by Tom Holt
‘Remarkable!’ said Diva. ‘Quite remarkable!’
‘So it was not just my idle fancy,’ cooed Elizabeth. ‘I was most forcefully reminded of my Aunt Caroline as she was when I first knew her. In fact, the resemblance is quite startling. Almost a photograph.’
At this point, the men entered the room, and were at once pressed to inspect the Discovery. Georgie quite failed to grasp its unfortunate implications and repeatedly expressed the opinion that the likeness was beyond dispute.
‘Why, Elizabeth, you might almost be sisters,’ he said, and Elizabeth, although pleased by this enthusiasm, could not help but feel a little annoyed. The painting was, after all, extremely ugly. Mr. Wyse also pronounced the likeness to be uncanny and pointed out the town of Tilling, which none of the other observers, for all their acuteness, had so far noticed. Then there was a renewed crush to see the picture. If, as seemed highly likely, the house through whose window Tilling was to be seen was that of Miss Lydia Mapp’s father, then surely it must be possible to identify, by the angle from which the town was seen, roughly where the ancestral home of the de Maps (and therefore of Elizabeth) must be. A hubbub of speculation followed, much to Elizabeth’s alarm, for if the house were successfully pinpointed, might not exposure follow? As it turned out, however, the painter’s lack of skill came once again to her aid; for it was finally agreed that such a view of the town could only be obtained from the middle of the English Channel, through a telescope and not allowing for the curvature of the earth. Mr. Wyse therefore declared it to be ‘stylised’ and the matter was dropped.
After such commotions, Bridge seemed quite unbearably mundane and Mr. Wyse had no objection at all when Fate dictated that he should be the one to be excluded from the two tables.
The time shall slip away in contemplation of your divine painting,’ he exclaimed with a charming bow. Elizabeth, who had taken such pains to render her forgery undetectable, waved gaily at him and started to deal the cards. Soon she was upbraiding her partner for not supporting her bid and quite unconscious of Mr. Wyse whose delighted fascination had not been exaggerated.
Mr. Wyse knew how to look at pictures. First he stood about seven feet away and allowed his sub-conscious mind to drink in all the hidden depths and subtleties of the work. This process, however, took rather less time than he had expected and he stepped closer to the canvas and inspected it in detail. His generous soul found much to admire in the vigorous, almost impressionistic brushwork (years ahead of its time), the daring manipulation of form and proportion that seemed almost to break the rules of composition, of anatomy itself, in its efforts to express the artist’s intentions.
Having satisfied himself that he had done the aesthetic side of the painting full justice, he turned his mind to contemplation of the portrait as a piece of historical evidence, and determined to extract from it every last scrap of information that it contained. He correctly placed the period from the style of the interior furnishings, identified to a nicety the breed of the lapdog and amply justified his opinion of the subject’s social position from her dress and manner of arranging her hair. He also noted an engagement ring on her finger—more evidence, if any were needed, to support his hypothesis. Finally, when all was apparently noted, he observed what appeared to be some heraldic device on the tablecloth on which the subject’s hand was resting. But it was partly covered by the signature of the artist and further obscured by a dark smear of discolouration around the subject’s name. Nevertheless, Mr. Wyse’s excellent education in the fine and liberal arts had prepared him for this eventuality. He knew that the best way of removing such marks without any risk at all to the canvas was to moisten the tip of one’s finger (not a handkerchief, which might scratch) with one’s tongue and rub gently but vigorously until the marks were removed. Having made certain that he was unobserved (for he had no desire to offend anyone by sticking out his tongue while they were watching), he moistened his finger in the approved manner and began to rub. The stain came away as easily as if it had been water-colour and the heraldic device became steadily clearer. He remoistened his finger and rubbed until it began to ache, for the device was one that he thought he recognised. As he did so, he saw, to his utter amazement, lettering beginning to appear under his finger-tip, just to the right of the subject’s name. He returned to his task with renewed diligence, careless now of observation in the excitement of his discovery, and scarcely heard Elizabeth’s hoarse cry of ‘Leave my painting alone!’ For, when all the discolouration was swept away, the name was clearly not Mapp but Mapperley, as in Mapperley House, near Tilling, Sussex.
‘I am convinced,’ said Mr. Wyse, as he stood next morning outside the post-office, waiting for his wife to post her letter, ‘that the remainder of the name was simply obscured by the discolouration and that Mrs. Mapp-Flint was the victim of a genuine misapprehension.’
‘Fiddlesticks!’ cried Evie. ‘It was forgery, plain and simple. Why, you said last night as we drove home that the stuff on your fingers looked rather like water-colour. She just painted over the rest of the letters. Typical!’
Mr. Wyse shook his head sadly. Try as he might he could not account for it otherwise. He knew that public opinion was against his view. Even Susan Wyse had thought as much—had written as much in her letter to the Contessa di Faraglione, hurriedly composed upon their return to Starling Cottage last night. He even believed it himself; but, as author of Elizabeth’s downfall, he felt that he owed it to his victim to give her the benefit of such little doubt as still remained.
‘We should not be too hasty,’ was all that he could find to say.
Evie would have remonstrated with him further had she not caught sight of Major Benjy walking out towards Grebe with a parcel under his arm. The Major was feeling rather out of sorts, for Elizabeth had been in a frightful temper ever since Mr. Wyse had interfered, as she put it, with her painting. What he could not understand was why Elizabeth, her ancestry once more put in doubt by Mr. Wyse’s revelations, had not produced the silver tray as evidence. The tray, with its name and spectacular crest, was just as good as the painting—as things had turned out, better—but Elizabeth had not mentioned it and, when he had tried to raise the subject, she had trodden on his foot. Whatever the matter was, he felt sure that the thoughtful gift he was taking home to her would cheer her up no end.
He had taken a rubbing of the crest on the tray—the de Map family crest—and ordered a year’s supply of writing-paper with the crest at the top. This inspiration had come upon him out of the blue and the thought of his own kindness and cleverness warmed him inside almost as much as a whisky-and-soda would have done, had he had access to that desirable commodity. Elizabeth loved that sort of thing. All the way back to Grebe he tried to picture her face. She wasn’t such a bad old soul, after all, and it was a husband’s duty to perform these small acts of kindness.
Arriving at Grebe he went straight to his wife and asked her how she was feeling. Elizabeth did not reply. She had hardly stirred all morning, for images of the nightmare of the last evening had come upon her in a constant stream and her head still echoed with the mocking condolences of her friends. It had been Major Benjy who had first uttered the word ‘forgery’ and his foolish question, ‘Now who would want to do a thing like that?’, had been answered only by Evie’s foolish squeaking and Susan’s embarrassed chatter. She would not forgive him for that as long as she lived. As if all that had not been enough, there was a monstrous bill from Mr. Hopkins for lemon sole—at least double what she really owed him—which she would of course resist with the last fibre of her being, and if necessary take to the House of Lords. But there was another aspect of the bill that worried her, although she could not think what it was.
‘Buck up, old girl,’ said the Major, as he placed the parcel before her. ‘Take a look at this. It’ll cheer you up, you see if it doesn’t.’
Dully, Elizabeth opened the parcel, which at first sight seemed to contain writing-paper with a gaudy crest on it.
‘What’s this?’ she asked sourly.
‘Writing-paper, Liz. With your family arms on it. I took a rubbing off that tray of yours.’
At first, Elizabeth thought this was some terrible practical joke. Then, as she stared at the crest, she recognised it as the embellishment on the tray—and as something more.
‘That’s not my crest,’ she began to explain, but as she looked at it something seemed to connect in her brain and she scrabbled furiously for Mr. Hopkins’s bill.
‘The chap at the stationer’s was most co-operative,’ said the Major, blithely. ‘He said there was no difficulty at all reproducing that particular crest. He made some joke about not knowing that we were setting up in the wet-fish business; I s’pose that’s to do with the fish on the crest.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ snarled Elizabeth, ‘it’s the crest of the Rother Fishmongers’ Association.’ And she pointed, white with rage, to the letterhead of Mr. Hopkins’s bill. There was the same crest, with the explanatory legend printed beneath it and the date of its foundation, 1770.
Thus it was that Diva, taking her favourite walk past Grebe, secure in the knowledge that she was unlikely to be waylaid, noticed an unusually thick column of smoke proceeding from the chimney.
‘It’s almost as if they were burning paper,’ she said to herself. ‘Well, they’d better be careful if they don’t want to set the chimney on fire. Paddy! Leave that cat alone!’
Chapter 12
When May came to Tilling, bringing with it new flowers and seasonal excitements, the inhabitants of the town seemed surprised to find that the year was still so young. Since Christmas there had been a quite extraordinary amount of activity in one way or another and Easter had slipped by almost unnoticed. There had been the Tapestry and then Monopoly; first Lucia and then Elizabeth had held a position almost akin to social dictatorship; then Lucia had ousted Elizabeth again, only to overreach herself with the business of the County Life article and to fall headlong into the shadows for nearly a month of exile. The precedent of that excommunication had cast a shadow over the town, for who could say, now that the weapon of total exclusion had, so to speak, been forged, on whose neck its blade might fall next? As a result everyone seemed to realise that we are put on this earth to love our neighbour, not to quarrel with him. Thus it was that Elizabeth’s subsequent disasters had been treated almost mildly, as if such things as deceit and malice no longer mattered and could be lightly overlooked.
Now, with the first mellowing signs of summer to be seen, all those temporary furies were but as the memory of a dream. Peace had broken out and, although the atmosphere of stability and reconciliation that blossomed in the little town was scarcely mirrored in the world outside, the pace of life had slowed down to that of a pleasant Sunday afternoon stroll. With the return of the sun and the longer evenings, there no longer seemed to be the need for frenzied activity just to keep the elements at bay.
There were summer outfits to be planned, patterns and materials to be chosen, with all the care and effort that must attend such crucial decisions. It was also advisable to plan well in advance the celebrations that would attend the advent of the strawberry and those other seasonal delicacies that provide us with the framework of our summer life. There was the Produce Show to consider and the Summer Exhibition. Georgie had already chosen his subject for this—a view of the Norman Tower and the Gun Garden, with the river in the distance, all framed by the small arch. With such an ambitious project in mind, he rather feared that he had left himself too little time. The distractions of the season were countless and when Lucia deployed his long-neglected croquet-hoops on the lawn and thereby set off a minor craze for the game, he nearly cried out in despair; another afternoon a week, at the very least, must be sacrificed—as if he were not busy enough already.
Lucia, on the other hand, seemed to be having difficulty in filling up the extended hours of daylight, for she was, like the Athenians, forever searching after some new thing, rather as if she wished the hectic pace of the past few months to continue, or even increase. Above all, her mind had become set on the idea of reviving the Tilling Festival, to consist of a week or, better still, a fortnight of artistic activity and celebration. There would have to be, she insisted, at least two premières of important plays by promising young authors, two concerts (at least) by a leading orchestra, and although she felt that she had left it too late to commission any new works, she must not be so negligent in the future. Then there would be exhibitions by exciting contemporary artists, poetry recitals and a civic parade.
‘The advantages to all the parties concerned are stupendous,’ she said for the umpteenth time as she and Georgie played croquet together. ‘The town, the artists, the nation as a whole stand to benefit from such a project. ’
‘Quite so,’ said Georgie, knitting his brows. He had found that if you tapped the ball not in the centre but near the top, it rolled rather further and rather straighter than usual and didn’t veer off quite so much to one side. But if you hit it in the wrong place, it hardly moved at all, or else went up in the air like one of Major Benjy’s drives at golf.
‘First, the advantages to the artists.’ Lucia stooped to address her ball, talking all the while. ‘They would have a unique forum—through that hoop there did you say? Thank you—for premières and previews. Critical and public attention would be focused upon them and they would not have to take their chances with the London reviewers. You object’—Georgie had done no such thing, but he let it pass—‘that we cannot afford to finance whole new productions by unknown playwrights—an agent’s objection if I may say so, and indicative of the attitude that is strangling artistic progress in this country. Very well then, we will have readings, in costume or if necessary in plain evening-dress, like a concert performance, by the celebrated actors who are present to perform in the major productions brought down from London. They would be delighted, I am sure, to contribute a few hours of their precious time to such a worthy enterprise. Think of the benefits, Georgie. Suppose I had written a play—oh, is it my turn now? There! Straight through the darling little hoop—and I wanted someone to produce it for me—’
‘That was very clever,’ said Georgie bitterly. Lucia had pulled off a tremendously difficult shot and she had hardly looked at the ball. He got the impression that she was not interested in the game, and as a result was playing superbly. The voice continued, as jarring and irritating as the sound of a distant motor-cycle at a summer picnic.
‘And then there are the advantages to the town,’ buzzed the voice. ‘As I intend to say to my Council, people would come from all over the country and perhaps from overseas as well. Oh, bad luck, Georgie, you usually have no trouble at all with that sort of stroke. That is why we must be sure to get lots of famous people, to make sure that lots of people come, to provide an audience for the new works we are assisting, if you see what I mean; the young, talented artists who have never been able to get a commercial production. The visitors would bring so much money to the town ....’
Georgie tried to shut out the voice and concentrate on his next shot, for he had already heard a great deal about the visitors and their money. Yet try as he might, he could not help but listen and his ball went straight into the leg of the hoop, nearly knocking it out of the ground.
‘We’ve been over all this before, Lucia,’ he said snappishly, ‘and I think it’s a splendid idea. But you must have a little rest now—you’ve been thinking about it for days and you’ll tire yourself out.’ He racked his brain for some snippet of Tilling news that might distract her from her theme, but could think of nothing. While he was silent, Lucia started speaking again.
‘But I am resting, Georgino. What could be more relaxing than a quiet game of croquet? Now, the money that we get from the visitors—think of all the wonderful things we could do for the town with all that extra revenue! There are the drains, for example—simply falling to pieces, so they tell me, and in most urgent need of renovation. With this extra
income we could repair them. Fancy that, Georgie! Art subsidising Sanitation.’
Georgie did not fancy it at all. Nor did he much like the situation he had got into with his last shot. Lucia, on the other hand was miles ahead, and although she seemed hardly to be looking at the ball, it skimmed through the hoops as if it were a performing animal. Soon the game was over and Lucia had won overwhelmingly.
‘So glad we’ve had this little chat,’ she said, as they collected up the balls. ‘Since neither of us seems to have any major reservations about the ideas I have outlined to you, I think I might start writing my letters now.’ She stopped, and a troubled look crossed her face. ‘And yet I cannot help thinking that we have forgotten something, you know. It’s as if we need some spearhead, some catalyst, a gentle push to set the ship off on its long voyage of adventure. Well, I must give it some more thought. Thank you so much for the game. I was terribly lucky, wasn’t I?’
‘Yes,’ thought Georgie savagely. But he simply smiled and Lucia went into the house. Georgie, however, set the balls out once more and played a game against himself. As he thought, all the shots he had missed when he was playing against Lucia worked perfectly in her absence, even the trickiest ones which he rarely if ever attempted.
‘Isn’t that always the way?’ he reflected morosely, and gathered up the balls once again.
Diva stood outside the draper’s shop and tried frantically to come to some definite decision. It was not fair, she considered, that the Ladies’ Home Journal should be so insistent on Marina blue this summer, when Woman and Beauty had so firmly declared that any other colours but orange and fawn would be unthinkable. As if that were not enough, whereas both of these august publications had stated unequivocally that navy and white court shoes were to be worn as long as the sun shone and the railways ran according to the summer schedules, Woman’s Journal spoke unsettlingly of straps, while Vogue thundered Delphic riddles about lizard and buckskin. As a result, Diva was thoroughly confused and not a little angry. Government action, she felt, might be called for if some degree of concord could not be reached by voluntary agreement.