‘Heaps of room for us all in the cottage,’ said Georgie. ‘I hope there’s a servants’ sitting-room.’
‘They’ll be in and out of Mallards all day,’ said Lucia. ‘A lovely servants’ hall there.’
‘If I can get it, I will,’ said Georgie. ‘I shall try to let my house at Riseholme, though I shall take my bibelots away. I’ve often had applications for it in other years. I hope Foljambe will like Tilling. She will make me miserable if she doesn’t. Tepid water, fluff on my clothes.’
It was time to get back to their inn to unpack, but Georgie longed for one more look at his cottage, and Lucia for one at Mallards. Just as they turned the corner that brought them in sight of these there was thrust out of the window of Miss Mapp’s garden-room a hand that waved a white handkerchief. It might have been samite.
‘Georgie, what can that be?’ whispered Lucia. ‘It must be a signal of some sort. Or was it Miss Mapp waving us good night?’
‘Not very likely,’ said he. ‘Let’s wait one second.’
He had hardly spoken when Miss Coles, followed by the breathless Mrs Plaistow hurried up the three steps leading to the front door of Mallards and entered.
‘Diva and quaint Irene,’ said Lucia. ‘It must have been a signal.’
‘It might be a coincidence,’ said Georgie. To which puerile suggestion Lucia felt it was not worth while to reply.
Of course it was a signal and one long prearranged, for it was a matter of the deepest concern to several householders in Tilling, whether Miss Mapp found a tenant for Mallards, and she had promised Diva and quaint Irene to wave a handkerchief from the window of the garden-room at six o’clock precisely, by which hour it was reasonable to suppose that her visitors would have left her. These two ladies, who would be prowling about the street below, on the look-out, would then hasten to hear the best or the worst.
Their interest in the business was vivid, for if Miss Mapp succeeded in letting Mallards, she had promised to take Diva’s house, Wasters, for two months at eight guineas a week (the house being much smaller) and Diva would take Irene’s house, Taormina (smaller still) at five guineas a week, and Irene would take a four-roomed labourer’s cottage (unnamed) just outside the town at two guineas a week, and the labourer, who, with his family would be harvesting in August and hop-picking in September, would live in some sort of shanty and pay no rent at all. Thus from top to bottom of this ladder of lessors and lessees they all scored, for they all received more than they paid, and all would enjoy the benefit of a change without the worry and expense of travel and hotels. Each of these ladies would wake in the morning in an unfamiliar room, would sit in unaccustomed chairs, read each other’s books (and possibly letters), look at each other’s pictures, imbibe all the stimulus of new surroundings, without the wrench of leaving Tilling at all. No true Tillingite was ever really happy away from her town; foreigners were very queer untrustworthy people, and if you did not like the food it was impossible to engage another cook for an hotel of which you were not the proprietor. Annually in the summer this sort of ladder of house-letting was set up in Tilling and was justly popular. But it all depended on a successful letting of Mallards, for if Elizabeth Mapp did not let Mallards, she would not take Diva’s Wasters nor Diva Irene’s Taormina.
Diva and Irene therefore hurried to the garden-room where they would hear their fate; Irene forging on ahead with that long masculine stride that easily kept pace with Major Benjy’s, the short-legged Diva with that twinkle of feet that was like the scudding of a thrush over the lawn.
‘Well, Mapp, what luck?’ asked Irene.
Miss Mapp waited till Diva had shot in.
‘I think I shall tease you both,’ said she playfully with her widest smile.
‘Oh, hurry up,’ said Irene. ‘I know perfectly well from your face that you’ve let it. Otherwise it would be all screwed up.’
Miss Mapp, though there was no question about her being the social queen of Tilling, sometimes felt that there were ugly Bolshevistic symptoms in the air, when quaint Irene spoke to her like that. And Irene had a dreadful gift of mimicry, which was a very low weapon, but formidable. It was always wise to be polite to mimics.
‘Patience, a little patience, dear,’ said Miss Mapp soothingly. ‘If you know I’ve let it, why wait?’
‘Because I should like a cocktail,’ said Irene. ‘If you’ll just send for one, you can go on teasing.’
‘Well, I’ve let it for August and September,’ said Miss Mapp, preferring to abandon her teasing than give Irene a cocktail. ‘And I’m lucky in my tenant. I never met a sweeter woman than dear Mrs Lucas.’
‘Thank God,’ said Diva, drawing up her chair to the still uncleared table. ‘Give me a cup of tea, Elizabeth. I could eat nothing till I knew.’
‘How much did you stick her for it?’ asked Irene.
‘Beg your pardon, dear?’ asked Miss Mapp, who could not be expected to understand such a vulgar expression.
‘What price did you screw her up to? What’s she got to pay you?’ said Irene impatiently. ‘Damage: dibs.’
‘She instantly closed with the price I suggested,’ said Miss Mapp. ‘I’m not sure, quaint one, that anything beyond that is what might be called your business.’
‘I disagree about that,’ said the quaint one. ‘There ought to be a sliding-scale. If you’ve made her pay through the nose, Diva ought to make you pay through the nose for her house, and I ought to make her pay through the nose for mine. Equality, Fraternity, Nosality.’
Miss Mapp bubbled with disarming laughter and rang the bell for Irene’s cocktail, which might stop her pursuing this subject, for the sliding-scale of twelve, eight and five guineas a week had been the basis of previous calculations. Yet if Lucia so willingly consented to pay more, surely that was nobody’s affair but that of the high contracting parties. Irene, soothed by the prospect of her cocktail, pursued the dangerous topic no further, but sat down at Miss Mapp’s piano and picked out God Save the King, with one uncertain finger. Her cocktail arrived just as she finished it.
‘Thank you, dear,’ said Miss Mapp. ‘Sweet music.’
‘Cheerio!’ said Irene. ‘Are you charging Lucas anything extra for use of a fine old instrument?’
Miss Mapp was goaded into a direct and emphatic reply.
‘No, darling, I am not,’ she said, ‘as you are so interested in matters that don’t concern you.’
‘Well, well, no offence meant,’ said Irene. ‘Thanks for the cocktail. Look in to-morrow between twelve and one at my studio, if you want to see far the greater part of a well-made man. I’ll be off now to cook my supper. Au reservoir.’
Miss Mapp finished the few strawberries that Diva had spared and sighed.
‘Our dear Irene has a very coarse side to her nature, Diva,’ she said. ‘No harm in her, but just common. Sad! Such a contrast to dear Mrs Lucas. So refined: scraps of Italian beautifully pronounced. And so delighted with everything.’
‘Ought we to call on her?’ asked Diva. ‘Widow’s mourning, you know.’
Miss Mapp considered this. One plan would be that she should take Lucia under her wing (provided she was willing to go there), another to let it be known in Tilling (if she wasn’t) that she did not want to be called upon. That would set Tilling’s back up, for if there was one thing it hated it was anything that (in spite of widow’s weeds) might be interpreted into superiority. Though Lucia would only be two months in Tilling, Miss Mapp did not want her to be too popular on her own account, independently. She wanted… she wanted to have Lucia in her pocket, to take her by the hand and show her to Tilling, but to be in control. It all had to be thought out.
‘I’ll find out when she comes,’ she said. ‘I’ll ask her, for indeed I feel quite an old friend already.’
‘And who’s the man?’ asked Diva.
‘Dear Mr Georgie Pillson. He entertained me so charmingly when I was at Riseholme for a night or two some years ago. They are staying at the Trader’s Arms, and off aga
in to-morrow.’
‘What? Staying there together?’ asked Diva.
Miss Mapp turned her head slightly aside as if to avoid some faint unpleasant smell.
‘Diva dear,’ she said. ‘Old friends as we are, I should be sorry to have a mind like yours. Horrid. You’ve been reading too many novels. If widow’s weeds are not a sufficient protection against such innuendoes, a baby girl in its christening-robe wouldn’t be safe.’
‘Gracious me, I made no innuendo,’ said the astonished Diva. ‘I only meant it was rather a daring thing to do. So it is. Anything more came from your mind, Elizabeth, not mine. I merely ask you not to put it on to me, and then say I’m horrid.’
Miss Mapp smiled her widest.
‘Of course I accept your apology, dear Diva,’ she said. ‘Fully, without back-thought of any kind.’
‘But I haven’t apologized and I won’t,’ cried Diva. ‘It’s for you to do that.’
To those not acquainted with the usage of the ladies of Tilling, such bitter plain-speaking might seem to denote a serious friction between old friends. But neither Elizabeth nor Diva had any such feeling: they would both have been highly surprised if an impartial listener had imagined anything so absurd. Such breezes, even if they grew far stronger than this, were no more than bracing airs that disposed to energy, or exercises to keep the mind fit. No malice.
‘Another cup of tea, dear?’ said Miss Mapp earnestly.
That was so like her, thought Diva: that was Elizabeth all over. When logic and good feeling alike had produced an irresistible case against her, she swept it all away, and asked you if you would have some more cold tea or cold mutton, or whatever it was.
Diva gave up. She knew she was no match for her and had more tea.
‘About our own affairs then,’ she said, ‘if that’s all settled—’
‘Yes, dear: so sweetly so harmoniously,’ said Elizabeth.
Diva swallowed a regurgitation of resentment, and went on as if she had not been interrupted.
‘—Mrs Lucas takes possession on the first of August,’ she said. ‘That’s to say, you would like to get into Wasters that day.’
‘Early that day, Diva, if you can manage it,’ said Elizabeth, ‘as I want to give my servants time to clean and tidy up. I would pop across in the morning, and my servants follow later. All so easy to manage.’
‘Then there’s another thing,’ said Diva. ‘Garden-produce. You’re leaving yours, I suppose.’
Miss Mapp gave a little trill of laughter.
‘I shan’t be digging up all my potatoes and stripping the beans and the fruit-trees,’ she said. ‘And I thought—correct me if I am wrong—that my eight guineas a week for your little house included garden-produce, which is all that really concerns you and me. I think we agreed as to that.’
Miss Mapp leaned forward with an air of imparting luscious secret information, as that was settled.
‘Diva: something thrilling,’ she said. ‘I happened to be glancing out of my window just by chance a few minutes before I waved to you, and there were Mrs Lucas and Mr Pillson peering, positively peering into the windows of Mallards Cottage. I couldn’t help wondering if Mr Pillson is thinking of taking it. They seemed to be so absorbed in it. It is to let, for Isabel Poppit has taken that little brown bungalow with no proper plumbing out by the golf-links.’
‘Thrilling!’ said Diva. ‘There’s a door in the paling between that little back-yard at Mallards Cottage and your garden. They could unlock it—’
She stopped, for this was a development of the trend of ideas for which neither of them had apologized.
‘But even if Mr Pillson is thinking of taking it, what next, Elizabeth?’ she asked.
Miss Mapp bent to kiss the roses in that beautiful vase of flowers which she had cut this morning in preparation for Lucia’s visit.
‘Nothing particular, dear,’ she said. ‘Just one of my madcap notions. You and I might take Mallards Cottage between us, if it appealed to you. Sweet Isabel is only asking four guineas a week for it. If Mr Pillson happens—it’s only a speculation—to want it, we might ask, say, six. So cheap at six.’
Diva rose.
‘Shan’t touch it,’ she said. ‘What if Mr Pillson doesn’t want it? A pure speculation.’
‘Perhaps it would be rather risky,’ said Miss Mapp. ‘And now I come to think of it, possibly, possibly rather stealing a march—don’t they call it—on my friends.’
‘Oh, decidedly,’ said Diva. ‘No “possibly possibly” about it.’
Miss Mapp winced for a moment under this smart rap, and changed the subject.
‘I shall have little more than a month, then, in my dear house,’ she said, ‘before I’m turned out of it. I must make the most of it, and have a quantity of little gaieties for you all.’
Georgie and Lucia had another long stroll through the town after their dinner. The great celestial signs behaved admirably; it was as if the spirit of Tilling had arranged that sun, moon and stars alike should put forth their utmost arts of advertisement on its behalf, for scarcely had the fires of sunset ceased to blaze on its red walls and roofs and to incarnadine the thin skeins of mist that hung over the marsh, than a large punctual moon arose in the east and executed the most wonderful nocturnes in black and silver.
They found a great grey Norman tower keeping watch seaward, an Edwardian gate with drum towers looking out landward: they found a belvedere platform built out on a steep slope to the east of the town, and the odour of the flowering hawthorns that grew there was wafted to them as they gazed at a lighthouse winking in the distance. In another street there stood Elizabethan cottages of brick and timber, very picturesque, but of no interest to those who were at home in Riseholme. Then there were human interests as well: quaint Irene was sitting, while the sunset flamed, on a camp-stool in the middle of a street, hatless and trousered, painting a most remarkable picture, apparently of the Day of Judgment, for the whole world was enveloped in fire. Just as they passed her her easel fell down, and in a loud angry voice she said, ‘Damn the beastly thing.’ Then they saw Diva scuttling along the High Street carrying a bird-cage. She called up to an open window very lamentably, ‘Oh, Dr Dobbie, please! My canary’s had a fit!’ From another window, also open and unblinded, positively inviting scrutiny, there came a baritone voice singing ‘Will ye no’ come back again?’ and there, sure enough, was the Padre from Birmingham, with the little grey mouse tinkling on the piano. They could not tear themselves away (indeed there was quite a lot of people listening) till the song was over, and then they stole up the street, at the head of which stood Mallards, and from the house just below it came a muffled cry of ‘Quai-hai’, and Lucia’s lips formed the syllables ‘Major Benjy. At his diaries.’ They tiptoed on past Mallards itself, for the garden-room window was open wide, and so past Mallards Cottage, till they were out of sight.
‘Georgie, entrancing,’ said Lucia. ‘They’re all being themselves, and all so human and busy—’
‘If I don’t get Mallards Cottage,’ said Georgie, ‘I shall die.’
‘But you must. You shall. Now it’s time to go to bed, though I could wander about for ever. We must be up early in order to get to the house-agents’ as soon as it’s open. Woggles & Pickstick, isn’t it?’
‘Now you’ve confused me,’ said Georgie. ‘Rather like it, but not quite.’
They went upstairs to bed: their rooms were next each other, with a communicating door. There was a bolt on Georgie’s side of it, and he went swiftly across to this and fastened it. Even as he did so, he heard a key quietly turned from the other side of it. He undressed with the stealth of a burglar prowling about a house, for somehow it was shy work that he and Lucia should be going to bed so close to each other; he brushed his teeth with infinite precaution and bent low over the basin to eject (spitting would be too noisy a word) the water with which he had rinsed his mouth, for it would never do to let a sound of these intimate manoeuvres penetrate next door. When half-undressed he r
emembered that the house-agents’ name was Woolgar & Pipstow, and he longed to tap at Lucia’s door and proclaim it, but the silence of the grave reigned next door, and perhaps Lucia was asleep already. Or was she, too, being as stealthy as he? Whichever it was (particularly if it was the last) he must not let a betrayal of his presence reach her.
He got into bed and clicked out his light. That could be done quite boldly: she might hear that, for it only betokened that all was over. Then, in spite of this long day in the open air, which should have conduced to drowsiness, he felt terribly wide-awake, for the subject which had intermittently occupied his mind, shadowing it with dim apprehension, ever since Pepino’s death, presented itself in the most garish colours. For years, by a pretty Riseholme fantasy, it had always been supposed that he was the implacably Platonic but devout lover of Lucia: somehow that interesting fiction had grown up, and Lucia had certainly abetted it as well as himself. She had let it be supposed that he was, and that she accepted this chaste fervour. But now that her year of widowhood was nearly over, there loomed in front of Georgie the awful fact that very soon there could be no earthly reason why he should not claim his reward for these years of devotion and exchange his passionate celibacy for an even more passionate matrimony. It was an unnerving thought that he might have the right before the summer was over, to tap at some door of communication like that which he had so carefully bolted (and she locked) and say, ‘May I come in, darling?’ He felt that the words would freeze on his tongue before he could utter them.
Did Lucia expect him to ask to marry her? There was the crux and his imagination proceeded to crucify him upon it. They had posed for years as cherishing for each other a stainless devotion, but what if, with her, it had been no pose at all, but a dreadful reality? Had he been encouraging her to hope, by coming down to stay at this hotel in this very compromising manner? In his ghastly midnight musing, it seemed terribly likely. He had been very rash to come, and all this afternoon he had been pursuing his foolhardy career. He had said that life wasn’t worth living if he could not get hold of Mallards Cottage, which was less than a stone’s throw (even he could throw a stone as far as that) from the house she was to inhabit alone. Really it looked as if it was the proximity to her that made the cottage so desirable. If she only knew how embarrassing her proximity had been just now when he prepared himself for bed!…