For once there was no need for the ritual enquiry of ‘Any news?’ The Padre arranged for the passing bell to be sounded as soon as Georgie, into whose hand he had pressed an unaccustomed glass of brandy and forced him to drink it, had left him. Though deeply shocked, everyone knew to whom it must refer, and if any further confirmation was needed the flag on the town hall was lowered to half-mast a few minutes later.
As the bell sounded its first few strokes, Susan Wyse stared in horror at Algernon Wyse. ‘Oh no, dear God, oh no,’ she said, and buried her face in her hands. Her husband, who made it a rule never to be seen crying in public, strode quickly into the back garden where he was alone for some time. Later they both dressed in black, which sat oddly in the summer sunshine, and went to call on Georgie.
Tilling was a sombre place for many weeks. A civic funeral was held a few days after Lucia’s death, with the Mayor and the town council processing slowly through the streets, following the horse-drawn hearse with her coffin to its final resting place in the churchyard. At Mr Wyse’s suggestion, it was Elizabeth Mapp-Flint who, as Lucia’s former Lady Mayoress, took pride of place behind Georgie and Olga. She clung tightly to the arm of Major Benjy, who walked with sombre military bearing and wore his exotic Northwest Frontier campaign medals for the occasion.
Some months later Georgie, by now Sir George Pillson, and Olga arranged a memorial service, which was attended not only by Lucia’s old friends from Tilling and Riseholme but also by lots of smart people from London, including John Gielgud, who read the lesson. As they left the church, with Lucia’s organ playing an arrangement of the slow movement from Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, they stood outside while Georgie uncovered a simple yet elegant memorial stone.
Emmeline Pillson,
formerly Lucas
‘Lucia’
Wife of Sir George Pillson, Bart.
Mayor and Patroness of Tilling
A friend to all
There were no dates on the stone, which was Georgie’s idea. When asked about it in the months and years to come, he would smile and reply quietly that Lucia had been ageless.
Presiding over the memorial service was almost the Reverend Kenneth Bartlett’s last official duty in Tilling. Some weeks later he retired from the ministry and returned with Evie to his native Birmingham. It is not recorded whether his Scottish accent survived the encounter.
Georgie tried hard to carry on at Mallards as though nothing had happened but found it impossible. The memory of Lucia haunted the place and he kept waiting to hear her voice or listening for her to play the piano. For a while he kept the house open but went on long trips with Olga to her various performances around the world. Then he rented it out to various tenants, one of whom was a glamorous lady author whose books were made into films. Eventually, however, he donated it to the National Trust, under whose auspices it can be visited to this day.
He and Olga went to live in Capri, taking the servants with them. The Wyses, who were beginning to find the English winters too much to deal with and who already wintered in Capri, finally sold their house in Tilling and moved there permanently too.
Quaint Irene was of course by now already a senior and well-respected figure in the world of art, and continued to be eagerly courted by Mayfair galleries for the privilege of holding her annual exhibition. She sold Taormina, using some of her new-found wealth to buy the Wyses’s house, where she held summer schools annually for aspiring painters. So for a few weeks each year the streets of Tilling were full of Irene Coles look-alikes, with all her female students calling each other ‘sister’ or ‘comrade’, smoking pipes and adopting schoolboy haircuts and plus-fours.
Diva Plaistow died quietly in her armchair one spring morning. Her servant had long since been let go and it was Elizabeth Mapp-Flint who found her (Diva’s door of course left on the latch in the best Tilling tradition), having entered the house to complain about something or other. She left hurriedly, shrieking for Major Benjy, who then went in, took his hat off and came out again looking very grave.
The Major for his own part passed away more energetically, subsiding one day by the fairway of the sixteenth hole. He was brought into the clubhouse on a hurdle, whereupon his fellow members clustered around, raised a valedictory glass and agreed to suspend play for the rest of the day as a mark of respect. He left a faded tiger skin rug, an impressive collection of firearms and an equally impressive unpaid bar bill.
Elizabeth Mapp-Flint aged badly and quickly following the Major’s departure and spent her final months in a nursing home in Bournemouth, enjoying herself by being insufferably rude to the staff and fellow inmates. Her funeral was attended only by the proprietor of the nursing home and three fellow guests, who had to be bribed to do so by the promise of a knickerbocker glory at a cafe on the promenade on the way home.
Georgie and Olga ended up sharing a house in Capri, regularly wandering into town in the evening to sip negronis and observe the passegiata before dinner, with everyone making a great fuss of the famous diva and her gentleman companion whom the locals – who never really came to grips with the niceties of English titles – insisted on calling ‘milord’.
Olga gave up first opera and then lieder and so they came gradually to stop travelling around the world and instead spent their time entirely in Capri, playing bridge with the Wyses, performing Schubert together and reading three-day-old English newspapers brought by ferry from Naples.
Some years after moving to Capri, Georgie saw Lucia one last time, seated at her piano in The Hurst at Riseholme and looking young and beautiful as he always remembered her. A book of Mozart duets lay open and inviting on the music stand, as she beckoned him to join her on their double piano stool.
‘Lucia!’ he gasped in wonder. ‘Is it really you, my darling?’
She smiled that special smile of hers, the smile that could charm duchesses and light up a whole room, and held out her hand to him as he advanced towards her.
In the morning Cadman came running into the room when he heard Foljambe scream. He found Georgie lying on his stomach with a faint smile on his face and both arms stretched out before him, as though he had been reaching for something which would always lie just beyond his grasp.