by E. F. Benson
‘Dear Susan, is it possible you haven’t heard that there was a fire in Ford Place last week? Fancy! And you’re strangely in error about the brigade’s efficiency, for they were there in three minutes from the time the alarm was given, and the fire was extinguished in five minutes more.’
‘Lucia, what is really wanted in Tilling,’ said Susan, ‘is better lighting of the streets. Coming home sometimes in the evening my Royce has to crawl down Porpoise Street.’
‘More powerful lamps to your car would make that all right, dear,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Not a very great expense. The paving of the streets, to my mind, wants the most immediate attention. I nearly fell down the other day, stepping in a great hole. The roads, too: the road opposite my house is little better than a snipe-bog. Again and again I have written to the Hampshire Argus about it.’
Mr Wyse bowed across the table to her.
‘I regret to say I have missed seeing your letters,’ he said. ‘Very careless of me. Was there one last week?’
Evie emitted the mouse-like squeak which denoted intense private amusement.
‘I’ve missed them, too,’ she said. ‘I expect we all have. In any case, Elizabeth, Grebe is outside the parish boundaries. Nothing to do with Tilling. It’s a County Council road you will find if you look at a map. Now the overcrowding in the town itself, Lucia, is another matter which does concern us. I have it very much at heart, as anybody must have who knows anything about it. And then there are the postal deliveries. Shocking. I wrote a letter the other day –’
This was one of the subjects which Susan Wyse had specially mugged up. By leaning forward and putting an enormous elbow on the table she interposed a mountain of healthy animal tissue between Evie and Lucia, and the mouse was obliterated behind the mountain.
‘And only two posts a day, Lucia,’ she said. ‘You will find it terribly inconvenient to get only two and the second is never anything but circulars. There’s not a borough in England so ill served. I’m told that if a petition is sent to the Postmaster-General signed by fifty per cent of the population he is bound by law to give us a third delivery. Algernon and I would be only too happy to get up this petition –’
Algernon from the other side of the table suddenly interrupted her.
‘Susan, take care!’ he cried. ‘Your budgerigar: your raspberry soufflé!’
He was too late. The budgerigar dropped into the middle of Susan’s bountifully supplied plate. She took it out, dripping with hot raspberry juice and wrapped it in her napkin, moaning softly to herself. The raspberry juice stained it red, as if Blue Birdie had been sat on again, and Foljambe very tactfully handed a plate to Susan on which she deposited it. After so sad and irrelevant an incident, it was hard to get back to high topics, and the Padre started on a lower level.
‘A cosy little establishment will Mistress Diva Plaistow be running presently,’ he said. ‘She tells me that the opening of it will be the first function of our new Mayor. A fine send-off indeed.’
A simultaneous suspicion shot through the minds of the candidates present that Diva (incredible as it seemed) might be in the running. Like vultures they swooped on the absent prey.
‘A little too cosy for my tastes,’ said Elizabeth. ‘If all the tables she means to put into her tea-room were full, sardines in a tin wouldn’t be the word. Not to mention that the occupants of two of the tables would be being kippered up the chimney, and two others in a gale every time the door was opened. And are you going to open it officially, dear Lucia?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Lucia. ‘I told her I would drink the first cup of tea with pleasure, but as Mrs Pillson, not as Mayor.’
‘Poor Diva can’t make tea,’ squeaked Evie. ‘She never could. It’s either hot water or pure tannin.’
‘And she intends to make all the fancy pastry herself,’ said Susan sorrowfully. ‘Much better to stick to bread and butter and a plain cake. Very ambitious, I call it, but nowadays Diva’s like that. More plans for all we know.’
‘And quite a reformer,’ said Elizabeth. ‘She talks about a quicker train service to London. She knows a brother-in-law of one of the directors. Of course the thing is as good as done with a word from Diva. It looks terribly like paranoia coming on.’
The ladies left. Major Benjy drunk off his port in a great hurry, so as to get a full glass when it came round again.
‘A very good glass of port,’ he said. ‘Well, I don’t mind if I fill up. The longer I live with my Liz, Pillson, the more I am astonished at her masculine grasp of new ideas.’
‘My Susan’s remarks about an additional postal delivery and lighting of the streets showed a very keen perception of the reforms of which our town most stands in need,’ said Algernon. ‘Her judgment is never at fault. I have often been struck –’
The Padre, speaking to Major Benjy, raised his voice for Georgie to hear and thumped the table.
‘Wee wifie’s energy is unbounded,’ he said. ‘Often I say to her: “Spare yourself a bitty” I’ve said, and always she’s replied “Heaven fits the back to the burden” quo’ she, and if there’s more work and responsibility to be undertaken, Evie’s ready for it.’
‘You mustn’t let her overtax herself, Padre,’ said Benjy with great earnestness. ‘She’s got her hands over full already. Not so young as she was.’
‘Eh, that’s what ails all the ladies of Tilling,’ retorted the Padre, ‘an’ she’ll be younger than many I could mention. An abounding vitality. If they made me Lord Archbishop to-morrow, she’d be a mother in Israel to the province, and no mistake.’
This was too much for Benjy. It would have been a gross dereliction of duty not to let loose his withering powers of satire.
‘No no, Padre,’ he said. ‘Tilling can’t spare you. Canterbury must find someone else.’
‘Eh, well, and if the War Office tries to entice you away, Major, you must say no. That’ll be a bargain. But the point of my observation was that my Evie is aye ready and willing for any call that may come to her. That’s what I’m getting at.’
‘Ha, ha, Padre; let me know when you’ve got it, and then I’ll talk to you. Well, if the port is standing idle in front of you –’
Georgie rose. He had had enough of these unsolicited testimonials, and when Benjy became satirical it was a symptom that he should have no more port.
‘I think it’s time we got to our bridge,’ he said. ‘Lucia will scold me if I keep you here too long.’
They marched in a compact body to the garden-room, where Lucia had been keeping hopeful Mayoresses at bay with music, and two tables were instantly formed. Georgie and Elizabeth, rubies, played against the sapphires, Mr Wyse and Evie, and the other table was drab in comparison. The evening ended unusually late, and it was on the stroke of midnight when the three pairs of guests, unable to get a private word with either of their hosts, moved sadly away like a vanquished army. The Royce conveyed the Wyses to Porpoise Street, just round the corner, with Susan, faintly suggesting Salome, holding the plate with the blood-stained handkerchief containing the budgerigar; a taxi that had long been ticking conveyed the Mapp-Flints to the snipe-bog, and two pairs of galoshes took the Padre and his wife to the Vicarage.
Lucia’s tactful letters were received next morning. Mr Wyse thought that all was not yet lost, though it surprised him that Lucia had not taken Susan aside last night and implored her to be Mayoress. Diva, on the other hand, with a more correct estimate of the purport of Lucia’s tact, was instantly sure that all was lost, and exclaiming, ‘Drat it, so that’s that,’ gave Lucia’s note to Paddy to worry, and started out for her morning’s shopping. There were plenty of absorbing interests to distract her. Susan, with the budgerigar cockade in her hat, looked out of the window of the Royce, but to Diva’s amazement the colour of the bird’s plumage had changed; it was flushed with red like a stormy sunset with patches of blue sky behind. Could Susan, for some psychical reason, have dyed it? … Georgie and Lucia were approaching from Mallards, but Diva, after th
at tactful note, did not want to see her friend till she had thought of something pretty sharp to say. Turning towards the High Street she bumped baskets sharply with Elizabeth.
‘Morning, dear!’ said Elizabeth. ‘Do you feel up to a chat?’
‘Yes,’ said Diva. ‘Come in. I’ll do my shopping afterwards. Any news?’
‘Benjy and I dined with Worshipful last night. Wyses, Bartletts, bridge. We all missed you.’
‘Wasn’t asked,’ said Diva. ‘A good dinner? Did you win?’
‘Partridges a little tough,’ said Elizabeth musingly. ‘Old birds are cheaper, of course. I won a trifle, but nothing like enough to pay for our taxi. An interesting, curious evening. Rather revolting at times, but one mustn’t be captious. Evie and Susan – oh, a terrible thing happened. Susan wore the bird as a breastplate, and it fell into the raspberry soufflé. Plop!’
Diva gave a sigh of relief.
‘That explains it,’ she said. ‘Saw it just now and it puzzled me. Go on, Elizabeth.’
‘Revolting, I was saying. Those two women. One talked about boy-scouts, and the other about posts, and then one about overcrowding and the other about the fire-brigade. I just sat and listened and blushed for them both. So cheap and obvious.’
‘But what’s so cheap and obvious and blush-making?’ asked Diva. ‘It only sounds dull to me.’
‘All that fictitious interest in municipal matters. What has Susan cared hitherto for postal deliveries, or Evie for overcrowding? In a nutshell, they were trying to impress Lucia, and get her to ask them, at least one of them, to be Mayoress. And from what Benjy told me, their husbands were just as barefaced when we went into the garden-room. An evening of intrigue and self-advertisement. Pah!’
‘Pah indeed!’ said Diva. ‘How did Lucia take it?’
‘I really hardly noticed. I was too disgusted at all these underground schemings. So transparent! Poor Lucia! I trust she will get someone who will be of use to her. She’ll be sadly at sea without a woman of sense and experience to consult.’
‘And was Mr Georgie’s dinner-costume very lovely?’ asked Diva.
Elizabeth half closed her eyes as if to visualize it.
‘A very pretty colour,’ she said. ‘Just like the gown I had dyed red not long ago, if you happen to remember it. Of course he copied it.’
The front-door bell rang. It was quicker to answer it oneself, thought Diva, than to wait for Janet to come up from the kitchen, and she trundled off.
‘Come in, Evie,’ she said, ‘Elizabeth’s here.’
But Elizabeth would not wait, and Evie, in turn, gave her own impressions of the previous evening. They were on the same lines as Elizabeth’s, only it had been Elizabeth and Susan who (instead of revolting her) had been so vastly comical with their sudden interest in municipal affairs:
‘And, oh, dear me,’ she said, ‘Mr Wyse and Major Benjy were just as bad. It was like that musical thing where you have a tune in the treble, and the same tune next in the bass. Fugue; that’s it. Those four were just like a Bach concert. Kenneth and I simply sat listening. And I’m much mistaken if Lucia and Mr Georgie didn’t see through them all.’
Diva had now got a complete idea of what had taken place; clearly there had been a six-part fugue.
‘But she’s got to choose somebody,’ she said. ‘Wonder who it’ll be.’
‘Perhaps you, he, he!’ squeaked Evie for a joke.
‘That it won’t,’ cried Diva emphatically, looking at the fragments of Lucia’s tactful note scattered about the room. ‘Sooner sing songs in the gutter. Fancy being at Lucia’s beck and call, whenever she wants something done which she doesn’t want to do herself. Not worth living at that price. No, thank you!’
‘Just my fun,’ said Evie. ‘I didn’t mean it seriously. And then there were other surprises. Mr Georgie in a red –’
‘I know; the colour of Elizabeth’s dyed one,’ put in Diva.
‘– and Mr Wyse in sapphire velvet,’ continued Evie. ‘Just like my second-best, which I was wearing.’
‘No! I hadn’t heard that,’ said Diva. ‘Aren’t the Tilling boys getting dressy?’
The tension increased during the next week to a point almost unbearable, for Lucia, like the Pythian Oracle in unfavourable circumstances, remained dumb, waiting for Elizabeth to implore her. The strain was telling and whenever the telephone-bell rang in the houses of any of the candidates she or her husband ran to it to see if it carried news of the nomination. But, as at an inconclusive sitting of the Conclave of Cardinals for the election of the Pontiff, no announcement came from the precinct; and every evening, since the weather was growing chilly, a column of smoke curled out of the chimney of the garden-room. Was it that Lucia, like the Cardinals, could not make up her mind, or had she possibly chosen her Mayoress and had enjoined silence till she gave the word? Neither supposition seemed likely, the first, because she was so very decisive a person; the second, because it was felt that the chosen candidate could not have kept it to herself.
Then a series of curious things happened, and to the overwrought imagination of Tilling they appeared to be of the nature of omens. The church clock struck thirteen one noon, and then stopped with a jarring sound. That surely augured ill for the chances of the Padre’s wife. A spring broke out in the cliff above the Mapp-Flint’s house, and, flowing through the garden, washed the asparagus-bed away. That looked like Elizabeth’s hopes being washed away too. Susan Wyse’s Royce collided with a van in the High Street and sustained damage to a mud-guard; that looked bad for Susan. Then Elizabeth, distraught with anxiety, suddenly felt convinced that Diva had been chosen. What made this the more probable was that Diva had so emphatically denied to Evie that she would ever be induced to accept the post. It was like poor Diva to think that anybody would believe such a monstrous statement; it only convinced Elizabeth that she was telling a thumping lie, in order to conceal something. Probably she thought she was being Bismarckian, but that was an error. Bismarck had said that to tell the truth was a useful trick for a diplomatist, because others would conclude that he was not. But he had never said that telling lies would induce others to think that he was telling the truth.
The days went on, and Georgie began to have qualms as to whether Elizabeth would ever humble herself and implore the boon.
‘Time’s passing,’ he said, as he and Lucia sat one morning in the garden-room. ‘What on earth will you do, if she doesn’t?’
‘She will,’ said Lucia, ‘though I allow she has held out longer than I expected. I did not know how strong that false pride of hers was. But she’s weakening. I’ve been sitting in the window most of the morning – such a multiplicity of problems to think over – and she has passed the house four times since breakfast. Once she began to cross the road to the front door, but then she saw me, and walked away again. The sight of me, poor thing, must have made more vivid to her what she had to do. But she’ll come to it. Let us discuss something more important. That idea of mine about reviving the fishing industry. The Royal Fish Express. I made a few notes –’
Lucia glanced once more out of the window.
‘Georgie,’ she cried. ‘There’s Elizabeth approaching again. That’s the fifth time. Round and round like a squirrel in its cage.’
She glided to her ambush behind the curtain, and, peeping stealthily out, became like the reporter of the University boat-race on the wireless.
‘She’s just opposite, level with the front door,’ she announced. ‘She’s crossing the road. She’s quickening up. She’s crossed the road. She’s slowing down on the front-door steps. She’s raised her hand to the bell. She’s dropped it again. She turned half-round – no, I don’t think she saw me. Poor woman, what a tussle! Just pride. Georgie, she’s rung the bell. Foljambe’s opened the door; she must have been dusting the hall. Foljambe’s let her in, and has shut the door. She’ll be out here in a minute.’
Foljambe entered.
‘Mrs Mapp-Flint, ma’am,’ she said. ‘I told her you w
ere probably engaged, but she much wants to see you for a few moments on a private matter of great importance.’
Lucia sat down in a great hurry, and spread some papers on the table in front of her.
‘Go into the garden, will you, Georgie,’ she said, ‘for she’ll never be able to get it out unless we’re alone. Yes, Foljambe; tell her I can spare her five minutes.’
3
Five minutes later Elizabeth again stood on the doorstep of Mallards, uncertain whether to go home to Grebe by the Vicarage and tell inquisitive Evie the news, or via Irene and Diva. She decided on the latter route, unconscious of the vast issues that hung on this apparently trivial choice.
On this warm October morning, quaint Irene (having no garden) was taking the air on a pile of cushions on her doorstep. She had a camera beside her in case of interesting figures passing by, and was making tentative jottings in her sketch-book for her Victorian Venus in a tartan shawl. Irene noticed something peculiarly buoyant about Elizabeth’s gait, as she approached, and with her Venus in mind she shouted to her:
‘Stand still a moment, Mapp. Stand on one leg in a poised attitude. I want that prancing action. One arm forward if you can manage it without tipping up.’
Elizabeth would have posed for the devil in this triumphant mood.
‘Like that, you quaint darling?’ she asked.
‘Perfect. Hold it for a second while I snap you first.’
Irene focused and snapped.
‘Now half a mo’ more,’ she said, seizing her sketch-book. ‘Be on the point of stepping forward again.’
Irene dashed in important lines and curves.
‘That’ll do,’ she said. ‘I’ve got you. I never saw you so lissom and elastic. What’s up? Have you been successfully seducing some young lad in the autumn of your life?’
‘Oh, you shocking thing,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Naughty! But I’ve just been having such a lovely talk with our sweet Lucia. Shall I tell you about it, or shall I tease you?’
‘Whichever you like,’ said Irene, putting in a little shading. ‘I don’t care a blow.’