Lucia Triumphant (29 page)

‘
Elizabeth, dear!' Lucia's voice, unmistakable even across the vast expanse of cable. ‘So glad I managed to catch you at last. I've been ringing all day. You dear thing, how elusive you are!'

Elizabeth drew in her breath to rebut this charge of flightiness, but the delay proved fatal. Lucia continued. Lucia, it seemed, never needed to stop for breath.

‘
Could you possibly spare me a minute this afternoon just to discuss your official
rôle
as Mayoress in the Royal Visit. I'm sorry it's such short notice, but you can have no idea how terribly busy I have been, and every time I manage to find five minutes to telephone you, Withers says you are out! Oh dear!' and a wistful sigh floated through the receiver. ‘Everything seems to be happening at once. Anyway, could you be especially kind to poor tired me and spare half-an-hour at—let me see'—pages, beyond doubt those of an engagement-book, rustled at the other end—‘ah yes—twenty-past three? Cadman will call for you in the motor.'

The voice fell silent just long enough to allow Elizabeth to say ‘Yes', and then bade her farewell and was replaced by the dialling tone. As Elizabeth put the instrument down, she was reminded of an unfortunate lady in mythology who was for ever being pursued by a persistent, buzzing gadfly. Lucia's telephone manner made Elizabeth sympathize with that poor sufferer. She ate her lunch with a troubled heart, pondering the new difficulties that had arisen. She could not refuse to cooperate, for her office demanded that she render all possible assistance to the Mayor in her official capacity. But she foresaw only too clearly that her part in the proceedings would be that of a subordinate, a mere instrument of ceremony, like the mace or the chain of office. Furthermore, by taking part in Lucia's self-glorifying production, she would risk being identified with it, and the disdain which she had carefully fostered in the town would fall on her as much as on the true author of the proceedings, Lucia. She could not hope to have any say in the organisation of the event, or to alter its structure in any degree. She would probably not even be told what the intinerary was. On the other hand, she would almost certainly be allowed to join the Royal tea party, and that was a great consolation.

As a result of these speculations she arrived at Mallards determined to play a purely honorary part in the proceedings; modesty, she would insist, forbade her seeking any of the limelight.

‘
But Elizabeth,
carissima,'
cried Lucia in apparent consternation, ‘think of your official
rôle
, your position as Mayoress! You represent the women of Tilling. I shall need you at my side throughout the day. This is no time for self-effacement. The ceremonial traditions of the town demand your presence—more, your active involvement.'

‘
Too kind of you, Lucia,' replied Elizabeth, rather startled, ‘but I am so unused to mixing in such society. Why, I should be tongue-tied and unable to speak. It would be far better if you, who have had so much practice ... all those duchesses and princesses we have heard about so often.'

But Lucia was set on her purpose. If anything were to go wrong with the Visit, she wanted Elizabeth to be involved as deeply as herself, so that the blame might be shared equally. On the other hand, she could not bear the thought of Elizabeth taking the credit for a single particle of the hard work that she, and she alone, had put into this affair.

‘
Just by being there,' she said, ‘you will be performing the essential function that I have described to you. Look at it from my point of view, dear. Think how I would feel,' and as she spoke a brilliant thought came to her, ‘if everyone were to say that just because I have had to do so much of the work myself, I had taken no account of popular feelings about the Visit. People might say that I had deliberately kept them out and told them nothing, just to keep the glory for myself!'

‘
Perish the thought!' said Elizabeth.

‘
Not everyone is as sensible as you, Elizabeth dear, which is why I want you to be my eyes and ears in the town, right up to the day of the Visit. Tell me what people are saying and thinking, what they would like to see, and so on. Then I can consider all reasonable suggestions, reject the obviously impracticable and incorporate such as are feasible into our programme. And you could do something else for me, if you would; you can tell everyone how things are going—what progress we are making with the itinerary and so on. So that when people come up to me and ask questions, I won't have to stay and answer, I can just say “Ask the Mayoress, she will tell you.” Now you
will
do that for me, won't you?'

This was clearly a move of diabolical cunning on Lucia's part. Not only would the blame for Lucia's secrecy be shifted entirely on to the shoulders of her spokeswoman, but Elizabeth, as liaison between Town Hall and High Street, would be personally responsible for every discarded suggestion and rejected innovation, blamed by everyone for the dismissal of their contributions. She would be directly implicated in any failure, but unable to claim any credit for a success. She had, in short, been caught in a trap. Once her reluctant agreement had been elicited, she was dismissed from the Presence and sent back to Grebe, with instructions to report at eleven-o'clock sharp the next morning to be thoroughly briefed. The only thing she still had to look forward to was the Macclesfield silk. Apart from that, the future was bleak indeed.

 

Just as she had feared there was no shortage of idiotic suggestions from the general public for Elizabeth to convey to Lucia, none of which Lucia found herself able to accept. The Padre, for instance, had the idea of a pipe-and-drum band to accompany the Queen throughout the town. Elizabeth had reported this and Lucia had explained patiently to her the difficulties that made the suggestion impossible (which Elizabeth already knew): that there was not one single bagpiper in the town and precious few drummers; that it seemed strange (to say the least) that Tilling, as far from Scotland as it is possible to be on the British mainland, should affect a Caledonian air for the Visit. Yet, when Elizabeth reported to the Padre that his suggestion had been rejected, he grew quite angry, not with Lucia, who had originally called for suggestions and thus was obviously open-minded, but with Elizabeth, whom he suspected of presenting his case ineffectually.

With this terrible burden on her back, Elizabeth went for her first fitting. The pattern had been a complicated one and there was little time—today was Friday, the Visit was on Monday, the dressmaker would have to work all weekend to complete it. Furthermore, the poor woman was so busy with work for the other ladies of Tilling that she was having trouble fitting them all in.

‘
Let me see,' said Elizabeth greedily as the dressmaker brought out the creation. She was glad to see that the worthy woman had gone to the trouble of protecting the dress with a rayon cover. But when she tried to remove the cover, she found to her horror that there was nothing beneath.

‘
Is that what you will be wearing on Monday, if you don't mind my asking?' said the dressmaker in a rather strange tone of voice. ‘I must say, I can't keep up with these modern fashions.'

‘
Where's my dress?' demanded Elizabeth hoarsely.

‘
That is your dress, madam.'

‘
It can't be,' gasped Elizabeth. ‘What on earth is it made of?'

‘
Sateen, madam. Exactly as you gave it me.'

Had she recalled them, Elizabeth would have echoed Macbeth's words to his guests, ‘Which of you hath done this?' As it was, she bolted through the door and dashed along the High Street to the draper's shop. There she extracted the entire history of the sateen and Irene's devilish deception. The draper, who was a sympathetic man, listened patiently to her eloquent denunciation of Irene, Fate and the World, which, for anyone who savoured the effusions of the Tragic Muse, were well worth hearing, and then informed her that it would be quite impossible to obtain Macclesfield silk before Monday. He also reminded Elizabeth that she had not yet paid for the sateen and asked whether it should be put on her account.

This final, unspeakable blow caused Elizabeth to hurl the dress (which was still in her hand) across the counter, cry in a fearful voice, ‘Charge it to Miss Coles's account!', and surge forth into the High Street.

Since Irene had no account at the draper's the bill remained unpaid for some time until that worthy man put it on Elizabeth's account as ‘Sundries' and was finally paid.

 

 

All human beings have at least one talent, and Irene Coles had several. She was a gifted painter (although she tended to treat this gift as a child treats an expensive present that it does not really care for); she had a quite remarkable gift of mimicry which she used to persecute those of her fellow creatures who roused her displeasure; these blessings Nature had bestowed upon her. Such gifts should have been enough for anyone, and there were those who would have said that she did not deserve any of them. But the Creator had bestowed upon her one other facility, greater than any of these, which she exploited to the best of her ability. Just as the offspring of the rich and powerful are said to be born with a silver spoon in their mouths, so Irene had come into the world with the apple of Discord gripped in her hand. In other words, she had the rare ability to irritate people at will. This talent she had recognised at an early age, and she had devoted her life to it.

In the pursuit of her vocation, she managed to make herself extremely unpopular by her quite outrageous behaviour. It was an open secret that she was a Socialist and an admirer of Russian Communism (although before that she had been fiercely pro-German). Her atheism, for which she called upon God to forgive her, was a constant thorn in the Padre's ample flesh. In her life in Art, her object seemed always to offend; in her relationships with her fellow-creatures, therefore, she could not in all conscience spare any of them, whatever her personal feelings, without betraying her Calling. To this rule she made only one exception, namely Lucia. Within hours of Lucia's first arrival in Tilling, Irene had adopted her as her personal goddess, so that, whatever Lucia might do or say, Irene would usually find some way of admiring it, at whatever expense to her own integrity. Her warlike nature longed for conflict, and in order to gratify this desire she was prepared to strike the most extraordinary attitudes, to deny what was obviously true and to assert what was patently false.

Under any other circumstances, therefore, she would have awoken on the morning of the Royal Visit with the express purpose of doing something to demonstrate an unreasoning Republicanism. But since Lucia had, so to speak, taken the whole affair under her wing, Irene was powerless to act. With a wistful sigh, she left unmade the banner that she had dreamt of, left her dinner bell, the faithful companion of her worst excesses, on the mantelpiece, and sat down, with the blinds drawn, to start work on a secret anti-Monarchist cartoon.

Thus it was that she missed the last frantic preparations for the Queen's arrival, and did not see the Royal Train pulling into the station or any of what followed. But curiosity is the bane of all resolutions, and she found it hard to sleep that night for wondering how Lucia had fared. So, when Tuesday dawned and the weary hours before marketing time had slipped away, she put on her reefer-jacket and a woollen hat and hurried from Taormina to find out what had happened.

The people of Tilling, had they been asked at any other time, would have said that, by and large, they had little use for Irene Coles. But on that particular day, she had a vital
rôle
to perform as a listener, for she was the only person in the town who had not witnessed the events of the preceding day, and to her alone could the whole story be told. Since the only point of things happening was that those who observed these things could tell other people about them, there was a great demand for an audience, and by the time Irene got back to her house, she had heard the tale from every conceivable source (sometimes from two or three sources at once; surely the stuff of an historian's dream) and her thirst for knowledge had been satisfied.

She had heard how the train had been held up for five minutes by a fallen branch on the line, and how the Town Band had stood playing Elgar until they were out of breath; how the child that Lucia had chosen to replace the victim of mumps had thrust her bouquet into the Royal hand and immediately burst into tears, which Her Majesty found rather touching; how Lucia had, the night before, sent everyone handwritten notes with a suggestion as to where they might stand in order to get a good view of the Queen, and how, as soon as the Queen arrived, she had given Lucia a list of the things she wanted to see, none of which appeared on Lucia's own carefully compiled itinerary; how the Queen had apologised most graciously for this sudden change of plan and how (this was said most grudgingly) Lucia had coped splendidly.

Irene heard that, instead of the Norman Tower and the Landgate, Her Majesty had wanted to visit one house whose conservatory contained an unusual variety of orchid, and another whose owner (that wretched stockbroker in Church Square again) possessed a small but quite unique collection of Chinese jade, which the Padre, the only member of the community to have seen it, had said looked like a collection of bars of soap, but which the Queen had admired enormously. Into Irene's ears was poured the whole tale of the Queen's tea at Mallards; how Elizabeth had appeared wearing, not the Macclesfield silk that Diva and Evie had promised, but last year's brown marocain, as antiquated and obsolete as a wheel-lock musket on a modern battlefield; how, at the last moment, Lucia's best silver tea-pot had mysteriously vanished and all that could be found was a brown earthenware vessel, belonging to Foljambe; and how the Queen had smiled when she saw it and declared that it was the image of the one she used herself to pour her husband's breakfast tea. All this Irene heard, and thereat she rejoiced. But the part of the day's events that everyone was most keen to tell her about, that part which inspired the greatest eloquence, was not quite so pleasant to listen to, and the way in which it was described, not by only one or two, but by all her sources, left Irene in no doubt what the outcome was likely to be.