Au Reservoir (11 page)

As he mentioned ‘He’, the Padre gazed meaningfully at the crucifix on the wall.

‘Oh, how like a man,’ Mapp shouted in exasperation, so overcome by her emotions as clearly to have forgotten to whom she was speaking. ‘Weak as water. No wonder she can trample all over you. Why do none of you have any
fight
in you?’

These deep emotions now bubbled to the surface as a positive wellspring, generously watering Elizabeth Mapp-Flint’s second best handkerchief as she clutched it to her face, rocking backwards and forwards in her chair and repeating, ‘It’s so unfair!’ at intervals between her sobs. So lengthy did this lachrymose interlude become that the Padre had time to rise awkwardly from his chair, fetch a glass of water from the kitchen, return, place it gingerly beside his distraught lady parishioner and nervously resume his seat. Slowly, the flood subsided.

‘Are you quite recovered now, dear lady?’ he enquired solicitously. ‘Aye, nae doot you’ll be after going home to your Major Mapp-Flint.’

Of this pious hope he was, however, to be speedily disabused. Mapp raised a bleary yet steely eye from her wet, crumpled mess of a handkerchief and fixed him with the sort of piercing gaze which she generally reserved for her husband when caught in close proximity to strong liquor or attractive women, and especially when encountered in combination with each other.

‘I’m not going anywhere, Padre,’ she informed him, ‘until we have decided how you are going to sort out this mess which you have created.’

‘But my sermon …’ he protested, gesturing weakly towards his study.

Elizabeth Mapp-Flint treated this trifling objection with the contempt it deserved. ‘Fortunately,’ she said, speaking in an elaborately calm and measured fashion as if to a naughty child or a befuddled elderly relative, ‘I was able to give this matter some thought while walking here from Grebe, so at least one of us has managed to arrive at a solution.’

‘If indeed there is one,’ he interjected dubiously.

‘Oh, there is,’ she replied emphatically. ‘Now listen to me very carefully, Padre. All you have to do is to phone the Chairman of the Tenterden fête committee and explain that there has been a mix-up and that you need her to write to Lucia, saying …’

She broke off as she became aware of the Padre’s eyes revolving slowly and helplessly as he silently opened and closed his mouth.

‘On second thoughts,
I
will phone her,’ she said briskly. ‘Now then, Padre, who is it that we need to speak to?’

‘Her name is Mrs Campbell,’ the Padre gasped, feeling that cardiac arrest might prove both imminent and welcome, ‘but I would advise against such a course of action. Mistress Campbell can be, well … a little difficult at times.’

Mapp snorted and reached for the vicarage telephone. After a necessary preamble with directory enquiries, she asked the operator to connect her.

‘Mrs Campbell,’ she crooned in her best friendly manner, ‘so sorry to disturb you. I’m with the Reverend Bartlett here in Tilling and am calling you on his behalf as he is so busy with parish affairs. My name is Mapp-Flint. I believe we met at the Coronation dinner in Hastings – such a sad business, I always thought, the abdication.’

There was a pause while Mrs Campbell crackled politely at the other end of the line.

‘No, the lady with an MBE pinned to her dress was my dear friend Susan Wyse.’

Further crackles.

‘No,’ Mapp said again, but this time with her smile becoming wider and more fixed, ‘the exquisitely dressed lady was my equally dear friend Mrs Pillson. Actually, it
is
her that we need to talk to you about, the Padre and I.’

This obviously struck a chord.

‘Yes, that’s right, the lady who is such very close friends with Noël Coward.’

Further telephone noise.

‘Well, actually I’m afraid there’s been a bit of a mix-up. Poor Padre is growing a little vague these days, I’m afraid, and he seems accidentally to have given Mrs Pillson the impression that you wanted
her
to open the fête.’

Anguished squawks.

‘Yes indeed, why would you want her? The very question I posed to the Padre, the dear forgetful man. Old friends though we are, I really cannot think of any reason why anyone would want ordinary old Lulu to open a fête, particularly so grand a one as you have in Tenterden.’

Approval, followed by what sounded awfully like anxiety.

‘Well, I do have a suggestion to make, Mrs Campbell. I put it forward very diffidently, mind, as after all your fête is none of my business.’

Mrs Mapp-Flint was at this point encouraged specifically to advance her suggestion.

‘I am sure we would all agree,’ Mapp cooed, her voice becoming if possible even more sugary, ‘that the important thing is to spare Padre’s blushes. Poor man, he’s so embarrassed by the knowledge that he has messed things up that he doesn’t know where to put himself. Sorry? Oh, just
anno domini
, I’m afraid, but then we’re none of us getting any younger, are we?’

The Padre gaped indignantly at being discussed in this way. To rub salt into the wound, he was sensitive about his age and was nursing not one but two secrets. The first was that he had just received the long-dreaded letter from the Bishop congratulating him on his coming retirement. The second, though this was not at all as secret as he imagined, was that he had started to become genuinely forgetful over the course of the last year or two.

‘My idea? Well, why not simply write to Mrs Pillson, explain that Reverend Bartlett got things mixed up, and that he was really intending to ask her to invite her friend Mr Coward down to open the fête, and that in deference to his feelings you would suggest sorting the matter out directly between the two of you without involving him further.’

Delighted parrot noises ensued, leading to the Padre rather sourly imagining Mrs Campbell jumping up and down on a perch and flapping her wings excitedly.

‘Not at all, Mrs Campbell, only too glad to be able to be of assistance. What was that? Why yes, of course I’ll tell him.’

‘Mrs Campbell sends her regards,’ she said unnecessarily as she put the phone down.

‘There, it’s all sorted,’ she trumpeted with every appearance of satisfaction at a job well done. ‘Not that difficult really, Padre. Just needed a little resolve, that’s all.’

‘But Mrs Pillson …?’ gasped the Padre, appalled by the prospect of Lucia’s reaction to the letter which he now knew must inevitably follow.

‘As for Mrs Pillson,’ replied Mapp grimly, ‘Her High and Mightiness is going to have to learn that she is not destined always to get things her own way.’

‘Oh,’ said Olga as Georgie came into her dressing room at Covent Garden, ‘you’re here then?’

‘Funny,’ he replied, ‘that’s exactly what Lucia said at lunchtime.’

‘It really is very bad of you, Georgie,’ she scolded him. ‘You know what I said. Lucia needs your support right now. Things are very difficult for her.’

‘No, everything’s all right now,’ he said, as he sat down and placed a bouquet of flowers on the table. ‘She told me all about it at lunch and then insisted that I should come up to town as planned.’

‘Really?’ asked Olga, clearly unconvinced. ‘Well, tell me, then.’

‘There’s been a new development,’ he explained. ‘Apparently Mapp got the Padre to volunteer Noël to open a fête over in Tenterden. He presumably told the committee in good faith that Lucia and Noël were friends, because Mapp told him they were and he simply passed it on.’

‘No!’ Olga cried in fine Tilling style. ‘The nerve of the woman!’

‘Ah, but you haven’t heard the best bit yet,’ Georgie said contentedly. ‘Of course it was the Padre who was then tasked with asking Lucia to ask Noël, and either he made a dog’s breakfast of it or Lucia somehow managed to twist his words and pretend to misunderstand – I suspect the latter, of course – but he ended up agreeing that she should open the fête herself.’

‘And even better,’ she added after they had finished laughing, ‘is the thought of the Padre then having to break the happy news to Mapp.’

‘Yes, isn’t it?’ Georgie agreed. ‘I wonder if she got that look on her face, you know – when she is really angry about something and her cheeks go red and her eyes bulge?’ He attempted to imitate the look with some success, which set them both laughing once again.

‘So there you are,’ Georgie said, wiping his eyes and tucking his handkerchief back into the sleeve of his evening shirt, ‘everything’s nice again. Oh, I am so glad that it’s all worked out, Olga, I have been dying to hear you in
Siegfried
again.’

‘Um, that could be a bit tricky actually,’ she said awkwardly. ‘You see, David Webster has the royal box tonight and because I assumed you weren’t coming I didn’t try to get you a ticket.’

‘Of course, I see,’ said Georgie as casually as he could manage. ‘Well, don’t worry about it. I can go home and then come back and meet you for dinner afterwards.’

‘Oh, rats!’ exclaimed Olga in extreme irritation. ‘There must be a way.’

Georgie waited expectantly.

‘Perhaps we could persuade one of the St John’s Ambulance people to change clothes with you?’ Olga suggested. ‘They’re never actually needed to do anything, you know, and they have little jump seats at the back of the orchestra stalls.’

‘Don’t people ever have heart attacks at Covent Garden, then?’ Georgie asked, intrigued.

‘Oh yes, but their private Harley Street quack usually turns out to be sitting behind them. Somebody got a nose bleed in the dress rehearsal of
Götterdämmerung
a couple of weeks ago and when the conductor stopped the music and asked if there was a doctor in the house half the dress circle stood up.’

‘Oh, well,’ Georgie said, much intrigued by the possibility, ‘tell me, what colour is the uniform exactly?’

At this stage there was a knock on the door. They both glanced at the clock. It was still too early for First Call.

‘Come in!’ Olga called, whereupon a tall, elegant man in exquisitely fitting evening dress entered the room.

‘Olga, my darling,’ he said in a slight Scottish accent, kissing her hand. ‘I just came to wish you the very best for this evening. Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t realise that you had company. I see that I’m intruding.’

‘You’re not intruding at all, David,’ Olga reassured him. ‘This is my very dear friend Georgie Pillson. In fact, you have met before at one of your supper parties. Georgie is a great patron of the arts. Why, he gives lots and lots of money to all sorts of charities, don’t you, Georgie?’

Georgie looked rather startled, as well he might. The only charitable contribution he could remember making was buying a flag on lifeboat day.

‘Georgie, you must remember David Webster. He runs the Covent Garden Opera Company.’

They shook hands, Georgie looking enviously at the cut of the visitor’s tails. He was strongly tempted to ask for an introduction to his tailor.

‘Of course I remember,’ Georgie lied. ‘Mr Webster, a pleasure to see you again.’

‘My dear Pillson,’ Webster said languidly. ‘Likewise.’

‘Gosh, David,’ Olga cried suddenly. ‘You may be the answer to a maiden’s prayer.’

‘I’m sure that sounds delightful,’ he said warily, ‘but in which way exactly?’

‘I thought Georgie wasn’t coming – all my fault, I made a mess of things like a first-class chump – so I didn’t get him a ticket. Can you help? We’re desperate. We even thought of disguising him as a St John’s Ambulance volunteer.’

‘Desperation indeed,’ Webster replied. ‘I cannot recommend it, though. For one thing it is probably illegal. For another, the uniform is most unbecoming.’

‘Oh, is it really?’ Georgie asked, quite crestfallen.

‘I fear so, my dear sir. Positively
lumpen
in fact. Personally I find that I much prefer naval uniform.’

‘Oh, so do I,’ Georgie said eagerly, thinking of his treasured yachting cap.

‘Why,’ he went on, blushing slightly, ‘I sometimes wear it myself – but only in appropriate circumstances, naturally.’

‘Do you really?’ Webster asked, gazing at him with a whole new interest. ‘Olga, there will be no need for subterfuge of any kind. I would be delighted to invite Mr Pillson to be my guest in the royal box.’

‘Oh, thank you, David, that’s wonderful.’

‘Not at all,’ Webster said as he turned to leave. ‘Well, I will see you later, Pillson. I trust you will enjoy the company. One of my other guests is John Gielgud. It will be my pleasure to introduce you.’

‘Oh, but I know him already,’ Georgie said at once. ‘Why, we had dinner the other night with him and Noël Coward.’

Webster turned at the door and looked hard at him again. A final thought seemed to strike him.

‘And perhaps I could mention, strictly
en passant
of course, that the Covent Garden Opera Company is itself a charity?’

O
lga and Georgie were taking a late breakfast together when the telephone rang. Shortly afterwards Celine entered the room and said, ‘Your wife, m’sieu.’ Celine, being French, had taken the idea of a married man frequently staying the night with her mistress in her stride, and while she recognised, with some regret, that the arrangement was entirely innocent, she still felt that the situation had a certain panache about it.

Georgie excused himself and went into the hall.

‘Hello, Lucia,’ he said with the slightly husky voice of one who has stayed up too late the night before and smoked too many cigarettes. ‘Any news?’

‘Yes,’ came the mournful reply, ‘and none of it good. I have just received a letter – delivered by chauffeur from Tenterden.’ Lucia’s tone of voice conveyed some surprise that anyone in Tenterden should run to a chauffeur.

‘Oh yes?’ Georgie said warily.

‘It’s from some wretched woman who claims to be the Lady Chairman of the fête committee there. She says the Padre has gone doolally, if you please, and meant to ask me to invite Noël Coward to open the fête. I can’t decide which I abhor more: her suggesting that the Padre is no longer compos mentis, or her believing that she can come crashing in and overturn arrangements which have already been made.’

‘Well,’ Georgie interjected diffidently. ‘I suppose it is her fête, after all.’