by E. F. Benson
Georgie had seen it, too, a week ago, and though most of Lucia’s music was familiar, he felt sure they had never tried this. He had had a bad cold in the head, and, not being up to their usual walk for a day or two, he had played over the bass part several times while Lucia was out taking her exercise: some day it might come in useful. Then this very afternoon, busy in the garden, he had heard a long-continued soft-pedalled tinkle, and rightly conjectured that Lucia was stealing a march on him in the treble part … Out they went to the garden-room, and Lucia found the ‘Bacchanal’. His new suit made him feel very kindly disposed.
‘You must take the treble, then,’ he said. ‘I could never read that.’
‘How lazy of you, dear,’ she said, instantly sitting down. ‘Well, I’ll try if you insist, but you mustn’t scold me if I make a mess of it.’
It went beautifully. Odd trains of thought coursed through the heads of both. ‘Why is she such a hypocrite?’ he wondered. ‘She was practising it half the afternoon.’ … Simultaneously Lucia was saying to herself, ‘Georgie can’t be reading it. He must have tried it before.’ At the end were mutual congratulations: each thought that the other had read it wonderfully well. Then bedtime. She kissed her hand to him as she closed her bedroom door, and Georgie made a few revolutions in front of his mirror before divesting himself of the new suit. By a touching transference of emotions, Lucia had vivid dreams of heaving seas of ruby-coloured velvet, and Georgie of the new Cunard liner, Queen Mary, running aground in the river on a monstrous shoal of whiting and lobsters.
There was an early autumnal frost in the night, though not severe enough to blacken the superb dahlias in Lucia’s garden and soon melting. The lawn was covered with pearly moisture when she and Georgie met at breakfast, and the red roofs of Tilling gleamed bright in the morning sun. Lucia had already engaged a shorthand and typewriting secretary to get used to her duties before the heavy Mayoral correspondence began to pour in, but to-day the post brought nothing but a few circulars at once committed to the waste-paper basket. But it would not do to leave Mrs Simpson completely idle, so, before setting out for the morning marketing, Lucia dictated invitations to Mrs Bartlett and the Padre, to Susan and Mr Wyse, to Elizabeth Mapp-Flint and Major Benjy for dinner and bridge the following night. She would write in the invocations and signatures when she returned, and she apologized in each letter for the stress of work which had prevented her from writing with her own hand throughout.
‘Georgie, I shall have to learn typing myself,’ she said as they started. ‘I can easily imagine some municipal crisis which would swamp Mrs Simpson, quick worker though she is. Or isn’t there a machine called the dictaphone? … How deliciously warm the sun is! When we get back I shall make a water-colour sketch of my dahlias in the giardino segreto. Any night might see them blackened, and I should deplore not having a record of them. Ecco, there’s Irene beckoning to us from her window. Something about the fresco, I expect.’
Irene Coles bounced out into the street.
‘Lucia, beloved one,’ she cried. ‘It’s too cruel! That lousy Town Surveying Department refuses to sanction my fresco-design of Venus rising from the sea. Come into my studio and look at my sketch of it, which they have sent back to me. Goths and Vandals and Mrs Grundys to a man and woman!’
The sketch was very striking. A nude, well-nourished, putty-coloured female, mottled with green shadows, was balanced on an oyster-shell, while a prize-fighter, representing the wind and sprawling across the sky, propelled her with puffed cheeks up a river towards a red-roofed town on the shore which presented Tilling with Pre-Raphaelite fidelity.
‘Dear me! Quite Botticellian!’ said Lucia.
‘What?’ screamed Irene. ‘Darling, how can you compare my great deep-bosomed Venus, fit to be the mother of heroes, with Botticelli’s anaemic flapper? What’ll the next generation in Tilling be like when my Venus gets ashore?’
‘Yes. Quite. So vigorous! So allegorical!’ said Lucia. ‘But, dear Irene, do you want everybody to be reminded of that whenever they go up and down the street?’
‘Why not? What can be nobler than Motherhood?’ asked Irene.
‘Nothing! Nothing!’ Lucia assured her. ‘For a maternity home –’
Irene picked up her sketch and tore it across.
‘I know what I shall do,’ she said. ‘I shall turn my wondrous Hellenic goddess into a Victorian mother. I shall dress her in a tartan shawl and skirt and a bonnet with a bow underneath her chin and button-boots and a parasol. I shall give my lusty South Wind a frock-coat and trousers and a top-hat, and send the design back to that foul-minded Department asking if I have now removed all objectionable features. Georgie, when next you come to see me, you won’t need to blush.’
‘I haven’t blushed once!’ said Georgie indignantly. ‘How can you tell such fibs?’
‘Dear Irene is so full of vitality,’ said Lucia as they regained the street. ‘Such ozone! She always makes me feel as if I was out in a high wind, and I wonder if my hair is coming down. But so easily managed with a little tact – Ah! There’s Diva at her window. We might pop in on her for a minute, and I’ll break it to her about a state-opening for her tea-rooms … Take care, Georgie! There’s Susan’s Royce plunging down on us.’
Mrs Wyse’s huge car, turning into the High Street, drew up directly between them and Diva’s house. She let down the window and put her large round face where the window had been. As usual, she had on her ponderous fur coat, but on her head was a quite new hat, to the side of which, like a cockade, was attached a trophy of bright blue, green and yellow plumage, evidently the wings, tail and breast of a small bird.
‘Can I give you a lift, dear?’ she said in a mournful voice. ‘I’m going shopping in the High Street. You, too, of course, Mr Georgie, if you don’t mind sitting in front.’
‘Many thanks, dear Susan,’ said Lucia, ‘but hardly worth while, as we are in the High Street already.’
Susan nodded sadly to them, put up the window, and signalled to her chauffeur to proceed. Ten yards brought her to the grocer’s, and the car stopped again.
‘Georgie, it was the remains of the budgerigar tacked to her hat,’ said Lucia in a thrilled whisper as they crossed the street. ‘Yes, Diva: we’ll pop in for a minute.’
‘Wearing it,’ said Diva in her telegraphic manner as she opened the front door to them. ‘In her hat.’
‘Then is it true, Diva?’ asked Lucia. ‘Did she sit down on her budgerigar?’
‘Definitely, I was having tea with her. Cage open. Budgerigar flitting about the room. A messy bird. Then Susan suddenly said “Tweet, tweet. Where’s my Blue Birdie?” Not a sign of it. “It’ll be all right,” said Susan. “In the piano or somewhere.” So we finished tea. Susan got up and there was Blue Birdie. Dead and as flat as a pancake. We came away at once.’
‘Very tactful,’ said Georgie. ‘But the head wasn’t on her hat, I’m pretty sure.’
‘Having it stuffed, I expect. To be added later between the wings. And what about those new clothes, Mr Georgie?’
‘How on earth did you hear that?’ said Georgie in great astonishment. How news travelled in Tilling! Only last night, dining at home, he had worn the ruby-coloured velvet for the first time, and now, quite early next morning, Diva had heard about it. Really things were known in Tilling almost before they happened.
‘My Janet was posting a letter, ten p.m.,’ said Diva. ‘Foljambe was posting a letter. They chatted. And are they really red?’
‘You’ll see before long,’ said Georgie, pleased to know that interest in his suit was blazing already. ‘Just wait and see.’
All this conversation had taken place on Diva’s doorstep.
‘Come in for a minute,’ she said. ‘I want to consult you about my parlour, when I make it into a tea-room. Shall take away those two big tables, and put in six little ones, for four at each. Then there’s the small room at the back full of things I could never quite throw away. Bird-cages. Broken coal-scuttles. Old
towel-horses. I shall clear them out now, as there’s no rummage-sale coming on. Put that big cupboard there against the wall, and a couple of card-tables. People might like a rubber after their tea if it’s raining. Me always ready to make a fourth if wanted. Won’t that be cosy?’
‘Very cosy indeed,’ said Lucia. ‘But may you provide facilities for gambling in a public place, without risking a police-raid?’
‘Don’t see why not,’ said Diva. ‘I may provide chess or draughts, and what’s to prevent people gambling at them? Why not cards? And you will come in your robes, won’t you, on Mayoring day, to inaugurate my tea-rooms?’
‘My dear, quite impossible,’ said Lucia firmly. ‘As I told Georgie, I should have to be attended by my Aldermen and Councillors, as if it was some great public occasion. But I’ll come as Mrs Pillson, and everyone will say that the Mayor performed the opening ceremony. But, officially, I must be incognita.’
‘Well, that’s something,’ said Diva. ‘And may I put up some posters to say that Mrs Pillson will open it?’
‘There can be no possible objection to that,’ said Lucia with alacrity. ‘That will not invalidate my incognita. Just some big lettering at the top “Ye Olde Tea-House”, and, if you think my name will help, big letters again for “Mrs Pillson” or “Mrs Pillson of Mallards”. Quite. Any other news? I know that your Paddy hasn’t got mange.’
‘Nothing, I think. Oh yes, Elizabeth was in here just now, and asked me who was to be your Mayoress?’
‘My Mayoress?’ asked Lucia. ‘Aren’t I both?’
‘I’m sure I don’t know,’ said Diva. ‘But she says she’s sure all Mayors have Mayoresses.’
‘Poor Elizabeth: she always gets things muddled. Oh, Diva, will you – No nothing: I’m muddled, too. Good-bye, dear. All too cosy for words. A month to-day, then, for the opening. Georgie, remind me to put that down.’
Lucia and her husband passed on up the street.
‘Such an escape!’ she said. ‘I was on the point of asking Diva to dine and play bridge to-morrow, quite forgetting that I’d asked the Bartletts and the Wyses and the Mapp-Flints. You know, our custom of always asking husbands and wives together is rather Victorian. It dates us. I shall make innovations when the first terrific weeks of office are over. If we always ask couples, single people like Diva get left out.’
‘So shall I if the others do it, too,’ remarked Georgie. ‘Look, we’ve nearly caught up Susan. She’s going into the post-office.’
As Susan, a few yards ahead, stepped ponderously out of the Royce, her head brushed against the side of the door, and a wing from the cockade of bright feathers, insecurely fastened, fluttered down on to the pavement. She did not perceive her loss, and went into the office. Georgie picked up the plume.
‘Better put it back on the seat inside,’ whispered Lucia. ‘Not tactful to give it her in public. She’ll see it when she gets in.’
‘She may sit down on it again,’ whispered Georgie. ‘Oh, the far seat: that’ll do. She can’t miss it.’
He placed it carefully in the car, and they walked on.
‘It’s always a joy to devise those little unseen kindnesses,’ said Lucia. ‘Poulterer’s first, Georgie. If all my guests accept for to-morrow, I had better bespeak two brace of partridges.’
‘Delicious,’ said Georgie, ‘but how about the plain living? Oh I see: that’ll be after you become Mayor … Good morning, Padre.’
The Reverend Kenneth Bartlett stepped out of a shop in front. He always talked a mixture of faulty Scots and spurious Elizabethan English. It had been a playful diversion at first, but now it had become a habit, and unless carried away by the conversation he seldom spoke the current tongue.
‘Guid morrow, richt worshipful leddy,’ he said. ‘Well met, indeed, for there’s a sair curiosity abroad, and ’tis you who can still it. Who’s the happy wumman whom ye’ll hae for your Mayoress?’
‘That’s the second time I’ve been asked that this morning,’ said Lucia. ‘I’ve had no official information that I must have one.’
‘A’weel. It’s early days yet. A month still before you need her. But ye mun have one: Mayor and Mayoress, ’tis the law o’ the land. I was thinking –’
He dropped his voice to a whisper.
‘There’s that helpmate of mine,’ he said. ‘Not that there’s been any colloquy betune us. She just passed the remark this morning: “I wonder who Mistress Pillson will select for her Mayoress,” and I said I dinna ken and left it there.’
‘Very wise,’ said Lucia encouragingly.
The Padre’s language grew almost anglicized.
‘But it put an idea into my head, that my Evie might be willing to help you in any way she could. She’d keep you in touch with all Church matters which I know you have at heart, and Sunday Schools and all that. Mind. I don’t promise that she’d consent, but I think ’tis likely, though I wouldn’t encourage false hopes. All confidential, of course; and I must be stepping.’
He looked furtively round as if engaged in some dark conspiracy and stepped.
‘Georgie, I wonder if there can be any truth in it,’ said Lucia. ‘Of course, nothing would induce me to have poor dear little Evie as Mayoress. I would as soon have a mouse. Oh, there’s Major Benjy: he’ll be asking me next who my Mayoress is to be. Quick, into the poulterer’s.’
They hurried into the shop. Mr Rice gave her a low bow.
‘Good morning, Your Worship –’ he began.
‘No, not yet, Mr Rice,’ said Lucia. ‘Not for a month yet. Partridges. I shall very likely want two brace of partridges to-morrow evening.’
‘I’ve got some prime young birds, Your Worsh – ma’am,’ said Mr Rice.
‘Very well. Please earmark four birds for me. I will let you know the first thing to-morrow morning, if I require them.’
‘Earmarked they are, ma’am,’ said Mr Rice enthusiastically.
Lucia peeped cautiously out. Major Benjy had evidently seen them taking cover, and was regarding electric heaters in the shop next door with an absent eye. He saw her look out and made a military salute.
‘Good morning,’ he said cordially. ‘Lovely day isn’t it? October’s my favourite month. Chill October, what? I was wondering, Mrs Pillson, as I strolled along, if you had yet selected the fortunate lady who will have the honour of being your Mayoress.’
‘Good morning, Major. Oddly enough somebody else asked me that very thing a moment ago.’
‘Ha! I bet five to one I know who that was. I had a word or two with the Padre just now, and the subject came on the tapis, as they say in France. I fancy he’s got some notion that that good little wife of his – but that would be too ridiculous –’
‘I’ve settled nothing yet,’ said Lucia. ‘So overwhelmed with work lately. Certainly it shall receive my attention. Elizabeth quite well? That’s good.’
She hurried away with Georgie.
‘The question of the Mayoress is in the air like influenza, Georgie,’ she said. ‘I must ring up the Town Hall as soon as I get in, and find out if I must have one. I see no necessity. There’s Susan Wyse beckoning again.’
Susan let down the window of her car.
‘Just going home again,’ she said. ‘Shall I give you a lift up the hill?’
‘No, a thousand thanks,’ said Lucia. ‘It’s only a hundred yards.’
Susan shook her head sadly.
‘Don’t overdo it, dear,’ she said. ‘As we get on in life we must be careful about hills.’
‘This Mayoress business is worrying me, Georgie,’ said Lucia when Susan had driven off. ‘If it’s all too true, and I must have one, who on earth shall I get? Everyone I can think of seems so totally unfit for it. I believe, do you know, that it must have been in Major Benjy’s mind to recommend me to ask Elizabeth.’
‘Impossible!’ said Georgie. ‘I might as well recommend you to ask Foljambe.’
2
Lucia found on her return to Mallards that Mrs Simpson had got through the l
aborious task of typing three identical dinner-invitations for next day to Mrs Wyse, Mrs Bartlett and Mrs Mapp-Flint with husbands. She filled up in autograph ‘Dearest Susan, Evie and Elizabeth’ and was affectionately theirs. Rack her brains as she would she could think of no further task for her secretary, so Mrs Simpson took these letters to deliver them by hand, thus saving time and postage. ‘And could you be here at nine-thirty to-morrow morning,’ said Lucia, ‘instead of ten in case there is a stress of work? Things turn up so suddenly, and it would never do to fall into arrears.’
Lucia looked at her engagement-book. Its fair white pages satisfied her that there were none at present.
‘I shall be glad of a few days’ quiet, dear,’ she said to Georgie. ‘I shall have a holiday of painting and music and reading. When once the rush begins there will be little time for such pursuits. Yet I know there was something very urgent that required my attention. Ah, yes! I must find out for certain whether I must have a Mayoress. And I must get a telephone-extension into the garden-room, to save running in and out of the house for calls.’
Lucia went in and rang up the clerk at the Town Hall. Yes: he was quite sure that every Mayor had a Mayoress, whom the Mayor invited to fill the post. She turned to Georgie with a corrugated brow.
‘Yes, it is so,’ she said. ‘I shall have to find some capable obliging woman with whom I can work harmoniously. But who?’
The metallic clang of the flap of the letter-box on the front door caused her to look out of the window. There was Diva going quickly away with her scudding, bird-like walk. Lucia opened the note she had left, and read it. Though Diva was telegraphic in conversation, her epistolary style was flowing.
Dearest Lucia,
I felt quite shy of speaking to you about it to-day, for writing is always the best, don’t you think, when it’s difficult to find the right words or to get them out when you have, so this is to tell you that I am quite at your disposal, and shall to find the right words or to get them out when you have, so much longer in Tilling than you, dear, that perhaps I can be of some use in all your entertainments and other functions. Not that I would ask you to choose me as your Mayoress, for I shouldn’t think of such a thing. So pushing! So I just want to say that I am quite at your service, as you may feel rather diffident about asking me, for it would be awkward for me to refuse, being such an old friend, if I didn’t feel like it. But I should positively enjoy helping you, quite apart from my duty as a friend.