Lucia in Wartime

by Tom Holt

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Georgie stiffly. ‘I wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing. And how dare Elizabeth try and use me against you! It’s too bad. I’ve got a good mind to—to punch Major Benjy on the nose!’

  ‘No need,’ said Lucia soothingly. ‘Ickle Lucia not want big strong men fighting over her. Besides, he might hit you back, and that would be too distressing. No, me got a plan of my vewwy own. Me teach naughty Elizabeth a lesson she not forget. Oh yes,’ she added with relish.

  ‘My dear, what are you going to do?’ demanded Georgie fascinated. This was more like the old Lucia; not the haughty, superior, Bridge-suppressing dictator, but the prime mover of Tilling life, the bringer of excitement.

  ‘I think we might have a little dinner party, Georgie. All our friends, including, of course, Elizabeth. And what do you think they’ll see on the mantelpiece as they sip their sherry? I’ll wager you’ll never guess.’

  ‘No!’ gasped Georgie. ‘The invitation! Oh how glorious! That’ll show her.’

  ‘Not a word from you or me, of course. Let it be a silent indictment of that woman’s evil nature. And now, please go and take off those dreadful clothes.’

  ‘Oh Lord, I’d completely forgotten!’ said Georgie. ‘Major Benjy’s waiting for me to sign his dratted register. And my second-best fawn trousers are at the Institute.’

  Major Benjy walked briskly back to Grebe, anxious to fetch the vital documents quickly and bring his subtle stratagem to fruition. Not bad at all for an old soldier, he reflected, a man like himself, used to simple and straightforward dealings. But Benjy Flint could be as ingenious as any of the old cats of Tilling on his day. And wouldn’t Elizabeth be pleased!

  The Roll was not in its accustomed place. He searched in the whisky-flask desk, on the bookshelves, even behind the sofa. No sign of it.

  ‘Liz,’ he called, ‘have you seen the Nominal Roll?’

  ‘The what, dear?’ she called back from the garden. ‘And please don’t bellow like that. I’m not deaf, although I’m sure I shall be soon if you keep on shouting like that.’

  ‘Sorry, old girl,’ he said, ‘but I’m looking for the Nominal Roll. The Home Guard Register, don’t you know. I think I’ve found us a new sergeant.’

  ‘How exciting,’ said his wife, bustling in from the kitchen. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Guess!’ chuckled the Major. He had planned to keep it a surprise, but now seemed as good a time as any to he congratulated for his cleverness.

  ‘Hopkins?’ asked Elizabeth.

  ‘No.’

  ‘The Padre? Algernon Wyse?’

  ‘Wrong and wrong again. I didn’t think you’d guess. Not the likeliest person to be a leader of men, I’ll admit, nor the best suited for the job, not by a long chalk. But it’s not Hitler that this particular sergeant’s going to be putting in his place. It’s that other dictator we were talking about.’

  ‘Mussolini?’ hazarded Elizabeth vaguely.

  ‘No, no, old girl. It’s a certain wretch whom we once thought of as a friend of sorts, but who betrayed our friendship in a most foul and despicable way.’

  ‘You mean Marshal Petain?’

  ‘No. Lucia, Lucia Pillson. I’ve got Mr. Georgie Pillson to be the new sergeant. Sergeant Milliner Michael-Angelo. Ha!’

  ‘But why should Mr. Georgie want to be in the Home Guard?’ demanded Elizabeth. Something was wrong here, she thought.

  ‘Because I persuaded him, that’s why. Dickens of a job it was, too. But nothing to old Silver-Tongued Benjy, as they used to call me. So that’ll put a stop to our Lucia’s jolly dinner parties, unless she’s prepared to put on an apron and peel the carrots herself. When Georgie-boy should be down in the kitchen cooking dinner, he’ll be out with me, marching up and down the Military Road, and may God help him if his belt-buckles are tarnished! Revenge is sweet, eh? I knew you’d be pleased.’

  ‘Fool!’ cried Elizabeth hoarsely. ‘Fool, fool, fool!’ She began to sob.

  ‘Steady on, old thing,’ urged the flabbergasted Major. This was not the reaction he had expected.

  ‘You wretch!’ she screamed. ‘How could you do this to me after all the work I’ve done, the agonies I’ve suffered, abasing myself before that creature! Silver-Tongued Benjy, was it? Idiot Benjy it must be from now on. I suppose you must have been drunk at the time, but that is no excuse. I shall never, never speak to you again.’

  At this juncture, that seemed a very agreeable prospect. Unfortunately it was not to be, for she continued:

  ‘You know what she’ll do, as soon as she’s seen through your infantile scheme, which will take her precisely three seconds? She’ll show that invitation to everyone and start telling them—the most terrible lies about me. Oh how cruel!’

  ‘Hang on, Liz. I said she won’t be able to see through it.’

  ‘She’ll see through it all right. She’ll think I put you up to it. It’s bad enough that Lucia should think me capable of such a puerile stratagem.’

  The full injustice of this aspect of the disaster seemed to go through Elizabeth like a knife. She struggled to contain her emotions, like an overheating engine, and then she seized one of her china pigs and dashed it to the ground.

  ‘Now look what you’ve done!’ she howled.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, I’m sure,’ said the Major, trying to sound offended but making a poor job of it. ‘I only did what I thought was for the best, as an old soldier and a gentleman. I apologise for my thoughtless conduct, which was unworthy of one of His Majesty’s officers, unworthy indeed,’ he added, ‘of any Englishman. Dashed silly thing to do.’

  Elizabeth picked up a copy of the Daily Mirror and began to tear it to pieces. This seemed to calm her down, for she spoke in level tones.

  ‘Tell me exactly what happened,’ she said, as she crumpled a picture of Mr. Anthony Eden into a tight ball. ‘What did you say to him?’

  ‘I suggested that he might like to be our sergeant,’ Major Benjy almost whispered. ‘Said it was his duty, and all that. He seemed very keen.’

  ‘Well, the damage is done. Or is it, Benjy? The Roll, has he signed it?’

  ‘Of course not. I was just looking for it.’

  A faint glimmer of hope dawned in Elizabeth’s mind.

  ‘And where is he now?’

  ‘He went back to Mallards to sew on his sergeant’s stripes, while I came back here to get the Roll. Chances are that Lucia hasn’t seen him yet. She may not know anything about it.’

  ‘Thank God he didn’t sign,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Well, don’t stand there. Run back to town and tell him it’s all been a ghastly mistake. Say that his cooking must come first. Say anything! Run!’

  And Major Benjy ran.

  Exhausted and perspiring heavily, almost dehydrated by the lack of whisky and soda, the Major burst through the door of the Institute, only to find Georgie, attired in civilian dress, collecting his second-best fawn trousers, with an air of utter disdain.

  ‘Pillson, my dear feller! So glad I managed to catch you!’ panted the Major. To the best of his knowledge, he had not run a step since he had last seen a tiger.

  ‘I’m afraid there’s been the most terrible mistake.’

  ‘There certainly has, Major Mapp-Flint,’ replied Georgie, icily. ‘A very serious mistake on your part.’

  Major Benjy sagged. There on the table was Georgie’s uniform, beautifully folded and pressed by Foljambe. Beside it, a pair of sergeant’s stripes, splendidly embroidered in yellow gold, seemed to grin at the Major like the yawning jaws of a shark.

  ‘You haven’t told your wife about this, have you?’ panted the Major.

  It was Mrs. Pillson who revealed to me the extent of your treachery, Major Mapp-Flint. You have attempted to use me as a pawn in a sordid intrigue.’ Georgie paused. Did one use pawns in sordid intrigues? Never having been in one himself, he could not say. ‘As a result I cannot accept the appointment. I wish you all success in your search for a suitable candidate.’

  ‘It was
all my idea,’ said the Major desperately. ‘Elizabeth knew nothing.’

  ‘Your chivalry seems somewhat misplaced, Major,’ returned Georgie coldly. ‘I am surprised that a distinguished soldier like yourself should be capable of using the commission entrusted to you by the King in such a frivolous way. I expected more of you, Major Flint.’ This phrase reopened the barely closed wound, and with a passionate throb in his voice he burst out, ‘You said I was a civic leader! It’s too unkind! Good day to you, Major Mapp-Flint!’

  He swept out of the Institute and slammed the door behind him. It would have been a fine, dignified exit had he not caught the hem of his cape in the door and had to reopen it to twitch it free.

  ‘Tar’some thing!’ he exclaimed, and was gone.

  ‘Damn’, ’ said the Major. ‘Now what shall I do?’

  For once, he knew the answer to that question. He rose to his feet and from a crate marked ‘Explosives’ he drew a bottle of whisky. He had often had recourse to such explosives during his career as a Home Guard commander, but even this secret weapon did not seem likely to do more than ameliorate his own condition. Gloomily he trudged back to Grebe, kicking a small stone in front of him. He knew how it felt.

  ‘No luck,’ he confessed, as he came into the presence of his wife. ‘He’s found out. Pillson was quite rude to me.’

  ‘Well, that’s that,’ said Elizabeth. ‘We shall have to sell this house and move away. I can’t face what people will say, I really can’t.’

  ‘Cheer up, Liz, we aren’t done for yet,’ said the Major, trying to sound nonchalant, and failing. ‘You’ll have to tell everyone the truth. I don’t think Lucia is all that popular these days.’

  ‘That’s true,’ mused Elizabeth. ‘She’s trying to stop them playing Bridge and wants them all to learn the piano. Diva was urging me to defy her only the other day.’

  ‘And the Padre says he’s going to preach a sermon on Tolerance on Sunday, with a veiled attack on Lucia in it,’ remembered the Major. ‘Or was it Hitler?’

  ‘And even the Wyses say that they’re too set in their ways to learn the piano, and they don’t think Bridge at all frivolous. Benjy, I think we have a chance after all. Ah! and I have an idea.’

  ‘Well done, old girl! Tell me about it.’

  ‘She’s sure to invite them all to dinner tomorrow night to show them the invitation. Very well, then. I’ll speak to them all in the morning at marketing hour and tell them my story. The truth, I mean, and then I’ll say how much Lucia’s tormented me, and that’s why I haven’t been able to put a stop to this no-Bridge nonsense. If I stress that bit, they’ll all take my side, because it’ll be me against Lucia about Bridge. We can’t lose!’

  ‘Brilliant!’ exclaimed the Major, deeply impressed. ‘And so courageous. You’re a marvel, Liz.’

  Elizabeth smiled and reflected that if her account was not yet strictly true, it would be so indistinguishable from the truth that no one, except possibly Lucia, would ever be able to tell the difference.

  The invitations were sent out; the word Bridge was missing from the left-hand corner. Elizabeth rejoiced, for the enemy had played directly into her hands. Her apologia was received with more sympathy and understanding than she had dared to hope, and this encouragement enabled her to rise to unprecedented pinnacles of the dramatic art. She was hurt, wounded, ashamed, repentant and defiant, from Twistevant’s in the west to Worthington’s in the east, and the power and intensity of her performance reached such a crescendo that Mrs. Bartlett, who was the last to hear it, was almost in tears by the time she had finished.

  Tilling hated mysteries, as Nature is said to abhor a vacuum; the mystery of Elizabeth’s curious self-humiliation before Lucia had now been solved and was most thrilling. In fact, the simple act of explanation, had she known it, would probably have vouchsafed absolution for Elizabeth. As it was, her masterly reworking of the facts had roused Tilling to a frenzy of excitement, so that people stood in queues for things they had no intention of buying simply in order to discuss the news with someone else. Certain aspects of the tale puzzled them; chiefly they had wondered why, considering the innocence of Elizabeth’s motives in opening the letter, she had not told Lucia about it, and how it was that she had been so worried by Lucia’s threat to expose her as a fraud. For all agreed that no one would have believed such an unkind and patently false account as Lucia had evidently threatened to tell them; why, the story would not even fit the known facts. On one thing, all were agreed: it was so like Lucia. Not the Lucia they had known and loved all these years, but the new, tyrannical Lucia, the Bridge-banner, the piano-enforcer. ‘Typical!’ they said. ‘And how poor Elizabeth must have suffered!’

  Whether they would have proved so gullible had not Lucia made such a terrible blunder, it is hard to say. But Bridge was indeed the very life-blood of Tilling; its deceptions, its speculations, its psychic bids were a microcosm of the town itself. Around the Bridge-table all the animosities of the last few days were reaped and threshed, and the seeds of new ones planted in their place, to grow to maturity in time for the next Bridge party in a few days’ time. It was the communion of the tribe, the stylised re-enactment of their daily lives. As the ritual of Adonis represents the death and rebirth of Nature, so the Bridge of Tilling embodied in its time-honoured patterns of misunderstood bids, revokes and bitter recriminations the whole social life-cycle of the population. To threaten Bridge was to threaten the very fabric of their society, and if Lucia thought that a dull evening listening to her hammering out the same old pieces on the piano was any substitute for this vital and meaningful activity, she was very much mistaken.

  Elizabeth, unaccompanied by Major Benjy, who was busy with his explosives at the Institute, was the last to arrive at Mallards that evening, and all considered this a hopeful sign. They all remembered the good old days, when she had made a point of always arriving last at any gathering. After Lucia’s coming, it had always been a matter of honour that Elizabeth was the last to arrive at Lucia’s house, and Lucia the last to arrive at Elizabeth’s. Indeed, one fine evening, Elizabeth had walked four times round Church Square and read half the headstones in the grave-yard because she saw the Wyses arriving at Mallards just when she was on the point of going in herself.

  The guests were ushered into the garden-room for a glass of sherry. There, on the mantelpiece, was the fateful rectangle of white card that must surely seal Elizabeth’s doom. On either side of it were two dazzling flower-arrangements that even a person with poor eyesight could not fail to notice, flanked by a selection of books that Lucia knew her friends were eager to borrow: a work on spiritualism for Susan, The Irish Setter in Sickness and in Health for Diva, and a rare edition of Burns for the Padre.

  ‘Diva, dear, how marvellous you look!’ crooned Lucia, ‘and Evie and dear Padre! Such thrilling news of our beloved Highland Regiments! Mr. Wyse, how elegant, and you, too, dear Susan. I declare I feel dowdy by comparison. Ah, there you are, Elizabeth, we were afraid you were not going to come. No Major Benjy? How sad! Still, it is such important work that he is doing, is it not? Up and down the Harbour, and in all weathers too.’

  Elizabeth smiled like a shark.

  ‘Essential,’ she agreed. ‘But so much easier now that he has found a man to be his sergeant.’

  ‘How exciting! Who?’

  ‘Hopkins the fishmonger has finally heard the call of duty,’ said Elizabeth grandly. ‘Major Benjy managed to persuade him at last. He can be so persuasive at times—no wonder his colleagues in Burma used to call him Silver-Tongued Benjy! Of course, he interviewed so many men for the job—many, many eager applicants—but not one of them up to his very high standards. What was needed, we felt, was a man respected in the community. Only the best for our dear Tilling, I insisted, and he agreed with me. Dear Lucia, you should have seen some of the paltry fellows who thought they might have a chance. Of course, when Major Benjy told them what the job involved, they scuttled away with their tails between their legs.’


  A tremor of excitement ran round the room. This was war. As far as Elizabeth was concerned, Georgie had applied to be sergeant and had been turned down in favour of Hopkins. This was better than any of them had dared to hope.

  ‘Such a difficult choice,’ squeaked Evie, daringly. She had been one of those most deeply moved by the proposed abolition of Bridge. ‘So few people in the town capable of doing the job, so many of them believing that they could. Poor Major Benjy!’

  ‘He said it was very hard to find words for a tactful refusal,’ continued Elizabeth blithely. ‘Some of them were quite angry and rude, and stormed off in a huff. Such bad manners!’

  ‘Ah weel!’ said the Padre, another inveterate gambler, ‘tes a’ well that ends well. And yon Hopkins is a fine figure of a man, what wi’ haulin’ around the crates of wee fishies.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Lucia coldly. ‘I’m sure we’ll all feel much better knowing that the strong arm of Mr. Hopkins has been raised up to protect us.’

  ‘Fie, Lucia, to be so frivolous’ (that dread word!) ‘about our brave Home Guard. I’m sure Mr. Georgie doesn’t share your low opinion of them,’ said Elizabeth, staring straight at the invitation and smiling yet more enormously.

  ‘On the contrary, on the contrary,’ muttered Lucia, totally confused. Were they all blind? Was the room too dark?

  ‘What delightful flowers, Mrs. Pillson,’ said Mr. Wyse solemnly, stepping over to the mantelpiece and burying his nose in the explosion of primary colours that Lucia had placed there. As he did so, his eye was but a few inches from the invitation, so that had he been half-blind he must have read it. But clearly he was far too well bred to peruse other people’s letters, for he turned and said, ‘Exquisite chrysanthemums. Or should one perhaps call them chrysanthema? Thus the Greek plural, although the ending “-um” is Latin. But then, chrysanthema would be correct in either case, would it not, Mrs. Pillson?’