Miss Mapp by E. F. Benson (best free ebook reader for pc .TXT) 📗

I see you did. But that wasn’t what I popped in about. This coal-strike, you know.”

“Got a cellar full,” said Diva.

“Diva, you’ve not been hoarding, have you?” asked Miss Mapp with great anxiety. “They can take away every atom of coal you’ve got, if so, and fine you I don’t know what for every hundredweight of it.”

“Pooh!” said Diva, rather forcing the indifference of this rude interjection.

“Yes, love, pooh by all means, if you like poohing!” said Miss Mapp. “But I should have felt very unfriendly if one morning I found you were fined—found you were fined—quite a play upon words—and I hadn’t warned you.”

Diva felt a little less poohish.

“But how much do they allow you to have?” she asked.

“Oh, quite a little: enough to go on with. But I daresay they won’t discover you. I just took the trouble to come and warn you.”

Diva did remember something about hoarding; there had surely been dreadful exposures of prudent housekeepers in the papers which were very uncomfortable reading.

“But all these orders were only for the period of the war,” she said.

“No doubt you’re right, dear,” said Miss Mapp brightly. “I’m sure I hope you are. Only if the coal strike comes on, I think you’ll find that the regulations against hoarding are quite as severe as they ever were. Food hoarding, too. Twemlow—such a civil man—tells me that he thinks we shall have plenty of food, or anyhow sufficient for[70] everybody for quite a long time, provided that there’s no hoarding. Not been hoarding food, too, dear Diva? You naughty thing: I believe that great cupboard is full of sardines and biscuits and bovril.”

“Nothing of the kind,” said Diva indignantly. “You shall see for yourself”—and then she suddenly remembered that the cupboard was full of chintz curtains and little bunches of pink roses, neatly cut out of them, and a pair of nail scissors.

There was a perfectly perceptible pause, during which Miss Mapp noticed that there were no curtains over the window. There certainly used to be, and they matched with the chintz cover of the window seat, which was decorated with little bunches of pink roses peeping through trellis. This was in the nature of a bonus: she had not up till then connected the chintz curtains with the little things that had fluttered down upon her and were now safe in her glove; her only real object in this call had been to instil a general uneasiness into Diva’s mind about the coal strike and the danger of being well provided with fuel. That she humbly hoped that she had accomplished. She got up.

“Must be going,” she said. “Such a lovely little chat! But what has happened to your pretty curtains?”

“Gone to the wash,” said Diva firmly.

“Liar,” thought Miss Mapp, as she tripped downstairs. “Diva would have sent the cover of the window-seat too, if that was the case. Liar,” she thought again as she kissed her hand to Diva, who was looking gloomily out of the window.

As soon as Miss Mapp had gained her garden-room, she examined the mysterious treasures in her left-hand glove.[71] Without the smallest doubt Diva had taken down her curtains (and high time too, for they were sadly shabby), and was cutting the roses out of them. But what on earth was she doing that for? For what garish purpose could she want to use bunches of roses cut out of chintz curtains?

Miss Mapp had put the two specimens of which she had providentially become possessed in her lap, and they looked very pretty against the navy-blue of her skirt. Diva was very ingenious: she used up all sorts of odds and ends in a way that did credit to her undoubtedly parsimonious qualities. She could trim a hat with a tooth-brush and a banana in such a way that it looked quite Parisian till you firmly analysed its component parts, and most of her ingenuity was devoted to dress: the more was the pity that she had such a roundabout figure that her waistband always reminded you of the equator…

“Eureka!” said Miss Mapp aloud, and, though the telephone bell was ringing, and the postulant might be one of the servants’ friends ringing them up at an hour when their mistress was usually in the High Street, she glided swiftly to the large cupboard underneath the stairs which was full of the things which no right-minded person could bear to throw away: broken basket-chairs, pieces of brown paper, cardboard boxes without lids, and cardboard lids without boxes, old bags with holes in them, keys without locks and locks without keys and worn chintz covers. There was one—it had once adorned the sofa in the garden-room—covered with red poppies (very easy to cut out), and Miss Mapp dragged it dustily from its corner, setting in motion a perfect cascade of cardboard lids and some door-handles.

[72] Withers had answered the telephone, and came to announce that Twemlow the grocer regretted he had only two large tins of corned beef, but——

“Then say I will have the tongue as well, Withers,” said Miss Mapp. “Just a tongue—and then I shall want you and Mary to do some cutting out for me.”

The three went to work with feverish energy, for Diva had got a start, and by four o’clock that afternoon there were enough poppies cut out to furnish, when in seed, a whole street of opium dens. The dress selected for decoration was, apart from a few mildew-spots, the colour of ripe corn, which was superbly appropriate for September. “Poppies in the corn,” said Miss Mapp over and over to herself, remembering some sweet verses she had once read by Bernard Shaw or Clement Shorter or somebody like that about a garden of sleep somewhere in Norfolk…

“No one can work as neatly as you, Withers,” she said gaily, “and I shall ask you to do the most difficult part. I want you to sew my lovely poppies over the collar and facings of the jacket, just spacing them a little and making a dainty irregularity. And then Mary—won’t you, Mary?—will do the same with the waistband while I put a border of them round the skirt, and my dear old dress will look quite new and lovely. I shall be at home to nobody, Withers, this afternoon, even if the Prince of Wales came and sat on my doorstep again. We’ll all work together in the garden, shall we, and you and Mary must scold me if you think I’m not working hard enough. It will be delicious in the garden.”

Thanks to this pleasant plan, there was not much opportunity for Withers and Mary to be idle…

Just about the time that this harmonious party began[73] their work, a far from harmonious couple were being just as industrious in the grand spacious bunker in front of the tee to the last hole on the golf links. It was a beautiful bunker, consisting of a great slope of loose, steep sand against the face of the hill, and solidly shored up with timber. The Navy had been in better form to-day, and after a decisive victory over the Army in the morning and an indemnity of half-a-crown, its match in the afternoon, with just the last hole to play, was all square. So Captain Puffin, having the honour, hit a low, nervous drive that tapped loudly at the timbered wall of the bunker, and cuddled down below it, well protected from any future assault.

“Phew! That about settles it,” said Major Flint boisterously. “Bad place to top a ball! Give me the hole?”

This insolent question needed no answer, and Major Flint drove, skying the ball to a prodigious height. But it had to come to earth sometime, and it fell like Lucifer, son of the morning, in the middle of the same bunker… So the Army played three more, and, sweating profusely, got out. Then it was the Navy’s turn, and the Navy had to lie on its keel above the boards of the bunker, in order to reach its ball at all, and missed it twice.

“Better give it up, old chap,” said Major Flint. “Unplayable.”

“Then see me play it,” said Captain Puffin, with a chewing motion of his jaws.

“We shall miss the tram,” said the Major, and, with the intention of giving annoyance, he sat down in the bunker with his back to Captain Puffin, and lit a cigarette. At his third attempt nothing happened; at the fourth the ball flew against the boards, rebounded briskly again[74] into the bunker, trickled down the steep, sandy slope and hit the Major’s boot.

“Hit you, I think,” said Captain Puffin. “Ha! So it’s my hole, Major!”

Major Flint had a short fit of aphasia. He opened and shut his mouth and foamed. Then he took a half-crown from his pocket.

“Give that to the Captain,” he said to his caddie, and without looking round, walked away in the direction of the tram. He had not gone a hundred yards when the whistle sounded, and it puffed away homewards with ever-increasing velocity.

Weak and trembling from passion, Major Flint found that after a few tottering steps in the direction of Tilling he would be totally unable to get there unless fortified by some strong stimulant, and turned back to the Club-house to obtain it. He always went dead-lame when beaten at golf, while Captain Puffin was lame in any circumstances, and the two, no longer on speaking terms, hobbled into the Club-house, one after the other, each unconscious of the other’s presence. Summoning his last remaining strength Major Flint roared for whisky, and was told that, according to regulation, he could not be served until six. There was lemonade and stone ginger-beer… You might as well have offered a man-eating tiger bread and milk. Even the threat that he would instantly resign his membership unless provided with drink produced no effect on a polite steward, and he sat down to recover as best he might with an old volume of Punch. This seemed to do him little good. His forced abstemiousness was rendered the more intolerable by the fact that Captain Puffin, hobbling in immediately afterwards, fetched[75] from his locker a large flask full of the required elixir, and proceeded to mix himself a long, strong tumblerful. After the Major’s rudeness in the matter of the half-crown, it was impossible for any sailor of spirit to take the first step towards reconciliation.

Thirst is a great leveller. By the time the refreshed Puffin had penetrated half-way down his glass, the Major found it impossible to be proud and proper any longer. He hated saying he was sorry (no man more) and wouldn’t have been sorry if he had been able to get a drink. He twirled his moustache a great many times and cleared his throat—it wanted more than that to clear it—and capitulated.

“Upon my word, Puffin, I’m ashamed of myself for—ha!—for not taking my defeat better,” he said. “A man’s no business to let a game ruffle him.”

Puffin gave his alto cackling laugh.

“Oh, that’s all right, Major,” he said. “I know it’s awfully hard to lose like a gentleman.”

He let this sink in, then added:

“Have a drink, old chap?”

Major Flint flew to his feet.

“Well, thank ye, thank ye,” he said. “Now where’s that soda water you offered me just now?” he shouted to the steward.

The speed and completeness of the reconciliation was in no way remarkable, for when two men quarrel whenever they meet, it follows that they make it up again with corresponding frequency, else there could be no fresh quarrels at all. This one had been a shade more acute than most, and the drop into amity again was a shade more precipitous.

Major Flint in his eagerness had put most of his[76] moustache into the life-giving tumbler, and dried it on his handkerchief.

“After all, it was a most amusing incident,” he said. “There was I with my back turned, waiting for you to give it up, when your bl—wretched little ball hit my foot. I must remember that. I’ll serve you with the same spoon some day, at least I would if I thought it sportsmanlike. Well, well, enough said. Astonishing good whisky, that of yours.”

Captain Puffin helped himself to rather more than half of what now remained in the flask.

“Help yourself, Major,” he said.

“Well, thank ye, I don’t mind if I do,” he said, reversing the flask over the tumbler. “There’s a good tramp in front of us now that the last tram has gone. Tram and tramp! Upon my word, I’ve half a mind to telephone for a taxi.”

This, of course, was a direct hint. Puffin ought clearly to pay for a taxi, having won two half-crowns to-day. This casual drink did not constitute the usual drink stood by the winner, and paid for with cash over the counter.