Au Reservoir (18 page)

He gaped soundlessly, and a distracted hand went scurrying around the tabletop in search of his cigarettes.

‘And once you have done this wonderful thing, Noël – and it is a wonderful thing you will be doing, I promise you – then you have my personal word that the car which drives you back to London will have nestling snugly in the boot as a personal “thank you” six bottles of the 1928 Petrus.’

So saying she snatched up her hat and bag and departed the scene of her victory. As she did so, the strains of Noël weakly saying ‘Cruel, so very cruel,’ wafted after her.

Georgie was by this time deeply ensconced in the intricacies of duplicate bridge with Lucia and a gentleman with the rather imposing name of Maurice Harrison-Grey, whom she had invited for lunch.

It all seemed very complicated the way he described it. There were Mitchell movements and Howell movements and Georgie really couldn’t understand which was preferable, and why. There were skip moves and hesitations, and pivots and arrow switches, and very soon his head was spinning as if in sympathy. Lucia, however, was listening intently and giving every appearance of comprehension.

If the way the boards and pairs moved around the room from table to table was complex enough, it seemed to pale into insignificance compared to the scoring. Rather than the good old rubber bridge scoring method of tricks scored being entered below the line, and overtricks and penalties above the line, a totally different method was employed. He asked about this rather weakly and was told quickly by Lucia, ‘Don’t be silly, Georgie, there is no line of course,’ after which he decided to sulk quietly on his side of the table and enjoy his veal Holstein, the veal having somehow magically slipped through the rationing system without recourse to meat vouchers.

It seemed that some elaborate triple process was involved, since points were converted into match points and these could in turn be converted into victory points, but only if one was playing in teams rather than pairs. What on earth did that mean?

‘Can’t a pair be a team?’ he enquired incautiously. ‘A team of two, anyway?’

Lucia cast him a withering glance.

‘Really,
caro mio
, do pay attention. A team is two pairs playing together against two other pairs and you score on the difference between the scores achieved on the two tables. I think it might do very well for some of our little local encounters here in dear old Tilling.’

‘It all does seem rather complicated at first,’ Harrison-Grey broke in sympathetically. ‘The best thing to do is get one or two members of your local club to attend a director’s course for a day or two. Then you’ll always have someone around who can tell everyone what to do.’

Lucia promptly whipped out her little notebook and pencil and started writing things down in her small and incredibly neat handwriting. Georgie sighed and sipped his Gewürztraminer. Perhaps it was the result of telepathy from having been her companion for so long, but he knew instinctively that what she was jotting down would be:

1. Form bridge club

2. Elect self President

3. Go on director’s course

The ‘4. Tell people what to do’ could safely be inferred, he thought.

‘Well, you seem to understand it all very well,’ Georgie marvelled. ‘Really, I don’t know how you do it.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Harrison-Grey said modestly. ‘You just sort of pick it up as you go along.’

‘You seem to forget, Georgie,’ Lucia chided him as she replaced her pencil and notebook in her handbag, ‘that Mr Harrison-Grey is the European bridge champion.’

‘That may be because you neglected to tell me,’ he said waspishly.

Lucia gave one of her tinkling laughs.

‘Dear me, I am justly scolded!’ she acknowledged. ‘Of course,
caro
, I had only just come in from my committee meeting, hadn’t I, when Mr Harrison-Grey arrived? A committee in the morning, a working lunch – if I may refer to it so without fear of offence? – and a meeting at the town hall this afternoon. Goodness, how you all work me so.’

‘I didn’t know you were going to the town hall today,’ Georgie observed, puzzled. ‘After all you’re not on the council any longer.’

‘Really, Georgie, one does not abdicate one’s civil responsibilities just because one leaves public office. Duty is not a mantle that can be lightly cast aside, that can be slipped off and on at will. Either one is a public servant or one is not. Elected office is as much a state of mind as anything else.’

She gazed grimly into the distance, wearing her Queen Elizabeth face, while her two lunch companions looked at each other in confusion, and then at the tablecloth. With obvious difficulty she drew herself out of her reverie of lofty good intentions and returned to the mundane, everyday world.

‘If you must know, though I was hoping to keep it a secret a little longer, I believe it would be a great coup for Tilling to host a duplicate bridge tournament, and the council chamber would make a magnificent setting for it, don’t you think?’

Georgie mentally kicked himself for not having thought to add ‘5. Hold bridge tournament’.

‘Oh, really?’ he said, trying to sound surprised.

‘Capital idea, if I may say so, Mrs Pillson,’ Harrison-Grey commented, nodding approvingly.

‘But do you think you’d get enough people?’ Georgie asked anxiously. ‘After all, there are only about a dozen bridge players in the whole town.’

‘We will invite applications from further afield, silly,’ Lucia said grandly. ‘I will place advertisements in the newspapers.’

‘You mean Brighton? Golly.’

Lucia frowned. As so often, her partner had failed to grasp the magnificent scope of her vision.

‘London, I think,’ she said decisively.

She rang the bell for the plates to be cleared away.

‘Now, then,’ she said rather dreamily, ‘if only I could think of something which would make it so overwhelmingly attractive and exciting that people would flock to it from all over the country …’

Georgie felt that she was gazing at him, albeit dreamily, and that he was expected to proffer some suggestion. He floundered, thinking desperately of other competitions which Lucia had sponsored.

‘A cup, perhaps?’ he asked desperately.

Lucia nodded sagely.

‘A sound suggestion, Georgie,’ she agreed. ‘I shall see about one immediately. But there is something else that is creeping around at the back of my mind … oh dear, it’s no use.’

Georgie stared across the table rather helplessly. If only she had arrived home a little earlier, he thought, and had time to brief him in advance. She inclined her head slightly towards their lunch guest and suddenly everything fell into place.

‘Oh,’ he said rather weakly, ‘why not invite some of the leading players in the country to come and compete? Why not Mr Harrison-Grey here, for example?’

There was a noticeable softening in the atmosphere, signifying that he had indeed struck the right target.

‘Why, Georgie,’ she said brightly, ‘what a wonderful idea.’

Georgie smiled contentedly as he helped himself and Harrison-Grey to the last of the wine.

‘And let us strike while the iron is hot,’ she continued briskly. ‘Let us issue our first invitation here and now. Mr Harrison-Grey, I do hope that you will honour us by attending?’

Harrison-Grey shifted uneasily.

‘My partner and I do attend tournaments, of course,’ he began, but then halted awkwardly.

Lucia frowned, but then her face cleared as realisation dawned.

‘But as professionals, of course,’ she said. ‘I do understand.’

‘Quite,’ Harrison-Grey said. ‘My usual terms –’

Lucia held up an imperious hand.

‘Pray do not let me embarrass you by being so vulgar as to discuss money at the lunch table. I will pay you and your partner double your usual attendance fee, and I will subscribe a cash prize in addition to the cup of one hundred pounds. Would that be acceptable?’

‘More than acceptable, dear lady,’ Harrison-Grey purred contentedly, savouring the last spicy remnants of his Gewürztraminer.

‘And I think,’ Lucia went on, ‘that we should make it a teams event, don’t you, Georgie? Teams of four. That way we can get all our friends here in Tilling used to the idea.’

‘Yes, if you think so,’ he said.

Looking at Lucia across the table, however, he could not help but feel a palpable sense of unfinished business. She had the look of a woman who knows that she has scored many notable victories, but is conscious that she is still on the brink of her crowning triumph. Troublingly, she seemed to be expecting him to provide her with an opening once again. Frantically he cast around, but found nothing.

‘Teams of four it shall be, then,’ she said, with a meaningfully intent focus on Georgie.

Had there been just the faintest of inflections on the word ‘four’, he wondered? Then he had it.

‘But Lucia,’ he asked innocently, ‘if we need a team of four to enter this tournament, who on earth shall we ask to play with us?’

Harrison-Grey gave a little bow from the seated position, which, had Mr Wyse been present, he would surely have applauded.

‘Should the suggestion prove acceptable,’ he said, ‘I would be delighted to offer the services of my partner and myself.’

‘Why, what a wonderful idea,’ Lucia exclaimed. ‘I would never have entertained that possibility for a moment. Let me accept with alacrity.’

Grosvenor entered the room with coffee and cream on a silver salver. Behind her came Foljambe with the cups and saucers.

‘If you please, sir,’ announced the latter as she bobbed, ‘Miss Bracely telephoned during lunch, and wonders if you can call her back when convenient?’

‘A
ny news?’ asked Diva hopefully.

‘Indeed there is,’ Elizabeth Mapp-Flint informed her grimly. ‘Mr Georgie, if you please, is going to open the fête at Tenterden. Not Lucia, mind. Georgie.’

‘No!’ Diva gasped dutifully, and then, ‘Are you sure?’

‘In the newspaper for all to see,’ Major Benjy cut in.

‘I didn’t see it,’ Diva said doubtfully.

‘That’s because you were looking at the
Tilling Gazette
, I assume, or one of the other Sussex papers,’ Mapp explained. ‘Don’t forget, Tenterden is in Kent. One of Benjy’s friends left the
Kent Messenger
lying around at the golf club, and he saw it there. Some nonsense about being proud to welcome a distinguished patron of the arts. Pah!’

‘But why should Georgie be opening a fête?’ Diva asked in a puzzled tone of voice as the Bartletts approached. ‘Doesn’t make sense. Not his sort of thing at all. Sure I heard him say once that he hated public speaking. Now, Lucia would be a different matter entirely. She opens things all the time.’

‘She’d open an envelope if she thought there might be a press cutting in it for her,’ Mapp said savagely. ‘Steady, Liz-girl,’ Major Benjy enjoined her, raising his hat to Evie Bartlett.

‘Any news?’ warbled the Padre.

‘News from Tenterden, Padre, yes,’ Mapp replied, eyeing him suspiciously. ‘Why, I’m surprised you should be asking us. After all, you are very much in the swim at Tenterden these days, are you not?’

She popped her head on eye side and stared at him in raptorial fashion. Fortunately the Reverend Bartlett had been subjected to such treatment before, and remained steady under fire.

‘Indeed?’ he asked innocently. ‘News about the fête, would it be?’

‘Mr Georgie to open it. Not Lucia. Very strange,’ telegraphed Diva.

Evie squeaked, though whether in surprise, confirmation or refutation it was difficult to tell.

‘Ah, is that the way of it, now?’ the Padre commented noncommittally.

‘It is indeed the way of it, Padre,’ Mapp said forcefully, ‘and what we’d like to know is why.’

‘I really could’nae say, I’m sure,’ he replied. ‘The last I heard, Mistress Campbell after a wee think had reinvited Mistress Pillson to officiate. Are you sure now that it’s not
Mistress
Pillson who’s agreed to do the honours?’

‘In the newspaper,’ flashed Diva. ‘Definitely Mr Georgie.’

‘Then I’m afeert I cannae enlighten ye, Mistress Mapp-Flint,’ the Padre said gravely.

Everybody stared at her. ‘Some trick of Lucia’s, obviously,’ Mapp stated robustly.

‘Well, it must be,’ she went on equally robustly. ‘First she avoids having to agree to ask Noël Coward because, as I’m sure we’re all aware, she doesn’t actually
know
the man at all, then she agrees to open the fête herself, then when her bluff is finally called she substitutes Mr Georgie.’

‘I’m no’ sure I follow,’ the Padre murmured in mild rebellion.

‘Why, don’t you see? She doesn’t want to have to go the fête and face us all, knowing that we had all been expecting her to produce Noël Coward and she wasn’t able to. So I expect she’s invented some other commitment to get out of even going to the thing.’

‘Can’t face us, eh?’ the Major commented, coming out in support. ‘Dare say you’re right, old girl.’

‘Well, of course I’m right,’ his wife continued indignantly, by now getting somewhat red in the face. ‘It’s just another one of her silly lies, only this time she’s been caught out.’

‘Well,’ Diva said dubiously, ‘there may well be a perfectly good reason why Georgie has agreed to open the fête, but if so then blowed if I know what it can be.’

Evie squeaked the suggestion that perhaps Mrs Pillson was expecting house guests that weekend, which led to a loud ‘Pah’ from Elizabeth Mapp-Flint.

‘Well, I’ve said all I’m going to say,’ the latter then stated firmly.

As if doubting her word, the others quickly took their leave and went about their perambulations.

‘No!’ exclaimed Georgie.

‘Yes!’ Olga replied in fine Tilling fashion, though she was in her living room in London.

‘But how an earth did you persuade him?’ Georgie asked. ‘He was so dead set against it, after all.’

‘It just so happened,’ Olga explained, ‘that I found myself in a position to provide him with the three things he wanted most in the whole world, well, for the time being anyway.’

‘Which were?’

‘Which were first a brilliant witticism about politicians, for which I happily tendered Lucia’s bon mot from the other night, and second a case of Noilly Prat.’