Au Reservoir

by Guy Fraser-Sampson

  ‘And what about when she can’t get an answer?’

  ‘That rather depends,’ he pondered. ‘If she’s only seen the Telegraph then she’ll go shopping as if nothing has happened and try to turn it all to her advantage by saying she knew all about it.’

  ‘And when some kind unselfish soul shows her the Mirror?’

  They looked at each other and both came to the same conclusion at the same moment.

  ‘Get up,’ hissed Olga. ‘Get up quickly and let’s go. Don’t even worry about shaving – you can go to the barber at Waterloo. Céline!’ she shouted as she ran from the room. ‘Bring me the Bradshaw.’

  As Sherlock Holmes once observed, the vocabulary of Bradshaw is terse and nervous, but limited. As a tool for avoiding former mayors of Tilling bent on vengeful visits, it may however be found most efficacious, as was to prove the case on this occasion. As Georgie came into the living room, Olga was pouring over it.

  ‘I think I’ve got it,’ she muttered, jotting things down in a small notebook. ‘Yes, I’m sure I’ve got it.’

  ‘Got what?’ Georgie enquired.

  ‘No time to explain,’ she said briskly, ‘I’ll tell you as we go along. Céline!’

  ‘Oui, madame?’

  Olga rattled off a string of very precise instructions, and then she and Georgie left the building in search of a taxi to take them to Waterloo Station.

  At about the same time, Lucia put down the Daily Telegraph with a very disagreeable expression on her face. What could Georgie have been thinking of, to hob-nob openly with those two men – she would not dignify them with the epithet ‘gentlemen’ – who had snubbed her so caddishly? ‘Oh, really, Georgie,’ she thought, ‘how could you?’

  Georgie could be so thoughtless, especially when in Olga’s company. It was almost as though the moment he saw her all decent sentiments, such as altruism and solicitude, vanished from his otherwise unimpeachable character. Why, she wouldn’t mind betting that it had been Olga who had set the whole thing up just to spite her.

  She gazed unhappily at the photograph once again, and as she did so the glimmerings of an idea began to form in her mind. She narrowed her eyes intently, as though to make out more clearly this half-formed shape which was lurking tantalisingly in the mists of her sub-conscious, and suddenly she saw at once what was to be done. She got up from the drawing room table with a silvery laugh and rang for Foljambe to fetch her hat, gloves and shopping basket.

  A few minutes later she was in the High Street. A small knot of Tillingites was already formed and loitering casually in front of Twistevant’s. So, she thought grimly, the story had already been spread. Well, she was equal to the challenge.

  ‘Good morning, good morning,’ she called merrily as she approached. Major Flint, Mr Wyse and the Reverend Kenneth Bartlett (known universally as the Padre) raised their hats respectfully.

  ‘Any news?’ asked Diva Plaistow, with what in a less transparent person might almost have passed for guile.

  ‘Oh, nothing really, just a call from Georgie, who’s enjoying himself up in town. He rang me yesterday evening to tell me he was going out to dinner with Noël Coward and John Gielgud. I had suggested it to Noël too, of course, once I knew my Georgino was going to be up in town, but I was so glad they managed it. Nice of them to include Olga, as well. I’m sure that’s the main reason Georgie arranged it, poor lamb. He is so fond of her, you know.’

  The group gazed at her blankly, and none more so than Diva.

  ‘So it was all Georgie’s idea?’ she asked lamely.

  ‘Mine actually, dear,’ Lucia said with another of those silvery little laughs for which she was justly famous. ‘I would have gone too myself, of course, but as you know I decided to go to darling Riseholme instead, and now I’m so frightfully busy here in Tilling with all my committees. How you all work me so!’

  Elizabeth Mapp-Flint was, however, made of sterner stuff than Diva Plaistow.

  ‘So,’ she said with her usual heavy irony, ‘Georgie, who lives in Tilling and has never met these two actors before, arranges to introduce them to a fellow performer who lives in London and attends show business parties every night of the week?’

  ‘Something like that, yes,’ Lucia replied airily. ‘Of course, I’m sure it’s always possible that she might have been on nodding terms with them already, but dinner, a chance to exchange ideas, discuss the opera and so forth – oh, yes, that sounds so like Georgino. Why I recognised his hand in it at once.’

  Mapp appeared unconvinced.

  ‘But of course, he had already called and told me all about it in advance, so I knew anyway,’ Lucia concluded with a winning smile.

  ‘I say, how thrilling,’ enthused Diva. ‘To think of our own Mr Georgie dining with such famous people!’

  ‘Famous perhaps,’ commented Mapp, who still fondly believed that her Thursday afternoon visits to the Plaza Cinema in Hastings when she was supposed to be changing her book at Boots’ lending library remained a closely guarded secret, ‘but hardly royal.’

  ‘No indeed,’ Mr Wyse agreed, with a bow out over the marshes in the direction of Grebe, where the Mapp-Flints lived. ‘We must not forget that Major and Mrs Mapp-Flint have entertained a Maharajah, no less.’

  ‘An honour to us all, ye ken,’ the Padre concurred rather warily. The Maharajah was still a bone of contention between Mapp and Lucia, the latter having gone so far as to doubt His Royal Highness’s existence when the former failed to produce him on cue for tea at Mallards.

  ‘Yes, of course, Padre,’ Lucia said firmly. ‘An honour indeed. Such a shame, Elizabeth, that you were not able to entice him over to Mallards. Why, you could have shown him where you used to live.’

  Mr Wyse winced. It was still a sore point with the Mapp-Flints that they had been unable to afford to continue living in Mallards after Mapp’s experiments on the stock exchange proved rather less fruitful than Lucia’s, and thus had been forced to exchange Mallards for Grebe (a house then occupied by Lucia and Georgie which, though a fine, stylish residence, was on the marshes and prone to flooding) together with what everyone except Elizabeth considered a very generous sum of money.

  ‘So kind, Lulu dear,’ countered Mapp, ‘how very like you. Unfortunately he had to drive back to London straight after lunch, after he had discussed his business with Benjy, that is. Royalty have such pressing schedules, you know. Much like your own, perhaps – but more so, naturally.’

  The group looked around in some embarrassment and the Wyses and the Bartletts showed distressing signs of wanting to be about their business. Even more unfortunately, Mapp somehow managed to get in the last word, calling, ‘Do be sure to invite Mr Coward to Mallards, Lucia, next time you write to him, so we can all meet him.’

  As she returned home Lucia felt that the proceedings had gone at least as well as could have been expected. While it was most unlikely that anyone believed her version of events, nobody could actually prove it to be untrue. How like Mapp to have succumbed to the temptation of dragging the Maharajah into any and every conversation rather than probing Lucia’s story more deeply.

  ‘So jealous, poor woman,’ she thought as she took off her hat and gloves and put them on the hall table. ‘How sad.’ She was still shaking her head sorrowfully as Grosvenor bobbed a curtsey and said, ‘If you please, mum, Miss Coles is waiting for you in the living room. She seems rather upset.’

  ‘Thank you, Grosvenor,’ Lucia said and then, sweeping into the living room, ‘Irene, dear, what’s amiss? This is very early to be calling.’

  Irene Coles, generally known as Quaint Irene, staunch in her devotion to Lucia, was standing in the middle of the room looking very distressed and holding a newspaper, which appeared to be of a type commonly bought by the lower orders.

  Chapter 3

  ‘Angel!’ cried Quaint Irene, who was indeed clearly very upset. ‘How simply septic for you!’

  ‘Irene, dear,’ said Lucia calmly, as she put down her basket, ‘do tell me what o
n earth you are talking about.’

  ‘So you haven’t heard. I’m so glad. I was worried that somebody would have ambushed you with this while you were shopping.’

  She thrust ‘this’ at Lucia, ‘this’ of course being the Daily Mirror.

  Lucia gazed at the newspaper in blank disbelief. As Irene watched her helplessly, it was almost as though for a moment Lucia’s mask had slipped, and she found herself looking at an old woman. But no, surely that was just a passing fancy. Lucia looked up, once more perfectly composed, and put the paper down as though she had been reading nothing more disturbing than the weather forecast.

  ‘Clearly there must be some perfectly innocent explanation,’ she said, but in a voice which trembled slightly. ‘I will telephone Olga at once and find out just what has been going on.’

  She was hoping that Irene would take the hint and depart but she stayed in the living room, gazing wretchedly at Lucia with a look of pure anguish on her face. Lucia left the room and went down the hall to the little telephone room, from where she attempted to call Olga’s flat, but without success.

  The couple of minutes which this entailed had nonetheless been all that she needed to regain fully her sangfroid.

  ‘Olga’s phone must be out of order,’ she informed Irene. ‘What a bore!’

  ‘What will you do, then?’ asked Irene.

  ‘As it happens, I was already intending to go up to town today. I will simply drop in on Olga and talk to her in person instead. Would you be so kind as to ring the bell? I must just have a look at my Bradshaw.’

  So it was that when Foljambe answered her mistress’s summons she found her studying exactly the same page of railway timetables that Olga had perused so recently in her flat in London.

  ‘I can just catch the 11.04 if I hurry,’ said Lucia to nobody in particular. ‘Ah, Foljambe, I must go up to London this morning. Will you please pack me an overnight bag quickly – just small, nothing formal – and ask Cadman to bring the Rolls round to run me to the station?’

  ‘Yes, mum,’ said Foljambe with a bob, and scurried from the room.

  A few minutes later, Cadman held the door open as Lucia got into the car, and so began the first leg of what Georgie and Olga would later refer to privately as the Great Southern Railway Handicap.

  At about one o’clock, Georgie and Olga arrived at Mallards having caught the 10.34 from Waterloo, and expressed great vexation at having missed Lucia. Though pressed by Grosvenor and Foljambe to stay to lunch, they instead asked Cadman to run them straight back to the station so they could be sure of catching Lucia at Olga’s flat in London. Waving serenely to one or two goggling Tillingites from the back of the Rolls, they caught the 2.04 to Waterloo, asking Cadman to drive on to the post office after he dropped them, and despatch a telegram addressed to Lucia at Olga’s London address explaining what had happened and asking her to wait for them.

  At about 1.30 Lucia arrived at Olga’s flat and was greeted with great surprise by Céline, who exclaimed that her mistress and Mr Pillson had left town earlier that morning to go and stay with Mrs Pillson at Mallards. Lucia, with some irritation, asked to use the telephone only to be informed that the instrument was out of order, and that Céline was even now awaiting an engineer who was due to come and repair it.

  Lucia then decided, exactly as Olga had predicted she would, that there was nothing for it but to return to Tilling, and she duly asked Céline to go out into the street to procure a taxi for her. While she waited, she jotted down the text of a telegram on a piece of Olga’s notepaper from her writing desk and, as she got into the taxi, gave it to Céline together with half a crown and enjoined her to send it without delay. Céline, remembering her mistress’s instructions, checked her watch when she reached the post office and, seeing that it was safe to do so, sent the missive, which of course explained what had happened and asked Georgie and Olga to wait for Lucia in Tilling.

  Lucia managed to catch the 2.34 from Waterloo, and arrived back at Mallards shortly after five o’clock, to find her telegram to Georgie lying unopened on the hall table. As she sat in her living room wondering rather sourly what on earth she should do now, there was a knock at the door and shortly afterwards Foljambe came into the room with a further telegram on a salver. Slitting it open, Lucia read, ‘All too tiresome. You stay Tilling. We join you tomorrow. Georgie.’

  ‘No reply, Foljambe,’ she said coolly.

  She waited for Foljambe to dismiss the postman and then called her back into the room.

  ‘What time did Mr Georgie get here, Foljambe?’ she enquired.

  ‘About lunchtime if you please, mum,’ came the answer but then, perhaps feeling that a fuller explanation was required. Foljambe went on in a rush, ‘Oh, madam, Mr Georgie was so upset to miss you. He and Miss Bracely wouldn’t even stay for lunch. They got Cadman to take them straight back to the station and they asked him to send you a telegram asking you to wait for them in London. I hope you won’t think it was his fault – he went straight to the post office from the station.’

  ‘It’s nobody’s fault, Foljambe,’ Lucia decided magnanimously, ‘except perhaps Miss Bracely’s telephone’s fault for being out of order.

  Please tell Cadman not to worry himself.’

  ‘Oh, thank you, mum,’ said Foljambe, greatly relieved.

  ‘Please tell Grosvenor that I will be on my own for dinner,’ said her mistress, ‘but that Mr Georgie and Miss Bracely will be arriving tomorrow.’

  By this time, of course, the Daily Mirror photograph has been seen by all of Tilling, not least by Elizabeth Mapp-Flint and her husband.

  ‘Good God!’ ejaculated the Major, totally stupefied. ‘Who’d have thought it of old Pillson? Didn’t know he had it in him.’ He shook his head in disbelief, put it down on the arm of his chair, and then picked it up and looked at it all over again.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure it’s all completely innocent,’ said his wife matter-offactly. ‘After all, Benjy-boy, you know Mr Georgie. How could it be otherwise?’

  ‘Quite,’ agreed the Major. ‘Probably just discussing a knitting pattern or something.’

  He squinted towards the tantalus. He had been unable to play his customary round of golf that morning as it had been raining, which meant that he had also missed out on his customary chota peg in the clubhouse afterwards. However, as he had assured Mapp very firmly indeed only a few days previously that not a drop of alcohol ever passed his lips before sundown, he now felt himself to be in something of an invidious position. If only she would leave the room for some reason, he would probably have time to step across to the sideboard, pour himself a tot, knock it back and replace the glass … Yes. He found himself measuring out the distance in his mind and rehearsing each step that would be required to cross the rug, flirt dangerously with being discovered in the act, and then make it back to the safety of his armchair.

  ‘Not that I will adopt that line in public, of course,’ his wife was saying, smiling to herself while wondering how soon she might decently call upon Lucia to enquire solicitously after Georgie and express the hope that he would not be away from home too long.

  ‘No,’ she went on, ‘but it’s this other photograph that really takes the biscuit.’ She waved the Daily Telegraph. ‘Why, it gives Lucia every opportunity to carry on claiming that she knows Noël Coward and John Gielgud, when it should be obvious to everyone that she no more knows Noël Coward and John Gielgud than I do! Everybody knows they both snubbed her when she wrote – several times, mind – to invite them down to Tilling.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the Major. It was a particularly vacant ‘ah’ even by his standards, and Mapp looked up at him sharply from her copy of the Daily Telegraph. There was nothing worse than being unpleasant about someone only to discover that nobody was listening to you.

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake have a drink, you stupid man,’ she snapped, ‘then perhaps you’ll be able to concentrate on what I’m saying.’

  Major Flint, who was unaccustomed to being ca
lled a stupid man in his own living room, even by his wife, looked hurt, as well he might. He then contrived to inject a note of dignified resignation into his hurt expression, as he rose slowly from his chair and walked with a hurt yet dignified tread towards the sideboard.

  Mapp realised that she had perhaps been a little abrupt and considered brushing a few tears from her eyes to show that it was simply understandable upset that had caused her to speak sharply to her husband, but then remembered that she had also been understandably upset on two of the three previous days. She had no wish to diminish the effect of her furtive eye-brushing by over-use, though she privately resolved to practise it anew in front of the mirror that evening. She decided instead to employ girlish contrition, usually a reliable stand-by.

  As the Major resumed his seat with a stern expression and a damp moustache, his wife subsided gently to her knees beside his chair in what she fondly imagined to be a handmaidenly fashion, and took his free hand (the one without the glass) in both of hers. This too was a long rehearsed routine and one that she used but rarely, which was perhaps as well since she had become somewhat stout over the last few years and in fact sank towards the ground with unexpected speed and firmness, accompanied by a loud cracking of joints and creaking of corsets. Indeed she only just managed to stop herself from exclaiming as her knees connected sharply with the floor, and at the same time a particularly vicious piece of whalebone drove into a large and soft part of her generously endowed frame.

  ‘Oh, Benjy boy,’ she cooed, fluttering her eyelashes bravely through the pain, ‘I’m sorry, you know I don’t mean it, but Lucia has made me so cross over this newspaper business. It’s so like her! Why can’t she just tell the truth and be done with it?’

  The Major decided magnanimously to treat the incident as closed. There was after all still the possibility that he might be able to milk the situation for at least one more drink.

  ‘Not her way, eh? To tell the truth I mean,’ he ventured, staring deeply into his glass.