The Essential E. F. Benson: 53+ Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). E. F. Benson

Mapp forgave and forgot about the worsted until she had found out. She could never quite manage the indelicacy of saying "Godiva", whatever Mrs Plaistow's figure and age might happen to be, but always addressed her as "Diva", very affectionately, whenever they were on speaking terms.

      "What a lovely morning, Diva darling," she said; and noticing that Mr Bartlett was well out of earshot, "The white butterflies were enjoying themselves so in the sunshine in my garden. And the swallows."

      Godiva was telegraphic in speech.

      "Lucky birds," she said. "No teeth. Beaks."

      Miss Mapp remembered her disappearance round the dentist's corner half an hour ago, and her own firm inference on the problem.

      "Toothache, darling?" she said. "So sorry."

      "Wisdom," said Godiva. "Out at one o'clock. Gas. Ready for bridge this afternoon. Playing? Poppits."

      "If I can squeeze it in, dear," said Miss Mapp. "Such a hustle today."

      Diva put her hand to her face as "wisdom" gave her an awful twinge. Of course she did not believe in the "hustle," but her pangs prevented her from caring much.

      "Meet you then," she said. "Shall be all comfortable then. Au —"

      This was more than could be borne, and Miss Mapp hastily interrupted.

      "Au reservoir, Diva, dear," she said with extreme acerbity, and Diva's feet began swiftly revolving again.

      The problem about the bridge-party thus seemed to be solved. The two Poppits, the two Bartletts, the Major and the Captain with Diva darling and herself made eight, and Miss Mapp with a sudden recrudescence of indignation against Isabel with regard to the redcurrant fool and the belated invitation, made up her mind that she would not be able to squeeze it in, thus leaving the party one short. Even apart from the redcurrant fool it served the Poppits right for not asking her originally, but only when, as seemed now perfectly clear, somebody else had disappointed them. But just as she emerged from the butcher's shop, having gained a complete victory in the matter of that suet, without expending the last breath in her body or anything like it, the whole of the seemingly solid structure came toppling to the ground. For on emerging, flushed with triumph, leaving the baffled butcher to try his tricks on somebody else if he chose but not on Miss Mapp, she ran straight into the Disgrace of Tilling and her sex, the suffragette, post-impressionist artist (who painted from the nude, both male and female), the socialist and the Germanophil, all incarnate in one frame. In spite of these execrable antecedents, it was quite in vain that Miss Mapp had tried to poison the collective mind of Tilling against this Creature. If she hated anybody, and she undoubtedly did, she hated Irene Coles. The bitterest part of it all was that if Miss Coles was amused at anybody, and she undoubtedly was, she was amused at Miss Mapp.

      Miss Coles was strolling along in the attire to which Tilling generally had got accustomed, but Miss Mapp never. She had an old wide-awake hat jammed down on her head, a tall collar and stock, a large loose coat, knickerbockers and grey stockings. In her mouth was a cigarette, in her hand she swung the orthodox wicker basket. She had certainly been to the other fishmonger's at the end of the High Street, for a lobster, revived perhaps after a sojourn on the ice, by this warm sun, which the butterflies and the swallows had been rejoicing in, was climbing with claws and waving legs over the edge of it.

      Irene removed her cigarette from her mouth and did something in the gutter which is usually associated with the floor of third-class smoking carriages. Then her handsome, boyish face, more boyish because her hair was closely clipped, broke into a broad grin.

      "Hello, Mapp!" she said. "Been giving the tradesmen what for on Tuesday morning?"

      Miss Mapp found it extremely difficult to bear this obviously insolent form of address without a spasm of rage. Irene called her Mapp because she chose to, and Mapp (more bitterness) felt it wiser not to provoke Coles. She had a dreadful, humorous tongue, an indecent disregard of public or private opinion, and her gift of mimicry was as appalling as her opinion about the Germans. Sometimes Miss Mapp alluded to her as "quaint Irene", but that was as far as she got in the way of reprisals.

      "Oh, you sweet thing!" she said. "Treasure!"

      Irene, in some ghastly way, seemed to take note of this. Why men like Captain Puffin and Major Flint found Irene "fetching" and "killing" was more than Miss Mapp could understand, or wanted to understand.

      Quaint Irene looked down at her basket. "Why, there's my lunch going over the top like those beastly British Tommies," she said. "Get back, love."

      Miss Mapp could not quite determine whether "love" was a sarcastic echo of "Treasure." It seemed probable.

      "Oh, what a dear little lobster," she said. "Look at his sweet claws."

      "I shall do more than look at them soon," said Irene, poking it into her basket again. "Come and have tiffin, quai-hai, I've got to look after myself today."

      "What has happened to your devoted Lucy?" asked Miss Mapp. Irene lived in a very queer way with one gigantic maid, who, but for her sex, might have been in the Guards.

      "Ill. I suspect scarlet-fever," said Irene. "Very infectious, isn't it? I was up nursing her all last night."

      Miss Mapp recoiled. She did not share Major Flint's robust views about microbes.

      "But I hope, dear, you've thoroughly disinfected —"

      "Oh, yes. Soap and water," said Irene. "By the way, are you Poppiting this afternoon?"

      "If I can squeeze it in," said Miss Mapp.

      "We'll meet again, then. Oh —"

      "Au reservoir," said Miss Mapp instantly.

      "No; not that silly old chestnut!" said Irene. "I wasn't going to say that. I was only going to say: 'Oh, do come to tiffin.' You and me and the lobster. Then you and me. But it's a bore about Lucy. I was painting her. Fine figure, gorgeous legs. You wouldn't like to sit for me till she's well again?"

      Miss Mapp gave a little squeal and bolted into her dressmaker's. She always felt battered after a conversation with Irene, and needed kingfisher blue to restore her.

      Chapter Two

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      There is not in all England a town so blatantly picturesque as Tilling, nor one, for the lover of level marsh land, of tall reedy dykes, of enormous sunsets and rims of blue sea on the horizon, with so fortunate an environment. The hill on which it is built rises steeply from the level land, and, crowned by the great grave church so conveniently close to Miss Mapp's residence, positively consists of quaint corners, rough-cast and timber cottages, and mellow Georgian fronts. Corners and quaintnesses, gems, glimpses and bits are an obsession to the artist, and in consequence, during the summer months, not only did the majority of its inhabitants turn out into the cobbled ways with sketching-blocks, canvases and paintboxes, but every morning brought into the town charabancs from neighbouring places loaded with passengers, many of whom joined the artistic residents, and you would have thought (until an inspection of their productions convinced you of the contrary) that some tremendous outburst of Art was rivalling the Italian Renaissance. For those who were capable of tackling straight lines and the intricacies of perspective, there were the steep cobbled streets of charming and irregular architecture, while for those who rightly felt themselves colourists rather than architectural draughtsmen, there was the view from the top of the hill over the marshes. There, but for one straight line to mark the horizon (and that could easily be misty) there were no petty conventionalities in the way of perspective, and the eager practitioner could almost instantly plunge into vivid greens and celestial blues, or, at sunset, into pinks and chromes and rose-madder.

      Tourists who had no pictorial gifts would pick their way among the sketchers, and search the shops for cracked china and bits of brass. Few if any of them left without purchasing one of the famous Tilling money-boxes, made in the shape of a pottery pig, who bore on his back that remarkable