Free Au Reservoir by Guy Fraser-Sampson Page B

always makes me maudlin.’
    ‘I say,’ Georgie ventured hesitantly, ‘do you ever find yourself secretly wishing that, no matter how awful Mapp might be, once – only once mind – Mapp might actually win and Lucia lose? It does sometimes seem a little unfair the way Lucia just crushes everyone else beneath her chariot wheels.’
    ‘I know what you mean, Georgie dear, but then Mapp is so dreadful that any feeling of sympathy for her tends to get strangled at birth.’
    ‘Well, she’s jolly well going to win out now anyway, isn’t she?’ asked Georgie. ‘Perhaps it’s worth it. At least then maybe she’ll stop.’
    ‘How do you mean?’
    ‘Well,’ Georgie explained, ‘she’s more or less openly challenged Lucia to produce Noël here in Tilling and we know that Lucia can’t do that, so sooner or later everyone is going to realise that Mapp is right and that Lucia really has just been telling fibs about Noël all the time.’
    ‘But that would be dreadful!’ Olga cried. ‘Why, if that happened then people would begin to question everything Lucia says, even everything she has said in the past. Then
she
would be very unhappy.’
    ‘I know,’ Georgie said gloomily. ‘You know how angry she got when nobody would believe her about knowing Poppy – why, she turned the whole town against her for a while.’
    ‘But that was really a fib as well, wasn’t it? At least it started off that way.’
    ‘Well, of course it was. Poppy never really wanted to have anything to do with Lucia at all, you know how she was. It was just a case of any port in a storm. She needed somewhere to spend the night and knew that we lived nearby.’
    ‘So then what happened, Georgie? I can’t believe I don’t know the full story.’
    ‘Well, the next day Lucia was naturally bursting to tell the others about hosting a duchess, but because Poppy had left early in the morning nobody else had actually seen her, and because they were all upset with Lucia about something or other at the time nobody would believe her. Even Quaint Irene thought she was making it all up; I think that hurt Lucia most of all.’
    ‘But didn’t you tell me about some sort of confrontation? Or have I remembered it all wrong?’
    ‘Yes there was, and no you haven’t,’ Georgie replied firmly. ‘She pitched into everyone after church on Sunday and told them all what she thought of them. Pitched it to them very strong, in fact.’
    ‘How awful.’
    Georgie nodded.
    ‘I don’t think she ever realised just how close she came to a total rupture, to nobody ever talking to her again, or if she did she never let on.’
    ‘But Poppy came back, didn’t she?’ Olga asked.
    ‘Yes, but it was completely by chance,’ Georgie said. ‘Poppy’s boat was delayed because of rough weather in the Channel, so she came back to stay another night, which gave Lucia a chance to invite everyone round to meet her. She’s always been lucky like that – it’s quite exasperating sometimes.’
    ‘I wonder,’ Olga said, ‘if we could completely take the wind out of Mapp’s sails once and for all, whether she would just slink back to Grebe with her tail between her legs and leave Lucia alone in future.’
    She glanced across at Georgie and saw from his expression that she already knew the answer to that question.
    ‘What do you really think about this idea of a damery for Lucia?’ he asked, changing the subject.
    ‘I’m not sure,’ she replied cautiously. ‘I’m going to chat to Norman first of all and see whether this thing can fly or not.’
    ‘Norman?’
    ‘Oh, Norman Brook, silly, he’s the Cabinet Secretary. Don’t you remember, I introduced you to him one night at Covent Garden at one of those frightful supper parties that David Webster makes us all go to.’
    ‘And he would be a good person to ask, would he?’ asked Georgie, who found that he really could not remember the wretched man at all.
    ‘Of course!’ Olga cried in surprise. ‘Why, really,