Au Reservoir (29 page)

Major Benjamin Mapp-Flint, late of His Majesty’s Indian Army, was at this juncture deeply shocked to witness his wife, while stomping at his side, utter a most unladylike expression which happily was heard by nobody but himself.

‘H
ello, my dear,’ Olga hooted down the line. ‘Thought I’d give you a ring to hear your news as I’m going to be stuck up in town for a while yet. Wasn’t it the bridge tournament a few days back? I’m dying to know how it went.’

‘Oh, what news!’ said Georgie at once. ‘Such a commotion.’

‘No!’ Olga responded. ‘Do tell me everything, and don’t miss out on a single detail. I’m in the bath and the water won’t go cold for ages yet.’

Georgie wondered briefly whether it was socially acceptable to receive a telephone call from a bathing lady friend, but decided to be reckless and go ahead.

‘Well, we didn’t win but we came third,’ he said. ‘And that was rather good actually, because we ended up with about twenty teams.’

‘Goodness, third out of twenty, that
is
good.’

‘Yes, I thought so too,’ Georgie concurred, feeling rather pleased. ‘So we each got a jolly nice little miniature cup and we’ve put them on the mantelpiece, though I do wonder whether mine might belong more naturally in my bibelot cabinet. What do you think?’

‘I would leave Lucia’s on the mantelpiece and put yours in the bibelot cabinet. After all, anyone who sees the one in the drawing room will know that the two of you won it jointly anyway.’

‘Yes, that’s what I thought,’ Georgie said contentedly. ‘Good, I’m glad that’s settled. I’ll go and find exactly the right place for it later. And I thought I might embroider a special doily for the one on the mantelpiece.’

‘Do bridge trophies have doilies?’ asked Olga dubiously.

‘I’m really not sure. How tarsome.’

‘But tell me about the commotion,’ Olga urged him.

‘Well,’ said Georgie, ‘it was a very new experience for all of us of course. We only ever play about eight or nine hands and suddenly there we were playing twenty-four in the morning and another sixteen in the afternoon. Jolly tiring, I don’t mind telling you.’

‘Yes, it must have been but get to the gory bit, Georgie, there’s a dear.’

‘Well, I said it was a new experience,’ he replied, ‘and another thing we had no experience of at all was a tournament director.’

‘Golly,’ said Olga, ‘what are they?’

‘They’re sort of bridge policemen,’ he explained. ‘They work out the scores and tell you who to play against next, and at which table, but they also deal with any problems that arise.’

‘Go on.’

‘Well, first of all Elizabeth’s opponents called the director and said she was trying to explain to her partner what her bid meant.’

‘And I’m guessing that’s frowned upon?’

‘Not just frowned upon. It’s cheating.’

‘Goodness!’

‘Yes, well then she insisted that she had every right to put her partner right if he misunderstood her bid and of course the director said she wasn’t entitled to at all, and then she accused him of being a petty official who was clearly determined to ruin everybody’s day.’

‘Poor Elizabeth,’ Olga said gently. ‘If only she would bite her tongue once in a while.’

‘I really do think she’s getting worse. The slightest little thing seems to set her off now.’

‘So what happened next?’ Olga asked.

‘They gave her a procedural penalty, which means they deducted some points. Actually, I’m not sure it would have made much difference because they weren’t doing very well in that round anyway. The Major doubled a slam, which you really shouldn’t do in teams, and of course the other side made it, and then he and Mapp had a big shouting match about what she should have led. Everyone was looking at them.’

‘Was that the end of it?’

‘No, unfortunately it wasn’t. Later on she tried that trick of hers when she drops a card on the floor, and then pretends to discover later on that she’s one short and demand a re-deal. Well, of course the director explained that you couldn’t do that, and that when she failed to follow suit with the card on the floor, she’d revoked, and as she’d won a trick afterwards that was a two trick penalty.’

‘How did she react?’

‘Very badly, I’m afraid. She started remonstrating loudly with the director that she couldn’t possibly be expected to follow suit with a card which wasn’t in her hand, so they brought the rule book to show her, and she snatched it out of their hands and threw it across the room. So that got her another procedural penalty.’

‘Oh, really, drat the woman!’ Olga exclaimed. ‘I’m so sorry that she spoiled Lucia’s tournament.’

‘Well, I’m not sure that she did actually,’ Georgie said. ‘You see, everyone else from Tilling was on their best behaviour, and simply looked at each other knowingly whenever she started cheating, and Lucia had the most beatific smile on her face throughout. I think Mapp’s professionals were jolly annoyed, though. I spotted them talking to her very severely during the lunch interval. At least I think it must have been very severely, because she’d gone jolly red in the face, and the Major was just standing there stiffly.’

‘And where did they come, in the end?’ Olga asked curiously.

‘Last, I’m afraid. It wasn’t just Mapp’s fault. I think she and Major Benjy both got very tired in the afternoon session and started making some silly mistakes. Then there was one more incident when someone claimed she’d been rubbing her ring to tell the Major to lead diamonds – she does do that, you know – and of course she denied it, but you could tell the directors were suspicious, nonetheless. One of them was hovering by her table almost all the time after that.’

‘Oh, how rotten for everybody,’ Olga said. ‘Do give me some good news to cheer me up, Georgie. Oh, hang on, I’ve dropped the soap. I just need to feel around for it a moment.’

There was a pause, during which Georgie wondered if he should close his eyes. He gazed at the print of Botticelli’s Venus on the wall of the telephone room and then quickly looked away again.

‘OK, I’m back,’ came Olga’s voice. ‘I do hope there
is
some good news, is there? If not, I’ve got some for you.’

‘Oh, rather!’ he averred. ‘Who do you think won the cash prize for the non-professional team? Why, the Bartletts, Diva and Irene.’

‘Oh, now that is wonderful news,’ Olga said sincerely. ‘After all, we know Diva could do with the money, and so could the Padre. He must be getting close to retiring soon, isn’t he?’

‘Do you know, I really hadn’t thought about it,’ Georgie said, ‘but now you come to think about it I suppose he must. Poor old Padre, if he is then I’m sure he doesn’t really want to go. He loves Tilling just as much as any of us. I do hope that putting in a good word for him with the Bishop might have done him some good.’

‘Well, it can never do any harm,’ opined Olga. ‘Now then, do you want to hear my news?’

‘Yes please.’

‘Well then, are you sitting down? Your knighthood has been approved, a baronetcy actually. Congratulations, Sir George. It’ll be announced in an honours list in a few months’ time.’

‘Oh, well yes, thank you, but I already knew about that, actually,’ Georgie replied uncertainly.

‘Damn and blast,’ said Olga damply at the other end amid splashes, ‘I was hoping to be the one to break the news. Hang on, by the way, I’m just getting out of the bath, so I need to put the phone down for a minute.’

This time he kept his gaze firmly averted from Venus, staring fixedly instead at an etching of the divine Beethoven.

‘Hello, Georgie, you still there? Don’t worry. I’m quite decent now so you can open your eyes. I’ve got my dressing gown on.’

‘Well, really!’ he protested, and was rewarded by a cackle of laughter at the other end.

‘Now tell me, how did you know?’ she pressed him. ‘Norman Brook told me the letters hadn’t gone out yet from Downing Street. There’s been a hold-up apparently over some Air Commodore with a housemaid in the family way.’

‘David Webster told me, or at least showed me,’ he explained, ‘but that doesn’t matter, Olga, because there’s something I really need to talk to you about and I want you to be perfectly honest with me.’

‘I don’t think we’ve ever had any secrets between us, have we Georgie?’ Olga said in a different sort of voice altogether, and then added, which gave him that funny butterfly feeling again, ‘nor ever will, I hope.’

‘Well, alright then,’ he replied, trying to keep his voice steady. ‘Webster told me that you had refused a damery of your own, and I really need to know whether you sacrificed it as part of some sort of deal to get me my honour instead.’

‘Dear Georgie,’ she said tenderly. ‘If that had been required, I would have done it gladly, but I didn’t. I turned it down for the same reason that I did last time. I’m from the gutter. I told you that from the very beginning. I’m just an ordinary person with an extraordinary voice. That makes me a special person in some eyes – not my own, but other people’s. But I’m not, I’m just plain old Olga, and plain old Olga I will remain, thank you very much. Why, if I was Dame Olga then I might have to start being polite to people I don’t like, or not being able to spend so much time with someone I like very much indeed, and you know who that is, don’t you, Georgie?’

‘Oh,’ said Georgie, and then no more.

‘So the answer is no, Georgie. I wish it wasn’t, because it would have been wonderful to be able to make some real sacrifice for you, but I didn’t have to do a thing, except sweet-talk old Norman a bit. So let’s not have any foolishness about you turning it down, or anything like that. That is what you were going to say, isn’t it?’

‘Well yes, it was,’ Georgie admitted readily, ‘but now there’s no need, is there?’

‘None in the least,’ Olga said firmly, ‘and anyway, think how devastated Lucia would have been if you’d turned it down and then she’d found out at some stage. I don’t think she would have understood your fine motives for a moment, do you?’

‘No,’ he said with feeling, ‘she wouldn’t.’

‘Well, there you are then. Lucia gets to be Lady Pillson; she will be delighted, and in fact everyone will be delighted except poor old Elizabeth Mapp-Flint.’

‘Yes,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I do hope she’ll stop now. Wouldn’t it be lovely if everyone could just be friends?’

‘It’s not going to happen though, is it?’ Olga asked. ‘I think she’s too far gone. No matter what she does, she seems to have this knack of going too far and snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.’

‘Oh I say, that’s very good,’ Georgie said admiringly.

‘It’s not original,’ she told him. ‘I think Lincoln said it about one of his generals.’

‘Well, it’s still jolly good anyway.’

‘Do you think so? Then perhaps I should give it to Noël. After all, Johnnie always says that he can never have too many carefully prepared ad libs.

‘By the way,’ she went on as he laughed delightedly, ‘I’m taking my dressing gown off now to put some talcum powder on, just in case you want to look the other way again.’

‘Oh really!’ Georgie protested weakly. He had to admit, though, that it did make one feel awfully like a Parisian man about town to be sitting there quite calmly talking to a naked lady.

‘My dear, just before I go, there is something which I need to impress upon you and that is the need for absolute secrecy, even after you get the letter and reply to it. It’s seen as appallingly bad form to let anything slip before the honours list is published and it’s rumoured that some people have even been deleted in consequence and never got their honours after all. So please do be very, very careful, my love, won’t you?’

‘I think I understand what you’re getting at,’ he said hesitantly.

‘How clever of you. Yes, if I were you I would tell Lucia nothing at all, absolutely nothing. Let her find out when she sees the list published in
The Times
.’

‘It shall be exactly as you say,’ he said. ‘Oh, by the way, did you know that you get to design your own coat of arms?’

‘I hate to disappoint you,’ she answered, ‘but if that old battleaxe Lady Ambermere was your aunt or cousin or whatever, then you’ll probably find that you have a coat of arms already and just don’t know it.

‘But,’ she went on quickly, sensing his disappointment, ‘it will still be enormous fun, won’t it? Just think of all the things you could embroider it into.’

‘Yes, quite,’ he said happily.

‘Must go now. I’m about to start painting my toenails and I really don’t think you’ll want to watch that. Au reservoir, Georgie.’

‘Au reservoir,’ he answered, feeling strangely alone and deserted as he heard the phone click at her end.

He replaced the handset and wandered into the drawing room.

‘That was a very long phone call,
caro mio
,’ Lucia enquired mildly. ‘Olga, I suppose?’

‘Yes,’ he said, sitting down and picking up his glasses and his embroidery. Then, in what he hoped was a very sophisticated sort of way, he said, ‘She was in the bath.’

‘I
was telling Olga about the tournament and all that trouble with the Mapp-Flints,’ Georgie said over dinner that night.

‘Yes, I had a letter from the bridge authorities this morning,’ Lucia informed him. ‘Based on the report of the directors they are asking the opinion of the Chairman of the Tilling Bridge Club as to whether the Mapp-Flints should be banned from all competitions and, if so, for how many years. I haven’t decided what to reply yet.’

‘But there isn’t a Tilling Bridge Club, is there? I mean, not yet anyway,’ Georgie pointed out. ‘And even if there is, it certainly doesn’t have a Chairman.’

‘I think that’s a bit of a grey area, isn’t it, dear?’ said she innocently. ‘After all, the club must have been in existence in order to hold the tournament as an affiliated event, so the fact that we hadn’t got around to holding its first meeting doesn’t really matter, surely?’

‘But even if you’re right about that, if the club has never held a meeting, then it can’t have appointed a Chairman, can it?’

He finished his soufflé and sipped his Chablis with the air of a King’s Counsel having just argued a particularly strong point in front of the Court of Appeal.