Tilling remained aloof for some weeks and Lucia came to feel that she was in the position of some savage chieftain Caractacus, say, or Cetewayo—who, after doing great damage to his enemies, is captured and made to live among them, a turbulent warrior dragging out his miserable existence with only the grudging respect of his ancient foe. As she walked down the High Street, she seemed to hear them say to each other, ‘There goes Lucia, who actually tried to put a stop to Bridge-playing in Tilling. And she very nearly succeeded, too!’
So long as Irene Coles remained in Tilling, Lucia was sure of at least one staunch ally. But the day came when even that fidus Achates departed. She called at Mallards at seven o’ clock one wet morning, clad in an enormous duffel-coat and smoking an oily black briar.
‘Alas!’ she declared dramatically. ‘We must part, dear Lucia. Duty calls and all that, though it breaks my heart to go!’ And she flung her arms around her acutely embarrassed friend.
‘Now you will take care,’ said Lucia solicitously.
Irene roared with laughter. ‘Don’t you worry about me. I’ll be all right. It’s you I’m worried about. How can I bring myself to leave you when Mapp is grinding you beneath her iron heel? Never mind, you’ll win through. Serenely, beautifully, triumphantly, you just mark my words.’
Lucia decided it would be best to move off this difficult subject. ‘And where will you be going? And who will you be going with?’
‘Sh!’ hissed Irene. ‘That’s a secret. But I’ll tell you. We’ll be taking coal to Manchester along the Ship Canal. There’s me and Lucy, of course, and Henry Porteous’s sister Antigone. We call her Tiggers,’ said Irene, in a voice heavy with gruff affection. ‘Oh, if only you would come too, and leave all this petty turmoil. The open waters, the nights beneath the brilliant stars, the tranquil progress through that majestic industrial landscape! I feel I shall do some of my best work with such inspiration all about me.’
Lucia shuddered. It all sounded perfectly horrible. ‘It all sounds perfectly delightful,’ she fluted, ‘but I am far too old and pampered to be of any use to you. But do have a simply wonderful time and paint hundreds and hundreds of beautiful pickies. Write to me and I’ll send you some warm socks and balaclava helmets.’
‘That’s so like your beautiful, generous nature,’ cried Irene, deeply affected. Then she embraced Lucia again, her eyes wet with tears. ‘And how dare that miserable old Mapp be so beastly to you! I’ve got a good mind to teach her a lesson before I go!’
And what she did was this. Rushing back to Taormina (for she still had a little while before her train arrived) she telephoned to Grebe. Putting on a deep, masculine voice (something which came easily to her), she asked for Mrs. Mapp-Flint. There was a short pause as Withers fetched Elizabeth from her dressing-room. Putting in her teeth, Elizabeth replied, ‘Yes?’
‘Mrs. Mapp-Flint?’ said Irene. ‘This is the Warden of the Tower of London speaking.’ Elizabeth at the other end of the line went white. ‘It has come to my attention,’ continued quaint Irene, ‘as official investigator of cases of infringement of protocol and general lèse majesté, that you recently bluffed your way into an official reception at Windsor Castle, masquerading as your distinguished fellow-citizen, Mrs. Pillson of Mallards House, Tilling. What is your explanation of such deplorable conduct?’
Elizabeth began to babble hysterically about wireless broadcasts and letters opened in error, about how some people jumped to the worst conclusions and how she had been, after all, a sort of ambassador ....
‘Come off it, Mapp,’ said Irene in her own sweet voice.
At the other end of the wire terror changed to fury. Quaint Irene put down the receiver and left to catch her train.
Elizabeth’s vengeance was swift and sure. Just as Major Benjy’s independent action had seemed to call for punishment against herself, now Irene’s interference, though no doubt unsolicited, must bring down retribution on Lucia’s head. Elizabeth set about placing Mallards under embargo. So pleasant had she been to her friends in Tilling, and so great was her reputation as the saviour of Bridge, that they accepted her lead unquestioningly, while magnifying Lucia’s brief spell of domination into a prolonged and barbarous tyranny. First, Elizabeth began to decline invitations to Mallards, whereupon her supporters followed her lead, supplying each other with the prior engagements necessary for this purpose. Then she removed Lucia’s name from her own guest-list, an example followed at once by everyone else, so that an unprecedented state of excommunication existed in Tilling, a terrifying precedent for the disloyal and a crushing blow for Lucia.
Georgie was not included in this internal exile, and, although at first he put up a show of solidarity, his flesh proved too weak. He had never proposed to abolish Bridge; why should he suffer? On the pretext of bringing Lucia all the news, he began to attend the social gatherings for which his heart yearned. There he was met with a display of sympathetic understanding as if all pitied him that he was bound in chains of matrimony to that monster. No one, at least in his presence, voiced any criticism of Lucia, for no one mentioned her at all. It was as if she had never existed.
After a fortnight of this unendurable torment, Lucia seemed quite broken in spirit. Elizabeth, determined not to err as Lucia had erred in failing to be at least moderately merciful to an overthrown opponent, then relaxed the blockade, so that Lucia was gradually readmitted to the social life of the town. This clemency was noted and approved of by Elizabeth’s partisans and her supremacy was now undisputed, as it had never been in the days before the advent of Lucia.
Lucia endured it bravely, but in her heart she was close to despair. She could see no way out of this snare in which she had so foolishly allowed herself to be caught, but nevertheless, she continued to live peacefully in retirement, as it were, playing the piano, reading Dante and Aristotle (and the austere calf-bindings of her excellent collection of standard authors gave no clue as to whether these works were in the original or a translation, so that it must be presumed that they were in the former), supervising the production of foodstuffs in her spacious garden, and devoting as much time as the authorities of that institution would permit her to the service of the Tilling hospital.
One evening, as she made her way home through the darkness from an afternoon of reading to the elderly and confused, she noticed a brilliant light, as if of flames, down by the marshes. For a moment, her heart stopped still; then she ran to the telephone box and called up the Institute. No reply; and she recalled that Major Benjy and all his troop were away at Hastings, taking part in a training exercise with the Regular Army. She then telephoned the police station; but tonight was the police-sponsored War Charities Dance and, so she guessed, charity began at home for the defenders of the law in Tilling. In the background she could hear piano-playing of doubtful quality and raucous singing, and the voice that answered her enquiry laughed noisily and suggested that she should go and investigate it herself. Finally, she telephoned Mr. Rice, the A.R.P. warden. Mr. Rice was not there, said his wife; he was out on his bike snooping about after his blessed lights again, and his dinner going cold on the table, and she didn’t know why she bothered, she really didn’t.
‘Typical!’ snorted Lucia, and she slammed down the instrument. She sought about her effects for some makeshift weapon, but all she could find was a cucumber, intended as a gift for the elderly and confused, but which had been politely refused on grounds of indigestibility. She wrapped her scarf around the vegetable so that it vaguely resembled some concealed firearm, and set off with a firm step towards the marches. Every shadow, in that uncertain twilight, seemed to hide the presence of an unseen assailant, every doorway and street-corner appeared to harbour some desperate enemy, but her blood was up; in some way she could not rationalise, she appeared to be hunting Elizabeth through the dark and treacherous town. Two or three times she stopped, convinced that the foe was upon her, and, making a clicking noise with her tongue and back teeth, she leveled the cucumber menacingly and rasped out: ‘Kommen Sie hier!’ But each time her suspicions proved unfounded and she pressed on, only too aware that she was doing a very brave thing and unable to help speculating as to exactly how brave she was being. She very much wanted to be brave, but she was highly unwilling to be foolhardy.
Indeed, it is extremely unlikely that even the fearless Lucia would have gone headlong into such danger had not the thought of the glory that must inevitably surround her been constantly in her thoughts. As she tiptoed through the gloom, her eyes fixed on the flickering light before her, she could almost hear the excited gabble of the High Street, Evie’s awestruck squeak, Diva’s respectfully hushed twittering, the Padre speaking plain English in his excitement, and, of course, the shamefaced stammering of Major Benjy, saying that Mrs. Pillson had done his duty for him, that Mrs. Pillson was worth the whole Home Guard put together; how he held himself entirely responsible for her tragic and premature death ....
As she came to the edge of the marches, she could distinctly see the cause of the fire. An aircraft had crashed nose-first into the ground, so that its tail was raised up towards the sky, silhouetted and darkened by the brilliance of the flames that played about it. It was a single-seater fighter, and although she could not identify it by its darkened tail, she imagined that it was a Messerschmitt, possibly a night-fighter that had lost its way over France and run out of fuel over the Sussex coast. As she speculated thus over the origins of the wreckage, she became aware of a human figure slumped in an attitude of resigned despair just outside the circle of flickering light. ·
Lucia dropped to her knees and crouched behind a small .undulation in the ground. From where she was she could see that he appeared to be unarmed; there was no holster at his side or weapon in his hand, although he was a large, powerful looking man, no doubt capable of snapping her neck like a pencil. He seemed entirely preoccupied, however, with the fate of his machine; perhaps he was actually grateful that, for him, the war was over. She had read that most Germans did not believe in the war, although one did not trust all that one read in the newspapers.
Like one of Major Benjy’s tigers, she crept forward, the cucumber thrust out in front of her, taking care to be absolutely quiet. Often she paused; still the airman remained motionless. She nerved herself for the moment of reckless courage; the flames seemed to hiss encouragements to her, the cinders glowed red—red as Elizabeth’s face would be when she learned what manner of woman it was that she had tormented ....
‘Hände hoch!’ she cried and made the clicking noise again. ‘Halt, oder ich schiesse!’
‘Schiessen Sie nicht! Ich bin waffenlos!’ wailed the airman with tragic resignation in his voice. He did not turn round but raised his arms slowly in the air.
Lucia had thought no further beyond this moment, for she had hardly dared hope that she would get this far. What was she to do now? What was the German for ‘On your feet!’? She racked her brain for some periphrasis, silently scanning in her mind the pages of opera libretti, for to such works was her knowledge of German confined. But alas! in neither The Magic Flute nor Parsifal, not even in the entire Nibelungs’ Ring does one character say to another ‘Get up slowly and no funny business.’ She made a wild guess.
‘Zu deinen Fuss!’ she snapped. ‘Schnell!’ The airman remained where he was. ‘So standen Sie aus?’ she suggested. ‘Bitte?’ she pleaded.
The airman turned round and looked at her, evidently mystified. She waved the cucumber threateningly and motioned him to rise. He did so.
She pointed to the town in the distance and said, ‘Eamus,’ before she remembered that that was not German but Latin.
‘Bene!’ replied the airman in the same tongue.
This, thought Lucia, is a stroke of luck, until she recollected that she still had no idea of how to say ‘Make a sudden move and I’ll blast you,’ even in Latin.
The little procession made its nervous way into the town, which was quiet and deserted. The airman, who had been silent all the way up from the marches, began to babble as he saw the town, so that Lucia was compelled to dig him in the back with the cucumber.
‘England!’ he cried. ‘Britannia!’
‘Mehercle!’ replied Lucia. There is no simple way of saying ‘yes’ in Latin. Doubtless, she thought bitterly, Algernon Wyse could think of a more elegant or idiomatic way of putting it, but then, Mr. Wyse would be hiding under his bed by this stage if he were in her shoes. Hah!
‘Cantium,’ said the airman. That was the ancient Roman name for Kent.
‘Non est Cantium,’ replied Lucia distractedly, ‘Est Sussex.’
The airman once again started to jabber in his barbaric tongue. It was most unlike the German of Lucia’s experience, but she (fortunately) had never claimed to be a German scholar. Her acquaintance with the filthy language had been made at Covent Garden and, for all she knew, the airman had a thick Bavarian brogue. She began to wonder whether anyone would ever appear to take this obnoxious person off her hands. But the town seemed to be entirely deserted and she was alone with her captive in the darkling streets.
‘Amicus sum,’ sobbed the airman in desperate tones. Lucia smiled grimly, for she had anticipated trouble. Fortunately they were at the top of Malleson Street. Surely the Home Guard must be returned by now, for it was quite dark, bringing with them every conceivable kind of lethal instrument to guard this miserable enemy. She directed her captive, who was pleading with all the eloquence of a Cicero that he was in no respect an enemy, down the street to the Institute. The blacked-out windows let out a few chinks of light and, oddly enough, there was a sound of singing.
‘Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest,’ sang Major Benjy, as she thrust open the door. ‘Yo ho ho and good Lord it’s Mrs. Pillson. What you doin’ roamin’ around this time ’o night? An hoozat with you?’
‘Major Mapp-Flint,’ said Lucia contemptuously, ‘I have captured a German airman.’ And she thrust the prisoner into the throng of bewildered tradesmen. Several of them tried to hide under the table.
‘By George!’ cried the Major. ‘It’s a Hun! Don’t fire till you see the blues of his eyes! All got blue eyes, these fiends,’ he explained.
‘There is no need to fire,’ shrieked Lucia, for she was standing directly behind him. ‘He is unarmed and the British do not shoot their prisoners.’
‘That’s true,’ reflected the Major. ‘Sergeant Hopkins, restrain the prisoner!’ The burly fishmonger clapped a hand on the airman’s shoulder and thrust him into a chair. ‘I shall telephone to Hastings at once,’ continued Major Benjy. ‘Prisoner. Damn Hun. Send an armoured car.’
After a somewhat confused conversation, the Major satisfied his interlocutor in Hastings that a prisoner was to be collected from Home Guard Headquarters, Tilling, and drew towards him a crate marked ‘Explosives’. Lucia, who had read of the punishments meted out to prisoners in the Indian Mutiny, cried out in alarm, but the Major drew forth a bottle of whisky and chuckled.
‘This calls for a li’l drink,’ he said.
Lucia snorted. ‘If I were you, Major Mapp-Flint, I should not impair my faculties with liquor while there is a dangerous prisoner to be guarded.’
‘Celebration,’ guffawed the Major. ‘Just a li’l drop to wet the prisoner’s head. Here, you guard him, you seem to be better at that sort of thing than the rest of us. By the way, where did you get that gun?’
‘Its not a gun,’ mumbled Lucia. ‘It’s a cucumber.’
‘That’s a good one,’ carolled the Major. ‘Resourceful, if you like! Captures a desperate fiend with a cucumber! Here, you’d better take my revolver.’
He drew the weapon and dropped it on the floor at the airman’s feet. Everyone froze in horror; everyone, that is, except Lucia. With the speed of a leopard, she struck the airman over the head with the cucumber, so that it disintegrated into fragments, while Hopkins retrieved the Major’s pistol and pointed it at the prisoner, who had not moved.
‘Nice work, Mrs. Pillson!’ exclaimed the fishmonger, with a world of respect in his voice. ‘We could do with you as Officer Commanding. Better than some I could mention, anyhow.’
Lucia’s face glowed with pride. Now there was a thought! She turned over this possibility in her mind during the silent half-hour that followed, until the roar of engines and the screech of brakes heralded the arrival of the Regular forces from Hastings.
A young man in Lieutenant’s uniform, flanked by two massive sergeants, burst through the door.
‘Right then,’ he said, ‘where’s this German airman of yours?’
‘There,’ growled the Major, ‘in that chair. Fiend!’
‘That,’ said the young man impatiently, ‘is an R.A.F. Flying Officer.’
‘He can’t be,’ gasped Lucia. ‘He speaks German. With a Bavarian accent.’
‘And who might you be?’
‘Emmeline Pillson. I captured him down by the marches. His aeroplane crashed there. A Messerschmitt.’
‘Well,’ drawled the Lieutenant, ‘you may be interested to know that you have captured a Wing Commander of the Polish Squadron, Royal Air Force, as you would no doubt have observed if you had taken the trouble to look at his insignia. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ he enquired of the bemused Pole. ‘Can you speak any English?’
The erstwhile German gazed at him despairingly.
‘Apparently not. Well drive him over to Hastings. There’s an interpreter there.’
The Lieutenant took the airman gently by the arm and ushered him towards the door.
‘Beats me how you could have taken him for a German. Doesn’t sound a bit like German, Polish. And what’s this slimy stuff all over the floor?’
‘Cucumber,’ piped up one of the Home Guard. ‘Mrs. Pillson hit him with a cucumber.’
‘Did she indeed?’ sighed the Lieutenant. ‘Poor chap must wonder whose side you lot are on. Lieutenant Flint, no doubt you will hear from your superior officer in the morning. Our time is not without value. In the meantime, might I suggest that you and your band of pirates go and guard that wrecked plane until someone arrives to take care of it? Good evening.’
He saluted precisely and slammed the door.
Major Benjy, it was rumoured, did indeed receive a reprimand from Headquarters; but it was understood that clemency was extended owing to factors beyond his, the Major’s, control, notably the outstanding stupidity of a certain civilian, Mrs. Pillson. Had she contacted the proper authorities instead of taking it upon herself to take action a great deal of embarrassment might have been spared all round. However, the Polish officer had decided not to press charges of assault, following Mrs. Pillson’s striking him with a cucumber, and so the matter was best left there.
‘The odd thing is,’ said Elizabeth to Diva, as they stood in line at the fishmongers, ‘she’s supposed to be perfectly fluent in Polish. Entertaining the Polish nobility to lunch every other week, hobnobbing with princesses and counts. I suppose Wing Commander Sobieski must have had a thick regional accent that rendered him incomprehensible to our dear friend, although, since he is related on his father’s side to the Polish Royal Family, I find it difficult to accept. Poor Lucia! Caught out yet again in one of her little deceptions. She does bring trouble on her own head.’
‘Another thing that strikes me as odd,’ mused Diva, ‘is Major Benjy not recognising an Air Force uniform like that. Strange.’
‘Poor Benjy! We are all fallible, are we not? But then, the exhaustion of the day’s manoeuvres, the exposure to the noises and fumes of the explosives’ (here she was closer to the truth than she knew) ‘and then to be confronted in a dimly lit hall with a hysterical woman and a foreigner. He never claimed to be a linguist.’
Diva had her doubts, and, as Elizabeth, by military prerogative, bore off the last of the skate, she speculated whether it was not so much the dimly lit hall as the brilliantly lit Major that had been at least partially to blame. Deep in her vacillating heart, she felt a twinge of sympathy for Lucia. It had been very brave of her, with only a cucumber, to confront an unknown airman on a dark marsh, even if the airman had turned out to be a Polish nobleman. Admittedly, she had lied about knowing Polish, but then, nobody had believed her, so it was not a particularly heinous lie. Lucia was a show-off and a fraud two-thirds of the time; she admitted this readily. But Elizabeth was the same for three-quarters of the time and so much more malicious. True, Lucia had tried to put a stop to Bridge, and as a true Tillingite Diva abhorred this. But, on the other hand, Elizabeth had tried to put a stop to Lucia, and had effectively succeeded. No true Tillingite could let such a thing happen; life would be so much less exciting without her.
She was roused from her reverie by Mr. Hopkins assertion that there was no more mackerel either.
‘I bet Major Flint doesn’t have to worry about where his next mackerel is coming from,’ she snapped. ‘All right then, it’ll have to be herring again.’
If only the balance could be restored, she reflected, as she scuttled back to Wasters to resume her position at her watching-window. If only we could get back to where we were, with neither of them completely dominating the other. Life would be so much more fun that way. As it is, she thought bitterly, we’ll have to put up with Elizabeth’s airs and graces for ever. And Mr. Georgie’s cooking is so delicious.
Fate paused, high above the straggling clouds, and in her hands she raised two sets of golden scales. In one were placed the destinies of Britain and Germany. In the other, slightly smaller, set were the fortunes of Elizabeth and Lucia. The golden instruments wobbled for an instant, and then fell decisively.
Now then, mused Fate, if only I could combine the two ....