The Second E.F. Benson Megapack. E.F. Benson
good-nature in managing to squeeze it in, for the sake of sweet Isabel, lay in the fact that she would be able to take some red-currant fool, and after one spoonful exclaim “Delicious,” and leave the rest uneaten.
The white butterflies and the swallows were still enjoying themselves in the sunshine, and so, too, were the gnats, about whose pleasure, especially when they settled on her face, Miss Mapp did not care so much. But soon she quite ceased to regard them, for, before the quaint little gilded boys on each side of the clock above the north porch had hammered out the three-quarters after three on their bells, visitors began to arrive at the Poppits” door, and Miss Mapp was very active looking through the boughs of the weeping ash and sitting down again to smile and ponder over her sketch with her head a little on one side, if anybody approached. One by one the expected guests presented themselves and were admitted: Major Flint and Captain Puffin, the Padre and his wife, darling Diva with her head muffled in a“cloud,” and finally Irene, still dressed as she had been in the morning, and probably reeking with scarlet-fever. With the two Poppits these made eight players, so as soon as Irene had gone in, Miss Mapp hastily put her sketching things away, and holding her admirably-accurate drawing with its wash of sky not quite dry, in her hand, hurried to the door, for it would never do to arrive after the two tables had started, since in that case it would be she who would have to sit out.
Boon opened the door to her three staccato little knocks, and sulkily consulted his list. She duly appeared on it and was admitted. Having banged the door behind her he crushed the list up in his hand and threw it into the fireplace: all those whose presence was desired had arrived, and Boon would turn his bovine eye on any subsequent caller, and say that his mistress was out.
“And may I put my sketching things down here, please, Boon,” said Miss Mapp ingratiatingly. “And will no one touch my drawing? It’s a little wet still. The church porch.”
Boon made a grunting noise like the Tilling pig, and slouched away in front of her down the passage leading to the garden, sniffing. There they were, with the two bridge-tables set out in a shady corner of the lawn, and a buffet vulgarly heaped with all sorts of dainty confections which made Miss Mapp’s mouth water, obliging her to swallow rapidly once or twice before she could manage a wide, dry smile: Isabel advanced.
“De-do, dear,” said Miss Mapp. “Such a rush! But managed to squeeze it in, as you wouldn’t let me off.”
“Oh, that was nice of you, Miss Mapp,” said Isabel.
A wild and awful surmise seized Miss Mapp.
“And your dear mother?” she said. “Where is Mrs. Poppit?”
“Mamma had to go to town this morning. She won’t be back till close on dinner-time.”
Miss Mapp’s smile closed up like a furled umbrella. The trap had snapped behind her: it was impossible now to scriggle away. She had completed, instead of spoiling, the second table.
“So we’re just eight,” said Isabel, poking at her, so to speak, through the wires. “Shall we have a rubber first and then some tea? Or tea first. What says everybody?”
Restless and hungry murmurs, like those heard at the sea-lions’enclosure in the Zoological Gardens when feeding-time approaches, seemed to indicate tea first, and with gallant greetings from the Major, and archaistic welcomes from the Padre, Miss Mapp headed the general drifting movement towards the buffet. There may have been tea there, but there was certainly iced coffee and Lager beer and large jugs with dew on the outside and vegetables floating in a bubbling liquid in the inside, and it was all so vulgar and opulent that with one accord everyone set to work in earnest, in order that the garden should present a less gross and greedy appearance. But there was no sign at present of the red-currant fool, which was baffling…
“And have you had a good game of golf, Major?” asked Miss Mapp, making the best of these miserable circumstances. “Such a lovely day! The white butterflies were enjoying—”
She became aware that Diva and the Padre, who had already heard about the white butterflies, were in her immediate neighbourhood, and broke off.
“Which of you beat? Or should I say ‘won!’” she asked.
Major Flint’s long moustache was dripping with Lager beer, and he made a dexterous, sucking movement.
“Well, the Army and the Navy had it out,” he said.“And if for once Britain’s Navy was not invincible, eh, Puffin?”
Captain Puffin limped away pretending not to hear, and took his heaped plate and brimming glass in the direction of Irene.
“But I’m sure Captain Puffin played quite beautifully too,” said Miss Mapp in the vain attempt to detain him. She liked to collect all the men round her, and then scold them for not talking to the other ladies.
“Well, a game’s a game,” said the Major. “It gets through the hours, Miss Mapp. Yes: we finished at the fourteenth hole, and hurried back to more congenial society. And what have you done today? Fairy-errands, I’ll be bound. Titania! Ha!”
Suet errands and errands about a missing article of underclothing were really the most important things that Miss Mapp had done today, now that her bridge-party scheme had so miscarried, but naturally she would not allude to these.
“A little gardening,” she said. “A little sketching. A little singing. Not time to change my frock and put on something less shabby. But I wouldn’t have kept sweet Isabel’s bridge-party waiting for anything, and so I came straight from my painting here. Padre, I’ve been trying to draw the lovely south porch. But so difficult! I shall give up trying to draw, and just enjoy myself with looking. And there’s your dear Evie! How de do, Evie love?”
Godiva Plaistow had taken off her cloud for purposes of mastication, but wound it tightly round her head again as soon as she had eaten as much as she could manage. This had to be done on one side of her mouth, or with the front teeth in the nibbling manner of a rabbit. Everybody, of course, by now knew that she had had a wisdom tooth out at one P.M. with gas, and she could allude to it without explanation.
“Dreamed I was playing bridge,” she said, “and had a hand of aces. As I played the first it went off in my hand. All over. Blood. Hope it’ll come true. Bar the blood.”
Miss Mapp found herself soon afterwards partnered with Major Flint and opposed by Irene and the Padre. They had hardly begun to consider their first hands when Boon staggered out into the garden under the weight of a large wooden bucket, packed with ice, that surrounded an interior cylinder.
“Red currant fool at last,” thought Miss Mapp, adding aloud:“O poor little me, is it, to declare? Shall I say ‘no trumps?’”
“Mustn’t consult your partner, Mapp,” said Irene, puffing the end of her cigarette out of its holder. Irene was painfully literal.
“I don’t, darling,” said Miss Mapp, beginning to fizz a little. “No trumps. Not a trump. Not any sort of trump. There! What are we playing for, by the way?”
“Bob a hundred,” said the Padre, forgetting to be either Scotch or archaic.
“Oh, gambler! You want the poor-box to be the rich box, Padre,” said Miss Mapp, surveying her magnificent hand with the greatest satisfaction. If it had not contained so many court-cards, she would have proposed playing for sixpence, not a shilling a hundred.
All semblance of manners was invariably thrown to the winds by the ladies of Tilling when once bridge began; primeval hatred took their place. The winners of any hand were exasperatingly condescending to the losers, and the losers correspondingly bitter and tremulous. Miss Mapp failed to get her contract, as her partner’s contribution to success consisted of more twos and threes than were ever seen together before, and when quaint Irene at the end said, “Bad luck, Mapp,” Miss Mapp’s hands trembled so much with passion that she with difficulty marked the score. But she could command her voice sufficiently to say, “Lovely of you to be sympathetic, dear.” Irene in answer gave a short, hoarse laugh and dealed.
By this time Boon had deposited