Au Reservoir
A Mapp and Lucia novel
Guy Fraser-Sampson
Chapter 1
Mrs Emmeline Pillson stood outside Tilling railway station and calmly regarded her chauffeur, Cadman, who had touched his cap on her arrival and placed her suitcase in the boot of the Rolls-Royce. Now he opened the door and looked at her expectantly. Having calmly regarded him, she turned, for it was a fine sunny day, and calmly regarded in turn the road rising the short distance into the old walled town, the tower of the church clearly visible above the rooftops, and the flower beds on each side of the station approach. These owed their very existence to her, both in her capacity as Mayor – since she had championed their creation – and as benefactor – since she it was who paid for the gardener to weed and water them during the summer months, thus regally overriding the pettifogging objections of those on her town council who had looked at each other doubtfully and rumbled mutinously about another tuppence on the rates.
Having done quite enough calm regarding for the moment, she came to a decision.
‘Thank you, Cadman, but I believe I shall walk,’ she said languidly. ‘It is such a lovely day.’
‘Very good, ma’am,’ that worthy retainer replied and, touching his cap once more, climbed into the gleaming machine and set it in motion towards Mallards, by far the finest house in what was by common consent the finest town in all England. Since consent was far from common among the denizens of Tilling, such accord was notable. In particular, it was about the only thing upon which Mrs Pillson, commonly referred to as Lucia, and her deadly rival Mrs Mapp-Flint, commonly referred to as Mapp, had ever agreed.
Lucia’s steady tread carried her towards the Landgate; though it was not the most direct route to Mallards, which lay beyond the church, it was the most appealing, and she was well known for her aesthetic sensibility. For it was she who kept alive the cultural flame in Tilling almost single-handed, what with her Dante lessons in the garden during the summer months, her historical tableaux vivants and her carefully rehearsed impromptu evening concerts (self-deprecatingly described as ‘po’ di mu’, which term would in turn be expanded by an explanation for those who chose to enquire, and frequently also for those who did not, that it was of course an abbreviation of un po’ di musica, for Lucia’s facility in the Italian language was widely praised, not least by herself).
It was in fact her sympathy with all things Italian that had given rise to her own name. Her late husband’s name had been Philip Lucas, and so it had seemed natural for he to become known as Pepino, and she Lucia. She reflected briefly upon dear Pepino as she paused by the observation platform, which she had endowed some hundred yards or so inside the Landgate, and gazed out over the cricket flats that lay below, outside the town wall. In truth this was a quite unremarkable stretch of reclaimed marshland, which in addition to the cricket pitch also bore a bowling green and a car park for the charabanc parties that increasingly had been returning to Tilling since the end of the war. However, there were two reasons why she always paused at this point and looked contemplatively out at the expanse below, and both of them were compelling.
The first was that, should anyone pass within earshot, they would hear her dreamily say, ‘Ah, Drake, how noble,’ while watching, trancelike, the measured stamp of Elizabethan halberdiers marching off to deter the dastardly Spaniards, passing their Admiral calmly finishing his game of bowls, before sighing and dragging herself with difficulty back to the present day disadvantages of rationing, power shortages and, worst of all, a Labour Government.
The second was that after the short but hard climb from the station, Lucia would now be short of breath, and this brief but deeply meaningful sojourn with the glorious past (for had she not played Queen Elizabeth in many a pageant?) gave her ample chance to regain it so that she might toss the customary ‘Any news?’ to any acquaintance upon whom she might chance during the remaining, more level, part of her journey without being seen to gasp in an unladylike fashion, as Elizabeth Mapp-Flint was wont to do these days. Lucia had resolutely inhabited her mid-thirties for at least the last two decades, having previously lingered reluctantly for some time in her late twenties; perhaps, she wondered, she might at last safely venture upon a fortieth birthday party?
Pepino had been her soulmate for all the years in which they had lived in Riseholme and before that in London, while fulfilling what Lucia saw as his essential objective, namely amassing enough of a fortune that she would be entirely absolved from ever having to undertake the slightest menial task for the rest of her life. He had also shared her cultural interests, writing heartfelt poems on subjects such as ‘Loneliness’, which were collected and published at Ye Signe of Ye Daffodil – a private press in Riseholme financed entirely, and most generously, by Pepino himself.
He had also shared her musical tastes, adopting an expression of deep spiritual catharsis as her fingers roamed over the first movement of the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata. The following movements she eschewed, proclaiming them of slightly lesser quality; besides, they went very much more quickly and the divine Beethoven’s soulful depths could clearly be enjoyed all the more languorously at adagio sostenuto than at allegretto, let alone the horrors of presto agitato.
Best of all, Pepino’s own fingers never sought to roam anywhere at all, whether at presto agitato or otherwise, and in this as in everything he proved the perfect husband, leaving her mercifully entirely free from any attentions of an unwelcome nature.
Her current husband, Georgie Pillson, had been her devoted admirer for all the many, many years, during which he had trodden the boards as Riseholme’s dashing young man, a part played all the more convincingly in advancing years with the aid of hair dye and a toupee. He was the bass part to her treble during piano duets, the Drake to her Elizabeth during pageants and tableaux vivants, and her staunchest supporter for almost all of the time they had known each other.
The ‘almost’ was important though, for while only occasionally had Georgie been tempted into the mutiny of independent thought and action, it had always been in the company of his own soulmate, the opera singer Olga Bracely.
In respect of Olga, Lucia maintained a guarded neutrality, regarding her in much the same way that the newspapers now showed soldiers gazing at each other suspiciously across barbed wire barriers in different zones of Berlin. The possibility of physical infidelity worried her not at all, for she was well aware that Georgie was as blissfully free from such tedious urges as had been Pepino; had she not been very sure of that fact, she would never have consented to marry him in the first place. More worrisome was that periodically, as Georgie was drawn back into Olga’s orbit, he would begin to exhibit troubling signs of gratuitous enjoyment of life, such as dancing to gramophone records, partying the night away with Olga’s friends in London and, worst of all, listening to Wagner.
Lucia was prepared magnanimously to agree that people should be allowed to enjoy themselves in moderation. Yet such behaviour should be strictly limited in both time and scope. The most seemly time was clearly when Lucia was present herself as the sparkling fount of such pleasures, and the most obvious scope was to be found in the many diversions she provided for her friends, be it her po’ di mu, her cucumber salad, her tableaux vivants, her gracious patronage of the Tilling art show and summer fête, or her improving lectures on a whole variety of topics which she usually delivered herself from a sheaf of closely handwritten notes, gazing disapprovingly over her glasses at Major Benjamin Flint, late of His Majesty’s Indian Army, as he snored, entirely unimproved, in the front row.
To the gramophone Lucia would never be reconciled. All her friends in Riseholme, with the notable exception of Olga, who had gone so far as to purchase a house there and become a rival
social magnet, had the good grace to hide their gramophone away when Lucia visited, for it was well known that she could not bring herself to set foot inside a house which contained one. Yet Olga had not only set hers playing at what she called a ‘romp’, but had drawn Georgie into dancing tangos and jitterbugs (Lucia still shuddered at the very thought) with every appearance of enjoyment.
Georgie had at times had the temerity to suggest that, as Lucia did not enjoy Olga’s parties, it made sense for her to stay at home while he attended alone, and though she had received such remarks with a silvery laugh which she was sure must quite adequately have conveyed her scorn and derision, this had obviously been lost upon Georgie, so strongly was he under dear Olga’s sway. So deeply lost upon him, in fact, that not only did he frequently attend her parties on his own but weekends away to boot. Now that the war was over, there was even talk of Olga’s circle reviving their regular jaunts to Le Touquet.
To rub salt into the wound, Lucia harboured dark suspicions that Olga’s own particular Hellfire Club included within its membership many of those whom Lucia had been lengthily and unsuccessfully importuning to come and address Tilling as part of her lecture programme. Could Olga’s friend ‘Noël’, for example, be the egregious Noël Coward, who had refused no less than five invitations, thus visiting extreme social embarrassment upon her?
The fact that the embarrassment had arisen only because, goaded by Elizabeth Mapp-Flint, she had professed to a deep and long-standing acquaintance with Noël Coward shortly before the unspeakable Mapp had stumbled upon his most recent reply (‘Stop pestering me, you wretched woman!’) served only to compound her sense of grievance. In the circumstances, her exasperated reaction was, she felt sure, entirely justified. ‘Really, Georgie!’ she had exclaimed, placing the latest missive most unwisely on to her desk rather than consigning it to the wastepaper basket where it would have lain undiscovered. ‘You would have thought that the dreadful little man would welcome an opportunity to become better known.’
Similarly, what if ‘dear Johnnie’ was actually Olga’s way of referring to that same John Gielgud who had spurned her offer to enlighten the glitterati of Tilling with his thoughts on Shakespearean acting? She had been forced to deputise herself, the derisive snorts of the Mapp-Flints serving to draw from her a performance of Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene which was still the stuff of Tilling legend, though a legend usually discussed only when neither Lucia nor Georgie was present.
As to her long-standing aversion to Wagner, had Lucia ever been taxed with the need to justify it, she would simply have stared glacially at her interlocutor and responded that clearly he or she had never sat through even a small part of the Ring Cycle.
As she turned into the High Street she chanced upon the Mapp-Flints and Diva Plaistow, who were standing outside Twistevant’s, shopping baskets worn on the left forearm in proper Tilling fashion. Seeing her, Major Benjy raised his hat and said, ‘Ah, dear lady, a welcome return.’ His wife attempted to show similar pleasure at Lucia’s reappearance but succeeded only in baring her teeth, which gave an impression of carnivorous anticipation rather at odds with her ejaculation of ‘Joy, joy,’ uttered while lightly clapping her hands.
‘Hello, Lucia, any news?’ asked Diva.
‘Just back from Riseholme, Diva dear. Rather fatiguing, but one must make the effort. All one’s old friends there are always so happy to see one again.’
As so often with Lucia, she was being a trifle economical with the truth. The passing years had taken their toll on ‘one’s old friends’. The Antrobus sisters still lived together in their late mother’s home, resolutely girlish as they lurched through middle age and out the other side, but they were about all that was left of her old life. Robert Quantock had been claimed by the grim reaper just before the war, and Daisy had gone to live with a cousin in the Lake District. Colonel and Mrs Boucher (formerly Weston) were long gone too.
So it was that Lucia’s occasional visits to Riseholme now took the form of staying at the Ambermere Arms and walking repeatedly around the village green in the hope of being recognised and greeted as the long-lost friend that she was. When passers-by resolutely declined to accord her such recognition, despite her fixed smile of long-lost friendly greeting, she sat outside the Hurst on a canvas stool, sketching her former home while looking sad yet winsome. Once she had exhausted the dramatic possibilities afforded by sadness and winsomeness she returned to Tilling. Politeness to one’s audience therefore made it necessary to employ a little dramatic licence to embellish what might understandably, but misleadingly, appear a somewhat drab episode in an otherwise rewarding existence.
‘And what of dear Mr Georgie?’ Elizabeth Mapp-Flint enquired.
‘Up in town, Elizabeth, with Olga Bracely,’ Lucia enlightened her as Mr and Mrs Wyse joined the party, Mr Wyse raising his hat and bowing gravely. ‘The opera once or twice, I believe, and an exhibition at the Royal Academy. They did press me to join them, of course, but sadly it just wasn’t possible given my busy schedule.’
‘Not too busy for Riseholme, though?’ Mapp pointed out.
Lucia sighed deeply.
‘I could just fit in one, but not both, and I thought I should not be selfish. Of course I would have loved to sit at Covent Garden and listen to Olga, but then I would have had to disappoint all my old friends in Riseholme, and that would have been very hard for them to bear.’
The truth of the matter was that Lucia’s visit to Riseholme had been born of a certain mixture of boredom and desperation; she had felt strangely restless with Georgie away from Mallards, not that she would ever have admitted this to anyone, least of all to Georgie.
‘Just think,’ Diva marvelled, ‘of Mr Georgie sitting there in the royal box surrounded by all sorts of glamorous people – and going somewhere for dinner afterwards, I shouldn’t wonder.’
Lucia waved a deprecating hand.
‘He doesn’t always sit in the royal box, of course. Only when the King isn’t there.’
They all looked at Mapp, rather startled, as from the back of her throat there came a little snarling noise.
‘Though of course,’ Lucia went on smoothly, ‘Georgie is no stranger to royal company.’
Uncertain glances were exchanged. It was true that Georgie wore with his evening dress (‘hitum’ in Lucia’s social patois) a dashing order of Albanian knighthood, and there were rumours – on which he modestly refused to comment – that he had been given it by a grateful king whose life he had once saved. However, given Georgie’s well-known interest in needlepoint, this startling evidence – if evidence it be – of a secret existence as a man of action was treated with varying degrees of scepticism, ranging from ‘Pshaw!’ from the Major to a grave bow on the part of Mr Wyse, usually in the general direction of Bellagio, where the anti-regicidal services in question were said to have been performed. Since both had actually been present at roughly the time the events in question were supposed to have taken place, surely even the eternally accommodating Mr Wyse was entitled to entertain certain doubts on the matter.
‘Ah, yes,’ said Diva non-committally.
‘Surprised you didn’t go yourself, dear,’ Mapp ventured, with her head to one side, ‘if Mr Georgie was going to be meeting lots of famous people. Why, you might be in the society pages again and have lots of cuttings to put in your scrap book. So nice, I always think, to leave them lying around at Mallards so … comfortably.’
The pause made clear, as it was intended to, that she had been on the verge of saying ‘ostentatiously’ but had been prevented from doing so by her natural good manners. Unfortunately the effect of this narrowly avoided social solecism was somewhat lessened by her next dart, which was to prove the old adage that one should never take aim at two targets at once.
‘Comoda, isn’t it, dear, in your lovely Italian?’
Even as she uttered the word, Mapp felt a flash of uncertainty and cursed herself for having been unable to refrain from attempting to administer a p
articularly effective coup de grâce, rather than simply walking off, leaving her victim seriously wounded. Mr Wyse’s immediate glance of surprise and distress to his wife confirmed her fears.
‘Comodo, actually, Elizabeth,’ Lucia purred. A shame indeed that Georgie was not present, she reflected, since he always said that it was such fun to be able to speak a language just well enough to correct other people’s mistakes.
‘I was of course employing the female form,’ Mapp countered.
‘Really, dear?’ Lucia replied, arching her eyebrows.
Mr Wyse remained resolutely silent. He already found the idea of a commode quite disturbing enough without it being linked in his mind with the female form. He recalled a boyhood visit to an elderly aunt in Godalming, and shuddered inwardly.
‘Stick to English, I should,’ Diva broke in, lapsing into her customary telegraphese. ‘Much better all round.’
‘Like the dragon,’ Mr Wyse proffered suddenly, rousing himself from his reverie. ‘Though with a ‘k’ of course. Why yes, I remember a crossword clue last week about a comfortable reptile.’
There was the customary pause to digest this, since Mr Wyse usually said such terribly clever things. The pause gave the redoubtable Elizabeth Mapp-Flint an opportunity to reload and fire another volley.
‘Perhaps Mr Georgie will be seeing that nice Noël Coward, as he is such a good friend of yours?’ she enquired innocently. ‘Goodness, now I come to think of it what a pity that you’ve never invited him to stay at Mallards. Why, I can just imagine the two of you sitting there at the piano playing Mozartino duets.’
‘Dear Noël,’ Lucia said dreamily. ‘Such a great talent and yet what a lovely man – so unaffected, you know.’
‘Such a shame, then, dear one, that you haven’t been able to entice him down for the weekend,’ Mapp pushed on, sensing victory.
‘Yes, isn’t it?’ Lucia cried. ‘It would indeed be wonderful, as you say, Elizabeth, but sadly the poor man is so busy he hardly knows what day of the week it is most of the time. Why, he told me as much in his last letter.’
Au Reservoir Page 1