Lucia In Wartime by Tom Holt

Author:Tom Holt [Holt, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Humorous, Fantasy, General, Fiction
ISBN: 9780552992022
Publisher: Black Swan
Published: 1986-12-29T13:00:00+00:00

8

Lucia departed to London to keep an eye on Georgie. Unable to get a taxi at Waterloo, she was compelled to travel by omnibus to Brompton Square and, carrying her own suitcase, she struggled wearily up to the doorstep of Olga’s house, just across the street from the rather more attractive dwelling where she herself had briefly held court as pretender to the social throne of the capital. But that interlude seemed to her now no more than a dream, an improbable fantasy. She put down her heavy load and rang the bell. The door was opened by Foljambe, imperturbable as ever. Georgie, it transpired, was having his bath and would be down shortly, so Lucia had an opportunity to inspect Miss Bracely’s property. A small house, as she remembered, very expensively furnished yet managing at every turn to strike exactly the wrong note.

‘Lucia!’ exclaimed Georgie. ‘How unexpected! What are you doing here?’

That, like everything else in the house, seemed to strike exactly the wrong note, but she put it down to the confusion of joyous reunion.

‘Oh Georgie,’ she gushed, ‘the broadcast! When I heard it I simply had to drop everything and rush to your side.’

‘Was it as bad as all that?’

‘Georgie, it was a triumph! Magnificent! Tremendous! Not a parsnip to be had in the whole of Tilling. The only topic of conversation. How proud I felt. And yet, hearing your voice, distorted by that dwefful wireless but unmistakably you, how lonely and how sad I felt, Georgie. As sweet Ovid so felicitously phrases it, surgit amar’aliquid, and I felt that I must

congratulate you in person. So I caught the duellists’ train and hurried up to London at once. I had to take an omnibus at Waterloo—what an adventure—and you’ll never guess what all the cockney wives were talking about. Your broadcast, of course. I heard one of them say “parsnips” distinctly three times, another discoursed of corned beef, a third told her companions how she would look forward to Monday afternoons in future. And now, do you think I might have a cup of tea?’

Georgie, had he been able, like Lucia, to make classical references at this awful hour of the morning, would have reflected on the power of Orpheus to cause trees and rocks to follow him by the power of his poetry; as it was, he could only think of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, and that did not seem polite somehow.

‘Fancy!’ he said. ‘You came all this way just because of my broadcast. How flattering. Will you be staying long?’

‘Staying?’ replied his wife, slipping her coat over her suitcases. ‘The thought had not crossed my mind. Let me see; I’ve got so much to do in Tilling. And would dear Olga be able to put me up? Such a charming house, but so small.’

‘Olga isn’t staying here,’ said Georgie firmly. ‘Just me and Foljambe.’

‘But she’s singing in London tonight,’ said Lucia, rather too much in the style of counsel for the prosecution for Georgie’s liking.

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