Lucia in Wartime

by Tom Holt

  ‘Yes,’ cried Diva, and she shut the window with a bang. ‘Stupid child!’ she muttered. ‘Could have broken the glass.’

  ‘Dear Irene,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Quite like a child in some respects, although perhaps she is getting a little bit too old for her pranks to be so readily passed off. Still, a sweet nature, underneath it all.’

  ‘Hello, Diva. Qui-hi, Mapp!’ exclaimed the sweet-natured child, bursting in through the door and settling in a chair like a small hurricane. ‘They’re spreading extraordinary rumours about you in the High Street.’

  ‘And what, pray, might they be saying?’ said Elizabeth, through a luminous smile.

  ‘Well, they say that you’re going off to the Tower of London to have your head chopped off, or something,’ replied Irene, lighting a cigarette and daintily hurling the spent match into the waste-paper basket.

  ‘Dear one!’ cooed Elizabeth, as if to a small, wilful infant. ‘I suppose you mean that you have heard that I am to go to Windsor Castle and meet the King.’

  ‘Well, a cat can look at a King,’ said Irene, blowing a cloud of smoke at her, ‘and I suppose that what a cat can do, a Mapp can do just as well. Nor does the resemblance stop there. But aren’t you a bit old to be presented at court, Mapp? And will you invite me to your coming-out ball?’

  Elizabeth’s smile, like the cliffs against which the sea pounds with frustrated fury, remained fixed. Irene was never more fanciful than when she was baffled.

  ‘No dear, I’m not going for any frivolous reasons, but to represent the Red Cross. I see myself as a sort of ambassador ....’

  ‘So I should jolly well think! All you’ve done is strut around in your uniform, looking like a blessed wedding-cake, while the nurses do all the work!’ fulminated Irene. ‘Just like you, Mapp, filching all the credit for other people’s efforts. And anyway, it shouldn’t be you going to this rout, but Lucia. Why, she virtually built the hospital single-handed—well, she paid for the operating theatre, which I expect you will one day honour with your presence when you eventually burst with pride—and she’s chairman of the governing board. I think the invitation was for her, and you crossed out her name and scrawled “Elizabeth Mapp” over the top.’

  This was an awkward moment for Elizabeth, but she found that she could say, ‘I did nothing of the sort, you rude darling,’ without apparent effort, for of course she hadn’t. She had been much more clever. ‘I can see that you won’t be satisfied until you’ve seen the actual invitation.’ So saying, she produced that magical document.

  ‘So it’s true, is it?’ exclaimed Irene. ‘Oh well, there it is. Fair play’s a jewel, as Benjy-boy says in his cups. I’d better say how pleased and proud I am, although I’m not. Remember, you’ll be there as a sort of ambassador, so behave yourself. I don’t want to be shown up by you. I must see if I’ve got any pumpkins or white mice I could let you have. But you must promise to be back by midnight, and don’t go losing your shoes.’

  And she swept out and pedalled back to Taormina on her racing-bicycle to begin a new canvas. It was to be Elizabeth, crowned and seated upon a throne, with Major Benjy seated beside her with a whisky bottle in his hand, receiving the homage of all nations, while behind her, crammed with every conceivable luxury, stood open a hidden cupboard as big as the Albert Hall.

  Despite the miseries, petty discomforts and constant worries that attended it, war was an exhilarating business for the inhabitants of Tilling. Life’s tempo was quickened, and the people of the town found tremendous scope for doing what they had always done, on a bigger and more tremendous scale. Scarcely had Lucia and Georgie returned from their three weeks exile in London, riding in a lorry laden with Government-issued provisions for Georgie’s culinary researches, than Elizabeth departed for Windsor, resembling nothing so much as a monarch departing for an official visit to another monarch of slightly inferior status—the King of England, for instance, visiting the King of Swaziland.

  As it turned out, she did not enjoy herself very much at the party; she handed her gas-mask case to a man who looked like a footman, but who turned out to be an equerry, a peer of the realm with several thousand acres in Lincolnshire, and, while attempting to scriggle through a knot of people, spilt a cup of tea over the dress of the Duchess of Kent, who smiled charmingly and said, ‘So sorry!’ In full flight from this disaster, she collided with the King, who apologised in similarly gracious terms and asked her who she was. Panicking, and thinking of headlines announcing ‘Disgraceful scenes at Windsor’, she said she was Lucia Pillson of Tilling, and was about to run away when His Majesty said, ‘Ah yes, Mrs. Pillson, I have heard of your generosity to the town. A new operating theatre for the hospital. So public-spirited.’ As far as she could remember, Elizabeth had smiled and thanked His Majesty, and then retired to a corner where she spent the rest of the afternoon counting biscuits. As she left, she heard someone saying, ‘Who was that large woman?’, and although there had been many large women present, she was sure that the description was of herself. She had never felt so large and conspicuous in all her life.

  Nevertheless, the newspapers had made no mention of what had verged upon two incidents of attempted High Treason, but instead had named Mrs. Elizabeth Mapp-Flint as among those present; Tilling would know only that she had been there, had met the King and the Duchess of Kent, and had rubbed shoulders with Royalty; the extent of the physical contact need never be known. She returned to Tilling on the train (where a soldier mistook her for a nurse and asked her to take a look at his feet) and emerged from the station fully prepared to recount the history of her triumph.

  At the very moment of Elizabeth’s arrival, Lucia was sitting on the sofa in her drawing-room. She was thinking free and patient thoughts (as recommended by Edgar in King Lear), but in spite of this something troubled her. To a certain extent her discomfort was due to the fact that Elizabeth had been staying in her house; that woman seemed to leave a miasma behind her, rather like the feeling that hangs about a house that has recently been burgled: a sense of unwarranted intrusion. But there was something more to it than that. Lucia realised that she, and not Elizabeth, should have been invited to the Castle. She, not Elizabeth, was the senior representative of the Aesculapian fraternity in Tilling. Yet His Majesty had chosen Elizabeth for the honour. Why?

  Naturally this sudden elevation to Royal circles was not to be regarded as any sort of victory for Elizabeth. A clear precedent had been set by Susan Wyse’s M.B.E. The people of Tilling naturally regarded anything that happened outside the parish boundaries as unimportant, and in such a way might Elizabeth’s jaunt be regarded. ‘Did you have a nice holiday, dear? So glad,’ would prove to be a satisfactory gambit if the distasteful subject should ever need to be referred to. On the other hand, if such strict principles were to be applied, how could Georgie expect to be lionised for triumphs that had been enacted in London, even further away than Windsor? Here was a difficulty; it might, of course, be argued that since Georgie’s voice had been heard within the boundaries of Tilling (by means of the wireless) the event was a Tilling event and thus legitimate. Such fine reasoning might, however, be beyond the capacity of the majority of Tilling folk. They had applauded Georgie’s London adventures, and so they must applaud Elizabeth’s achievements in Windsor too. Both parties had brought glory on the town and, in truth, Georgie’s were individual honours, whereas Elizabeth had been, as she herself pointed out, a sort of ambassador. To belittle her was to belittle Tilling—disaster. Once again it struck her that by rights she, not Elizabeth, should have gone to Windsor.

  She looked at her watch. The London train would be arriving now, and Elizabeth would be alighting from it, smiling as broadly as ever, pretending no doubt that nothing out of the ordinary had happened, waiting impatiently for the events of the trip to be dragged out of her by eager enquirers.

  Lucia squirmed involuntarily at this thought and as she did so, something seemed to dig into the small of her back. She turned round, and noticed an envelope t
hat had worked its way up from the depths of the sofa, addressed to herself and—goodness!—bearing the crest of Windsor Castle. It was already open and from it she drew an invitation card summoning Mrs. Emmeline Pillson to a party at the Castle in honour of the representatives of the medical services. The day appointed for the party was yesterday.

  ‘Hoc habet!’ exclaimed the Roman gladiator who struck down his opponent and turned to see whether the wretch should live or die. Doubtless Lucia was familiar with the phrase, and might have used it had she not been taken by another thought that expelled the joy of discovery from her mind. Had they both been invited to the Castle? In that case Elizabeth was guilty simply of concealment. Or had she alone been invited, and had Elizabeth opened this letter, resolved on treachery, and written back saying that Mrs. Pillson could not attend and offering to come in her stead? In that case, Elizabeth was guilty of nothing less than fraud. If Elizabeth had committed the former crime, surely she would have taken more care over destroying the evidence. The card would have gone on the fire rather than down the back of a sofa. Sofas, unlike dead men, do tell tales. If it were the latter (and more serious) offence, then the criminal might easily forget about the first invitation in the excitement of procuring the second.

  She seemed to see directly into Elizabeth’s soul, and was amazed by the blackness of it. The brilliance of the Machiavellian mind, the courage and ingenuity of the felon also astonished her; the malefactor was worthy of some respect, even a sort of dubious admiration. Certainly the punishment must be fittingly severe. But how was that to be? Simply to display the invitation and broadcast her reconstruction of the act, like one of Mrs. Agatha Christie’s detectives, would not satisfy her sense of poetic justice. Better still—forego the exposure of the criminal and keep the evidence. With this deadliest of weapons she could subdue Elizabeth to her will for ever, leaving her attentions and powers free for worthier, more uplifting purposes than petty social conflict.

  With a decisive action she slipped the card back into the envelope and the envelope into her pocket. Elizabeth would be confronted tête à tête as soon as she got back (‘Longing to hear about your wonderful trip to Sandringham—no, Windsor wasn’t it?’) and on the mantelpiece would be displayed that silent witness to her corruption. Elizabeth would at once perceive the full horror of her situation, and would find herself with no alternative but to behave submissively for the rest of her life. Punishment indeed!

  ‘Georgie!’ she called, and then remembered that these days her husband spent most of his time underground, like a cave-dweller. So she tripped lightly down the stairs and found him studying a carrot.

  ‘If only one could disguise the beastly colour of it,’ he reflected.

  Swiftly and accurately she told him of her discovery and rehearsed her hypothesis, concluding with a summary of her plan of campaign.

  ‘Monstrous!’ he exclaimed, thumping the carrot, which disappeared on to the floor. ‘I never would have thought she could have stooped so low.’

  ‘Never mind,’ Georgie, ‘it’s turned out all right in the end. Think of dear Elizabeth having to be pleasant for the rest of time, or else we show everyone the invitation. Isn’t it a fitting punishment?’

  ‘It’s like the Sword of Demosthenes—no, Damocles—hanging over her,’ said Georgie. ‘I do think that’s clever. But I don’t think I could resist telling everyone if I were in your shoes. Just Imagine their faces!’

  ‘Such a waste of this gift from heaven, Georgie, and rather petty too. We should not seek to destroy the poor woman, however misguided she may have been. Instead we shall take this opportunity to compel her to change her ways—for her own good as much as anything. Besides, if we were to smite her down with this thunderbolt, she would be sure to attempt some terrible revenge upon us, and that would be too tedious for words. I tire of these annoying little plots and counterplots, Georgie—they are out of place in wartime. We have other, more important, matters to attend to.’

  That seemed to settle the matter, and Lucia returned to the garden-room to wait for Elizabeth. Before she could sit down, however, she saw her victim trotting gaily down from Church Square. She tapped on the window and waved to indicate her presence, and Elizabeth went to the front-door and rang the bell. There was just enough time to place the invitation on the mantelpiece and take her stand in front of it before the doomed woman was shown in by Foljambe.

  ‘Elizabeth dear, how nice to see you. Now I won’t keep you from your reunion with Major Benjy, but you must quickly tell me all about it. Did you see the King?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she replied, ‘we had a nice little chat. He knew all about Tilling, would you believe it, and congratulated us on our work here.’

  That means my operating theatre, thought Lucia, but she can’t bring herself to say it. How typical! ‘And did you see anyone else?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh yes, the Duchess of Kent was there—such a sweet woman. She spilt a little drop of tea on my uniform—there, such a little speck, but she apologised most prettily, and so I forgave her. Withers will be able to get rid of the mark, but I’m almost tempted to leave it there as a memento.’

  ‘Better not, dear. People might think it was soup.’ Lucia moved away from the mantelpiece and sat down. At once Elizabeth saw the invitation: at once she recognised it. Her first instinct was to leap up and fling it on the fire, where it should have gone in the first place, but although she was larger, Lucia was nimbler than she and would prevent her. She stared at the hideous thing, and waited for the tirade of vituperation that must now follow.

  ‘And were there many people there?’ continued Lucia calmly, fixing her with a piercing gaze.

  ‘Yes, lots,’ mumbled Elizabeth. ‘Packed.’

  ‘How exciting for you! I do so wish I could have gone, but then, many are called but few are chosen, as the Bible so succinctly puts it.’ She rose and put the invitation in her pocket. ‘As I believe you pointed out to everyone, you went not as Mrs. Elizabeth Mapp-Flint, but as a sort of ambassador for us all. As a citizen of Tilling, therefore, I feel that I too have been to Windsor. I too have met the King and the Duchess of Kent, albeit vicariously. Do sit down, dear, make yourself at home, although I could not recommend the sofa. Things do tend to fall down the back of it, which can lead to some discomfort. Take one of the chairs, that’s better. Now, I expect you would like to hear all about Mr. Georgie’s broadcasts and my trip to London.’

  A little later, the two celebrities issued forth, almost but not quite arm-in-arm, for one was fractionally behind the other as if giving due deference to a superior, and they made their statuesque way to the High Street. Those who encountered them questioned them eagerly about their adventures, but found that whereas Lucia was only too pleased to relate every detail of her comparatively mundane experience in London, the sort of ambassador was somewhat reticent about her mission to Windsor; in fact, she seemed somewhat put out if anyone mentioned it at all.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Evie to Diva after an inconclusive interview with the august pair, ‘that means it can’t have been a success. I wonder what could have happened?’

  ‘Perhaps she spilt something over the King or broke a vase,’ replied Diva, not knowing that she grazed the truth with her words. ‘Don’t think much of that. Before she went off she was telling us all that she was going as—how did she put it?—our ambassador representing the whole town, in which case she really ought in all fairness to tell us something about it instead of keeping it all to herself. But isn’t it wonderful about Mr. Georgie! And a whole lorry full of vegetables!’

  She looked at Evie meaningfully.

  ‘I expect they’ll do a lot of entertaining now that they’re both back again,’ said Evie.

  ‘I hope so,’ replied Diva.

  Chapter 10.

  The Mapp-Flints returned to Grebe. There they found a certain amount of disorder; a military vehicle had used their garden as a shortcut, squashing a number of sweet flowers flat, and a nest of cigarette-ends came to
light under the plum-tree. Elizabeth moaned when she saw these desecrations, while the Major, who had never completely shared his wife’s love of flowers, said that he supposed things were worse in occupied France and the best thing would be to turn the wrecked flower-bed into another vegetable patch. Elizabeth gave a strangled sob at this insensitivity and fled into the house to count her Tilling pigs.

  Evie’s forecast of lavish entertainment at Mallards proved to be correct. Feasts exceeding even the quantity and quality of peacetime were staged there once or twice a week. Georgie insisted on conducting what he called consumer research, and his assistants in this vital work were only too pleased to co-operate. All thoughts of reciprocal hospitality were quickly abandoned, for no one could hope to match the Homeric opulence of Mallards, and besides, it was their patriotic duty to eat the delicacies that Mr. Georgie’s talented hands prepared for them. Rarely in the political history of the world have citizens been so quick to answer their country’s call as the folk of Tilling. To round off the pleasure, there was the thrill of hearing the recipes they had eaten on Fridays (in the development of which they had all played their parts) broadcast by the B.B.C. on the following Mondays. An actor had been found who could reproduce Georgie’s voice exactly (he also did Mr. Churchill when the need arose) and so Georgie simply wrote the scripts and sent them to Teddy Broome in London. What with eating out and listening in, most Tillingites spent a large proportion of their lives at Mallards, with a corresponding saving in fuel and electricity. As a result, Lucia’s authority over the town was to all intents and purposes absolute, for Elizabeth had capitulated entirely.

  This was, perhaps, the most fascinating part of it. When Georgie started to give courses in elementary domestic science, Elizabeth and Major Benjy were among the first to enrol. They listened with apparently insatiable curiosity to Chopin, Elgar, even Berlioz, and were always insistent on Just one more delightful air, sweet Lucia. Although Elizabeth wore her uniform during the day, she never wore it at Mallards, and the civilian clothes she wore were deliberately dowdy, so that Lucia was undisputed arbiter of elegance in matters of apparel. Only at the Bridge-table were traces of the old Eve to be distinguished, and even these seemed to vanish at the slightest mention of Royalty. The more percipient of the spectators in this curious drama soon observed that a reference to court cards or speculation as to the conventions of Bridge employed at Balmoral or Sandringham quickly rendered Elizabeth as meek as a lamb.