Kitty, as Laura had anticipated, made her more than welcome and showed her over the seven-roomed flat, a recent extravagance as the family also had a house in Sussex. Laura admired the new domicile.
“Pretty plushy,” she pronounced. “Now what’s all this about the borough jamboree and the Feast of St Lawrence? Incidentally, just to keep the record straight, St Lawrence was not a previous incumbent of the parish of Brayne, but a deacon of the early Church who became a martyr. He lived in Rome or Carthage, I believe, in the time of the Emperor Valerian—viz., to wit, somewhere half-way into the third century, if my memory serves me. He died a revolting death on a gridiron.”
“Good heavens, Dog!” cried the astounded Kitty. “How on earth do you know all that?”
Laura waved a shapely hand.
“Not to deceive you,” she replied, “Mrs Croc. did a learned paper (for some psychiatry mob who publish such things) on the psychology of martyrs, both Christian and otherwise. I was given the stuff to type. That’s all there is to it.”
“Oh,” said Kitty, obviously relieved. “So that’s it. I thought at first you were beginning to get softening of the brain. Well, sit down and we’ll have a drink while I slip you the dope about the pageant. Lunch is in half-an-hour, if that’s all right.”
“Good! I’m starving!”
“Well, against the sub-committee’s supposedly better judgment,” Kitty went on, “I’ve decided to cram the whole thing into one single day. They wanted, if you please, six days of junketing, beginning with two days of market and fair. At such times, it seems, all the local yobs went around clobbering people over the head and getting girls into trouble. In fact, so far as I can make out, murder was about the most respectable crime committed. Well, I wasn’t having anything to do with any of that. “I wish no part in your sinned against and sinning,” I said. “Besides, I can’t spare the time.” You don’t blame me, Dog, do you?”
“Assuredly not. “One crowded hour of glorious life” is my motto, and always has been.”
“I knew you’d agree. So, between us, the special subcommittee and I have boiled it down to this: nine-thirty ack emma sharp, procession of floats moves off from the Butts en route for Squire’s Acre.”
“The Butts? Squire’s Acre?”
“That’s all right. After lunch I’ll take you along and show you. Pageant disperses at eleven, when pubs open. Can’t bear to keep them after that—the men, I mean. They wouldn’t stay, anyhow. Half-past twelve, official lunch at The Hat With Feather, two o’clock onwards a fun-fair in the local park, also other festivities in the Hall grounds.”
“Festivities?”
“So-called, Dog. Have another drink. Cigarette? It’s to be the usual sort of thing, and nothing on earth to do with me, thank goodness, although I shall have to show up. The primary schools will do maypole dances…”
“In the plural?”
“Of course. Five primary schools means five maypoles. I thought you were trained to teach?”
“Oh, yes, I see. No mixing of the breeds, as combined rehearsals too difficult to arrange.”
“Yes. Well, then, the Grammar School and the County Secondary Boys’ School are giving a trampoline display and will be doing stunts on the portable apparatus—buck, box and horse—and the girls are putting on Modern Dance and Free Activities.”
“All the usual sort of stuff, as you say.”
“You can’t beat it, Dog, if you want to bring along the parents. Then the pony club are holding a short gymkhana, to be followed by a display of dressage by Joan of Arc, Charles II and Dick Turpin.”
“Dressage? Who are the experts?”
“The people who are lending us the grounds of Squire’s Acre. We’ve got to butter them up because of that, so, as they suggested this dressage thing, I had to agree, although personally I find all this well-schooled horse business rather boring, and probably the result of cruelty to animals anyway.”
“What else goes on?”
“In the evening we really go to town. There’s to be an all-ticket show in the Town Hall. We’re hiring the Tossington Tots—repulsive little so-and-so’s!—and a couple of fairly low-life comedians whose stuff, I don’t mind wagering, will have to be vetted before it’s fit for human consumption. Then there’s a formation dance team who won’t need pay (because they’re amateurs) but who’ll have to be lushed up, needless to say, and then we’re to have a ballet from people nobody’s ever heard of, and we finish off with the combined choirs of the Grammar School and the County Secondaries, all of whom will have to be browsed and sluiced, to borrow from your favourite author, and a contribution made to their School Funds.”
“Quite a jamboree, take it for all in all.”
“Yes. Oh, and the drama club are giving us a scene or two from The Merry Wives of Windsor.”
“And what are the drama club like?” Laura enquired, interested.
“Awful! I could act the lot of them off the stage,” said Kitty modestly. Lunch was served and they were joined by Kitty’s husband.
“Hullo, Laura darling,” he said. “Glad you could come along. I suppose Kitty has told you all about this pageant she’s mixed herself up in?”
“I think I’ve grasped the main points,” said Laura.
“I’m very pleased to think that she will have your support. You may be instrumental in persuading the spectators not to lynch her when the show’s over. By the way, love,” he added, turning to his wife, “if you’ve a rehearsal this evening, I’m taking Laura out to dinner.”
“I’ve nothing but a few telephone calls to make, so you can add me to the party,” said Kitty.
“Good thing I booked a table for four, then.”
“Four? Who else is coming?”
“Young Julian Perse, our nevvy, of course.”
Kitty shuddered.
“He’s the one who let me in for this pageant thing,” she confided to Laura. “I’ve cut him out of my will. Anyway, I’ve had my revenge. He wanted to be Henry VIII with all six wives, but I made the sub-committee put him in a car, like the Mayor and Mayoress and all the other Councillors.”
“But how cruel!” said Laura, with a leer which would have done credit to her formidable employer.
“Well, he is a Councillor,” retorted Kitty, “so he can go by car like the other Councillors. What’s the matter with that? So, in revenge, he’s not going to show up at the Town Hall in the evening—though I don’t really think it’s revenge.”
“He may think himself lucky in the end,” said Laura, not knowing with what authority she spoke.
Dinner was gay and amusing and, allowing (as Laura tactfully did) for a certain amount of youthful arrogance and cocksureness on his part, young Mr Perse acquitted himself with distinction and proved to be a pleasant addition to the party. He took to Laura immediately, made himself extremely charming to her in a discreetly flirtatious manner, gently teased his aunt, talked seriously and well to his uncle, and when dinner was over offered to run Laura round Brayne in his car, so that she could see what she was letting herself in for. This offer was flatly turned down by Kitty, who objected to the project on the grounds that she wanted Laura all in one piece for the next day’s rehearsals.
“Of course, lots of people won’t be able to turn up for the afternoon stint because they’ll be at work,” she explained to Laura, when, young Mr Perse having been sent back to Brayne, the others had returned from the restaurant to the flat, “but so long as two or three in each party know the drill, it ought to be all right, I should think. Anyway, the schools have all promised that we can have the children, so that’s quite something, isn’t it?”