Lucia Victrix
Page 58
‘Any ditch,’ said Georgie. ‘Just making a mistake and not being judicious. Tilling is a mass of pitfalls.’
‘I don’t mind about pitfalls so long as my conscience assures me that I am guided by right principles. I must set an example in my private as well as my public life. If I decide to go on with my daily marketing I shall certainly make a point of buying very cheap, simple provisions. Cabbages and turnips, for instance, not asparagus.’
‘We’ve got plenty of that in the garden when it comes in,’ said Georgie.
‘– plaice, not soles. Apples,’ went on Lucia, as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘Plain living in private – everybody will hear me buying cheap vegetables – Splendour, those lovely gloves, in public. And high thinking in both.’
‘That would sound well in your inaugural speech,’ said Georgie.
‘I hope it will. What I want to do in our dear Tilling is to elevate the tone, to make it a real centre of intellectual and artistic activity. That must go on simultaneously with social reforms and the well-being of the poorer classes. All the slums must be cleared away. There must be an end to overcrowding. Pasteurization of milk, Georgie; a strict censorship of the films; benches in sunny corners. Of course, it will cost money. I should like to see the rates go up by leaps and bounds.’
‘That won’t make you very popular,’ said Georgie.
‘I should welcome any unpopularity that such reforms might earn for me. The decorative side of life, too. Flower-boxes in the windows of the humblest dwellings. Cheap concerts of first-rate music. The revival of ancient customs, like beating the bounds. I must find out just what that is.’
‘The Town Council went in procession round the boundaries of the parish,’ said Georgie, ‘and the Mayor was bumped on the boundary-stones. Hadn’t we better stick to the question of whether you go marketing or not?’
Lucia did not like the idea of being bumped on boundary-stones …
‘Quite right, dear. I lose myself in my dreams. We were talking about the example we must set in plain living. I wish it to be known that I do my catering with economy. To be heard ordering neck of mutton at the butcher’s.’
‘I won’t eat neck of mutton in order to be an example to anybody,’ said Georgie. ‘And, personally, whatever you settle to do, I won’t give up the morning shopping. Besides, one learns all the news then. Why, it would be worse than not having the wireless! I should be lost without it. So would you.’
Lucia tried to picture herself bereft of that eager daily interchange of gossip, when her Tilling circle of friends bustled up and down the High Street carrying their market-baskets and bumping into each other in the narrow doorways of shops. Rain or fine, with umbrellas and galoshes or with sunshades and the thinnest blouses, it was the bracing hour that whetted the appetite for the complications of life. The idea of missing it was unthinkable, and without the slightest difficulty she ascribed exalted motives and a high sense of duty to its continuance.
‘You are right, dear,’ she said. ‘Thank you for your guidance! More than ever now in my new position, it will be incumbent on me to know what Tilling is thinking and feeling. My finger must be on its pulse. That book I was reading the other day, which impressed me so enormously–what on earth was it? A biography.’
‘Catherine the Great?’ asked Georgie. Lucia had dipped into it lately, but the suggestion was intended to be humorous.
‘Yes: I shall forget my own name next. She always had her finger on the pulse of her people: that I maintain was the real source of her greatness. She used to disguise herself, you remember, as a peasant-woman – moujik, isn’t it? – and let herself out of the back door of the Winter Palace, and sit in the bars and cafés or wherever they drink vodka and tea – samovars – and hear what the common people were saying, astonishing her Ministers with her knowledge.’
Georgie felt fearfully bored with her and this preposterous rubbish. Lucia did not care two straws what ‘the common people’ were saying. She, in this hour of shopping in the High Street, wanted to know what fresh mischief Elizabeth Mapp-Flint was hatching, and what Major Benjy Mapp-Flint was at, and whether Diva Plaistow’s Irish terrier had got mange, and if Irene Coles had obtained the sanction of the Town Surveying Department to paint a fresco on the front of her house of a nude Venus rising from the sea, and if Susan Wyse had really sat down on her budgerigar, squashing it quite flat. Instead of which she gassed about the duty of the Mayor-Elect of Tilling to have her finger on the pulse of the place, like Catherine the Great. Such nonsense was best met with a touch of sarcasm.
‘That will be a new experience, dear,’ he said. ‘Fancy your disguising yourself as a gipsy-woman and stealing out through the back door, and sitting in the bars of public-houses. I do call that thorough.’
‘Ah, you take me too literally, Georgie,’ she said. ‘Only a loose analogy. In some respects I should be sorry to behave like that marvellous woman. But what a splendid notion to listen to all that the moujiks said when their tongues were unloosed with vodka: In vino veritas.’
‘Not always,’ said Georgie. ‘For instance, Major Benjy was sitting boozing in the Club this afternoon. The wind was too high for him to go out and play golf, so he spent his time in port … Putting out in a gale, you see, or stopping in port. Quite a lot of port.’
Georgie waited for his wife to applaud this pretty play upon words, but she was thinking about herself and Catherine the Great.
‘Well, wine wasn’t making him truthful, but just the opposite,’ he went on. ‘Telling the most awful whoppers about the tigers he’d shot and his huge success with women when he was younger.’
‘Poor Elizabeth,’ said Lucia in an unsympathetic voice.
‘He grew quite dreadful,’ said Georgie, ‘talking about his bachelor days of freedom. And he had the insolence to dig me in the ribs and whisper “We know all about that, old boy, don’t we? Ha ha. What?”’
‘Georgie, how impertinent,’ cried Lucia. ‘Why, it’s comparing Elizabeth with me!’
‘And me with him,’ suggested Georgie.
‘Altogether most unpleasant. Any more news?’
‘Yes; I saw Diva for a moment. Paddy’s not got mange. Only a little eczema. And she’s quite determined to start her tea-shop. She asked me if I thought you would perform the opening ceremony and drink the first cup of tea. I said I thought you certainly would. Such éclat for her if you went in your robes! I don’t suppose there would be a muffin left in the place.’
Lucia’s brow clouded, but it made her happy to be on Mayoral subjects again.
‘Georgie, I wish you hadn’t encouraged her to hope that I would,’ she said. ‘I should be delighted to give Diva such a magnificent send-off as that, but I must be very careful. Supposing next day somebody opens a new boot-shop I shall have made a precedent and shall have to wear the first pair of shoes. Or a hat-shop. If I open one, I must open all, for I will not show any sort of favouritism. I will gladly, ever so gladly, go and drink the first cup of tea at Diva’s, as Mrs Pillson, but not officially. I must be officially incognita.’
‘She’ll be disappointed,’ said Georgie.
‘Poor Diva, I fear so. As for robes, quite impossible. The Mayor never appears in robes except when attended by the whole Corporation. I can hardly request my Aldermen and Councillors to have tea with Diva in state. Of course it’s most enterprising of her, but I can’t believe her little tea-room will resemble the gold mine she anticipates.’
‘I don’t think she’s doing it just to make money,’ said Georgie, ‘though, of course she wouldn’t mind that.’
‘What then? Think of the expense of cups and saucers and tables and teaspoons. The trouble, too. She told me she meant to serve the teas herself.’
‘It’s just that she’ll enjoy so much,’ said Georgie, ‘popping in and out and talking to her customers. She’s got a raving passion for talking to anybody, and she finds it such silent work living alone. She’ll have constant conversation if her tea-room catches on.’
‘That’s sickening,’ said Georgie. ‘Why not?’
‘It’s very difficult. If I ask you, it will certainly set a precedent –’
‘You think too much about precedents,’ interrupted Georgie. ‘Nobody will care.’
‘But listen. The banquet is entirely official. I shall ask the Mayors of neighbouring boroughs, the Bishop, the Lord Lieutenant, the Vicar, who is my Chaplain, my Aldermen and Councillors, and Justices of the Peace. You, dear, have no official position. We are, so to speak, like Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort.’
‘You said that before,’ said Georgie, ‘and I looked it up. When she opened Parliament he drove with her to Westminster and sat beside her on a throne. A throne –’
‘I wonder if that is so. Some of those lives of the Queen are very inaccurate. At that rate, the wife of the Lord Chancellor ought to sit on a corner of the Woolsack. Besides, where are you to be placed? You can’t sit next me. The Lord Lieutenant must be on my right and the Bishop on my left –’
‘If they come,’ observed Georgie.
‘Naturally they won’t sit there if they don’t. After them come the Mayors, Aldermen and Councillors. You would have to sit below them all, and that would be intolerable to me.’
‘I shouldn’t mind where I sat,’ said Georgie.
‘I should love you to be there, Georgie,’ she said. ‘But in what capacity? It’s all official, I repeat. Think of tradition.’
‘But there isn’t any tradition. No woman has ever been Mayor of Tilling before: you’ve often told me that. However, don’t let us argue about it. I expect Tilling will think it very odd if I’m not there. I shall go up to London that day, and then you can tell them I’ve been called away.’
‘That would never do,’ cried Lucia. ‘Tilling would think it much odder if you weren’t here on my great day.’
‘Having dinner alone at Mallards,’ said Georgie bitterly. ‘The neck of mutton you spoke of.’
He rose.
‘Time for my bath,’ he said. ‘And I shan’t talk about it or think about it any more. I leave it to you.’
Georgie went upstairs, feeling much vexed. He undressed and put on his blue silk dressing-gown, and peppered his bath with a liberal allowance of verbena salts. He submerged himself in the fragrant liquid, and concentrated his mind on the subject he had resolved not to think about any more. Just now Lucia seemed able to apply her mind to nothing except herself and the duties or dignities of her coming office.
‘“Egalo-megalo-mayoralo-mania”, I call it,’ Georgie said to himself in a withering whisper. ‘Catherine the Great! Delirium! She thinks the whole town is as wildly excited about her being Mayor as she is herself. Whereas it’s a matter of supreme indifference to them … All except Elizabeth, who trembles with rage and jealousy whenever she sees Lucia … But she always did that … Bother! I’ve dropped my soap and it slips away like an eel … All very tarsome. Lucia can’t talk about anything else … Breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner, there’s nothing but that … Mayoral complex … It’s a crashing bore, that’s What it is … Everlastingly reminding me that I’ve no official position … Hullo, who’s that? No, you can’t come in, whoever you are.’
A volley of raps had sounded at the door of the bathroom. Then Lucia’s voice:
‘No, I don’t want to come in,’ she said. ‘But, eureka, Georgie. Ho trovato: ho ben trovato!’
‘What have you found?’ called Georgie, sitting up in his bath.
‘It. Me. My banquet. You and my banquet. I’ll tell you at dinner. Be quick.’
‘Probably she’ll let me hand the cheese,’ thought Georgie, still feeling morose. ‘I’m in no hurry to hear that.’
He padded back to his bedroom in his dressing-gown and green morocco slippers. A parcel had arrived for him while he was at his bath, and Foljambe, the parlourmaid valet had put it on his pink bed-quilt.
‘It must be my new dinner-suit,’ he said to himself. ‘And with all this worry I’d quite forgotten about it.’
He cut the string and there it was: jacket and waistcoat and trousers of ruby-coloured velvet, with synthetic-onyx buttons, quite superb. It was Lucia’s birthday-present to him; he was to order just what dinner-suit he liked, and the bill was to be sent to her. She knew nothing more, except that he had told her that it would be something quite out of the common and that Tilling would be astonished. He was thrilled with its audacious beauty.
‘Now let me think,’ he meditated. ‘One of my pleated shirts, and a black butterfly tie, and my garnet solitaire. And my pink vest. Nobody will see it, but I shall know it’s there. And red socks. Or daren’t I?’
He swiftly invested himself in this striking creation. It fitted beautifully in front, and he rang the bell for Foljambe to see if it was equally satisfactory behind. Her masterful knock sounded on the door, and he said come in.
Foljambe gave a shrill ejaculation.
‘Lor!’ she said. ‘Something fancy-dress, sir?’
‘Not at all,’ said Georgie. ‘My new evening suit. Isn’t it smart, Foljambe? Does it fit all right at the back?’
‘Seems to,’ said Foljambe, pulling his sleeve. ‘Stand a bit straighter, sir. Yes, quite a good fit. Nearly gave me one.’
‘Don’t you like it?’ asked Georgie anxiously.
‘Well, a bit of a shock, sir. I hope you won’t spill things on it, for it would be a rare job to get anything sticky out of the velvet, and you do throw your food about sometimes. But it is pretty now I begin to take it in.’
Georgie went into his sitting-room next door, where there was a big mirror over the fireplace, and turned on all the electric lights. He got up on a chair, so that he could get a more comprehensive view of himself, and revolved slowly in the brilliant light. He was so absorbed in his Narcissism that he did not hear Lucia come out of her bedroom. The door was ajar, and she peeped in. She gave a strangled scream at the sight of a large man in a glaring red suit standing on a chair with his back to her. It was unusual. Georgie whisked round at her cry.
‘Look!’ he said. ‘Your delicious present. There it was when I came from my bath. Isn’t it lovely?’
Lucia recovered from her shock.
‘Positively Venetian, Georgie,’ she said. ‘Real Titian.’
‘I think it’s adorable,’ said Georgie, getting down. ‘Won’t Tilling be excited? Thank you a thousand times.’
‘And a thousand congratulations, Georgino,’ she said. ‘Oh, and my discovery! I am a genius, dear. There’ll be a high table across the room at my banquet with two tables joining it at the corners going down the room. Me, of course, in the centre of the high table. We shall sit only on one side of these tables. And you can sit all by yourself exactly opposite me. Facing me. No official position, neither above or below the others. Just the Mayor’s husband close to her materially, but officially in the air, so to speak.’
From below came the merry sound of little bells that announced dinner. Grosvenor, the other parlourmaid, was playing quite a sweet tune on them to-night, which showed she was pleased with life. When she was cross she made a snappy jangled discord.
‘That solves everything!’ said Georgie. ‘Brilliant. How clever of you! I did feel a little hurt at the thought of not being there. Listen: Grosvenor’s happy, too. We’re all pleased.’
He offered her his beautiful velvet arm, and they went downstairs.
‘And my garnet solitaire,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t it go well with my clothes? I must tuck my napkin in securely. It would be frightful if I spilt anything. I am glad about the banquet.’
‘So am I, dear. It would have been horrid not to have had you there. But I had to reconcile the feelings of private life with the etiquette of public life. We must expect problems of the sort to arise while I’m Mayor –’
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‘Such good fish,’ said Georgie, trying to divert her from the eternal subject.
Quite useless.
‘Excellent, isn’t it,’ said Lucia. ‘In the time of Queen Elizabeth, Georgie, the Mayor of Tilling was charged with supplying fish for the Court. A train of pack-mules was despatched to London twice a week. What a wonderful thing if I could get that custom restored! Such an impetus to the fishermen here.’
‘The Court must have been rather partial to putrid fish,’ said Georgie. ‘I shouldn’t care to eat a whiting that had been carried on a mule to London in hot weather, or in cold, for that matter.’
‘Ah, I should not mean to go back to the mules,’ said Lucia, ‘though how picturesque to see them loaded at the river bank, and starting on their Royal errand. One would use the railway. I wonder if it could be managed. The Royal Fish Express.’
‘Do you propose a special train full of soles and lobsters twice a week for Buckingham Palace or Royal Lodge?’ he asked.
‘A refrigerating van would be sufficient. I dare say if I searched in the archives I should find that Tilling had the monopoly of supplying the Royal table, and that the right has never been revoked. If so, I should think a petition to the King: ‘Your Majesty’s loyal subjects of Tilling humbly pray that this privilege be restored to them.’ Or perhaps some preliminary inquiries from the Directors of the Southern Railway first. Such prestige. And a steady demand would be a wonderful thing for the fishing industry.’
‘It’s got enough demand already,’ said Georgie. ‘There isn’t too much fish for us here as it is.’
‘Georgie! Where’s your political economy? Demand invariably leads to supply. There would be more fishing-smacks built, more men would follow the sea. Unemployment would diminish. Think of Yarmouth and its immense trade. How I should like to capture some of it for our Tilling! I mustn’t lose sight of that among all the schemes I ponder over so constantly … But I’ve had a busy day: let us relax a little and make music in the garden-room.’
She rose, and her voice assumed a careless lightness. ‘I saw to-day,’ she said, ‘in one of my old bound-up volumes of duets, an arrangement for four hands of Glazonov’s “Bacchanal”. It looked rather attractive. We might run through it.’