Authors: Guy Fraser-Sampson
Georgie tried hard to carry on at Mallards as though nothing had happened but found it impossible. The memory of Lucia haunted the place and he kept waiting to hear her voice or listening for her to play the piano. For a while he kept the house open but went on long trips with Olga to her various performances around the world. Then he rented it out to various tenants, one of whom was a glamorous lady author whose books were made into films. Eventually, however, he donated it to the National Trust, under whose auspices it can be visited to this day.
He and Olga went to live in Capri, taking the servants with them. The Wyses, who were beginning to find the English winters too much to deal with and who already wintered in Capri, finally sold their house in Tilling and moved there permanently too.
Quaint Irene was of course by now already a senior and well-respected figure in the world of art, and continued to be eagerly courted by Mayfair galleries for the privilege of holding her annual exhibition. She sold Taormina, using some of her new-found wealth to buy the Wyses’s house, where she held summer schools annually for aspiring painters. So for a few weeks each year the streets of Tilling were full of Irene Coles look-alikes, with all her female students calling each other ‘sister’ or ‘comrade’, smoking pipes and adopting schoolboy haircuts and plus-fours.
Diva Plaistow died quietly in her armchair one spring morning. Her servant had long since been let go and it was Elizabeth Mapp-Flint who found her (Diva’s door of course left on the latch in the best Tilling tradition), having entered the house to complain about something or other. She left hurriedly, shrieking for Major Benjy, who then went in, took his hat off and came out again looking very grave.
The Major for his own part passed away more energetically, subsiding one day by the fairway of the sixteenth hole. He was brought into the clubhouse on a hurdle, whereupon his fellow members clustered around, raised a valedictory glass and agreed to suspend play for the rest of the day as a mark of respect. He left a faded tiger skin rug, an impressive collection of firearms and an equally impressive unpaid bar bill.
Elizabeth Mapp-Flint aged badly and quickly following the Major’s departure and spent her final months in a nursing home in Bournemouth, enjoying herself by being insufferably rude to the staff and fellow inmates. Her funeral was attended only by the proprietor of the nursing home and three fellow guests, who had to be bribed to do so by the promise of a knickerbocker glory at a cafe on the promenade on the way home.
Georgie and Olga ended up sharing a house in Capri, regularly wandering into town in the evening to sip negronis and observe the
passegiata
before dinner, with everyone making a great fuss of the famous diva and her gentleman companion whom the locals – who never really came to grips with the niceties of English titles – insisted on calling ‘milord’.
Olga gave up first opera and then lieder and so they came gradually to stop travelling around the world and instead spent their time entirely in Capri, playing bridge with the Wyses, performing Schubert together and reading three-day-old English newspapers brought by ferry from Naples.
Some years after moving to Capri, Georgie saw Lucia one last time, seated at her piano in The Hurst at Riseholme and looking young and beautiful as he always remembered her. A book of Mozart duets lay open and inviting on the music stand, as she beckoned him to join her on their double piano stool.
‘Lucia!’ he gasped in wonder. ‘Is it really you, my darling?’
She smiled that special smile of hers, the smile that could charm duchesses and light up a whole room, and held out her hand to him as he advanced towards her.
In the morning Cadman came running into the room when he heard Foljambe scream. He found Georgie lying on his stomach with a faint smile on his face and both arms stretched out before him, as though he had been reaching for something which would always lie just beyond his grasp.
First published 2014 by Elliott and Thompson Limited
27 John Street, London WC1N 2BX
epub: 978-1-90965-355-9
MOBI: 978-1-90965-356-6
Text © Guy Fraser-Sampson 2014
The Author has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this Work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover illustration by Antigone Konstantinidou based on an image from
Mary Evans Picture Library
Typeset by Marie Doherty
This edition is not for sale in the United States of America.