Jeeves and the Wedding Bells (12 page)

I said nothing, as per instruction.

‘Well?’

‘Am I allowed to speak now?’

‘Yes. Have you the faintest idea what I’ve been talking about?’

‘Yes, I have. You love Amelia and intend to make her Mrs Beeching if it’s the last thing you do.’

‘Oh, hallelujah! He’s got it. Hold tight to that thought, Bertie. Don’t get confused or misled by anything else. And don’t try to imagine the feelings that lie behind it. You wouldn’t understand.’

‘You never know, Woody. Perhaps I might.’

There was an awkward one, during which I caught sight of that look again.

‘Or possibly not,’ I footnoted, as I made my escape.

It being now almost seven o’clock, I went down a floor, through the green baize and up the back stairs to my quarters. I had fulfilled my share of the division of labours between Jeeves and me, and though Woody may have been a little graceless, I felt he had a point. A chap who’s completely lost his head over a girl doesn’t want some other chap giving her the come-on. It confuses. It enrages. I had no doubt about his passion for this Amelia, mysterious though she remained to me. And I had at least avoided a series of left-right combinations to the person.
I could only hope Jeeves had pulled off a result with Amelia.

A bracing encounter with the chill waters of the bathroom was followed by a change of clothing and a re-parting of the hair. When I peered into the glass above the basin, it seemed to me I looked like Dan Leno about to go on stage at the Shoreditch Empire, but I trusted Jeeves’s judgement. I took the spectacles he’d lent me and hooked them over the ears, thinking as I did so, how much of Plato and the gang had passed through the lenses on the way to that great brain. It was an honour to wear them. Then I went downstairs – rather unsteadily, as the glasses seemed to make the steps rise up to meet me, like the gangway of a Channel steamer.

In the kitchen, Mrs Padgett filled me in on what to expect. The first course was soup, unfortunately. There was to be no less than five minutes but not more than ten between courses. Bicknell was on wine duty, but would help distribute the plates if I was getting behind.

‘But ’ark at me going on,’ said Mrs P. ‘’Appen you’ve done this all an ’undred times before.’

‘Not really.’

I shall never, if I live to be as old as Methuselah, forget my first sight of the dining room at Melbury Hall. As I think I’ve mentioned, the Hackwoods used only a few rooms for themselves: drawing room, library, long room with billiard table and this dining room, with conservatory off. But what rooms they were.

The dining table could have seated thirty; and if you’d shoved it to one side of the room, you could have got another
thirty down a second table alongside. No wonder a private school was baying at the gates.

I entered through a swing door in the corner, bearing a tray with several bowls of cold cucumber soup. I put it on the sideboard, as instructed, turned, and let my eyes take in the awful scene.

The company was in the process of sitting down. At the head of the table was Sir Henry Hackwood, a rubicund old villain with a face like a fox and a glittering eye. Desperation and bad temper had coloured his features, though Scotch whisky may have lent a hand. On his right was what looked like a Persian cat in human form, which, I took it from Woody’s description, was Mrs Venables.

Georgiana wore a plain satin dress and a distant look. Amelia was in blue, though the rims of her eyes were red. Lord Etringham in his Drones club shirt-studs and exact bow tie was placed between them, exuding poise. Woody was below the salt, brooding. The Venables father and son filled in the gaps, the latter without drawing breath as he told a story about a visit to the Maharajah of Jodhpur.

The real horror lay in mid-table where, opposite one another, sat Lady Hackwood and her old school friend Dame Judith Puxley. Dame Judith had rows of black beads over her evening dress and an unblinking gaze, like a rattlesnake that’s just spotted its lunch. In appearance, her old classmate, Lady H, ran more to the blowsy end of things, but her voice was a pure icicle of disappointment. Between them they were about as welcoming as Goneril and Regan on being told that
old Pop Lear had just booked in for a month with full retinue.

It was with a palsied hand that I began the soup service.

‘Damned annoying thing just happened,’ Sir Henry announced to the table. ‘Shields and Caldecott, couple of my best players for Saturday, have pulled out. Motoring off to Kent to play for some wandering outfit. It’s very short notice to replace batsmen of that quality.’

‘Really, Henry, it’s just a game,’ said Lady H. ‘What does it matter who plays for you?’

‘Because, my dear, the rest of the team are fellows from the house – guests and staff. We need a couple of strong players. Beeching?’

Woody looked up from his soup. ‘I’ll see if I can think of someone, Sir Henry. It’s Thursday, so—’

‘I know what day of the week it is, man. I thought you were supposed to be a sportsman.’

‘My work at the Bar has meant that I haven’t had much time recently, but I could try a few old friends from the Oxford eleven.’

‘We don’t want swots, you fool, we want batsmen.’

‘We did beat Surrey that year, and drew with Yorkshire, so …’

It was a couple of furlongs from Sir Henry’s seat to the Coventry occupied by Woody, but a glare made itself felt across the gulf and silenced the playmate of my youth.

‘Might I make a suggestion, Sir Henry?’ said Jeeves.

‘Ah, Etringham. I knew I could rely on you.’

‘My man Wilberforce is a keen cricketer. He has frequently
boasted to me of his triumphs with leather and willow. I believe that when younger he had a trial for the county.’

I had got four soup bowls almost back to safety, but at this moment they broke into a spontaneous dance, the spoons going like castanets as I plonked the whole lot on to the sideboard.

I was about to protest, when I heard Jeeves continuing, ‘I feel sure that he would be able to find another player or two at short notice. His acquaintance is formed in large part from the sporting underworld.’

‘Sounds like an excellent chap,’ said Sir Henry. ‘Tell him to see what he can do. He’s got carte blanche.’

I don’t know if anything about this exchange has struck you as odd. No? Well, the thing that seemed peculiar to me was that no one consulted the fellow Wilberforce himself. It was as though I wasn’t there.

I heard the high horse neigh impatiently, and I cast a wistful glance in the direction of the saddle. Then I remembered what Jeeves had told me about Easton, the stand-in butler at Aunt Dahlia’s; I bit the lip and took the tray back to the kitchen.

By the time I came back with some sole fillets, Sidney Venables was addressing Lady Hackwood at the top of his voice.

‘The Pathan,’ he bellowed, ‘is a splendid chap and we always got on well with them, didn’t we, my dear? The Bengali, on the other hand, is a slippery customer.’

‘And did you spend much time in Calcutta?’ asked Dame Judith Puxley. ‘My late husband once lectured there.’

‘Heavens, no, frightful place. All plagues and bad drains. Appalling climate.’

‘Did you in fact ever visit?’ Dame Judith persisted.

‘I was due to go once, but there was a deal of trouble with the Sepoys in the local cantonment. The CO was out of his depth so guess who had to step in and sort it out! “Send for Venables!” That was always the cry if there was dirty work afoot, wasn’t it, my dear?’

‘Sidney was ever so busy,’ said the Persian cat.

Dame Judith was not deterred. ‘I was simply trying to establish, Mr Venables,’ she went on, ‘how you came to have such a view about Bengalis without having actually visited Bengal.’

If you were a Sumerian tablet beneath Dame Judith’s scrutiny, one imagined, you would give up your secrets pretty quick, cuneiform or not.

Old Venables, however, seemed oblivious. ‘Oh, it’s well known,’ he said. ‘Kipling couldn’t stand the blighters either. Now the Punjab is a different matter.’

‘We liked the Punjabis,’ said Mrs Venables to Sir Henry Hackwood.

‘What?’

Sir Henry had been staring out of the window while the Indian chatter went on, doubtless wondering whether it was too late to send a car to London for Patsy Hendren to open the batting on Saturday.

‘I said, we liked the Punjabis, Sidney and me.’

‘Did you by Jove!’ Sir Henry gave her a quick once-over, as though trying to remember who she was. ‘Well, jolly good for you.’

‘And then of course,’ old Venables boomed on, ‘some fool in Delhi raised the question of independence.’

‘And what did you think of that?’ said Lady H wearily.

‘Well,’ said Venables wiping his lips on his napkin, ‘I was very interested by my own response.’

On my next return to the kitchen, I found Mrs Padgett dishing up the meat course, with the help of a stout female from the village. This was Mrs P’s big moment, and it was all hands to the pump. The noisettes of veal didn’t look a patch on those that Anatole’s legerdemain conjured up in Aunt Dahlia’s kitchen, but in any normal light appeared toothsome enough. While all was being transferred from cooking vessel to china, I slipped back into the dining room to make myself useful.

As I was pouring a glass of water for Rupert Venables, I caught Georgiana’s eye across the table. It held an expression I had never seen in all those evenings in France, or in our brief encounters since. Reproach was the first thing I spotted; though there was a lingering friendliness, too. What was new in those deep brown pools was … I’m not sure what the word is. Melancholy? I can’t put my finger on it. But the light that had sparkled when she used to say, ‘Come on, Bertie, couldn’t we just
share
a few langoustines’ had been extinguished.

It hit me hard. Pausing only to mop up the worst of the overspill from young Venables’s tumbler, I moved hastily down the row of chairs.

Dame Judith had by now wrenched the conversation from the subcontinent to the question of the female vote, where she seemed to sense blood.

‘My dear Henry,’ she was saying, ‘surely you can’t imagine that women will give up the battle until they have the same rights as men.’

‘Henry can imagine anything if he tries hard enough,’ said his wife. ‘He can picture a pot of gold under the mulberry tree in Snooks Farm Lane when he’s in the mood. Ask him to imagine selling a couple of racehorses, though, and his mind goes completely blank.’

‘A great mistake giving women the vote at all,’ said Sir Henry. ‘Whatever next? They’ll try and form an all-women government.’

‘That would be a splendid idea,’ said Dame Judith. ‘They would make a better job of it than the dunderheads we usually have in office.’

‘Absolute stuff and nonsense,’ said Sir Henry, blind to Lady H’s warning look. ‘Anyway, the wretched suffragettes have got their way.’

‘Only for women over thirty,’ said Dame Judith.

‘Quite right,’ chipped in Amelia. ‘Cousin Toby can vote, and he’s younger than I am. He’s only twenty-two. It’s ridiculous.’

‘If you think a couple of young girls like you and Georgiana would know how to cast a vote sensibly then I …’ Sir Henry seemed finally to catch his wife’s eye. ‘I’ll eat my head,’ he trailed off.

I was manoeuvring the dish of what I took to be
pommes dau-phinoises
between Sidney Venables and Georgiana Meadowes when I heard a familiar soft cough – probably not audible to the untrained ear. I looked up to see Jeeves’s eye flicker
meaningfully from right to left, telling me that I was on the wrong side.

I had wondered why old Sidney, who looked every inch a potato wallah, was giving me the cold shoulder. I had come in hard to starboard and he was braced for a portside docking. I began to withdraw the heavy dish for a fresh approach, without thinking that what was right to Venables was left to Georgiana, who at that moment reached for the spoon and fork. The combination of her digging and my pulling back caused a sort of leverage to take place. Three slices of King Edward’s with accompanying sauce flipped on to the table.

‘Sorry, Bertie,’ said Georgiana. ‘My fault. No harm done.’

She quickly scooped up the stray bits and put them on her side plate.

I was too busy with my ‘Sorry, Miss’-ing to be absolutely certain that I’d heard correctly. I docked successfully at the second attempt with Venables senior, who helped himself with a will.

Keeping my head down, I moved on to Amelia and in my mind went back over the last thirty seconds or so. There was no doubt that Georgiana had said, ‘Sorry, Bertie.’

As I finished dauphinoise duty and returned to my sentry-go position by the sideboard, I felt four eyes boring into me. Reading from left to right, those eyes belonged to Lady Hackwood and Dame Judith Puxley, and what fell within their field of vision signally failed to please.

‘Georgiana,’ said Lady Hackwood, ‘did I hear you—’

But Georgiana was up and running. ‘Dame Judith, what
perhaps you need to understand about dear Uncle Henry’s attitude to women’s suffrage is that it was formed by the outcome of the Derby in 1913.’

It seemed to do the trick. There was a pause.

‘I beg your pardon?’ said Dame Judith, as though she had stepped in something. ‘A horse race?’

‘Yes! You remember,’ Georgiana went on briskly, ‘when that suffragette threw herself beneath the hooves of the king’s horse—’

‘Anmer,’ barked Sir Henry. ‘Thoroughly second-rate colt. Disgrace to the king’s colours.’

‘… And caused a commotion,’ said Georgiana, forging on. ‘Well, what some people seem to have forgotten about the race is that it ended in a stewards’ inquiry. The winner when they crossed the line was the favourite, Craganour. He had just overtaken a horse called Aboyeur, a hundred-to-one outsider.’

I remembered Georgiana telling me she had spent most of her childhood in the saddle, but I’d no idea she was quite such an historian of the Turf.

‘It was a disaster,’ said Sir Henry.

‘Like most people,’ said Georgiana, ‘Uncle Henry had put all his money on the favourite. But the stewards disqualified him and gave the race to Aboyeur.’

‘Absolute scandal,’ said Sir Henry.