‘Say we borrow ten thousand pounds at three and a half,’ she said, ‘the interest on that will be three hundred and fifty pounds a year. We invest it, Georgie, – follow me closely here – at four and a half, and it brings us in four hundred and fifty pounds a year. A clear gain of one hundred pounds.’
‘That does seem brilliant,’ said Georgie. ‘But wait a moment. If you re-invest what you borrow, how do you pay for the work on your drains?’
Lucia’s face grew corrugated with thought.
‘I see what you’re driving at, Georgie,’ she said slowly. ‘Very acute of you. I must consider that further before I bring my scheme before the Finance Committee. But in my belief – of course this is strictly private – the work on the drains is not so very urgent. We might put it off for six months, and in the meantime reap our larger dividends. I’m sure there’s something to be done on those lines.’
Then with a view to investigating the lighting of the streets, she took Georgie out for walks after dinner on dark and even rainy evenings.
‘This corner now,’ she said as the rain poured down on her umbrella. ‘A most insufficient illumination. I should never forgive myself if some elderly person tripped up here in the dark and stunned himself. He might remain undiscovered for hours.’
‘Quite,’ said Georgie, ‘but this is very cold-catching. Let’s get home. No elderly person will come out on such a night. Madness.’
‘It is a little wet,’ said Lucia, who never caught cold. ‘I’ll go to look at that alley by Bumpus’s buildings another night, for there’s a memorandum on Town Development plans waiting for me, which I haven’t mastered. Something about residential zones and industrial zones, Georgie. I mustn’t permit a manufactory to be opened in a residential zone: for instance, I could never set up a brewery or a blacksmith’s forge in the garden at Mallards –’
‘Well, you don’t want to, do you?’ said Georgie.
‘The principle, dear, is the interesting thing. At first sight it looks rather like a curtailment of the liberty of the individual, but if you look, as I am learning to do, below the surface, you will perceive that a blacksmith’s forge in the middle of the lawn would detract from the tranquillity of adjoining residences. It would injure their amenities.’
Georgie plodded beside her, wishing Lucia was not so excruciatingly didactic, but trying between sneezes to be a good husband to the Mayor.
‘And mayn’t you reside in an industrial zone?’ he asked.
‘That I must look into. I should myself certainly permit a shoemaker to live above his shop. Then there’s the general business zone. I trust that Diva’s tea-rooms in the High Street are in order: it would be sad for her if I had to tell her to close them … Ah, our comfortable garden-room again! You were asking just now about residence in an industrial zone. I think I have some papers here which will tell you that. And there’s a coloured map of zones somewhere, green for industrial, blue for residential and yellow for general business, which would fascinate you. Where is it now?’
‘Don’t bother about it to-night,’ said Georgie. ‘I can easily wait till to-morrow. What about some music? There’s that Scarlatti duet.’
‘Ah, divino Scarlattino!’ said Lucia absently, as she turned over her papers. ‘Eureka! Here it is! No, that’s about slums, but also very interesting … What’s a “messuage”?’
‘Probably a misprint for message,’ said he. ‘Or massage.’
‘No, neither makes sense: I must put a query to that.’
Georgie sat down at the piano, and played a few fragments of remembered tunes. Lucia continued reading: it was rather difficult to understand, and the noise distracted her.
‘Delicious tunes,’ she said, ‘but would it be very selfish of me, dear, to ask you to stop while I’m tackling this? So important that I should have it at my fingers’ ends before the next meeting, and be able to explain it. Ah, I see … no, that’s green. Industrial. But in half an hour or so –’
Georgie closed the piano.
‘I think I shall go to bed,’ he said. ‘I may have caught cold.’
‘Ah, now I see,’ cried Lucia triumphantly. ‘You can reside in any zone. That is only fair: why should a chemist in the High Street be forced to live half a mile away? And very clearly put. I could not have expressed it better myself. Good night, dear. A few drops of camphor on a lump of sugar. Sleep well.’
The Mayoress was as zealous as the Mayor. She rang Lucia up at breakfast-time every morning, and wished to speak to her personally.
‘Anything I can do for you, dear Worship?’ she asked. ‘Always at your service, as I needn’t remind you.’
‘Nothing whatever, thanks,’ answered Lucia. ‘I’ve a Council meeting this afternoon –’
‘No points you’d like to talk over with me? Sure?’
‘Quite,’ said Lucia firmly.
‘There are one or two bits of things I should like to bring to your notice,’ said the baffled Elizabeth, ‘for of course you can’t keep in touch with everything. I’ll pop in at one for a few minutes and chance finding you disengaged. And a bit of news.’
Lucia went back to her congealed bacon.
‘She’s got quite a wrong notion of the duties of a Mayoress, Georgie,’ she said. ‘I wish she would understand that if I want her help I shall ask for it. She has nothing to do with my official duties, and as she’s not on the Town Council, she can’t dip her oar very deep.’
‘She’s hoping to run you,’ said Georgie. ‘She hopes to have her finger in every pie. She will if she can.’
‘I have got to be very tactful,’ said Lucia thoughtfully. ‘You see the only object of my making her Mayoress was to dope her malignant propensities, and if I deal with her too rigorously I should merely stimulate them … Ah, we must begin our regime of plain living. Let us go and do our marketing at once, and then I can study the agenda for this afternoon before Elizabeth arrives.’
Elizabeth had some assorted jobs for Worship to attend to. Worship ought to know that a car had come roaring down the hill into Tilling yesterday at so terrific a pace that she hadn’t time to see the number. A van and Susan’s Royce had caused a complete stoppage of traffic in the High Street; anyone with only a few minutes to spare to catch a train must have missed it. ‘And far worse was a dog that howled all last night outside the house next Grebe,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Couldn’t sleep a wink.’
‘But I can’t stop it,’ said Lucia.
‘No? I should have thought some threatening notice might be served on the owner. Or shall I write a letter to the Argus, which we both might sign. More weight. Or I would write a personal note to you which you might read to the Council. Whichever you like, Worship. You to choose.’
Lucia did not find any of these alternatives attractive, but made a business-like note of them all.
‘Most valuable suggestions,’ she said. ‘But I don’t feel that I could move officially about the dog. It might be a cat next, or a canary.’
Elizabeth was gazing out of the window with that kind, meditative smile which so often betokened some atrocious train of thought.
‘Just little efforts of mine, dear Worship, to enlarge your sphere of influence,’ she said. ‘Soon, perhaps, I may be able to support you more directly.’
Lucia felt a qualm of sickening apprehension.
‘That would be lovely,’ she said. ‘But how, dear Elizabeth, could you do more than you are doing?’
Elizabeth focused her kind smile on dear Worship’s face. A close up.
‘Guess, dear!’ she said.
‘Couldn’t,’ said Lucia.
‘Well, then, there’s a vacancy in the Borough Council, and I’m standing for it. Oh, if I got in! At hand to support you in all your Council meetings. You and me! Just think!’
Lucia made one desperate attempt to avert this appalling prospect, and began to gabble.
‘That would be wonderful,’ she said, ‘and how well I know that it’s your devotion to me that prompts you. How I val
ue that! But somehow it seems to me that your influence, your tremendous influence, would be lessened rather than the reverse, if you became just one out of my twelve Councillors. Your unique position as Mayoress would suffer. Tilling would think of you as one of a body. You, my right hand, would lose your independence. And then, unlikely, even impossible as it sounds, supposing you were not elected? A ruinous loss of prestige –’
Foljambe entered.
‘Lunch,’ she said, and left the door of the garden-room wide open.
Elizabeth sprang up with a shrill cry of astonishment.
‘No idea it was lunch-time,’ she cried. ‘How naughty of me not to have kept my eye on the clock, but time passed so quickly, as it always does, dear, when I’m talking to you. But you haven’t convinced me; far from it. I must fly; Benjy will call me a naughty girl for being so late.’
Lucia remembered that the era of plain living had begun. Hashed mutton and treacle pudding. Perhaps Elizabeth might go away if she knew that. On the other hand, Elizabeth had certainly come here at one o’clock in order to be asked to lunch, and it would be wiser to ask her.
‘Ring him up and say you’re lunching here,’ she decided. ‘Do.’
Elizabeth recollected that she had ordered hashed beef and marmalade pudding at home.
‘I consider that a command, dear Worship,’ she said. ‘May I use your telephone?’
All these afflictions strongly reacted on Georgie. Mutton and Mapp and incessant conversation about municipal affairs were making home far less comfortable than he had a right to expect. Then Lucia sprang another conscientious surprise on him, when she returned that afternoon positively invigorated by a long Council meeting.
‘I want to consult you, Georgie,’ she said. ‘Ever since the Hampshire Argus reported that I played bridge in Diva’s card-room, the whole question has been on my mind. I don’t think I ought to play for money.’
‘You can’t call threepence a hundred money,’ said Georgie.
‘It is not a large sum, but emphatically it is money. It’s the principle of the thing. A very sad case – all this is very private – has just come to my notice. Young Twistevant, the grocer’s son, has been backing horses, and is in debt with his last quarter’s rent unpaid. Lately married and a baby coming. All the result of gambling.’
‘I don’t see how the baby is the result of gambling,’ said Georgie. ‘Unless he bet he wouldn’t have one.’
Lucia gave the wintry smile that was reserved for jokes she didn’t care about.
‘I expressed myself badly,’ she said. ‘I only meant that his want of money, when he will need it more than ever, is the result of gambling. The principle is the same whether it’s threepence or a starving baby. And bridge surely, with its call both on prudence and enterprise, is a sufficiently good game to play for love: for love of bridge. Let us set an example. When we have our next bridge-party, let it be understood that there are no stakes.’
‘I don’t think you’ll get many bridge-parties if that’s understood,’ said Georgie. ‘Everyone will go seven no-trumps at once.’
‘Then they’ll be doubled,’ cried Lucia triumphantly.
‘And redoubled. It wouldn’t be any fun. Most monotonous. The dealer might as well pick up his hand and say seven no-trumps, doubled and redoubled, before he looked at it.’
‘I hope we take a more intelligent interest in the game than that,’ said Lucia. ‘The judgment in declaring, the skill in the play of the cards, the various systems so carefully thought out – surely we shan’t cease to practise them just because a few pence are no longer at stake? Indeed, I think we shall have far pleasanter games. They will be more tranquil, and on a loftier level. The question of even a few pence sometimes produces acrimony.’
‘I can’t agree,’ said Georgie. ‘Those acrimonies are the result of pleasant excitement. And what’s the use of keeping the score, and wondering if you dare finesse, if it leads to nothing? You might try playing for twopence a hundred instead of threepence –’
‘I must repeat that it’s the principle,’ interrupted Lucia. ‘I feel that in my position it ought to be known that though I play cards, which I regard as quite a reasonable relaxation, I no longer play for money. I feel sure we should find it just as exciting. Let us put it to the test. I will ask the Padre and Evie to dine and play to-morrow, and we’ll see how it goes.’
It didn’t go. Lucia made the depressing announcement during dinner, and a gloom fell on the party as they cut for partners. For brief bright moments one or other of them forgot that there was nothing to be gained by astuteness except the consciousness of having been clever, but then he (or she) remembered, and the gleam faded. Only Lucia remained keen and critical. She tried with agonized anxiety to recollect if there was another trump in and decided wrong.
‘Too stupid of me, Padre,’ she said. ‘I ought to have known. I should have drawn it, and then we made our contract. Quite inexcusable. Many apologies.’
‘Eh, it’s no matter; it’s no matter whatever,’ he said. ‘Just nothing at all.’
Then came the adding-up. Georgie had not kept the score and everyone accepted Lucia’s addition without a murmur. At half-past ten instead of eleven, it was agreed that it was wiser not to begin another rubber, and Georgie saw the languid guests to the door. He came back to find Lucia replaying the last hand.
‘You could have got another trick, dear,’ she said. ‘Look; you should have discarded instead of trumping. A most interesting manoeuvre. As to our test, I think they were both quite as keen as ever, and for myself I never had a more enjoyable game.’
The news of this depressing evening spread apace through Tilling, and a small party assembled next day at Diva’s for shilling teas and discussions.
‘I winna play for nowt,’ said the Padre. ‘Such a mirthless evening I never spent. And by no means a well-furnished table at dinner. An unusual parsimony.’
Elizabeth chimed in.
‘I got hashed mutton and treacle pudding for lunch a few days ago,’ she said. ‘Just what I should have had at home except that it was beef and marmalade.’
‘Perhaps you happened to look in a few minutes before unexpectedly,’ suggested Diva who was handing crumpets.
There was a nasty sort of innuendo about this.
‘I haven’t got any cream, dear,’ retorted Elizabeth. ‘Would you kindly –’
‘It’ll be an eighteen-penny tea then,’ Diva warned her, ‘though you’ll get potted meat sandwiches as well. Shall it be eighteen-pence?’
Elizabeth ignored the suggestion.
‘As for playing bridge for nothing,’ she resumed, ‘I won’t. I’ve never played it before, and I’m too old to learn now. Dear Worship, of course, may do as she likes, so long as she doesn’t do it with me.’
Diva finished her serving and sat down with her customers. Janet brought her cream and potted-meat sandwiches, for of course she could eat what she liked, without choosing between a shilling and an eighteen-penny tea.
‘Makes it all so awkward,’ she said. ‘If one of us gives a bridge-party, must the table at which Lucia plays do it for nothing?’
‘The other table, too, I expect,’ said Elizabeth bitterly, watching Diva pouring quantities of cream into her tea. ‘Worship mightn’t like to know that gambling was going on in her presence.’
‘That I won’t submit to,’ cried Evie. ‘I won’t, I won’t. She may be Mayor but she isn’t Mussolini.’
‘I see naught for it,’ said the Padre, ‘but not to ask her. I play my bridge for diversion and it doesna’ divert me to exert my mind over the cards and not a bawbee or the loss of it to show for all my trouble.’
Other customers came in; the room filled up and Diva had to get busy again. The office-boy from the Hampshire Argus and a friend had a good blow-out, and ate an entire pot of jam, which left little profit on their teas. On the other hand, Evie and the Padre and Elizabeth were so concerned about the bridge crisis that they hardly ate anything. Diva presented
them with their bills, and they each gave her a tip of twopence, which was quite decent for a shilling tea, but the office-boy and his friend, in the bliss of repletion, gave her threepence. Diva thanked them warmly.
Evie and the Padre continued the subject on the way home.
‘Such hard luck on Mr Georgie,’ she said. ‘He’s as bored as anybody with playing for love. I saw him yawn six times the other night and he never added up. I think I’ll ask him to a bridge-tea at Diva’s, just to see if he’ll come without Lucia. Diva would be glad to play with us afterwards, but it would never do to ask her to tea first.’
‘How’s that?’ asked the Padre.
‘Why she would be making a profit by being our guest. And how could we tip her for four teas, when she had had one of them herself? Very awkward for her.’
‘A’weel, then let her get her own tea,’ said the Padre, ‘though I don’t think she’s as delicate of feeling as all that. But ask the puir laddie by all means.’
Georgie was duly rung up and a slightly embarrassing moment followed. Evie thought she had said with sufficient emphasis ‘So pleased if you will come to Diva’s to-morrow for tea and bridge,’ but he asked her to hold on while he saw if Lucia was free. Then Evie had to explain it didn’t matter whether Lucia was free or not, and Georgie accepted.
‘I felt sure it would happen,’ he said to himself, ‘but I think I shan’t tell Lucia. Very likely she’ll be busy.’
Vain was the hope of man. As they were moderately enjoying their frugal lunch next day, Lucia congratulated herself on having a free afternoon.
‘Positively nothing to do,’ she said. ‘Not a committee to attend, nothing. Let us have one of our good walks, and pop in to have tea with Diva afterwards. I want to encourage her enterprise.’
‘A walk would be lovely,’ said Georgie, ‘but Evie asked me to have tea at Diva’s and play a rubber afterwards.’
‘I don’t remember her asking me,’ said Lucia. ‘Does she expect me?’