that. All these stones will be carted away in a day or two.”

“Glad of that, ma’am. I’ll be able to get to my potting-shed again. Well, I’ll try to put you to rights. I’d best pull up the broccoli first, you won’t want it under your windows, will you? You stick to rolling the lawn, ma’am, if you want to garden. You won’t do any harm then.”

It was rather dreadful being put in one’s place like this, but Daisy did not dare risk a second quarrel, and the sight of Georgie at the dining-room window (he had come across to ‘weedj,’ as the psychical processes, whether ouija or planchette, were now called) was rather a relief. Weeding, after all, was unimportant compared with weedjing.

“And I don’t believe I ever told you what Olga wrote about,” said Georgie, as soon as she was within range. “We’ve talked of nothing but museum. Oh, and Mrs. Boucher’s planchette has come. But it broke in the post, and she’s gumming it together.”

“I doubt if it will act,” said Daisy. “But what did Olga say? It quite went out of my head to ask you.”

“It’s too heavenly of her,” said he. “She’s asked me to go up and stay with her for the first night of the opera. She’s singing Lucrezia, and has got a stall for me.”

“No!” said Daisy, making a trial trip over the blotting-paper to see if the pencil was sharp. “That will be an event! I suppose you’re going.”

“Just about,” said Georgie. “It’s going to be broadcasted, too, and I shall be listening to the original.”

“How interesting!” said Daisy. “And there you’ll be in Brompton Square, just opposite Lucia. Oh, you heard from her? What did she say?”

“Apparently she’s getting on marvellously,” said Georgie. “Not a moment to spare. Just what she likes.”

Daisy pushed the planchette aside. There would be time for that when she had had a little talk about Lucia.

“And are you going to stay with her too?” she asked Georgie was quite determined not to be ill-natured. He had taken no part (or very little) in this trampling on Lucia’s majesty, which had been so merrily going on.

“I should love to, if she would ask me,” he observed. “She only says she’s going to. Of course, I shall go to see her.”

“I wouldn’t,” said Daisy savagely. “If she asked me fifty times I should say ‘no’ fifty times. What’s happened is that she’s dropped us. I wouldn’t have her on our museum committee if—if she gave her pearls to it and said they belonged to Queen Elizabeth. I wonder you haven’t got more spirit.”

“I’ve got plenty of spirit,” said Georgie, “and I allow I did feel rather hurt at her letter. But then, after all, what does it matter?”

“Of course it doesn’t if you’re going to stay with Olga,” said Daisy. “How she’ll hate you for that!”

“Well, I can’t help it,” he said. “Lucia hasn’t asked me and Olga has. She’s twice reminded Olga that she may use her music-room to practise in whenever she likes. Isn’t that kind? She would love to be able to say that Olga’s always practising in her music-room. But aren’t we ill-natured? Let’s weedj instead.”

Georgie found, when he arrived next afternoon in Brompton Square, that Olga had already had her early dinner, and that he was to dine alone at seven and follow her to the opera house.

“I’m on the point of collapse from sheer nerves,” she said. “I always am before I sing, and then out of desperation I pull myself together. If—I say ‘if’—I survive till midnight, we’re going to have a little party here. Cortese is coming, and Princess Isabel, and one or two other people. Georgie, it’s very daring of you to come here, you know, because my husband’s away, and I’m an unprotected female alone with Don Juan. How’s Riseholme? Talk to me about Riseholme. Are you engaged to Piggy yet? And is it broccoli or phlox in Daisy’s round bed? Your letter was so mysterious too. I know nothing about the Museum yet. What Museum? Are you going to kill and stuff Lucia and put her in the hall? You simply alluded to the Museum as if I knew all about it. If you don’t talk to me, I shall scream.”

Georgie flung himself into the task, delighted to be thought capable of doing anything for Olga. He described at great length and with much emphasis the whole of the history of Riseholme from the first epiphany of Arabic and Abfou on the planchette-board down to the return of Simkinson. Olga lost herself in these chronicles, and when her maid came in to tell her it was time to start, she got up quite cheerfully.

“And so it was broccoli,” she said. “I was afraid it was going to be phlox after all. You’re an angel, Georgie, for getting me through my bad hour. I’ll give you anything you like for the Museum. Wait for me afterwards at the stage door. We’ll drive back together.”

From the moment Olga appeared, the success of the opera was secure. Cortese, who was conducting, had made his music well; it thoroughly suited her, and she was singing and looking and acting her best. Again and again after the first act the curtain had to go up, and not until the house was satisfied could Georgie turn his glances this way and that to observe the audience. Then in the twilight of a small box on the second tier he espied a woman who was kissing her hand somewhere in his direction, and a man waving a programme, and then he suddenly focused them and saw who they were. He ran upstairs to visit them, and there was Lucia in an extraordinarily short skirt with her hair shingled, and round her neck three short rows of seed pearls.