Au Reservoir (21 page)

‘Eh?’

He gazed at her warily. Coincidence, often extreme coincidence, was a common feature of his regular excuses as to why he was late home after a round of golf. What new fiendish stratagem was this, and to what nefarious aim might it be directed?

‘Oh, you remember,’ she reminded him. ‘What was it your commanding officer told you about being ambushed by the Pathans when you first joined the regiment?’

‘That there’s no such thing as coincidence,’ he said weightily, ‘only enemy action.’

‘There you are, then,’ she concluded with vicious satisfaction. ‘Enemy action. Somehow that woman got hold of my plan and managed to forestall me.’

‘But the other afternoon, you know,’ her husband said hurriedly, ‘old Wilkinson’s car really did run out of petrol. Silly blighter had run out of fuel vouchers. And I only stayed as long as I did in the bar because I was relying on him for a lift. You see, coincidences can happen.’

Elizabeth was staring grimly into the distance with her lips drawn slightly back across her teeth. She appeared not to be listening to him, so he tried again.

‘And that lady who was offering French lessons,’ he proffered. ‘That was a coincidence too.’

His wife relinquished her fantasy of offence being repaid by retribution.

‘What on earth are you talking about?’ she demanded.

‘That woman who was giving French lessons,’ he faltered.

Suddenly he was wondering if this had been such a sensible area to touch upon after all.

‘What about her?’

‘Well, she was giving French lessons, don’t you know.’

His wife gazed at him blankly.

‘So what was the coincidence?’

‘That she was giving French lessons.’

‘But you went there for French lessons, Benjy. I distinctly remember you telling me that you wanted to improve your French in case we went on holiday to France again.’

Major Benjamin Mapp-Flint was beginning to stare at his wife with a determinedly stupid expression on his face.

‘That’s right.’

Elizabeth once again began to employ her ‘Why do I have to have such a buffoon for a husband?’ tone of voice.

‘Let me just be quite sure that I’ve got this right, Benjy. You went there for French lessons?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘And when you arrived you found that she was giving French lessons and you did in fact have some French lessons?’

‘Quite.’

‘And you thought that to be a coincidence?’

‘At the time, yes,’ the Major relied airily. ‘But now that I come to think of it, Liz old girl, perhaps not such a good example of one after all, what?’

His wife stared at him very strangely. She seemed on the point of further enquiry. The Major rapidly prepared a line of possible responses. Fortunately these were not to be required after all, as something else obviously suddenly occurred to her.

‘
And
,’ she said viciously, ‘she has quite gratuitously cost me ten shillings.’

‘A
ny news?’ enquired the Mapp-Flints as they encountered Diva and Quaint Irene in the High Street.

‘Yes!’ Irene and Diva said together. Then Irene went on alone.

‘Haven’t you seen Lucia’s card in the window of Twemlow’s?’

‘Oh, about the coach you mean? Hardly “news”, quaint one,’ Mapp replied, lifting her nose ever so slightly higher in the air. ‘No, not that, though isn’t it just like her? So wonderful! So kind! So generous!’

The sight of Irene Coles, or anybody else for that matter, visibly hugging herself at the thought of how wonderful Lucia was, sadly deluded though such a belief might be, made Mapp feel quite nauseous, and she swallowed hard.

‘Other card,’ signalled Diva. ‘Not that one at all.’

Both Mapp-Flints looked puzzled.

‘Thou speakest in riddles, dear one,’ Mapp said.

‘Why, how can you have seen one but not the other?’ Irene wondered. ‘Surely the words “bridge tournament” must have simply leapt off the card at you?’

Elizabeth Mapp-Flint gave her husband a hard stare. Clearly they were going to exchange words on the subject of his powers of observation, but that would have to await a more private moment.

‘Bridge tournament?’ she mused. ‘Why surely that’s what we do when we get together once a week or so, isn’t it? Hardly merits a card in Twemlow’s at threepence a week.’

‘No, silly, a real tournament,’ Diva enlightened her. ‘In the town hall. People invited from all over the country. Cash prizes, a cup and everything.’

‘Now let me see,’ Mapp said, pinching the bridge of nose, ‘I wonder who is being so gracious as to put up cash prizes, and pay for a cup, not to mention the expense of promoting the event all over the country?’

‘Lucia, of course,’ Irene enthused. ‘Isn’t it just like her?’

Mapp had known this answer was coming, of course, but she pinched her nose yet harder in involuntary rage. She took a deep breath through her mouth and then released her fingers, leaving a bright red mark on each side of her nose.

‘Lady Bountiful, of course,’ she said, her rage getting the better of her. ‘How generous she is, and how grateful we all are.’

She sketched a deep curtsey towards Mallards, as Irene and Diva looked at each other uneasily. At times like this, Elizabeth Mapp-Flint was not shown at her best.

‘Well,’ she went on, affecting great unconcern. ‘I find that I can enjoy playing bridge quite well enough without the lure of cash prizes, so I shall be content to carry on playing at tea time with a few chosen friends. That’s the way we have always done things in Tilling and that’s the way things will carry on being done, despite the efforts of parvenus to introduce nasty new-fangled ideas. Bridge tournament indeed! Why, I’m only surprised that she hasn’t suggested a bridge club.’

‘She has,’ Irene said promptly.

‘A bridge club?’ Mapp said disbelievingly. ‘That’s the first I’ve heard of it.’

‘Should read Twemlow’s window a bit more thoroughly, Mapp,’ that hateful Irene hooted. ‘Application list open in the public library.’

‘Nobody will join,’ Mapp said at once. ‘It’ll be just like that time she first stood for the town council and nobody voted for her. She’ll just make herself look ridiculous.’

‘Nobody voted for you either,’ interjected Irene unhelpfully.

‘That is neither here nor there,’ Mapp swept on. ‘I say nobody will sign up and it will be just her and Georgie, and perhaps a few local tradesmen who don’t want to lose her business. Well, let’s see how she likes playing bridge with butchers and greengrocers while we all carry on as normal without her!’

She found this prospect greatly comforting, and her rage began to dissipate.

‘Well, we’ve just been to sign up, actually,’ Diva said awkwardly. ‘I mean, it all seems so much fun.’

‘So has most of the town from the look of things,’ Irene added, rubbing salt into the wound. ‘I saw the Wyses and the Bartletts, for a start.’

‘But how can you all be so foolish?’ Mapp cried, her rage rising again, and to new levels. ‘Can’t you see what she’s doing? This is just one more thing she can control!’

‘Well, it would be churlish not to elect her as the first President, or Chairman, or whatever, wouldn’t it?’ Diva asked. ‘After all it was her idea, and she is paying for everything.’

‘That woman,’ hissed Mapp, suddenly icy calm, ‘will not rest until she controls the entire world, you mark my words.’

‘You should have kept control of that coven of yours, Mapp,’ horrid Irene said, as she stuck her hands in her pockets and sauntered off. ‘I thought being chief witch really suited you.’

Diva looked embarrassed, as well she might, for she had been present as a committee member on that fateful day, and had voted to install Lucia as Mapp’s successor. This had resulted in a curt note announcing a permanent rupture of the ‘I think further correspondence between us would be superfluous’ variety which, in the best Tilling tradition of permanent ruptures, had lasted for at least three days.

As the three of them moved on along the High Street with their shopping baskets, they chanced upon Lucia and Georgie coming in the opposite direction.

‘
Elizabetha mia!
’ Lucia cried, with every appearance of enthusiasm, while Georgie and the Major raised their hats.

‘Dear worship,’ Elizabeth replied, ‘so you are come amongst us once more. What joy!’

‘I was not aware that I had been away, Elizabeth,’ Lucia said, with a quizzical glance at Diva as though she too might have noticed stray symptoms of senility in Elizabeth Mapp-Flint’s recent behaviour.

‘Perhaps not, dear one,’ Mapp responded, ‘but we haven’t seen each other for positively ages,
n’est ce pas
? Perhaps it’s just my bad fortune not to have been present at the same time as you go shopping.’

‘Quite possibly, dear,’ Lucia agreed.

‘Well, we have been busy,’ Georgie added, thinking that Lucia’s last remark, though perfectly apt, might bear a little softening.

‘So I hear,’ came Mapp’s rejoinder. ‘Fêtes, and coaches, and bridge tournaments, and opera houses – why, I really don’t know how you find the time, Lucia. You leave the rest of us feeling quite dizzy trying to keep up with you.’

It was a shame that Elizabeth Mapp-Flint had never learned how properly to deploy irony as a verbal tool, since this omission tended to rob her conversation of its intended wit and suggest instead a naked venom of a type often employed by middle-aged ladies of the terminally dissatisfied persuasion.

‘Talking of coaches, Elizabeth …’ the Major interjected.

‘Ah yes,’ Mapp said heavily, ‘Benjy is reminding me to ask if we may take advantage of your kind offer of a ride in your coach on Saturday.’

The other three looked at each other, since the request had been uttered in a tone of barely concealed anger for which there appeared to be no reasonable cause.

‘Delighted!’ Lucia answered. ‘Why I will go back to Mallards straightaway and put your names on the list. How thoughtful of you to ask, Elizabeth. We have had a very gratifying response already and it would have been dreadful to have had to leave such good friends disappointed. Why, if things go on like this, we might have to hire a second coach as well.’

This information did not seem to improve Mapp’s mood.

‘Talking of the bridge tournament,’ Diva said brightly, ‘I’m going to enter with Irene. How exciting! So looking forward to it.’

‘Excellent, Diva,’ Lucia said approvingly, ‘but you will need to be four players, not two.’

Diva looked blank, as indeed did the Mapp-Flints.

‘It’s a teams tournament, you see,’ Georgie explained eagerly. ‘Instead of playing as a pair, you play as two pairs, and you score points based on your combined results.’

Major Benjy still looked blank but across the faces of both Diva and Elizabeth flashed sudden comprehension followed by clear signs, to the experienced Tilling observer, of the equally sudden impact of a very good idea that must at all costs be hidden from one’s companions, old and dear friends though they might be.

‘Thank you so much for explaining that, dear Mr Georgie,’ Mapp said with the sickly smile which she was sure others found most endearing. ‘Goodness, so much innovation! But Benjy and I will of course enter. Such a noble venture requires everyone’s support, don’t you think? Come along, Benjy, let’s go to the library right now before Lucia’s list fills up so much that there isn’t even room to squeeze in our names. Au reservoir, everybody.’

With this she seized the Major by the arm and propelled him along the High Street as quickly as her somewhat bovine gait would permit.

Diva too gabbled an ‘Au reservoir’ and set off in pursuit.

‘Oi!’ she said loudly as she came up behind them. ‘I thought you said you were going to the library?’

This was a reasonable line of enquiry, since the Mapp-Flints were heading for the Church Square, while the library lay in the opposite direction.

‘Sorry, dear?’ Mapp said vaguely, affecting either not to hear or not to understand.

‘The library,’ said Diva. ‘Wrong way.’

‘Just have a few things to attend to first, dear,’ Mapp replied airily, quickening her pace.

This meant of course that Diva too had to quicken her pace, and the ensuing events caused something of a spectacle for those passers-by who witnessed it.

In order properly to appreciate its nature, it should be explained that the pavements of Tilling are narrow. This slight drawback is dealt with in good Tilling fashion by walking in the road, but this is an exercise which must be conducted with caution, since the streets of Tilling are cobbled, and sprained or even broken ankles not unknown.

Both Diva Plaistow and Elizabeth Mapp-Flint had achieved that mature roundness of figure which made sharing a pavement with anyone a near impossibility. This meant that in order to overtake her friend, Diva had to step out into the road. Since Major Mapp-Flint had already done so in chivalrous fashion to allow his wife full use of the pavement, this meant that Diva had to overtake not one obstacle but two. She was thus forced to veer right out into the middle of the road.

In fact this proved to be not quite so much a disadvantage as might at first be thought, since in the middle of the road she encountered a flat, uncobbled section which had presumably been intended for a horse to be able to pull a cart or carriage without the risk of incurring lameness on the cobbles. This largely nullified Elizabeth’s initial advantage.

However, in the time which it had taken Diva to gain this firm going in the centre of the track, Elizabeth had made considerable progress on the rails, and so Diva had to quicken her pace considerably in order to catch her up and, if possible, pass her. As Elizabeth was not wearing blinkers, she was able to spot this manoeuvre out of the corner of her eye and put in a spurt of her own to compensate.

Since the route from the High Street to the Church Square ran steeply uphill, Tilling was now treated to the sight of two of its better-known figures striding grimly uphill, both growing rapidly red in the face, and with their faces set in a rictus of distress as they sucked in the breath eagerly to struggle on. The Major, despite his best efforts, felt unable to match this unexpected turn of speed and soon fell back a length or so; it was clear that, in the absence of a steward’s enquiry, he would not be placed.