Blandings Castle and Elsewhere (27 page)

But Love will find a way. Meeting Madeline Bassett one day
and falling for her like a ton of bricks, he had emerged from his
retirement and started to woo, and after numerous vicissitudes
had clicked and was slated at no distant date to don the spongebag
trousers and gardenia for buttonhole and walk up the aisle
with the ghastly girl.

I call her a ghastly girl because she was a ghastly girl. The
Woosters are chivalrous, but they can speak their minds.
A droopy, soupy, sentimental exhibit, with melting eyes and
a cooing voice and the most extraordinary views on such things
as stars and rabbits. I remember her telling me once that rabbits
were gnomes in attendance on the Fairy Queen and that the
stars were God's daisy chain. Perfect rot, of course. They're
nothing of the sort.

Aunt Dahlia emitted a low, rumbling chuckle, for that speech
of Gussie's down at Market Snodsbury has always been one of
her happiest memories.

'Good old Spink-Bottle! Where is he now?'

'Staying at the Bassett's father's place – Totleigh Towers,
Totleigh-in-the-Wold, Glos. He went back there this morning.
They're having the wedding at the local church.'

'Are you going to it?'

'Definitely no.'

'No, I suppose it would be too painful for you. You being in
love with the girl.'

I stared.

'In love? With a female who thinks that every time a fairy
blows its wee nose a baby is born?'

'Well, you were certainly engaged to her once.'

'For about five minutes, yes, and through no fault of my own.
My dear old relative,' I said, nettled, 'you are perfectly well aware
of the inside facts of that frightful affair.'

I winced. It was an incident in my career on which I did not
care to dwell. Briefly, what had occurred was this. His nerve
sapped by long association with newts, Gussie had shrunk from
pleading his cause with Madeline Bassett, and had asked me to
plead it for him. And when I did so, the fat-headed girl thought
I was pleading mine. With the result that when, after that
exhibition of his at the prize giving, she handed Gussie the
temporary mitten, she had attached herself to me, and I had
had no option but to take the rap. I mean to say, if a girl has got it
into her nut that a fellow loves her, and comes and tells him that
she is returning
hex fiancé
to store and is now prepared to sign up
with him, what can a chap do?

Mercifully, things had been straightened out at the eleventh
hour by a reconciliation between the two pills, but the
thought of my peril was one at which I still shuddered.
I wasn't going to feel really easy in my mind till the parson
had said: 'Wilt thou, Augustus?' and Gussie had whispered
a shy 'Yes.'

'Well, if it is of any interest to you,' said Aunt Dahlia, 'I am
not proposing to attend that wedding myself. I disapprove of Sir
Watkyn Bassett, and don't think he ought to be encouraged.
There's one of the boys, if you want one!'

'You know the old crumb, then?' I said, rather surprised,
though of course it bore out what I often say – viz. that it's
a small world.

'Yes, I know him. He's a friend of Tom's. They both collect
old silver and snarl at one another like wolves about it all the
time. We had him staying at Brinkley last month. And would
you care to hear how he repaid me for all the loving care
I lavished on him while he was my guest? Sneaked round behind
my back and tried to steal Anatole!'

'No!'

'That's what he did. Fortunately, Anatole proved staunch –
after I had doubled his wages.'

'Double them again,' I said earnestly. 'Keep on doubling
them. Pour out money like water rather than lose that superb
master of the roasts and hashes.'

I was visibly affected. The thought of Anatole, that peerless
disher-up, coming within an ace of ceasing to operate at Brinkley
Court, where I could always enjoy his output by inviting
myself for a visit, and going off to serve under old Bassett, the
last person in the world likely to set out a knife and fork for
Bertram, had stirred me profoundly.

'Yes,' said Aunt Dahlia, her eye smouldering as she brooded
on the frightful thing, 'that's the sort of hornswoggling highbinder
Sir Watkyn Bassett is. You had better warn Spink-Bottle
to watch out on the wedding day. The slightest relaxation of
vigilance, and the old thug will probably get away with his tiepin
in the vestry. And now,' she said, reaching out for what had
the appearance of being a thoughtful essay on the care of the
baby in sickness and in health, 'push off. I've got about six tons of
proofs to correct. Oh, and give this to Jeeves, when you see him.
It's the "Husbands' Corner" article. It's full of deep stuff about
braid on the side of men's dress trousers, and I'd like him to vet it.
For all I know, it may be Red propaganda. And I can rely on you
not to bungle that job? Tell me in your own words what it is
you're supposed to do.'

'Go to antique shop –'

'– in the Brompton Road –'

'– in, as you say, the Brompton Road. Ask to see cow-creamer–'

'– and sneer. Right. Buzz along. The door is behind you.'

It was with a light heart that I went out into the street and hailed
a passing barouche. Many men, no doubt, might have been a bit
sick at having their morning cut into in this fashion, but I was
conscious only of pleasure at the thought that I had it in my
power to perform this little act of kindness. Scratch Bertram
Wooster, I often say, and you find a Boy Scout.

The antique shop in the Brompton Road proved, as foreshadowed,
to be an antique shop in the Brompton Road and,
like all antique shops except the swanky ones in the Bond Street
neighbourhood, dingy outside and dark and smelly within. I don't
know why it is, but the proprietors of these establishments always
seem to be cooking some sort of stew in the back room.

'I say,' I began, entering; then paused as I perceived that the
bloke in charge was attending to two other customers.

'Oh, sorry,' I was about to add, to convey the idea that I had
horned in inadvertently, when the words froze on my lips.

Quite a slab of misty fruitfulness had drifted into the emporium,
obscuring the view, but in spite of the poor light I was able
to note that the smaller and elder of these two customers was no
stranger to me.

It was old Pop Bassett in person. Himself. Not a picture.

Also available in Arrow

P.G. Wodehouse

A Jeeves and Wooster novel

When Bertie Wooster goes to Totleigh Towers to pour oil on
the troubled waters of a lovers breach between Madeline Bassett
and Gussie Fink-Nottle, he isn't expecting to see Aunt Dahlia
there – nor to be instructed by her to steal some silver. But
purloining the antique cow creamer from under the baleful nose
of Sir Watkyn Bassett is the least of Bertie's tasks. He has to
restore true love to both Madeline and Gussie and to the Revd
Stinker Pinker and Stiffy Byng – and confound the insane
ambitions of would-be Dictator Roderick Spode and his Black
Shorts. It's a situation that only Jeeves can unravel ...

Also available in Arrow

P.G. Wodehouse

A Golf collection

From his favourite chair on the terrace above the ninth hole,
The Oldest Member tells a series of hilarious golfing stories.
From Evangeline, Bradbury Fisher's fifth wife and a notorious
'golfing giggler', to poor Rollo Podmarsh whose game was so
unquestionably inept that 'he began to lose his appetite and
would moan feebly at the sight of a poached egg', the game of
golf, its players and their friends and enemies are here shown in
all their comic glory.

Also available in Arrow

P.G. Wodehouse

A Blandings novel

When the moon is full at Blandings, strange things happen:
among them the painting of a portrait of The Empress, twice in
succession winner in the Fat Pigs Class at the Shropshire
Agricultural Show. What better choice of artist, in Lord
Emsworth's opinion, than Landseer. The renowned painter of
The Stag at Bay may have been dead for decades, but that doesn't
prevent Galahad Threepwood from introducing him to the castle
– or rather introducing Bill Lister, Gally's godson, so desperately
in love with Prudence that he's determined to enter Blandings in
yet another imposture. Add a gaggle of fearsome aunts, uncles
and millionaires, mix in Freddie Threepwood, Beach the Butler
and the gardener McAllister, and the moon is full indeed.