Lucia in Wartime Read online

  Lucia in Wartime

  by

  Tom Holt

  Based on the characters

  created by E.F. Benson

  Published by Coffeetown Press

  PO Box 70515

  Seattle, WA 98127

  For more information go to: www.coffeetownpress.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Cover Illustration by Marie Michal

  Cover design by Sabrina Sun

  Lucia in Wartime

  Copyright © 2012 by Tom Holt

  ISBN: 978-1-60381-129-3 (Trade Paper)

  ISBN: 978-1-60381-130-9 (eBook)

  Produced in the United States of America

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to coffeetownpress.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  * * * * * *

  Dedicated to

  Edward Frederick Benson

  1867-1940

  ‘Servant of God—Brave Sufferer—Author—Three Times Mayor of Rye’

  Originally published in England by Macmillan London Ltd., 1985.

  The author acknowledges with gratitude the permission kindly granted by the Estate of K.S.P. McDowell to base this novel on the characters created by E.F. Benson.

  The map of Tilling is adapted from E.F. Benson: Mr. Benson Remembered in Rye, and the World of Tilling, by Cynthia and Tony Reavell (published by Martello Bookshop, Rye), and is reproduced by kind permission of the authors.

  First PERENNIAL LIBRARY edition published 1986.

  Acknowledgments

  My thanks are due to:

  -Robert Smith, for help and encouragement;

  -Sylvia James, who typed out the (almost illegible) manuscript;

  -My mother, who first introduced me to Lucia.

  * * * * * *

  Chapter 1

  It might have been supposed that the outbreak of war would have broken the spirit of Mrs. Emmeline Pillson, formerly Lucas, née Smythe, always Lucia, three times Mayor of Tilling. Nothing could be further from the truth. Had not Lucia been forced on many occasions to fight desperate battles to retain her rightful position as Queen of Tilling society against the awesome figure of Elizabeth App-Flint? Had not her little realm on so many occasions been overrun, as Hitler had overrun the Sudetenland, and had she not always risen phoenix-like from the ashes of her supposed defeat and triumphantly driven the pretender and the infidel in full flight? Hitler, be he never so formidable, could scarcely be as savage, as unprincipled an opponent as dear Elizabeth (three times Mayoress of Tilling).

  The enemy had, of course, started with many advantages. Given the international situation, Italian—which it had never been conclusively proved that Lucia could not speak fluently—was banished from the dinner-tables and Bridge parties of Tilling. Mozart—celestial Mozartino!—was a German, as was Immortal Beethoven, and the transcendent beauty of the slow movement of the Moonlight Sonata was almost forgotten in the garden-room at Mallards. This unexpected treason on the part of her most trusted allies had left Lucia momentarily at a disadvantage; but her unquenchable spirit was only scotched, not slain. Where Mozart and Beethoven had reigned, there would be Elgar, Rowland and Purcell. Instead of Italian she would punctuate her conversation with ...

  Certainly the outbreak of war had upset the social order of Tilling. The Wyses, linked by marriage with the Italian aristocracy, were little better than uninterned aliens. But Major Benjamin App-Flint, the town’s only resident warrior, enjoyed an esteem even greater than had been his when, on one never to be forgotten occasion, he had briefly (and erroneously) been clothed in the glamour of the desperate duellist. The fact that both participants in this affair of honor had sought to escape to London by the early morning train and had converted their rencontre into a round of golf in no way diminished the antique splendour of the incident. His opinions on strategy and tactics were eagerly solicited at every Bridge party and the somewhat vague and enigmatic manner in which his oracles from the shrine of Mars were delivered only served to augment his reputation. Also, when he carried his wife’s shopping basket in the High Street, there was the slightest trace of a limp attributable, no doubt, to a war wound, although in which leg it was not quite certain.

  It was this aspect of her husband’s many-faceted character that engaged Elizabeth App-Flint as she addressed her patriotically frugal breakfast of toast and home-made plum jam one morning at Grebe, their house near the marshes outside Tilling.

  ‘Such a pity, dear,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘that the foolish War Office cannot find some use for such an experienced and illustrious soldier as yourself.’

  A letter had arrived yesterday from that criminally short-sighted body, thanking the Major for his public-spirited offer to take charge of his old command but evincing a rather naïve belief that Hitler could be crushed without him. This had not completely exasperated the indomitable old soldier; his military career, although spanning some twenty-five years, had been mercifully free of any involvement in actual conflict.

  ‘Yes, girlie, I know,’ he said, shaking his head sadly, ‘always were damn fools in Whitehall. Couldn’t recognize a good man then, can’t recognize one now. Still, that’s that, eh?’

  ‘That most certainly is not that. I simply won’t have your talents going to waste at this crucial point in our nation’s history. Why, it’s as bad as burning food, or pouring petroleum into the sea. We must find some other work for you—air-raid warden perhaps, or training such able-bodied men as are still here in the town into a proper Home Guard, capable of offering resistance in the event of an invasion. Or watching for German aircraft or parachutists.’

  The Major had not thought of that. Of course his duty to his country must come first, and ever since the sand-dunes on which he had been accustomed to play golf had been draped in barbed-wire and signboards warning the public not to proceed beyond this point he had had to spend more time under the eye of his dear wife than he would have chosen himself. Watching for enemy barges, however, perhaps in the company of another golf-playing patriot, would surely entitle him to access the forbidden zone; and there was that spartan but nonetheless inviting little public-house opposite the tram-stop, where an old soldier had been wont to fortify himself against the delights of domestic life. But training—attempting to train—the farm-labourers and chemists’ boys of Tilling to hurl the Hun back into the sea—that was a different kettle of fish altogether.

  ‘Air-raid warden?’ he said hopefully. ‘Surely a younger man?’

  ‘No, Benjy, such a responsible duty calls for a man of authority, a man respected in the community. Can you imagine dear Mr. Georgie, in his cape, strutting round Tilling bawling “Do put that tar’some light out!” or some such thing? Or Mr. Wyse perhaps? Or the Padre? Why, no one would understand him, for he would be sure to shout in Scotch! No, Benjy-boy, you are the only man in Tilling who would be up to the task. I wonder what is the proper authority to apply to.’

  Benjy scowled at the teapot, which these days tended to supply a particularly anaemic fluid. The national emergency had enabled Elizabeth to ascend new pinnacles of frugality.

  ‘I suppose you’ll want me to hang about in all weathers outside Mallards, in case Lucia—I mean Mrs. Pills
on—happens to break the black-out regulations. ’Pon my word, girlie, I don’t think a matter of vital importance should be entrusted to an old man already worn out in his country’s service. I would have thought Twistevant’s young lad—he’s got fat feet, you know—or one of Twemlow’s boys ....’

  ‘The defence of Britain is not to be left to tradesmen,’ said Elizabeth grandly, surprising herself almost as much as her husband. ‘Besides, if you don’t do it, that woman will get herself involved in it somehow. You mark my words.’

  Elizabeth took a savage bite of her thin toast. The defence of Britain was under no circumstances to be left to Lucia.

  Strangely enough the same national issues were engaging the mind of the Pillsons in Mallards.

  ‘Mark my words, Georgie, she’ll try and get that husband of hers involved in some important war-work, and that I could not allow. I feel a deep responsibility for our little town, having carried out its most onerous public duties for three consecutive years. And what would Major Benjy do to further our security? Challenge Hitler to a duel on the sand-dunes perhaps, and then run away to London by the first train? No, Georgie, I feel that it is up to us, as Tilling’s leading citizens, to shoulder yet another burden on behalf of our community. Air-raid wardens, Georgie, and collections to raise money to build Hurricanes, and digging for victory. And Grosvenor and Foljambe must go and make munitions or parachutes or something.’

  The horror of this awful idea struck Georgie dumb for a moment. Never in their married life had Lucia suggested anything quite so dreadful. Do without Foljambe! What, he wondered, was the point of fighting this tar’some war if all vestiges of civilised life were to be abandoned in the process?

  ‘You, Georgie, you must put your name forward immediately for some responsible position. And we must have some evacuees to live here. We must not be selfish. We must give of ourselves to the utmost.’

  ‘I won’t do without Foljambe, and that’s flat. And I won’t have evacuees. Why, they’d steal my bibelots. And I’m sure I don’t know what I could do. Really, Lucia, you mustn’t let yourself get carried away like this.’

  ‘Oo vewwy naughty Georgie not to answer Country’s call in time of Emergency,’ said Lucia, lapsing into the baby-talk she so often used to deal with Georgie when he was troublesome. ‘Oo surely not leave ickle Lucia to face frightful Germans on her own?’

  ‘We do have an Army, Lucia, who I am quite sure are perfectly capable of dealing with Hitler without any help from us. I’ll tell you what—we can get together a concert party to entertain the troops—music and tableaux, and Irene doing impressions of Goering and Himmler. I’m sure that will achieve much more than depriving ourselves of the bare necessities of survival.’

  ‘We shall see, Georgie, we shall see. And now, perhaps, a quarter-of-an-hour of immortal Elgar, and then to the High Street. We must not allow the horrors of war to come between us and contemplation of the Eternal. Dear Elgar! So quintessentially what we are fighting for.’

  Except that dear Elgar, although so quintessentially English, was rather more difficult than Georgie remembered, so that he played many false notes, and went forth into the High Street in a very dark frame of mind.

  They met Godiva Plaistow in the queue at the butcher’s.

  ‘Sausages,’ said she in her telegraphic style. ‘Supposed to be pork, but presumably breadcrumbs. Haven’t seen a sausage since Paddy had that fight with a Scottie. Don’t suppose I shall recognise one when I do see it.’

  ‘No!’ said Lucia, her high-minded concern for strategy eclipsed by the thought of pork sausages. ‘And are there any left?’

  ‘Don’t know. Wyses were here at crack of dawn. Left draped in sausages on their tricycles. I wonder how they knew?’

  ‘You know, dear Diva, I sometimes wonder whether our dear Tilling has yet grasped the need for community spirit at this critical time. I, for my part, entirely disapprove of the virtual ostracism of our dear friends the Wyses, simply because they have connections with a hostile country. Yet I do not believe that they will help their own cause by ....’

  ‘By hogging all the sausages. Still, they were here first. Would have done the same myself in their shoes, I expect,’ said Diva magnanimously. She could see that the couple at the counter had quite incredibly failed to buy any sausages, so that she was now certain to get some. ‘I hope there’s some scraps for Paddy!’ she added, more hopefully than realistically.

  Quaint Irene Coles, attired in a flying-jacket and blue serge trousers, braked her racing-bicycle beside the kerb and shouted, ‘What are you queuing for?’

  ‘Sausages, dear,’ said Lucia, ‘although I fear you might be a little bit late.’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Irene. ‘What’s a sausage or two between sisters-in-arms? Besides, Henry can probably get me some from the Officers’ Mess if I ask him.’

  With that bombshell, more explosive than anything hurled by the long-range guns of Germany, she raced off towards the Landgate.

  ‘Henry!’ said Diva, thunderstruck. ‘Officers’ Mess! Fancy.’

  And so deep was she in thought that she almost forgot to ask if there were any scraps, although, since there were none, this hardly mattered.

  Outside the shop she met the Reverend Kenneth Bartlett, known to all Tilling as the Padre.

  ‘Sausages,’ she said to the Padre, ‘and Irene’s got an officer from the Harbour who can get her all the sausages she wants.’

  ‘No!’ said the Padre. ‘An officer of the soldiery. I ken he must be one of yon Staffordshire Regiment. A godly company o’ Christian knights I ween they are, too.’

  This macaronic dialect had been a playful whimsy to start with, but, like a child who had ignored his mother’s warning, he had ‘stuck like it’, and now the accents of his Midlands birthplace manifested themselves only in times of great excitement.

  ‘Henry,’ said Diva, ‘and all those sausages.’

  ‘Wait till I tell wee wifie. And are ye no coming to take tea with us this afternoon, Mistress Plaistow? Very well then, till four-o’ clock.’

  He hurried off towards the butcher’s, in time to see the last sausages disappear into Lucia’s basket.

  One might have thought that Tilling was a nest of enemy spies, to judge by the number of its residents who could be seen later that day walking past the small infantry camp at Tilling Harbour, furtively regarding it and occasionally, when they thought they were not overlooked, peering at it through opera-glasses. Lucia and Georgie, with the smallest of her first husband’s telescopes concealed in a copy of the Hastings Chronicle, had suddenly been seized with a desire to take their bicycle-exercise as near to the sea as the barbed-wire allowed them. Major Benjy too was filled with a nostalgic wish to gaze upon the scene of his former golfing triumphs, his binoculars no doubt being essential to pick out the details of the long seventh hole; and the Padre, who had previously been content to leave the spiritual guidance of the troops to the uniformed cleric attached to them, had clearly heard the call of pastoral duty, for he went down to the Harbour with fifty copies of last week’s parish magazine. But there was no sign of Irene, or her bicycle, or Henry, or sausages. Had they troubled to look into the dining-room of the Traders’ Arms, they would have seen the object of their espionage having lunch with a short, balding man in the uniform of a Captain of the Staffords, discussing the latest trends in the European avant-garde (for Henry was none other than Henry Porteous, the painter) with a parcel of what might easily have been sausages on the table in front of her. As it was, all Tilling risked arrest, denunciation and the firing squad without any result.

  But the incident had set off a train, a veritable Flying Scotsman, of thought in Lucia’s mind: she must have an officer too, who would come to Mallards (with or without sausages) and be inspired by the beauty of Purcell and Elgar before venturing forth, a knight wearing her favour, to do battle with the infidel. In fact, more than one officer. There must be a whole Round Table of the Knights of Mallards, the goodliest company of
chivalry ever seen on the Sussex coast. When she had established her short-lived salon in London, she had been seeking selfishly to enthrone herself queen of that glittering city of shadows; so unworthy of one who had since devoted every fibre of her being to the public service. How better could she assist the nation’s war-effort than to instil in its leaders of men (or at least such of its leaders of men as were currently in Tilling Harbour) the true essence of their struggle against barbarism. Also, said the old Eve at the back of her mind, how better to put dear Elizabeth in her place than by trumping her retired Major with a couple of real live officers still on active service?

  Actually getting hold of a job-lot of assorted officers was a different matter. She could not order them from Twistevant’s (‘Good morning, Twistevant, and have you got any Colonels today? Four then, please, and send them to Mrs. Pillson, Mallards’). The Army had kept itself to itself, confining its activities to the Harbour and the Sebastopol Arms. Occasionally, a uniformed male had been seen about the streets of Tilling with a camera or a sketching-book, but she could not seize such a man by the elbow and drag him off to the garden-room to listen to madrigals, arranged for four hands on the pianoforte. Presumably they were under orders to keep their distance from the townsfolk on account of some military secrets that they might disclose in an unguarded moment.

  Baffled but by no means despondent, Lucia returned to Mallards with her day’s trophy of two lamb-chops. On her way, she passed Elizabeth and Major Benjy in deep conversation with the Padre and his wife Evie. The Major was apparently confiding to his enraptured audience that a counter-attack, via the Faroes and Iceland, was so inevitable as to be a foregone conclusion, and the only question over which Whitehall was still agonising was whether to establish the final bridgehead at Oslo or Copenhagen. Smiling in such a way that she could grind her teeth at the same time, Lucia turned up West Street and propelled her bicycle up the cobbled slope.