Lucia Triumphant (28 page)

Lucia consulted the list that she had drawn up and noted with apparent surprise that she would have to do everything herself. But that, she said, was what being a public servant meant.

The first and greatest task would be to draw up an itinerary. There was so much to see: the Landgate, the Norman Tower, the Museum, the Church ... how could so much be fitted into an afternoon? She felt sorely tempted, she said, to leave it to someone else. But there was, as the saying went, only one woman's hand on the lonely plough, and so she sent out for town maps, red pencils and rulers and set about calculating the best possible route.

‘
And what can I do?' asked Georgie hopefully.

‘
Why, tell everyone, of course.'

This was exactly what he wanted her to say, for to be first with news of this sort was a great privilege. But first, before doing anything else, he ordered his cream barathea suit.

 

 

Georgie's announcement caused a minor panic, for it was obvious that outfits that had been ordered for the summer would be far too plain for a Royal visit. It was the civic duty of each citizen to look respectable, for what would the Queen think if she only saw dowdy, depressed-looking women in the streets of the town? She might get the impression that Tilling was a miserable place, and that would never do.

So there was a great changing of orders and insisting upon rare and exotic colours and fabrics, and the draper began to fear for his sanity. Where orange had previously sufficed, there must now be tangerine; mere fawn was no longer acceptable,
café
au lait
was the only conceivable shade. Mrs. Bartlett, who had before wanted plain blue poplin, now insisted upon navy
foulard
with a small spot, and Mrs. Plaistow's urgent request for tea-rose georgette quite spoilt his afternoon. However, he was a conscientious man and all these extraordinary stuffs were obtained and supplied. Yet from the one person he had expected to change her mind, Mrs. Mapp-Flint, he heard nothing at all, which worried him intensely.

Lucia, meanwhile, seemed to have been transformed into a small hurricane, so quickly and furiously did she sweep about the town. Georgie saw her rarely between breakfast and dinner, and then it was only to be quizzed about the whereabouts of this or that sheaf of papers that had mysteriously vanished, or to hear some unintelligible complaint against the stupidity and stubbornness of some minor functionary. When she returned, exhausted but still talking, in the evening, she would recite an epic of the day's complaints, for which Georgie was made to feel in some inexplicable way vaguely responsible. When he asked if there were anything he could do to help, Lucia would reply that only she could hope to bring any sort of order to the chaos that was Tilling (for, according to what Lucia had to say, there was open Bolshevism afoot, especially among the staff of the Parks Department) and that she would be perfectly capable of achieving this aim if only people were not so difficult. Georgie, who had found people difficult all his life, could sympathize with this, but he rather resented being implicitly counted as one of them. When their joyless meals were concluded in the evening, he would often go straight to bed, bewildered and bad-tempered, while Lucia worked on late into the night, surrounded by charts, routes, diagrams, proposed schedules and sketch-maps of the sort usually appended to histories of military campaigns.

The barathea suit helped Georgie to console himself during this hectic period, for it had to be fitted several times. Just when it seemed almost complete, inspiration came to him in a dream and he insisted on a third button for the jacket. The eloquence and passion with which he argued his case made him feel quite magnificent afterwards, especially since he had heard those words he had never expected to hear from a tailor, ‘Perhaps you are right, sir. I never thought of it like that.' But the news that Mr. Wyse had commissioned a black frock-coat and a new top hat gave him several sleepless nights. Would it not, after all, have been better to have insisted upon absolute formality? Suppose the Queen thought he was not taking her visit seriously, and that he had turned out in the first suit that had come to hand? But a careful study of the Society papers reassured him that no possible exception could be taken to his choice of costume, and that Mr. Wyse would, if anything, be a trifle overdressed. It was, however, too late to warn him, and impossible to let him know without breaking the confidentiality of the fitting-room. As to his other competitors in the field of male elegance, Georgie felt secure from challenge. The Padre would be bound to wear his clerical weeds and Major Benjy, having been dissuaded by his wife from resurrecting his old uniform, was sulking and had declared that his Sunday suit was good enough for the House of God and therefore must be good enough for the Queen of England.

Even more important than costume was actual location. There was no point in being dressed well if the Tillingites were in the wrong place, unable to see or to be seen. Georgie was unable to tell them what the proposed itinerary was to be; he tried to explain that even Lucia did not know yet, for the tangle of papers on her desk was now totally impenetrable and she was talking of starting again from scratch. Nobody believed him, however, and he was suspected of concealing the truth for dark reasons of his own.

In order to find out the truth, Elizabeth suggested that a watch be kept on Lucia's movements, and pickets and observers were duly posted about the town to see where she went. The Padre at once began an investigation of the lead on the top of the church tower, although why he needed binoculars to examine what was under his feet was a mystery. Evie spent a lot of time in the stationer's, debating what shade of writing-paper she wanted and frequently darting out into the street to examine the colours by daylight. Diva spent a whole morning in the queue at the post-office, for she always seemed to lose her place whenever she got to the front, so busy was she, craning her neck to see what was going on in the street. A comparison of notes and sharing of information gleaned from other sources enabled the Watch Committee (as someone frivolously called the group) to work out a probable itinerary; but, since there was no way of knowing in which order the various places of interest would be visited, all this patient reconnaissance seemed to have been in vain.

As usual, when a great deal of effort is expended with no tangible results, resentment began to manifest itself and a scapegoat was sought. Lucia, being in charge of all the arrangements, was the likeliest candidate for this unappealing part, and the fact that she never stopped in her frantic movements to wish them good-morning or release any snippet of useful information fuelled the flames of ill-feeling that flickered around the tea-cups and Bridge-tables of Tilling.

‘
She's deliberately keeping out of our way,' said Elizabeth, speaking not for herself alone. ‘She wants the Queen all to herself, and no one else is to be allowed even a sight of her. Why, I wouldn't be surprised if the visit took place at dead of night and Queen Mary was shown round by the light of a lantern.'

‘
She can't very well invite us all to take tea with Her Majesty,' said Georgie, forgetting that his place at the Royal tea-table was assured.

‘
Well, you will certainly meet her,' said Evie, ‘because you are Lucia's prince consort, or whatever she calls you. It's us who will be kept out.'

Mr. Wyse, as a member of an old and distinguished family, and Susan, who was an M.B.E., felt very strongly about this subject, and, although Mr. Wyse at least did not allow his displeasure to manifest itself in any way, his silence was sufficient to encourage Elizabeth to develop her theme.

‘
The least she could do,' she said, pouring milk into her cup, ‘would be to tell us the route by which the Royal party is to travel. How else can we ensure that Her Majesty gets a friendly and patriotic welcome? It won't look very well if the streets are all deserted. Very apathetic we will seem and Her Majesty will say “Very well, I shan't visit Tilling again, if that's how they feel.” '

‘
Lucia has been very busy, you know,' Georgie started to say, but the atmosphere of cold hostility that greeted his words caused him to fall silent. In addition he felt slightly guilty that he, who was in no respect remarkable or outstanding, should be assured of an audience when everyone else was excluded. As a result, his privileged position seemed to lose its charm for him, and he even toyed with the idea of being indisposed on the day of the visit. But that would seem rude, so he gave it up. Nevertheless, it was with a heavy heart that he returned to Mallards and to the fusillade of complaints about the head gardener that constituted his welcome.

‘
My request for snowdrops and violets—for simple charm is, as you know, to be the keynote of the proceedings—was met with plain rudeness,' she said. ‘Instead, I was offered daffodils and narcissi—just think of it, Georgie—and bright yellow tulips. Yellow, mind you, not red, which I believe the Queen admires. We might as well offer Her Majesty a bunch of carrots and brassica.'

‘
It is a little late for snowdrops,' said Georgie diffidently, but Lucia swept his words away as a liner might sweep away a fishing-boat.

‘
And then I find that the child I had selected to present the bouquet—the only one who would possibly do—has been allowed to catch mumps and is confined to bed. Why the authorities thought fit to ignore my suggestion that the child be kept out of school, and thus away from the risk of infection, until after the visit, I cannot hope to understand. It is almost as though someone were trying to sabotage my plans.'

Georgie did not not even try to reply to this. Instead he sat back in his chair and attempted to think of pleasant things, such as picnics by a river or walks in a formal garden. Sadly the river-banks and flower-beds of his imagining were lined with daffodils and narcissi and staringly yellow tulips, so he gave it up. All through dinner the tirade continued, so that he got indigestion; and, when in a lull in the narrative, he meekly suggested a piano duet to soothe away the tribulations of the day (Lucia's own favourite specific for troubled minds) he was briskly informed that there was no time for such indulgence, and went early to bed.

‘
I hope it rains,' he said bitterly, and switched off the light.

 

Alone of the ladies of Tilling, Elizabeth took no thought for the morrow, what she might wear. She knew that, even as she sat and sipped tea at Grebe, a measured quantity of the finest silk was being rushed from Macclesfield to clothe her. Secure in this knowledge she evaded with skilful and infuriating guile all attempts to wheedle from her details of her costume. Let them guess as much as they liked, she would outshine them all. Her only concern was lest she should outshine Her Majesty, but that was improbable. True, the material she had requested seemed to have been a long time in coming; but she had been promised it for Thursday. Thursday had come, and there would be plenty of time to have the dress made up. The pattern she had chosen was one that would display the silk to its best advantage and the dressmaker had promised to hold herself in readiness for its delivery. So Elizabeth walked into town and collected her parcel.

‘
Good morning,' she carolled as she entered the shop, then noticed to her irritation that Evie was lurking in a corner, feigning interest in some purple ribbon. So she lowered her voice and asked if her order were ready, taking care not to mention the type of material, for Evie's ears were sharp.

‘
Yes, Mrs. Mapp-Flint, your order arrived this morning. That'll be nine shillings and elevenpence altogether.'

This struck Elizabeth as decidedly cheap for the very finest Macclesfield silk, but her upbringing and her natural frugality had instilled in her the importance of never acknowledging a bargain.

‘
Dear me,' she therefore said, ‘what a price things are these days.'

To her surprise the draper agreed with her and for a moment she felt unaccountably suspicious. But Evie had moved up towards the counter and was nonchalantly inspecting a card of buttons, so instead of opening the parcel and having a look at the contents, she thanked the draper and took the parcel straight to the dressmaker. There she found Diva, fussing endlessly about her tea-rose georgette, so she thrust the package into the dressmaker's arms, giving her a terrible look to ensure secrecy, wished Diva good-morning and hurried on her way. She spent the rest of the morning engaged in casual shopping, welcoming now the desperate attempts of her friends to wheedle her secret from her and leaving them with a fine selection of erroneous impressions.

This pleasant occupation filled up the time until lunch, and she returned home with a light and happy step, to find Major Benjy engaged in a fearsome argument with Withers. The accusation was that Withers had burnt a hole in the trouser-leg of his second-best suit, to which Withers replied austerely that it was not a flat-iron but the terror that flies by night which had done the damage, damage that would not have occurred had her request to be allowed to put the Major's garments into mothballs been granted. Elizabeth resolved this bitter dispute with Solomon-like diplomacy, accepting that the damage had been done by moth, and scolding Withers for not putting the clothes into mothballs on her own initiative. This seemed to satisfy both parties, to some extent at least, and tranquillity was restored. Having obtained silence, Elizabeth sat down to think about the forthcoming event and plan what her
rôle
in it might be. Ought she to ignore the whole affair, as being devalued by Lucia's commandeering of the Royal party and the entire occasion; or ought she to follow each step with diligent attention, the better to be able to offer constructive advice and criticism after the visit was over? As Mayoress she had a duty to perform the latter function, yet Lucia had not yet seen fit even to request her presence, which was an insult not only to her but to the office she held and to the people of Tilling, whom, in some nebulous way, she represented. This fierce internal debate was interrupted by the distant clamour of the telephone, and after a short while Withers, still sullen after her rebuke, came to inform her that Mrs. Pillson was on the line and would like to speak to her.