by Tom Holt
‘She’s started doing callisthenics again,’ replied Georgie. ‘Positively overflowing with health. It tires me just to watch her.’
‘Dear Lulu, what a marvel she is,’ chirped Elizabeth, as if Lucia were a hundred and four. ‘How we are all fuelled by that wonderful vitality! Age cannot wither her,’ she concluded, and with a little wave was gone. What age could not do, she thought, I can.
There was now no danger of being enfiladed by Irene at the junction of the High Street and West Street, and she strolled past that once dreaded spot with a relaxed stride. Diva, as ever, was at her window; as ever, she was sewing away at something (she always sewed at things, as the sea drives at the cliffs but never moves them). This time, it was a dull, russet object, resembling nothing so much as a mailbag ....
‘Good morning, Diva!’ she called. As ever, Diva tried to duck out of sight, and, as ever, she was too late. Years of practice and all to no avail.
‘Hello, Elizabeth. Can you spare a moment for a cup of tea and a chat? Or are you in a hurry?’
This was said without much hope, and Elizabeth duly ascended the stairs. Diva braced herself for a comment on her needlework that would make her wish to rend the inoffensive garment into pieces.
‘Such a pretty sketch Mr. Georgie is doing of the Landgate,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I feel we ought to revive our little picky exhibitions. I cannot now recall why Lucia cancelled them in the first place.’
‘Well, the Institute is needed pretty well all the time by the Home Guard,’ said Diva. ‘Wouldn’t do to turn them out just for a few pictures, especially with the cold weather coming.’
‘I shall have a word with the officer in charge,’ said Elizabeth coyly. ‘I know him quite well, as it happens. He’s such a gruff soldierly man, but he has a heart of gold. I expect he can find us a little corner for our pretty pictures.’
Poor Major Benjy, thought Diva, he’ll get no peace until he agrees. Then watercolours all over his cartridge boxes.
‘And what is this going to be when it’s finished?’ asked Elizabeth charmingly. ‘A new skirt? No, here are the sleeves; it must be a jacket. How silly of me. It will go so well with your pink blouse. Most inventive, dearest. I wish I could find time for such things. Any news?’
‘I saw Susan Wyse going down Malleson Street when I popped out for some thread just now. No sables. What could she be wanting?’
‘Well, I don’t think she’s going to enlist,’ drawled Elizabeth, ‘so we can rule out the Institute. The house-agents, perhaps? Letting Starling Cottage while they take a holiday! Most unlikely. Ah! I have it! The station. She must be meeting a train, except that there isn’t one due for an hour and besides Mr. Wyse would go with her. They would probably regard it as a special occasion and take the Royce. The post-office, then. An important letter, perhaps, and she cannot wait for the postman. Or perhaps,’ said Elizabeth sardonically, ‘she simply wants some stamps.’
‘That must be it, then,’ said Diva sadly. ‘Never mind. I’ll get us some tea. Janet!’
‘Don’t trouble on my account, dear. I simply popped in to wish you good morning. We meet at the Vicarage this evening, do we not?’
She’s seen something, thought Diva, as the footsteps on the stairs receded, or she’d have stayed for her tea. What is it? From the window, she saw the Wyses deep in conversation with the Padre and wee wifie.
‘Forget the tea, Janet!’ she called, casting down her sewing. ‘I’m popping out for a bit.’
‘A quite remarkable escape,’ declared Mr. Wyse, as Diva and Elizabeth joined the group ‘Ah, good morning, Mrs. Mapp-Flint, Mrs. Plaistow. I fear we shall have some rain very soon.’
‘From what?’ demanded Diva. ‘The escape, I mean, not the rain.’
‘Such joyful news from Italy,’ said Susan. Diva snorted. She could read about the war in the newspapers.
‘Our dear sister Amelia,’ explained Mr. Wyse. ‘She has escaped from Italy after a truly remarkable series of adventures, and has arrived safely in England. She will be coming here very shortly.’
‘’Tes a miracle, by a’ accounts,’ declared the Padre. ‘The seas divided for her, as for the Children of Israel; she has come out ’o the land of bondage and is safe in bonny England.’
‘We were so worried,’ continued Mr. Wyse. ‘Francesco di Faraglione, you see, had so vigorously opposed the Mussolini régime that he was placed under house-arrest at the beginning of the war. Naturally, Amelia was determined to stay at his side. But then,’ his voice faltered, ‘he disappeared suddenly one night.’
‘No!’ squeaked Evie. ‘How horrible!’
‘Later she had word that he had made his way to some friends in the South and was leading a band of desperate guerillas in raids against the enemy.’
‘And with his bad knee,’ added Susan. ‘So courageous.’
‘He left instructions with Amelia, telling her how to escape to England and rejoin her family. She disguised herself as an old peasant woman—so distressing for one of her refinement, yet in her letter she tells us that she felt a strange exhilaration—and joined a crew of zingari—gipsies, Mrs. Mapp-Flint—and they travelled north, singing and selling clothes-pegs as they went. Dear Amelia, so she says, took the rôle of a teller of fortunes and soon became quite proficient in the use of the crystal ball and tarocchi cards. Apparently she had borrowed a book on the subject from our Mrs. Pillson on her last visit to these shores, and she took this book with her. She declares that it has saved her life. Finally, they made their way to the Swiss frontier, and my sister bribed an aged shepherd to conduct her across the mountains on a donkey. But her adventures were not over; they were stopped by a German patrol, and to divert their attention she read their palms—apparently she had read about this also in Mrs. Pillson’s book. The Germans seem to have been impressionable ruffians and were so pleased with the brilliant prospects of plunder and promotion which Amelia saw in their hands that they let her pass unhindered. And now she is in London, and will shortly be travelling to Whitchurch to spend a few days there, before coming to Tilling for the duration of the war. But, she declares, she is much changed by her experiences. She vows that she is quite finished with Italy and all things Italian; she will not speak another word of that accursed tongue for as long as she lives. And she is most anxious to meet Mrs. Pillson and return the book to which, she swears, she owes her continued existence.’
Elizabeth ground her beautiful teeth. It seemed as if Lucia’s tentacles extended to the four corners of the earth.
‘So fortunate!’ she exclaimed. ‘Truly a remarkable tale. I shall look forward so much to hearing it from her own lips. But oh! what a terrible place this world has become, and how wicked people are!’
‘’Tes the blackness ’o the murky sky that makes the wee stars to shine so brightly,’ murmured the Padre. ‘Come, Evie, we must gang awa tae the fishmongers.’
Georgie, of course, was unaware of all this excitement. He had tried to adjust the shading of the interior of the Landgate (which had completely satisfied him until Elizabeth sowed seeds of doubt in his mind) with the result that everything inside the arch now was cast into Stygian gloom. He decided that the sketch would have to become the Landgate at night, and should be postponed until his creative powers had had time to recuperate.
He made his way back to Mallards and let himself in. Lucia was sitting in the drawing-room, staring at a letter. The envelope had fallen to the ground.
‘Lucia!’ he exclaimed. ‘What is it? Not bad news, I trust.’
‘Read this,’ she said, without any expression. So he read it.
‘Lucia,’ he said, in a voice full of wonder and awe, but could not continue.
‘And in our house, Georgie.’ She pulled herself together with a massive effort. ‘Not a word to anyone. No one must ever know. It must be our secret.’
‘Not even Elizabeth?’
‘No one.’
Georgie sat down, and his sketching things joined the envelope in an unheeded heap o
n the floor.
‘So like Lord Tony,’ he said, ‘to have thought of us.’
‘No, Georgie,’ said Lucia with deep sincerity, ‘it is all your doing. See what he says in his letter: “... a beautiful house in a sleepy little town and absolutely the best cook in England.” ’
‘Oh Lucia,’ he said, ‘it is true, isn’t it? All of them coming here. If only we could tell Elizabeth. She would burst into flames and burn herself into ashes.’
‘There are more important things in life, Georgie, than scoring points off Elizabeth,’ said Lucia gravely. Georgie looked her in the eye. She had meant every word she said.
The autumn was beginning to grow cold now, and the days were getting shorter. Encouraging news from the front set tongues wagging almost every day and a general air of optimism filled the town. Diva, after several false starts, tentatively gave the mailbag its première and was most annoyed when nobody noticed it, a most unTillinglike occurrence. The Wyses awaited with mounting excitement the arrival of Amelia di Faraglione (who now answered to no name but Amelia Wyse-Faraglione), who had declared that she could wait no longer to be reunited with her saviour Mrs. Pillson.
Only Lucia and Georgie seemed withdrawn and abstracted, as if something of great importance were hanging over them, blocking the trivia of everyday life from their sight. For the scintillating pleasures of Tilling they had no appetite. Georgie, it seemed, passed all his time in the kitchen of Mallards, and Lucia with him, emerging after the shoppers had left the High Street, to buy necessary provisions. Yet no invitations were issued, no unknown guests seen arriving or leaving. It was not offence or dudgeon that had caused them to withdraw from society; it was just that they were both entirely preoccupied with something, and nobody could guess what it was.
One evening, the guests assembled for dinner and Bridge at Starling Cottage. Elizabeth and Diva met in West Street and paused to enjoy the evening air in the twilight before going on to their hosts. As they stood there, they heard the purr of motors coming up the street behind them, a most unusual noise in those days of petroleum rationing. A procession of enormous Rolls-Royce cars went by, and the two women gaped open-mouthed at the occupants clearly discernible in the early evening light. There was a tall, distinguished-looking man in the uniform of a French general, his striking profile familiar from a thousand newspapers. Another car contained a large, powerfully built man in American uniform and beside him an Admiral of the Royal Navy—and not just any Admiral. The last motor in the procession ....
With trembling knees they passed on to Porpoise Street to relate what they had seen.
‘How long have they been talking, Georgie?’ asked Lucia, perched on the edge of her chair in the drawing-room.
‘You mean since his chauffeur went in with the maps? Ages. Isn’t it glorious!’
There was a knock at the door. Lucia put down the tray from which she had eaten her supper, sprang to her feet and lunged at the door-handle.
‘We have come to congratulate the chef,’ said the intruder. ‘I trust you do not object to cigar smoke?’
At Starling Cottage, the debate had raged all through dinner and all through the rubbers of Bridge that followed; when the cards were finally cast aside the debate had hardly started and still they had come to no conclusion.
‘They must have been going to Hastings,’ insisted the Padre; of Scots there was no trace in his accent, and he spoke in the tones of his native Birmingham.
‘But why should they go that way? It’s nowhere near the road to Hastings,’ cried Diva, weary from repeating this obvious point. ‘Nor the London road. The only place it leads to is Church Square.’
‘Or the Norman Tower,’ urged Mr. Wyse. ‘It is an excellent place for a conference.’·
‘Nonsense, Algernon,’ said his wife. ‘The Town Hall. They were holding a conference in the Town Hall.’
‘It’s no use,’ said Diva. ‘We’ll have to go and look.’
So Evie and the Padre, and Mr. Wyse and Susan, who forgot to put on her sables, though the night was cold, and Diva and Elizabeth and Major Benjy, who in his excitement had drunk nothing at all save three glasses of wine and a spot of port, all set off to see what they could see.
They did not have far to look. As they rounded the corner they saw, in the brilliant moonlight, the illustrious guests, the demi-gods, the pillars of the free world, shaking Lucia and Mr. Georgie warmly by the hand and climbing into their motors.
As they stood and stared a stocky figure in an unmistakable black hat grasped Lucia’s hand in both of his and said, in a voice whose orotund tones echoed in the narrow street as they will echo forever throughout history:
‘A thousand thanks, my dear Lucia, for so graciously allowing us to take over your delightful house for a whole evening. And let me say this. Never, in my vast experience of the culinary art, have I dined so well as I have tonight, nor ever tasted anything to rival your splendid lobster à la Riseholme.’
He tipped a little ash from his cigar, and then he too was gone.
‘He called her Lucia!’ whispered Evie.
‘Well, I’ll be blowed!’ exclaimed Major Benjy.
And there they stood, like trolls who have been caught out by the dawn, standing as still as if they would never move again.
* * * * * *
Photo by Shelley Humphries
Tom Holt was born in 1961 in London, England.
His first book, Poems By Tom Holt, was published when he was twelve years old. While he was still a student at Oxford he wrote two sequels to E F Benson’s Lucia series. After an undistinguished seven-year stint as a lawyer, he became a full-time writer in 1995 and has published over thirty novels.
Tom lives with his wife and daughter in the west of England. As well as writing, he raises pigs and pedigree Dexter cattle.