‘We won’t argue about it, dear, she said. ‘Have it all your own way.’
This suavity was most uncharacteristic of Elizabeth: was it a small piece of corroborative evidence?
‘Anyhow, I’m dreadfully sorry you’re in low water,’ said Diva. ‘Hope you’ll get a good let. Wish I could take Mallards myself.’
‘A little bigger than you’re accustomed to, dear,’ said Elizabeth with a touch of the old Eve. ‘I don’t think you’d be very comfortable in it. If I can’t get a long let, I shall have to shut it up and store my furniture, to avoid those monstrous rates, and take a teeny-weeny house somewhere else. For myself I don’t seem to mind at all, I shall be happy anywhere, but what really grieves me is that my Benjy must give up his dear garden-room. But as long as we’re together, what does it matter, and he’s so brave and tender about it … Good morning, Mr Georgie. I’ve news for you, which I hope you’ll think is bad news.’
Georgie had a momentary qualm that this was something sinister about Foljambe, who had been very cross lately: there was no pleasing her.
‘I don’t know why you should hope I should think it bad news,’ he said.
‘I shall tease you,’ said Elizabeth in a sprightly tone. ‘Guess! Somebody going away: that’s a hint.’
Georgie knew that if this meant Foljambe was going to leave, it was highly unlikely that she should have told Elizabeth and not him, but it gave him a fresh pang of apprehension.
‘Oh, it’s so tarsome to be teased,’ he said. ‘What is it?’
‘You’re going to lose your neighbours. Benjy and I have got to let Mallards for a long, long time.’
Georgie repressed a sigh of relief.
‘Oh, I am sorry: that is bad news,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Don’t know yet. Anywhere. A great wrench, but there’s so much to be thankful for. I must be getting home. My boyikins will scold me if I don’t rest before lunch.’
Somehow this combination of financial disaster and great expectations raised Elizabeth to a high position of respect and sympathy in the eyes of Tilling. Lucia, Evie and Diva were all childless, and though Susan Wyse had had a daughter by her first marriage, Isabel Poppit was now such a Yahoo, living permanently in an unplumbed shack among the sand-dunes, that she hardly counted as a human being at all. Even if she was one, she was born years before her mother had come to settle here, and thus was no Tillingite. In consequence Elizabeth became a perfect heroine; she was elderly (it was really remarkably appropriate that her name was Elizabeth) and now she was going to wipe the eye of all these childless ladies. Then again her financial straits roused commiseration: it was sad for her to turn out of the house she had lived in for so long and her Aunt Caroline before her. No doubt she had been very imprudent, and somehow the image presented itself of her and Benjy being caught like flies in the great web Lucia had been spinning, in the centre of which she sat, sucking gold out of the spoils entangled there. The image was not accurate, for Lucia had tried to shoo them out of her web, but the general impression remained, and it manifested itself in little acts of homage to Elizabeth at bridge-parties and social gatherings, in care being taken that she had a comfortable chair, that she was not sitting in draughts, in warm congratulations if she won her rubbers and in sympathy if she lost. She was helped first and largely at dinner, Susan Wyse constantly lent her the Royce for drives in the country, so that she could get plenty of fresh air without undue fatigue, and Evie Bartlett put a fat cushion in her place behind the choir at church. Already she had enjoyed precedence as a bride, but this new precedence quite outshone so conventional a piece of etiquette. Benjy partook of it too in a minor degree, for fatherhood was just as rare in the Tilling circle as motherhood. He could not look down on Georgie’s head, for Georgie was the taller, but he straddled before the fire with legs wide apart and looked down on the rest of him and on the entire persons of Mr Wyse and Padre. The former must have told his sister, the Contessa Faraglione, who from time to time visited him in Tilling, of the happy event impending, for she sent a message to Elizabeth of so delicate a nature, about her own first confinement, that Mr Wyse had been totally unable to deliver it himself, and entrusted it to his wife. The Contessa also sent Elizabeth a large jar of Italian honey, notable for its nutritious qualities. As for the Padre, he remembered with shame that he had suggested that a certain sentence should be omitted from Elizabeth’s marriage service, which she had insisted should be read, and he made himself familiar with the form for the Churching of Women.
But there were still some who doubted. Quaint Irene was one, in spite of her lewd observations to Georgie; in her coarse way she offered to lay odds that she would have a baby before Elizabeth. Lucia was another. But one morning Georgie, coming out of Mallards Cottage, had seen Dr Dobbie’s car standing at the door of Mallards, and he had positively run down to the High Street to disseminate this valuable piece of indirect evidence, and in particular to tell Lucia. But she was nowhere about, and, as it was a beautiful day, and he was less busy than usual, having finished his piece of petit point yesterday, he walked out to Grebe to confront her with it. Just now, being in the Office, she could not be disturbed, as Grosvenor decided that a casual morning call from an old friend could not rank as an urgency, and he sat down to wait for her in the drawing-room. It was impossible to play the piano, for the sound, even with the soft pedal down, would have penetrated into the Great Silence, but he found on the table a fat volume called Health in the Home, and saw at once that he could fill up his time very pleasantly with it. He read about shingles and decided that the author could never have come across as bad a case as his own: he was reassured that the slight cough which had troubled him lately was probably not incipient tuberculosis: he made a note of calomel, for he felt pretty sure that Foljambe’s moroseness was due to liver, and she might be induced to take a dose. Then he became entirely absorbed in a chapter about mothers. A woman, he read, often got mistaken ideas into her head: she would sometimes think that she was going to have a baby, but would refuse to see a doctor for fear of being told that she was not. Then, hearing Lucia’s step on the stairs, he hastily tried to replace the book on the table, but it slipped from his hand and lay open on the carpet, and there was not time to pick it up before Lucia entered. She said not a word, but sank down in a chair, closing her eyes.
‘My dear, you’re not ill, are you?’ said Georgie. Lucia kept her eyes shut.
‘What time is it?’ she asked in a hollow voice.
‘Getting on for eleven. You are all right, are you?’
Lucia spread out her arms as if measuring some large object.
‘Perfectly. But columns of figures, Georgie, and terrific decisions to make, and now reaction has come. I’ve been telephoning to London. I may be called up any moment. Divert my mind, while I relax. Any news?’
‘I came down on purpose to tell you,’ said Georgie, ‘and perhaps even you will be convinced now. Dr Dobbie’s car was waiting outside Mallards this morning.’
‘No!’ said Lucia, opening her eyes and becoming extremely brisk and judicial. ‘That does look more like business. But still I can’t say that I’m convinced. You see, finance makes one look at all possible sides of a situation. Consider. No doubt, it was the doctor’s car: I don’t dispute that. But Major Benjy may have had an upset. Elizabeth may have fallen downstairs, though I’m sure I hope she hasn’t. Her cook may have mumps. Lots of things. No, Georgie, if the putative baby was an Industrial share – I put it badly – I wouldn’t touch it.’
She pointed at the book on the floor.
‘I see what that book is,’ she said, ‘and I feel sure you’ve been reading about it. So have I. A rather interesting chapter about the delusions and fancies of middle-aged women lately married. Sometimes, so it said, they do not even believe themselves, but are only acting a kind of charade. Elizabeth must have had great fun, supposing she has been merely acting, getting her Benjy-boy and you and others to believe her, and being
made much of.’
Lucia cocked her head thinking she heard the telephone. But it was only a womanly fancy of her own.
‘Poor dear,’ she said. ‘I am afraid her desire to have a baby may have led her to deceive others and perhaps herself, and then of course she likes being petted and exalted and admired. You must all be very kind and oblivious when the day comes that she has to give it up. No more twilight sleep or wanting to buy dolls or having the old green skirt let out–Ah, there’s the telephone. Wait for me, will you, for I have something more to say.’
Lucia hurried out, and Georgie, after another glance at the medical book, applied his mind to the psychological aspect of the situation. Lucia had doubtless writhed under the growing ascendency of Elizabeth. She knew about the Contessa’s honey, she had seen how Elizabeth was cossetted and helped first and listened to with deference, however abject her utterance, and she could not have liked the secondary place which the sentiment of Tilling assigned to herself. She was a widow of fifty, and Elizabeth in virtue of her approaching motherhood, had really become of the next generation, whose future lies before them. Everyone had let Lucia pass into eclipse. Elizabeth was the great figure, and was the more heroic because she was obliged to let the ancestral home of her Aunt. Then there was the late election: it must have been bitter to Lucia to be at the bottom of the poll and obtain just the same number of votes as Elizabeth. All this explained her incredulity … Then once more her step sounded on the stairs.
‘All gone well?’ asked Georgie.
‘Molto bene. I convinced my broker that mine was the most likely view. Now about poor Elizabeth. You must all be kind to her, I was saying. There is, I am convinced, an awful anticlimax in front of her. We must help her past it. Then her monetary losses: I really am much distressed about them. But what can you expect when a woman with no financial experience goes wildly gambling in gold mines of which she knows nothing, and thinks she knows better than anybody? Asking for trouble. But I’ve made a plan, Georgie, which I think will pull her out of the dreadful hole in which she now finds herself. That house of hers, Mallards. Not a bad house. I am going to offer to take it off her hands altogether, to buy the freehold.’
‘I think she only wants to let it furnished for a year if she can,’ said Georgie, ‘otherwise she means to shut it up.’
‘Well, listen.’
Lucia ticked off her points with a finger of one hand on the fingers of the other.
‘Uno. Naturally I can’t lease it from her as it is, furnished with mangy tiger-skins, and hip-baths for chairs and Polynesian aprons on the walls and a piano that belonged to her grandmother. Impossible.’
‘Quite,’ said Georgie.
‘Due. The house wants a thorough doing-up from top to bottom. I suspect dry rot. Mice and mildewed wallpaper and dingy paint, I know. And the drains must be overhauled. I don’t suppose they’ve been looked at for centuries. I shall not dream of asking her to put it in order.’
‘That sounds very generous so far,’ said Georgie.
‘That is what it is intended to be. Tre. I will take over from her the freehold of Mallards and hand to her the freehold of Grebe with a cheque for two thousand pounds, for I understand that is what she has sunk in her reckless speculations. If she accepts, she will step into this house all in apple-pie order and leave me with one which it will really cost a little fortune to make habitable. But I think I ought to do it, Georgie. The law of kindness. Che pensate?’
Georgie knew that it had long been the dream of Lucia’s life to get Mallards for her own, but the transaction, stated in this manner, wore the aspect of the most disinterested philanthropy. She was evidently persuaded that it was, for she was so touched by the recital of her own generosity that the black bird-like brightness of her eyes was dimmed with moisture.
‘We are all here to help each other, Georgie,’ she continued, ‘and I consider it a Providential privilege to be able to give Elizabeth a hand out of this trouble. There is other trouble in front of her, when she realizes how she has been deceiving others, and, as I say, perhaps herself, and it will make it easier for her if she has no longer this money worry and the prospect of living in some miserable little house. Irene burst into tears when I told her what I was going to do. So emotional.’
Georgie did not cry, for this Providential privilege of helping others, even at so great an expense, would give Lucia just what she wanted most. That consideration dried up, at its source, any real tendency to tears.
‘Well, I think she ought to be very grateful to you,’ he said.
‘No, Georgie, I don’t expect that; Elizabeth may not appreciate the benevolence of my intentions, and I shall be the last to point it out. Now let us walk up to the town. The nature of Dr Dobbie’s visit to Mallards will probably be known by now and I have finished with my Office till the arrival of the evening post … Do you think she’ll take my offer?’
Marketing was over before they got up to the High Street, but Diva made a violent tattoo on her window, and threw it open.
‘All a wash-out about Dr Dobbie,’ she called out. ‘The cook scalded her hand, that’s all. Saw her just now. Lint and oiled silk.’
‘Oh, poor thing!’ said Lucia. ‘What did I tell you, Georgie?’
Lucia posted her philanthropic proposal to Elizabeth that very day. In consequence there was a most agitated breakfast duet at Mallards next morning.
‘So like her,’ cried Elizabeth, when she had read the letter to Benjy with scornful interpolations. ‘So very like her. But I know her well enough now to see her meannesses. She has always wanted my house and is taking a low advantage of my misfortunes to try to get it. But she shan’t have it. Never! I would sooner burn it down with my own hands.’
Elizabeth crumpled up the letter and threw it into the grate. She crashed her way into a piece of toast and resumed.
‘She’s an encroacher,’ she said, ‘and quite unscrupulous. I am more than ever convinced that she put the idea of those libellous dinner-bells into Irene’s head.’
Benjy was morose this morning.
‘Don’t see the connection at all,’ he said.
Elizabeth couldn’t bother to explain anything so obvious and went on.
‘I forgave her that for the sake of peace and quietness, and because I’m a Christian, but this is too much. Grebe indeed! Grab would be the best name for any house she lives in. A wretched villa liable to be swept away by floods, and you and me carried out to sea again on a kitchen-table. My answer is no, pass the butter.’
‘I should’t be too much in a hurry,’ said Benjy. ‘It’s two thousand pounds as well. Even if you got a year’s let for Mallards, you’d have to spend a pretty penny in doing it up. Any tenant would insist on that.’
‘The house is in perfect repair in every respect,’ said Elizabeth.
‘That might not be a tenant’s view. And you might not get a tenant at all.’
‘And the wicked insincerity of her letter,’ continued Elizabeth. ‘Saying she’s sorry I have to turn out of it. Sorry! It’s what she’s been lying in wait for. I have a good mind not to answer her at all.’
‘And I don’t see the point of that,’ said Benjy. ‘If you are determined not to take her offer, why not tell her so at once?’
‘You’re not very bright this morning, love,’ said Elizabeth, who had begun to think.
This spirited denunciation of Lucia’s schemings was in fact only a conventional prelude to reflection. Elizabeth went to see her cook; in revenge for Benjy’s want of indignation, she ordered him a filthy dinner, and finding that he had left the dining-room, fished Lucia’s unscrupulous letter out of the grate, slightly scorched, but happily legible, and read it through again. Then, though she had given him the garden-room for his private sitting-room, she entered, quite forgetting to knock and ask if she might come in, and established herself in her usual seat in the window, where she could observe the movements of society, in order to tune herself back to normal pitch. A lot was happening: S
usan’s great car got helplessly stuck, as it came out of Porpoise Street, for a furniture van was trying to enter the same street, and couldn’t back because there was another car behind it. The longed-for moment therefore had probably arrived, when Susan would have to go marketing on foot. Georgie went by in his Vandyck cape and a new suit (or perhaps dyed), but what was quaint Irene doing? She appeared to be sitting in the air in front of her house on a level with the first-storey windows. Field-glasses had to be brought to bear on this: they revealed that she was suspended in a hammock slung from her bedroom window and (clad in pyjamas) was painting the sill in squares of black and crimson. Susan got out of her car and waddled towards the High Street. Georgie stopped and talked to Irene who dropped a paint-brush loaded with crimson on that blue beret of his. All quite satisfactory.
Benjy went to his golf: he had not actually required much driving this morning, and Elizabeth was alone. She had lately started crocheting a little white woollen cap, and tried it on. It curved downwards too sharply, as if designed for a much smaller head than hers, and she pulled a few rows out, and began it again in a flatter arc. A fresh train of musing was set up, and she thought, with strong distaste, of the day when Tilling would begin to wonder whether anything was going to happen, and, subsequently, to know that it wasn’t. After all, she had never made any directly misleading statement: she had chosen (it was a free country) to talk about dolls and twilight sleep, and to let out her old green skirt, and Tilling had drawn its own conclusions. ‘That dreadful gossipy habit,’ she said to herself, ‘if there isn’t any news they invent it. And I know that they’ll blame me for their disappointment. (Again she looked out of the window: Susan’s motor had extricated itself, and was on its way to the High Street, and that was a disappointment too.) I must try to think of something to divert their minds when that time comes.’
Her stream of consciousness, eddying round in this depressing backwater, suddenly found an outlet into the main current, and she again read Lucia’s toasted letter. It was a very attractive offer; her mouth watered at the thought of two thousand pounds, and though she had expressed to Benjy in unmistakable terms her resolve to reject any proposal so impertinent and unscrupulous, or, perhaps, in a fervour of disdain, not to answer it at all, there was nothing to prevent her accepting it at once, if she chose. A woman in her condition was always apt to change her mind suddenly and violently. (No: that would not do, since she was not a woman in her condition.) And surely here was a very good opportunity of diverting Tilling’s attention. Lucia’s settling into Mallards and her own move to Grebe would be of the intensest interest to Tilling’s corporate mind, and that would be the time to abandon the role of coming motherhood. She would just give it up, just go shopping again with her usual briskness, just take in the green skirt and wear the enlarged woollen cap herself. She need make no explanations for she had said nothing that required them: Tilling, as usual, had done all the talking.