Au Reservoir

by Guy Fraser-Sampson

  ‘Come now, Lucia, don’t be so modest,’ she protested, her beaming smile spreading more widely than ever and revealing a rather frightening array of teeth. ‘Why, surely you spoke of bones from animal sacrifices and glass, and pipes and all sorts of things?’

  ‘Perhaps your memory is playing tricks, Elizabeth?’ Lucia countered. ‘After all, it was all rather a long time ago now.’

  ‘Yes, it was just after you bought the house from Elizabeth, wasn’t it?’ Georgie asked, attempting to ride to the rescue once more. ‘Why, it was all the fault of those gas men who came round when we smelt gas. It was they who dug up the garden, trying to find the leak. Do you remember?’

  ‘But, dear worship,’ Elizabeth persisted, treating Georgie’s intervention with the contempt she felt it deserved, ‘we can easily settle the point. You keep everything in that box over there, don’t you? And yet you’ve always been very naughty and never allowed us to have a look at them. Why not open it up and let Mr Chesworth have a teeny peek, just to satisfy our curiosity?’

  ‘Personally, I’m not the slightest bit curious,’ Quaint Irene asserted. She could sense that her beloved Lucia was stepping into danger, and that Mapp was the cause. ‘Why don’t you drop it, Mapp? If Lucia doesn’t want to show us, that’s her business.’

  There was a half-hearted murmur of support from the Wyses, promptly swept aside.

  ‘Oh, but you see,’ Mapp gushed, ‘I’m sure Lucia is just being modest and not wanting to show us because she thinks her finds don’t amount to very much, but in fact that’s not true, is it, Mr Chesworth? I understand that even bits of pottery – shards did you call them, dear? – can be awfully interesting and tell an expert a great deal.’

  She gazed expectantly at the man from the British Museum, who felt forced to concur. He began to expound on the architectural merits of pottery analysis but, becoming increasingly aware that there was an edge to the atmosphere which he neither understood nor welcomed, faltered and stopped in mid-sentence.

  Georgie felt a tide of panic rising within him, as matters seemed to be progressing inexorably towards humiliation for them both. How unutterably foolish it now seemed for Lucia to have kept those rotten bits and pieces of nothing all these years rather than discreetly disposing of them when nobody would have noticed their disappearance.

  Mr Wyse, who in truth had never believed the story of Lucia’s Roman remains in the first place, was alarmed at the prospect of distress and embarrassment being caused, but was unable to think of anything meaningful which he might do to avert it. Filled with an awful sense of impending doom, he gazed dismally at Susan, who met his glance with equal distress. He read confirmation that she understood the situation all too well. He tried looking at Major Benjy in the vain hope that he might telepathically be able to transmit an urgent plea for him to restrain his wife, but in vain. The good Major, having finally divined the nature of his wife’s long-awaited flank attack, was sitting bolt upright with a faint smile on his face; clearly any tacit appeal would go unanswered.

  For once, Lucia’s face, too, was showing signs of animation, Mr Wyse noted. With an inward pang of hopeless realisation, he identified it as alarm. Oh, this was awful! It was like watching a condemned man being led to the scaffold. Yet he could neither halt the execution not offer any solace.

  ‘Why, I can’t even remember if it is all there,’ she said distractedly.

  ‘Yes!’ Georgie agreed with a sudden glimmer of hope, ‘some of it may have got lost over the years.’

  ‘Surely not?’ Mapp cried brightly. ‘Don’t you remember, worship, that, when you and Mr Georgie came back from Italy that time, you were proposing to build a museum to yourself – I beg pardon, I mean to the office of Mayor, of course.’

  ‘I don’t remember anything of the sort,’ the loyal Irene objected.

  Mapp’s fangs glinted briefly in her direction.

  ‘I am glad to say, quaint one, that we managed to confine the matter behind the closed doors of the town hall. Many members of the council felt, understandably, that the suggestion was not in the best of taste.’

  ‘And what does that have to do with the price of fish anyway?’ Irene asked doggedly.

  Mapp shuddered dramatically.

  ‘Really, dear, such vulgar music hall expressions!’

  ‘Well?’ Irene persisted.

  ‘If you must know, Lucia suggested at the time adding her Roman finds to such other items of local importance as her bicycle, her shopping basket and various of her costumes for tableaux vivants. So, you see, we can be sure that she has always preserved them most carefully for the benefit of posterity.

  ‘Now then, dear,’ she continued, returning the full weight of her attack to Lucia, ‘surely you will allow this nice Mr Chesworth to examine your treasures? I’m sure he will handle them very carefully.’

  With this she cocked her head on one side and gazed at Lucia expectantly.

  Georgie felt a terrible sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. It was rather like when he had feared he had lost Foljambe for good when she married Cadman, but even worse. A sudden realisation hit him that his promised knighthood would surely evaporate in a puff of smoke given the scandal which was about to break around his head, coupled with the realisation that he cared about this very much, not for his own sake, but for Lucia’s.

  With slow, deliberate movements Lucia got up, lifted up the box, carried it across the room and set it down in front of Mr Chesworth. Then, still without uttering a word, she returned to her seat.

  ‘Oh, how exciting!’ Mapp exclaimed girlishly as he lifted the lid. ‘Just like Christmas! I wonder what treats we will find inside?’

  Georgie looked on with quiet resignation as Mr Chesworth very carefully lifted out first some tissue paper and then some pieces of pottery.

  ‘Ah-ha!’ Mapp said. ‘The shards! Pray, Mr Chesworth, what can you tell us about them?’

  ‘Not very much, I’m afraid,’ he admitted. ‘They seem to be of fairly recent origin.’

  ‘We knew that, of course,’ Lucia explained. ‘We only kept them so that we would have a complete record of the excavation …’

  She tailed off as she realised that only a few moments earlier she had as good as denied that any proper excavation had taken place at all.

  ‘A very sensible measure,’ Mr Chesworth said approvingly.

  ‘Well, they look just like pieces of broken flower pot to my untrained eye,’ Elizabeth commented. Dear me – how disappointing!’

  ‘There is more,’ Mr Chesworth said as he lifted out first another layer of tissue paper and then a knife blade.

  ‘Well now,’ Elizabeth commented with heavy sarcasm (indeed, she never employed any other variety), ‘that looks a little small to be a Roman sword.’

  ‘Perhaps they had a special unit of midgets, what?’ Major Benjy conjectured. He seemed unhappy when nobody reacted to this shaft of wit in the manner which he felt it merited.

  ‘It is a knife, of course,’ Mr Chesworth noted in a tone of slight reproof. It was becoming clear to him that he was being used, and it was not a sensation which he enjoyed. He glanced at Lucia sitting, beautiful yet stoic, on the other side of the room and tried hard to think of something positive to say.

  ‘It is perhaps from the last century,’ he proffered. A derisive snort from Elizabeth Mapp was his only reward.

  Further rustling preceded the emergence of an old clay pipe.

  ‘We thought it was perhaps … Jacobean,’ Lucia said in rather a small voice.

  ‘That is indeed possible,’ Mr Chesworth averred quickly as he laid it aside, though he knew better. ‘Tobacco has been smoked in England since late Tudor times, as you know.’

  Elizabeth Mapp snorted again, clearly unconvinced. Impatiently, she leaned forwards and thrust her own hand in the box and felt around. Finding nothing but tissue paper, she turned and stared suspiciously at Lucia.

  ‘But where is the glass, dear one? You distinctly mentioned glass. I remember it
well.’

  ‘The glass, it seems, has been mislaid,’ Georgie observed.

  One could at least be thankful for small mercies, he thought. It was the discovery of the first part of the word ‘Apollinaris’ on a fragment of what turned out to be a mineral water bottle which had first convinced Lucia that they were dealing with the site of a temple to Apollo. However deep their humiliation might already be, so deep indeed that they would almost certainly have to quit Tilling the next day never to return, they were at least to be spared the indignity of the whole world being made aware that they had mistaken something which could be bought on any day of the week in Twistevant’s for a Roman relic. Come to think of it, he dimly remembered Lucia telling Grosvenor to clear various ‘finds’ off the table on which she had been scrubbing them with a toothbrush and throw them away.

  ‘So that’s it then,’ Mapp observed. ‘No Roman remains at all. Oh, how disappointing.’

  She gazed triumphantly about her.

  ‘You’re a spiteful old woman!’ Irene shouted suddenly and ran abruptly from the room, trailing the beginnings of a sob behind her.

  The company looked awkwardly at each other. Mapp had never been known to be gracious in defeat in the past. She clearly had no intention of being so in victory either.

  Perhaps, thought Diva, who had watched the proceedings with growing horror, Mapp could be forgiven at least a little. For many, many years she had been worsted continually by Lucia in every conceivable social situation. The fact that she had been forced by unwise investment decisions (which naturally but unfairly she blamed on Lucia) to sell Mallards to her rival had never been forgiven. Nor had the fact that it was Lucia, not she, the long-standing resident of Tilling, to whom the town council had turned when seeking first a co-opted member and then their Mayor. Elizabeth had been forced by cruel fate to wait a very long time for her revenge, and now that total victory had at last been delivered into her hands she was clearly intending to savour every moment of it.

  Equally clearly, however, the remaining occupants of the room had no such intention. Led by Mr Wyse and the Padre, they were already rising to their feet and starting to mumble embarrassed thanks and farewells to Lucia.

  ‘Dear friends,’ Lucia said rather plaintively, ‘must you all go?’

  It seemed they must. As Mapp glowered ferociously at the disappearance of her audience, the party began to take their leave, leaving Lucia to shame and disgrace.

  Chapter 26

  ‘Georgie,’ Lucia suddenly spoke up uncertainly, ‘what about that coin you found? Where did you put it?’

  Georgie looked blank, as well he might, for he knew perfectly well that he had found no such thing. He attempted to retrieve the situation by saying, ‘Oh, I really don’t know,’ but his agitation was palpable.

  ‘The box is empty, dear,’ Elizabeth reminded Lucia somewhat viciously, rustling the tissue paper inside to emphasise her point.

  Diva, herself on the verge of tears, came back across the room to Lucia.

  ‘Give it up, Lucia. Much the best thing,’ she said quietly.

  Then she turned to Mapp, her cheeks flushed.

  ‘Time to leave, Elizabeth,’ she said. ‘Best for everyone. Enough said.’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ said Mr Wyse, bowing to the room at large. With relief written plainly on their faces, the company made once again for the door.

  Then Lucia’s voice issued forth again, rather stronger this time.

  ‘But how silly of me, I had quite forgotten the little drawer in the base of the box.’

  With an audible collective sigh at this fresh sally, the others turned back, each trying to avoid catching anyone else’s eye.

  ‘Mr Chesworth,’ she cooed, ‘would you be so kind as to try it? I think one of those ornamental carvings at the bottom operates as a knob with which to pull it out.’

  ‘Why, so it does,’ he replied, after fiddling with the box for a minute. ‘Now, what have we here?’

  He removed a very small piece of tissue paper and carefully opened it.

  ‘I say!’ he exclaimed. ‘This is more like it.’

  ‘What is it?’ Elizabeth asked, a hint of uncertainty appearing in her voice for the first time.

  ‘A coin,’ came the response, and then, like a casual rapier thrust into her vitals, ‘and definitely Roman.’

  ‘No!’ chorused the room.

  ‘Yes indeed,’ he assured them. ‘In fact, wait a minute, surely not …?’

  He reached into his pocket for a small magnifying glass and scrutinised the coin intently. The room held its breath.

  ‘It can’t be,’ Elizabeth said instinctively. ‘It’s a trick, whatever it is.’

  The others ignored this sally. Their attention was focused on Mr Chesworth, and his gaze was fixed on the coin.

  ‘Oh!’ he exclaimed in surprise. Then, as if an unseen blow had suddenly knocked all the breath from his body, he buckled at the knees and sat down very heavily on his chair.

  ‘Oh,’ he said again, but this time it was a weak, tremulous, unbelieving sort of ‘oh’ uttered with a rounded mouth and glazed eyes.

  ‘Is it of any interest?’ Lucia asked casually.

  Mr Chesworth looked at her and nodded soundlessly. Then he took a big gulp of air and responded.

  ‘It is an aureus,’ he said. ‘A gold coin equivalent to twenty-five denari.’

  ‘A denarius was a penny, wasn’t it?’ Susan Wyse asked. ‘That’s the “d” that we use for pennies?’

  ‘Quite correct, madam,’ Mr Chesworth confirmed, ‘though the denarius was not a trifling unit of currency. There were coins right down to the quadrans, of which there were sixty-four to the denarius.’

  ‘Hardly very valuable, then,’ Elizabeth ventured hopefully. ‘Twentyfive pennies is only just over two shillings, after all.’

  The rest of the room were then treated to the spectacle of Mr Chesworth looking surprised and trying not to laugh, which most afterwards agreed had been very nearly as satisfying as if he had actually done so.

  ‘Well,’ he said, clearly struggling for a sensible response, ‘in terms of its purchasing power at the time you have to think in terms of a soldier’s wages for nearly a month, but that’s not the point.’

  ‘The point, of course,’ came Lucia’s old, strong, confident voice, ‘would be its historical significance. If it had any, of course,’ she added innocently, ‘which I’m sure it doesn’t.’

  ‘Well, of course it doesn’t,’ Elizabeth interjected.

  ‘Oh, but it does,’ Mr Chesworth assured her.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Mr Wyse suggested, ‘the British Museum might enlighten us as to what that might be?’

  The British Museum stood up, placed the coin and his magnifying glass on the table with a hand which trembled noticeably and spoke in a firm, clear voice as if addressing a lecture hall.

  ‘This is undoubtedly the most exciting numismatic find from Roman Britain ever made.’

  ‘No!’ came forth again the instinctive Tilling response to any item of news.

  ‘It is, as I said, an aureus,’ he went on, ignoring the interruption. ‘That in itself is quite unusual. Very little trade in Roman Britain required gold coins, and they were unpopular because they needed to be broken into so many smaller coins. If you imagine trying to pay for newspaper today with a five pound note you will understand something of the irritation of merchants of the day.

  ‘But this,’ he said, picking it up again with gleaming eyes, ‘is very special. It is stamped with the details of Gaius Marcus Aurelius Marius. As I am sure you know, he was one of those Emperors who was set up by the local soldiers, of whom he was General, despite the fact that there was already at least one other Emperor already on the throne.’

  Everyone nodded in what they hoped was a knowledgeable fashion.

  ‘But surely,’ Lucia drawled languidly, ‘he only survived for a few months before being overthrown didn’t he?’ She furrowed her brow, obviously dredging up the details from her en
cyclopaedic knowledge of the twilight years of the Roman Empire. ‘He was killed by … Victorinus, wasn’t it? In 269 ad I seem to remember.’

  ‘Indeed he was,’ Mr Chesworth replied, with a nod to her powers of memory and erudition, which she acknowledged in a manner that hinted strongly at the urbane. ‘Which means it is very rare to find any of his coins at all, let alone an aureus. Why, until this very afternoon I had no knowledge that any even existed. Certainly none has ever been found – anywhere in the world.’

  During the stunned silence that greeted this remark Lucia glided across the room and touched the bell.

  ‘And to think,’ she said as she gazed at the stupefied faces of her guests, ‘that it has been lying around in that old box all this time since Georgie found it in the mud so many years ago.’

  Georgie found his throat so constricted that he could only gasp, ‘Well, just fancy!’

  Mr Chesworth came to his senses. It occurred to him that any unknown assistant curator who launched a previously unsuspected archaeological phenomenon on the world would be unlikely to remain an unknown assistant curator for much longer. Newspaper headlines referring to the Chesworth aureus flashed giddily through his mind.

  ‘Might I ask, madam,’ he enquired cautiously, ‘what your plans might be for this amazing discovery?’

  Lucia laughed gaily. ‘Why, I really hadn’t given it any thought. This is all so sudden, after all.’

  ‘I venture to suggest,’ he went on, ‘that it might properly be displayed in the British Museum. With its loan from your good self suitably acknowledged, naturally.’

  For one who really hadn’t given it any thought, Lucia’s response was surprisingly swift and decisive.

  ‘Since it was my husband who found it, it is he who should be acknowledged,’ she replied firmly. ‘It shall be known as the Pillson aureus and it will not be lent, but given. My husband will donate it to the nation.’

  Mr Chesworth goggled.

  ‘I am sure the nation will be very grateful,’ he gasped.