Stony faces and forced smiles met her. She tumbled to it at once, the clever creature.
‘And how good of you all to have rallied round me,’ she said, ‘and have made our little festa such a success. I was so anxious about it, but I needn’t have been with so many dear loyal friends to back me up. The Bishop was enchanted with Mallards, Elizabeth: of course I told him that I was only an interloper. And what sweet things he said to me about the Padre, Evie.’
Lucia racked her brain to invent something nice which he said about Diva. So, though Paddy hadn’t been at the party, how immensely the Bishop admired her beautiful dog!
‘And how about a little bridge this afternoon?’ she asked. ‘Shan’t invite you, Georgino: just a woman’s four. Yes and yes and yes? Capital! It’s so hot that we might play in the shelter in Elizabeth’s secret garden. Four o’clock then. Georgie, come to the stationer’s with me. I want you to help me choose a book. My dear, your pedalling yesterday! How enthusiastic the organist was about it. Au reservoir, everybody.
‘Georgie, I must get a great big scrap-book,’ she went on, ‘to paste my press-notices into. They multiply so. That paragraph the other day about my excavazioni, and to-day a whole column, and the photograph in the Daily Mirror. It would be amusing perhaps, years hence, to turn over the pages and recall the past. I must get a handsome-looking book, morocco, I think. How pleased all Tilling seems to be about yesterday.’
11
The holiday season came round with August, and, as usual, the householders of the Tilling social circle let their own houses, and went to live in smaller ones, thereby not only getting a change of environment, but making, instead of spending, money on their holiday, for they received a higher rent for the houses they quitted than they paid for the houses they took. The Mapp-Flints were the first to move: Elizabeth inserted an advertisement in The Times in order to save those monstrous fees of house-agents and instantly got an inquiry from a most desirable tenant, no less than the widow of a Baronet. In view of her rank, Elizabeth asked for and obtained a higher rent than she had ever netted at Mallards, and, as on her honeymoon, she took a very small bungalow near the sea, deficient in plumbing, but otherwise highly salubrious, and as she touchingly remarked ‘so near the golf-links for my Benjy-boy. He will be as happy as the day is long.’ She was happy, too, for the rent she received for Grebe was five times what (after a little bargaining) she paid for this shack which would be so perfect for her Benjy-boy.
Her new tenant was interesting: she had forty-seven canaries, each in its own cage, and the noise of their pretty chirping could be heard if the wind was favourable a full quarter of a mile from the house. It was ascertained that she personally cleaned out all their cages every morning, which accounted for her not being seen in Tilling till after lunch. She then rode into the town on a tricycle and bought rape-seed and groundsel in prodigious quantities. She had no dealings with the butcher, so it was speedily known, and thus was probably a vegetarian; and Diva, prowling round Grebe one Friday morning, saw her clad in a burnous, kneeling on a carpet in the garden and prostrating herself in an eastward position. It might therefore be inferred that she was a Mahommedan as well.
This was all very satisfactory, a titled lady, of such marked idiosyncrasies, was evidently a very promising addition to Tilling society, and Diva, not wishing to interrupt her devotions, went quietly away, greatly impressed, and called next day, meaning to follow up this formality with an invitation to a vegetarian lunch. But even as she waited at the front door a window directly above was thrown open, and a shrill voice shouted ‘Not at home. Ever.’ So Diva took the tram out to the golf-links, and told Elizabeth that her tenant was certainly a lunatic. Elizabeth was much disturbed, and spent an hour every afternoon for the next three days in hiding behind the hornbeam hedge at Grebe, spying upon her. Lucia thought that Diva’s odd appearance might have accounted for this chilling reception and called herself. Certainly nobody shouted at her, but nobody answered the bell and, after a while, pieces of groundsel rained down on her, probably from the same upper window … The Padre let the vicarage for August and September, and took a bungalow close to the Mapp-Flints. He and Major Benjy played golf during the day and the four played hectic bridge in the evening.
Diva at present had not succeeded in letting her house, even at a very modest rental, and so she remained in the High Street. One evening horrid fumes of smoke laden with soot came into her bathroom where she was refreshing herself before dinner, and she found that they came down the chimney from the kitchen of the house next door. The leakage in the flue was localized, and it appeared that Diva was responsible for it, since, for motives of economy, which seemed sound at the time, she had caused the overflow pipe from her cistern to be passed through it. The owner of the house next door most obligingly promised not to use his range till Diva had the damage to the flue repaired, but made shift with his gas-ring, since he was genuinely anxious not to suffocate her when she was washing. But Diva could not bring herself to spend nine pounds (a frightful sum) on the necessary work on the chimney, and for the next ten days took no further steps.
Then Irene found a tenant for her house, and took that of Diva’s neighbour. He explained to her that just at present, until Mrs Plaistow repaired a faulty flue, the kitchen-range could not be used, and suggested that Irene might put a little pressure on her, since this state of things had gone on for nearly a fortnight, and his repeated reminders had had no effect. So Irene put pressure, and on the very evening of the day she moved in, she and Lucy lit an enormous fire in her range, though the evening was hot, and waited to see what effect that would have. Diva happened to be again in her bath, musing over the terrible expense she would be put to: nine pounds meant the saving of five shillings a week for the best part of a year. These gloomy meditations were interrupted by volumes of acrid smoke pouring through the leak, and she sprang out of her bath, convinced that the house was on fire, and without drying herself she threw on her dressing-gown. She had left the bathroom door open: thick vapours followed her downstairs. She hastily dressed and with her servant and Paddy wildly barking at her heels flew into the High Street and hammered on Irene’s door.
Irene, flushed with stoking, came upstairs.
‘So I’ve smoked you out,’ she said. ‘Serve you right.’
‘I believe my house is on fire,’ cried Diva. ‘Never saw such smoke in my life.’
‘Call the fire-engine then,’ said Irene. ‘Good-bye: I must put some more damp wood on. And mind, I’ll keep that fire burning day and night, if I don’t get a wink of sleep, till you’ve had that flue repaired.’
‘Please, please,’ cried Diva in agony. ‘No more damp wood, I beg. I promise. It shall be done to-morrow.’
‘Well, apologize for being such a damned nuisance,’ said Irene. ‘You’ve made me and Lucy roast ourselves over the fire. Not to mention the expense of the firing.’
‘Yes. I apologize. Anything!’ wailed Diva. ‘And I shall have to re-paper my bathroom. Kippered.’
‘Your own fault. Did you imagine I was going to live on a gas-ring, because you wouldn’t have your chimney repaired?’
Then Diva got a tenant in spite of the kippered bathroom, and moved to a dilapidated hovel close beside the railway line, which she got for half the rent which she received for her house. Passing trains shook its crazy walls and their whistlings woke her at five in the morning, but its cheapness gilded these inconveniences, and she declared it was delightful to be awakened betimes on these August days. The Wyses went out to Capri to spend a month with the Faragliones, and so now the whole of the Tilling circle, with the exception of Georgie and Lucia, were having change and holiday to the great advantage of their purses. They alone remained in their adjoining abodes and saw almost as much of each other as during those weeks when Georgie was having shingles and growing his beard in hiding at Grebe. Lucia gave her mornings to finance and the masterpieces of the Greek tragedians, and in this piping weather recuperated herself with
a siesta after lunch. Then in the evening coolness they motored and sketched or walked over the field-paths of the marsh, dined together and had orgies of Mozartino. All the time (even during her siesta) Lucia’s head was as full of plans as an egg of meat, and she treated Georgie to spoonfuls of it.
They were approaching the town on one such evening from the south. The new road, now finished, curved round the bottom of the hill on which the town stood: above it was a bare bank with tufts of coarse grass rising to the line of the ancient wall.
Lucia stood with her head on one side regarding it.
‘An ugly patch,’ she said. ‘It offends the eye, Georgie. It is not in harmony with the mellow brick of the wall. It should be planted. I seem to see it covered with almond-trees; those late flowering ones. Pink blossom, a foam of pink blossom for la bella Primavera. I estimate that it would require at least fifty young trees. I shall certainly offer to give them to the town and see to them being put in.’
‘That would look lovely,’ said Georgie.
‘It shall look lovely. Another thing. I’m going to stop my financial career for the present. I shall sell out my tobacco shares – realize them is the phrase we use – on which I have made large profits. I pointed out to my broker, that, in my opinion, tobaccos were high enough, and he sees the soundness of that.’
Georgie silently interpreted this swanky statement. It meant, of course, that Mammoncash had recommended their sale; but there was no need to express this. He murmured agreement.
‘Also I must rid myself of this continual strain,’ Lucia went on. ‘I am ashamed of myself, but I find it absorbs me too much: it keeps me on the stretch to be always watching the markets and estimating the effect of political disturbances. The Polish corridor, Hitler, Geneva, the new American president. I shall close my ledgers.’
They climbed in silence up the steep steps by the Norman tower. They were in considerable need of repair, and Lucia, contemplating the grey bastion in front, stumbled badly over an uneven paving-stone.
‘These ought to be looked to,’ she said. ‘I must make a note of that.’
‘Are you going to have them repaired?’ asked Georgie humorously.
‘Quite possibly. You see, I’ve made a great deal of money, Georgie. I’ve made eight thousand pounds –’
‘My dear, what a sum. I’d no notion.’
. ‘Naturally one does not talk about it,’ said Lucia loftily. ‘But there it is, and I shall certainly spend a great deal of it, keeping some for myself – the labourer is worthy of his hire – on Tilling. I want – how can I put it – to be a fairy godmother to the dear little place. For instance, I expect the plans for my new operating-theatre at the hospital in a day or two. That I regard as necessary. I have told the Mayor that I shall provide it, and he will announce my gift to the Governors when they meet next week. He is terribly keen that I should accept a place on the Board: really he’s always worrying me about it. I think I shall allow him to nominate me. My election, he says, will be a mere formality, and will give great pleasure.’
Georgie agreed. He felt he was getting an insight into Lucia’s schemes, for it was impossible not to remember that after her gift of the organ she reluctantly consented to be a member of the Church Council.
‘And do you know, Georgie,’ she went on, ‘they elected me only to-day to be President of the Tilling Cricket Club. Fancy! Twenty pounds did that – I mean I was only too glad to give them the heavy roller which they want very much, and I was never more astonished in my life than when those two nice young fellows, the foreman of the gas works and the town surveyor –’
‘Oh yes, Georgie and Per,’ said he, ‘who laughed so much over the smell in the garden-room, and started you on your Roman –’
‘Those were their names,’ said Lucia. ‘They came to see me and begged me to allow them to nominate me as their President, and I was elected unanimously to-day. I promised to appear at a cricket-match they have to-morrow against a team they called the Zingâri. I hope they did not see me shudder, for as you know it should be “I Zingâri”: the Italian for “gipsies”. And the whole of their cricket-ground wants levelling and re-laying. I shall walk over it with them, and look into it for myself.’
‘I didn’t know you took any interest in any game,’ said Georgie.
‘Georgino, how you misjudge me! I’ve always held, always, that games and sport are among the strongest and most elevating influences in English life. Think of Lord’s, and all those places where they play football, and the Lonsdale belt for boxing, and Wimbledon. Think of the crowds here, for that matter, at cricket- and football-matches on early closing days. Half the townspeople of Tilling are watching them: Tilling takes an immense interest in sport: they all tell me that people will much appreciate my becoming their President. You must come with me to-morrow to the match.’
‘But I don’t know a bat from a ball,’ said Georgie.
‘Nor do I, but we shall soon learn. I want to enter into every side of life here. We are too narrow in our interests. We must get a larger outlook, Georgie, a wider sympathy. I understand they play football on the cricket-ground in the winter.’
‘Football’s a sealed book to me,’ said Georgie, ‘and I don’t intend to unseal it.’
They had come back to Mallards, and Lucia standing on the doorstep looked over the cobbled street with its mellow brick houses.
‘Bella piccola città!’ she exclaimed. ‘Dinner at eight here, isn’t it, and bring some musica. How I enjoy our little domestic evenings.’
‘Domestic’: just the word ‘domestic’ stuck in Georgie’s mind as he touched up his beard, and did a little sewing while it dried, before he dressed for dinner. It nested in his head, like a woodpecker, and gave notice of its presence there by a series of loud taps at frequent intervals. No doubt Lucia was only referring to their usual practice of dining together and playing the piano afterwards, or sitting (even more domestically) as they often did, each reading a book in easy silence with casual remarks. Such a mode of spending the evening was infinitely pleasanter and more sensible than that they should sit, she at Mallards and he at the Cottage, over solitary meals and play long solos on their pianos instead of those adventurous duets. No doubt she had meant nothing more than that by the word.
The party from the bungalows, the Mapp-Flints and the Padre and his wife, came into Tilling next day to see the cricket-match. They mingled with the crowd and sat on public benches, and Elizabeth observed with much uneasiness how Lucia and Georgie were conducted by the town surveyor to reserved deck-chairs by the pavilion: she was afraid that meant something sinister. Lucia had put a touch of sun-burn rouge on her face, in order to convey the impression that she often spent a summer day watching cricket, and she soon learned the difference between bats and balls: but she should have studied the game a little more before she asked Per, when three overs had been bowled and no wicket had fallen, who was getting the best of it. A few minutes later a Tilling wicket fell and Per went in. He immediately skied a ball in the direction of long-on, and Lucia clapped her hands wildly. ‘Oh, look, Georgie,’ she said. ‘What a beautiful curve the ball is describing! And so high. Lovely … What? Has he finished already?’
Tilling was out for eighty-seven runs, and between the inningses, Lucia, in the hat which the Hastings Chronicle had already described, was escorted out to look at the pitch by the merry brothers. She had learned so much about cricket in the last hour that her experienced eye saw at once that the greater part of the field ought to be levelled and the turf relaid. Nobody took any particular notice of Georgie, so while Lucia was inspecting the pitch he slunk away and lunched at home. She, as President of the Tilling Club, lunched with the two teams in the pavilion, and found several opportunities of pronouncing the word Zingâri properly.
The bungalow-party having let their houses picnicked on sandwiches and indulged in gloomy conjecture as to what Lucia’s sudden appearance in sporting circles signified. Then Benjy walked up to the Club nominally to see
if there were any letters for him and actually to have liquid refreshment to assuage the thirst caused by the briny substances which Elizabeth had provided for lunch, and brought back the sickening intelligence that Lucia had been elected President of the Tilling Cricket Club.
‘I’m not in the least surprised,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I suspected something of the sort. Nor shall I be surprised if she plays football for Tilling in the winter. Shorts, and a jersey of Tilling colours. Probably that hat.’
Satire, it was felt, had said its last word.
The Hastings Chronicle on the next Saturday was a very painful document. It contained a large-print paragraph on its middle page headed ‘Munificent Gift by Mrs Lucas of Mallards House, Tilling.’ Those who felt equal to reading further then learnt that she had most graciously consented to become President of the Tilling Cricket Club, and had offered, at the Annual General Meeting of the Club, held after the XI’s match against the Zingâri, to have the cricket-field levelled and relaid. She had personally inspected it (so said Mrs Lucas in her Presidential address) and was convinced that Tilling would never be able to do itself justice at the King of Games till this was done. She therefore considered it a privilege, as President of the Club, in which she had always taken so deep an interest, to undertake this work (loud and prolonged applause) … This splendid gift would benefit footballers as well as cricketers since they used the same ground, and the Committee of the Football Club, having ascertained Mrs Lucas’s feelings on the subject, had unanimously elected her as President.
The very next week there were more of these frightful revelations. Again there was that headline, ‘Munificent Gift, etc.’ This time it was the Tilling hospital. At a meeting of the Governors the Mayor announced that Mrs Lucas (already known as the Friend of the Poor) had offered to build a new operating-theatre, and to finish it with the most modern equipment according to the plan and schedule which he now laid before them –