Lucia hired the Institute, and set about choosing her music. She would play a good deal of Chopin, and she and Georgie together would play a good deal more, as well as the Elgar and the madrigals and the Dowland. The Padre would sing some Scottish ballads, including ‘Will ye no come back again?’, and quaint Irene would, as a sop to the groundlings, do her celebrated Impression of Hitler eating an orange—the orange, of course, to be mimed; real oranges were still a painful topic. As a grand finale she (Lucia) would take the leading rôle in a most ambitious and symbolic tableau; attired as Boadicea and representing the Spirit of England, she would chase the Teutonic dragon (Irene in her Hitler outfit and Diva in the tail section of the Christmas mummers’ dragon) away from the South coast. This selection of delights would, she felt, not only give the troops a rousing send-off, but involve all Tilling except Elizabeth.
What with rehearsals and practising Chopin and limiting the Padre to only four ballads, at least two of which must be comprehensible to those unfamiliar with the Scottish dialect, and keeping Elizabeth from having anything to do with it, and encouraging Georgie to work out a rather complicated recipe for Stroganoff using almost none of the original ingredients, Lucia was kept very busy over the next few days. All Tilling buzzed with concert-fever. Diva spent hours in the dragon’s tail, getting accustomed to the almost total darkness inside the costume, Irene strutted up and down in front of the Wyses making violent gestures and spluttering (they were the only people with sufficient leisure to watch her rehearse, although they found the performance in highly doubtful taste), and anyone passing the Vicarage would have been startled by the bellowing of Caledonian folksong that issued from within. On the eve of the concert Lucia returned, tired but content, from a final rehearsal at Starling Cottage, to find a letter from Lord Tony. She opened it eagerly, only to find that he had managed to persuade Teddy Broome from the Ministry of Food to come to dinner and the concert, and to meet Georgie. In a postscript, written in haste, he also said that Olga Bracely, who was entertaining the troops in Hastings on the same day, had heard of the concert, and had expressed an earnest wish to be present, although sadly she could not be in time for dinner.
This, not unnaturally, caused Lucia a moment’s dismay. The presence of an important official from the Ministry of Food, come expressly to consult him about one-egg meringues and what not, combined with Olga, whom he undoubtedly still adored, might tend to make Georgie just a little above himself. Of course, she trusted him absolutely, but it was undeniably true that meeting Olga again always left him rather rebellious; and now that the officers were leaving she would have to find some other prestigious occupation for them both so that she might maintain her rightful position in Tilling. Olga alone she could have coped with by adhering to the two of them and hogging the conversation until Olga went away, but the man from the Ministry posed rather more serious problems.
Nevertheless, the triumph that she must surely enjoy with the concert would keep Elizabeth in check for the moment, and the preparations for that event continued to monopolise her thoughts. The Padre would insist on singing a very long and mournful ballad about an army of heroic Scots warriors who went away to fight the marauding Norsemen and who, despite many deeds of notable prowess and impeccable valour all round, did not come back. That, she felt, was not quite what she had in mind.
Stroganoff and lemon sorbet (magically created with but one small lemon) came forth from Mallards’ kitchen to astound and gratify the officers assembled around the Round Table of Lucia’s Camelot for the last time, and Teddy Broome, seated in the Siege Perilous on Lucia’s right, took but a small part in the sparkling conversation, for all his powers of concentration were devoted to the food. Try as he might he could not detect the substitutes and improvisations that he was assured had been employed in the Stroganoff and the sorbet. Once he lifted his solemn countenance and suggested ‘Powdered egg?’ in a hopeful voice, only to be informed that that deplorable substance had not entered into the process at all. Mystified and awash with imagination and sorbet he continued to munch and puzzle and analyse and wonder.
Then, when coffee (with an artificial cream of uncanny realism) had been hastily consumed, and when Lord Tony had thoughtfully suggested that a flask of coffee be taken out to Major Benjy, who might have had to miss his coffee again in order to take out the evening patrol, the assembled company departed, by Humber, on the short journey to the Institute. As it happened Major Benjy was indeed leading out his evening patrol from the Institute as they arrived, for the concert had forced them out of their cosy drill-hall into the cold night air. The Home Guard’s rustic salutes were returned with professional precision by the Regulars, and Lord Tony said ‘Qui-hi, Major Benjy’ under his breath, though not sufficiently quietly for it not to be heard by the whole platoon. Lucia laughed shrilly, exclaimed ‘Naughty Lord Tony,’ and waved gaily to the furious Commander of the Tilling troop.
There was not a vacant seat in the Institute, for it was filled with officers of every shape and size, age and rank. In the front row was Henry Porteous, sitting next to quaint Irene, who was wearing a duffel-coat to conceal her Hitler costume. There seemed to be a coolness between them that Lucia would have investigated fully at any other time .... And there was Olga, radiant and magnificent. Georgie blushed redder than the sunrise, and dropped his music. Gathering it hastily, he joined Lucia at the piano and prepared to turn the pages for her. There were, he noticed, a great many pages, and somehow the assembled officers struck him as being in not quite the mood for so much Chopin. When all was settled, Lucia seated herself at the piano, assumed her music face and began to play.
So deeply was her attention engaged in the glories (and difficulties) of the music that she did not at first notice the slight air of restlessness that followed the fifth piano solo. When her recital came to an end, the applause almost appeared to be as much relief as approval. When the Padre stepped on to the platform to sing his Scottish ballads in appropriate costume there were muffled cheers at the back of the hall, as if some uncultured minds were expecting a Harry Lauder routine. Their cheers turned to audible whispers as the Padre sang his first ballad (he had a loud voice, used mainly for plainsong). There seemed to be mounting speculation among the younger and less educated officers as to whether the turn was meant to be funny or not. Lucia’s lips were a thin white line as she played the first bars of ‘Scots, wha hae wi Wallace bled,’ but the whispers continued, and the clapping was surely somewhat slower than one heard at Covent Garden. With panic in his eyes the Padre turned and suggested that they should go straight on to the final ballad, and regrettably enough his rhetorical question ‘Will ye no come back again?’ was greeted by a few definite replies of ‘No!’
After he had resumed his seat, followed by a few (doubtless good-humoured) suggestions as to how he should extend his repertoire, Georgie joined Lucia at the piano for the duets.
‘I don’t think they like it,’ he whispered.
‘Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast, Georgie,’ she replied, but Georgie wasn’t too sure. At times, he thought, music had exactly the opposite effect, and this was one of them. Surely the officers wouldn’t throw things....
Lucia had determined to be entirely oblivious to the disturbances, but nonetheless the programme of madrigals was severely truncated, and Elgar wholly omitted. It seemed unlikely that the massed chivalry of Staffordshire would stand much more of Lucia’s rousing send-off. The next item on the agenda was Irene’s Hitler impersonation. She was dressed in knee-breeches, riding-boots and braces, her head topped by a cardboard cap and her upper lip daubed with boot-polish. Lucia shuddered slightly at the spectacle, but the audience roared with delight, and started demanding encores in advance, to get their orders in early, so to speak. When the storm of gesticulation and spluttering was over and the ovation had died away, Lucia rose to return to the piano. Chopin and Grieg .... Georgie, seized with a sudden concern for his wife’s safety, caught her arm and hissed ‘Play the National Anthem’ to her. As she hesitated, Lord Tony, who had been whispering with Olga, joined them and muttered something about Miss Bracely wanting to sing a few numbers, and could it be fitted in? Lucia was in two minds. She was unwilling to let dear Olga steal her show, but then, there was not much left of her show to steal. Besides, Olga was a professional and must by now be used to rowdies, while that world-famous voice might even save a situation rapidly becoming chaotic. Georgie joined in the discussion, declaring that he was willing to accompany Olga on the piano, and Lucia, glancing at the audience, assented. She too did not believe for a moment that British officers would throw things, but in case they did, the stains of over-ripe tomatoes would be easier to remove from Georgie’s shirt than from her evening-gown.
A decision having been reached, Lord Tony rose and announced a change in the programme. Miss Olga Bracely, the famous soprano, had consented to sing a few songs which would be familiar to them all .... Lucia felt a pang of anxiety at these words as, almost simultaneously, Georgie began to play the tune (if it could be described as such) of ‘Run, rabbit, run’.
And Olga sang.
Enormous, like a giant wave of the sea, was the applause that rocked the little hall. Never before had such applause, such clapping and cheering, been heard there, but never before had its roof re-echoed such a superb voice as that of the divine Olga. Like an alchemist who can make vile things precious she transmuted the vulgar melodies. Even ‘Roll out the barrel’, Lucia was forced to admit, seemed quite a jolly little tune when Olga sang it. Georgie, meanwhile, was playing as he had never played before, pounding the keys in an ecstasy of delight. Divine Mozartino it most certainly was not, but to accompany his Olga, even in ‘There’ll always be an England’ and ‘I’m going to get lit up when the lights go up in London’, amid all this tumult of devotion, was the purest happiness. His eyes flitted from one unfamiliar page to the next, and he clouted the piano like a blacksmith. Finally, with ‘Land of hope and glory’ (which evidently was the only piece of Elgar’s music that would be heard in Tilling that night) and a roaring crescendo of ‘Rule Britannia’, the concert came to an explosive end and Major Benjy, splashing along with his men through the puddles in the High Street, could hear the singing and the clapping in Malleson Street, and wondered how he was to break the news to Elizabeth that, in spite of all her predictions to the contrary, Lucia’s concert appeared to have been a great success.
Dazed and shattered by his transcendent emotions, Georgie came away from the piano-stool, his ears ringing with the approbation of the soldiers. Although no husband could be as devotedly loyal as he, he knew that but for Olga the concert would have been a hopeless failure, and that Olga had turned it into a triumph for which Lucia would take the credit. As it was, the audience held no grudges, and officers of every rank were thanking Lucia for a highly entertaining evening, some perjuring their immortal souls by saying how much they had enjoyed her piano-playing. Admittedly they were also congratulating him, so that his blush became ever more crimson, and they were worshipping Olga, who was autographing a sea of programmes.
She broke away from the throng and joined him. With her were Teddy Broome and Lord Tony, and at the back of them, although Georgie did not see her, Lucia.
‘Georgie, you were marvellous,’ said Olga, and he could find no words with which to reply. ‘I never knew you could play like that. It makes all the difference in the world to have a good accompaniment. I wish you could come and play for me on my tour. My usual accompanist isn’t a patch on you. He never puts any feeling into the music—I imagine he thinks it’s below his dignity to play popular songs.’
‘You see,’ said Lord Tony to Teddy Broome, ‘not only can he create Stroganoff out of sawdust and brown paper, but he has the common touch, he can communicate. You’ll have to sign him up now. He’s better than all your stuffy professors.
Teddy Broome nodded gravely, like a Prime Minister.
‘Indeed, Mr. Pillson, I haven’t yet had an opportunity to say how much I admired your skill and resourcefulness as a cook. I was deeply impressed.’
‘Georgie,’ cried Olga, ‘don’t tell me you can cook as well. You are a dark horse.’
‘Cook!’ exclaimed Lord Tony. ‘He can do more than cook. Why, he created a perfect lemon sorbet tonight out of one little lemon the size of a golf-ball. So Teddy’s going to sign him up to take part in a series of broadcasts he’s getting up on hints to housewives on “Making the Most of Your Ration-Book”.’
Georgie may have attempted to mumble a refusal, but it was not a very serious attempt. He was full of his own glory, and when Olga screamed ‘Oh Georgie, you must!’ at him, he said, ‘Yes, please,’ and turned from scarlet to mauve.
‘That’s settled, then,’ said Teddy Broome. ‘I’ll write to you in a couple of days with details. You’ll have to come up to London for a week or so.’
‘That’s all right, you can stay at my house,’ said Olga. ‘Brompton Square, Georgie, quite like old times. I won’t be there because I’m on tour still, but Foljambe can look after you and I don’t think you’ll be needing a cook.’
Poor Georgie! In his hour of triumph he thought only of himself, broadcasting on the wireless, staying at Olga’s house, doing his bit—more than his bit—towards the war-effort. He was useful at last after a half-century of being moderately ornamental, and the idea overwhelmed him. After all, as Lord Tony had said at dinner, designing a new vegetable pie for the Home Front was just as good as designing a new tank for the battlefront. And as for Lucia, well, she must make do without him for a while. For as long as he could remember he had supported her in her triumphs—now she must support him in his. It did not occur to him, of course, that with Grosvenor and the cook gone and Foljambe in London looking after him, Lucia would have to fend for herself, unless she could get a charwoman from the town. Oddly enough, this horrible thought did not occur to Lucia herself until the next morning. Her mind, up till then, had been far too busy with thoughts of betrayal and desertion.
Of course she had brought it on herself: She had overreached herself with the officers’ concert, and Nemesis had been quick to strike her down. Of course, she should have been the one to man the abandoned tiller of the kitchen, then she would be going to London to broadcast on the B.B.C. while Georgie stayed behind and polished his bibelots (would he take them with him to London? No, he would be afraid of dropping them). It was simply the penalty of laziness. She had made a mistake—two mistakes—and she must rectify the situation as best she could. She must be realistic; Georgie could not be stopped from going to London, and so she must be all for it. As for herself, she would be in the same situation, she felt, as the wives of the fighting men at the front, for her husband would be away serving his country in the kitchen and the broadcasting studio, if not in the field of battle. Obviously while he was away she could not dream of entertaining, or taking any part in the life of Tilling. Therefore she must have influenza (which with judicious management could be made to appear like pining for the departed) and do what she could to keep the house in order. Flight to the refuge of a hotel (even the Ambermere Arms in Riseholme) was not for her. That would be cowardice, and she was no coward. Besides, she could probably get a charwoman from the town through the agency, who might perhaps be persuaded with gold to do whatever was necessary to corned beef to make it edible, and as a last resort the tin-opener and the moderate stock of nutritious if simple provisions laid down in the cellar in case of emergencies (if this was not an emergency, what was?). Besides, she would have leisure enough to learn to cook herself, for if Georgie could do it so could she, and no doubt Mr. George Pillson, the radio expert, would be delighted to give her a few elementary lessons. The radio expert .... She had hardly considered the glow of reflected glory that must inevitably surround her as she waited, influenza-ridden, in Mallards for his return.
‘And to think,’ she reflected cheerfully, ‘that he’s been frittering away his time with gros point and watercolours when he’s really the Toscanini of the kitchen range! And if I learn to cook and can get a char to do the cleaning there’s no reason why I shouldn’t give tea parties, with Bridge to follow, and perhaps if Georgie’s broadcasts are in the afternoon we can all gather round the radio and listen. That would be fun.’
Georgie, whose conscience·was beginning to trouble him, eagerly agreed to introduce her to the freemasonry of the kitchen.
‘My dear, it couldn’t be simpler. So long as you follow the recipe you can’t go wrong. You just put all the things together and heat them up. You’ll be doing lobster à la Riseholme by the time I come back.’
So, armed with food and Cooking for Gentlefolks, they descended, like Dante and Vergil, into the kitchen, and Georgie, like the Roman poet, pointed out all the instruments of torture and described their dark purposes. That, he said, was a frying-pan; you put lard in it and it sizzled. That was a casserole; that was a baking-dish. These were the knives that you carved meat and vegetables with. This was a kettle, the source of boiling water without which tea could not be made.
‘Oh Georgie,’ she said, ‘I shall never get used to all these different pans. What’s this?’
‘It’s an omelette pan. You make omelettes in it, if you can get the eggs. And that’s a whisk for beating eggs and making batter and things. The flour’s kept in here, and this is for peeling potatoes. No, I’m not quite sure how you use it. Foljambe usually does that for me.’
Lucia proved a willing pupil, and after a day of concerted effort she produced her first cup of drinkable tea and her first slices of bread and butter that resembled food rather than masonry. The letter arrived from Teddy Broome with a week’s notice for Georgie; and another from Prince Andrei—his mother the Princess and his younger brother the Count would be passing through Tilling in two days time. Could she possibly spare them a few hours to make them welcome in the land of freedom? His mother had been particularly impressed, wrote the Prince, by his account of the miraculous Stroganoff that Georgie had cooked on the night of the wonderful concert, and had openly expressed her doubts that an Englishman could make a better Stroganoff than a Pole .... Would it be possible for Mr. Pillson to vindicate his judgment and taste in the eyes of his beloved mother? He added that she spoke very little English, and the Count not much more, but since both Mr. and Mrs. Pillson seemed perfectly at home in the Polish tongue this would of course present no difficulty. Lucia wrote at once to say that they would be only too honoured. She was determined to have at least one other gaudy lunch, very little English or no, although it might be as well not to invite anyone else to the lunch party. En famille. The thought of the last two Chopin duets having been learnt in vain had angered her more than almost anything.
In the greater world of Tilling, marketing and news-gathering continued ignorant of the turmoil of Mallards. Diva had quite got over the disappointment of not being the hindquarters of Hitler in the tableau; she had been in the back-room most of the time, only emerging when her curiosity had overcome her discretion during Olga’s singing, and therefore remained in ignorance of the less than entire success of the rest of the programme. Irene did nothing to correct her impression of overall triumph, merely stressing the excellent reception accorded to Hitler and the orange, so that for all that Diva knew the tableau had merely receded gracefully in favour of Olga’s offer to sing, after which even her performance as the dragon’s tail must have been an anti-climax.
‘“Run, rabbit, run.” Not quite my cup of tea, but certainly the stuff to give the troops,’ she admitted to the Padre, whose lips were as sealed as Irene’s, albeit from different motives. ‘Jolly good for morale, all that singing. I know they enjoyed your ballads. Tell me, was Irene really such a big hit, or does she go round calling you Harry Lauder out of sheer jealousy?’
Fortunately something distracted Diva’s attention before he was called upon to give a truthful answer to her question, and Tilling was left with the impression that Lucia had been entirely responsible for giving the officers such a splendid farewell. Elizabeth, maddened by the news of Georgie’s imminent fame, speculated endlessly that it had been otherwise, but there were too many witnesses and Irene (being loyal), Diva (being ignorant) and the Padre (being compromised) did nothing to confirm her suspicions. Meanwhile, all Tilling buzzed with excited anticipation, asking if a date had been set for Mr. Georgie’s broadcasts, what he would say, would he betray the secret of lobster à la Riseholme that only Lucia and Elizabeth knew, and which Elizabeth had gone to sea on a kitchen-table to obtain .... The sheer practicality of it astounded them, and aroused their jealous admiration. Diva, who had been compelled to close her tea-shop at the outbreak of war because she could not make head or tail of the endless official forms with which a concerned Government bombarded her, felt a certain reflected pride, for she could make pastry and pour tea. Nonetheless, Tilling shared Prince Andrei’s view that Georgie was Renaissance Man, equally at home with a palette or a skillet.
Elizabeth, for all her fury, was content to sit quietly and wait for the furore to die down. Her hour of glory was rapidly approaching, for now that Lucia’s officers had evaporated she would be the sole purveyor of military personnel to Tilling. Major Benjy represented the native product, so to speak, and her cousin Herbert the imported commodity. He would be arriving soon, and there must be widespread tea and Bridge to welcome him. Besides, Major Benjy’s troop of warriors was no longer followed about by hordes of ribald children, and she had written to the Red Cross, putting her name forward for a vacancy as its principal officer in Tilling. The post was largely honorary and, since there were no casualties yet, a sinecure anyway. She was eminently qualified for the job, for had she not taken a first-aid course in those first panic-stricken days of war and spent a number of seemingly wasted evenings bandaging the head of the draper’s wife in the pretty fiction that she had burns?
As for dear Lulu, she reckoned that with Georgie and Foljambe away and Grosvenor busy with her bombs at the factory, she would be reduced to eating grass and drinking rainwater unless the entire Mallards household had suddenly all become notable chefs. The thought of Lucia eating pilchards out of the tin with a fork, cold, gave Elizabeth a great deal of innocent amusement as she sat in the isolated splendour of Grebe and looked out over the unending marshes. Once, before that woman came out of Worcestershire like the Assyrian, before she had been ensnared by dear Lucia in reckless speculation and had lost so much money that she had been forced to sell her Mallards and retire to this desert spot like an Anatolian saint, she had had a garden-room to look out of from behind a curtain. She turned, choked with emotion, and listlessly counted her collection of Tilling china pigs, usually an infallible narcotic in time of stress. One of them was missing, however, and her vexation increased, for she found its poor decimated corpse under the desk. She opened a drawer to hide the ruins from her sight and found a half-empty whisky flask. A chain of consequence involving Major Benjy, the flask, an erratic whisky-induced movement, a smash of china and frantic efforts to hide the debris, sprang complete into her mind. She ground her teeth and sat down at the desk to write the invitations for the tea and Bridge party that would introduce her cousin Herbert. She paused and wondered whether it might not be advisable to have him to lunch on his own the first time, just in case he turned out to be less than the paragon of virtue that she imagined him to be, but she dismissed the notion at once. She was impatient to regain her rightful crown, which she had surrendered, along with her house, to that interloper.
Having completed the last invitation, she set off down the long road that entered the town via the picturesque old stone archway. She intended to deliver the invitations by hand (for it was sinful, in such difficult times, to waste money on stamps, and the post was so erratic) and perhaps drop a few tantalising hints as she went. Her first call was on Diva, who was sitting in her favourite position at the front window of Wasters, from which she could over look the High Street while getting on with whatever piece of needlework she was engaged in at the time. Just now she was trimming an old hat with the now familiar chintz roses.
‘Diva dear,’ called Elizabeth from the street, ‘may I just pop in for a moment? An invitation to meet my cousin.’
Although eager to receive the invitation, Diva was rather put out by the unexpected visitation. Chintz roses were no longer a surprise to anyone, but on a hat they might take on a new lease of life, and she hoped that Elizabeth would not be sarcastic about them. Just to make sure, she hid the hat behind a cushion. Unfortunately Elizabeth saw it at once and drew it forth.
‘Not another new hat already, dearest? No, it’s the old straw one and, of course, chintz roses! Your trademark. Now then, any news?’
‘Not really,’ replied Diva with a certain amount of reserve. Elizabeth’s condescending tone demanded a slight coolness, but too much could precipitate a quarrel, which would mean that she would have to decline the invitation to meet Elizabeth’s cousin. ‘Except that Lucia has got a Polish Princess and Count going to lunch with her tomorrow, but she can’t invite anyone else because they don’t speak English. I suppose that means that Lucia and Georgie can speak Polish, and they haven’t just been putting it on because they can’t speak Italian anymore. Fancy! And she’s learning to cook from Mr. Georgie. Lucia, I mean, not the Princess.’
‘No!’ exclaimed Elizabeth in mock awe. ‘Is there any limit to our dear Lucia’s talents? A linguist and a chef as well. I suppose they really are Polish, and not just any old people?’
‘Lucia showed me the letter,’ replied Diva. ‘She said it was to let me see how quaintly Prince Andrei wrote English, but I think it was documentary evidence to prove they were both real princesses and counts.’
‘Such a relief to know that dear Lulu won’t be entirely on her own now that the officers have gone, and Mr. Georgie about to go away as well. She will have the comfort of knowing that the aristocracy of half of Europe may drop by at any time and share a tin of sardines with her. Otherwise she should be quite on her own in that great big house. I remember how lonely I used to be there before my Benjy-boy and I were married.’
Nonsense, thought Diva, you were too busy spying on everyone from the garden-room to be lonely for a moment.
‘Don’t suppose she’ll have time to be lonely,’ replied Diva. ‘You know how busy she always is even though she’s not Mayor any more. She’s still chairman of the governors of the hospital, and now she’ll be cooking as well—she’ll be busier than ever.’
‘Yes, dear,’ said Elizabeth sweetly, ‘so brave to be embarking on something new at her time of life. Of course, we’re never too old to learn.’ (Elizabeth was believed by the charitably minded to be a year or two younger than Lucia and since, in fact, she was, their charity was rather superfluous.) ‘Nevertheless, it must be a dreadful worry to her, with Mallards to look after and no servants. I hope it doesn’t go to rack and ruin while Foljambe is away. A disagreeable woman I have always found, but no doubt very capable at her job. I should hate to think that I had parted with dear Aunt Caroline’s house only to see it crumble away before my very eyes.’
‘Really, Elizabeth,’ said Diva crossly (Elizabeth was being intolerable today) ‘compared to what it was like when you had it, it’s a different house altogether. Painted. Re-wired. Doors close properly.’
That was an unfortunate thing to say, for who could forget a certain cupboard door that had failed to close properly during a certain coal-strike? Diva thought of her invitation and tried to be more pleasant.
‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘I’m looking forward to meeting your cousin. Great respect for the Air Force. Bravemen. Admirable.’
‘I always think they are the cream of the armed forces,’ replied Elizabeth, ignoring the unfortunate reference to ill closing doors, ‘and with so much responsibility on their young shoulders. Major Benjy—so well informed on military matters—was saying only yesterday that unless we make sure of winning the war in the air, we cannot hope to win the war on the ground.’
In fact this piece of wisdom had been said by Mr. Churchill on the wireless, but Major Benjy had repeated it, if only to disagree violently with it, and so he might be supposed to have said it too.
‘Have you met him before? Herbert I mean,’ asked Diva, eagerly.
‘No alas, he is from a collateral branch of the family, the Lancashire branch you know. Dear Herbert is the grandson of my aunt Elizabeth, for whom I was named. So appropriate, don’t you think, that we should meet at last. I don’t know what he actually does in the Air Force—I expect he flies Hurricanes and shoots down lots of Germans. Or do you think his work is so secret that he is not at liberty to talk about it? Wouldn’t that be marvellous! And now I must press on and go and deliver the rest of these invitations. Such a long way back to Grebe, and I fear it may rain later on.’
Elizabeth did not stop and chat at the Vicarage for fear of the rain and of hearing more nice things about Lucia, but simply delivered the invitation and hastened away past beloved Mallards (poor Aunt Caroline!) towards Porpoise Street. She had been in two minds as to whether or not she should invite the Wyses, for Starling Cottage was still counted in the collective mind of Tilling as part of Italy. But the need to deprive Lucia of any potential allies, and the demands of the Bridge-table had decided her, for without the Wyses there would not be eight people, unless she invited Irene and the Curate. After all, they were not entirely ostracised, for she herself had been to dinner there only recently (although that particular dinner party was not one of her happiest memories). Even in wartime, it was Elizabeth’s principle always to think the best of people.