Jeeves and the Wedding Bells (13 page)

‘Uncle Henry maintained that Craganour had had to change course after the suffragette incident, whereas Aboyeur was unaffected.’

‘Without that wretched woman,’ said Sir Henry, ‘Craganour would have won by a good two lengths.’

‘And that, Dame Judith,’ Georgiana concluded, ‘is why Uncle Henry is against all forms of female emancipation.’

‘I was set to win thirty-five guineas,’ said Sir Henry sadly.

Woody was trying not to laugh, while Rupert Venables let out a shrill one. Goneril and Regan seemed to have been distracted, though I was not convinced the danger had fully passed.

Jeeves may well have felt something similar. As Georgiana fell back, flushed with her effort, he stepped up smoothly.

‘A most distressing day,’ he said. ‘I remember it well.’

‘I suppose you were on the favourite, too, Etringham,’ said Sir Henry, sympathetically. ‘We all were.’

‘Indeed,’ said Jeeves. ‘Though I was placing my bet with Honest Sid Levy, I could not help noticing the extremely generous odds on Aboyeur. It seemed to me that a small saving wager at such a price was well worth the gamble.’

‘You really are quite a fellow, aren’t you, Etringham? When the ladies leave us, you’d better talk me through the card tomorrow.’

‘It would be a pleasure. Though no one of course can guarantee—’

‘Don’t be so dashed modest! Never known a tipster like it.’

I left them to their mutual admiration, but I have to say it was a pretty shaken Bertram who rejoined the galley slaves.

‘By ’eck, you look all in, Mr Wilberforce,’ said Mrs Padgett. ‘Them folk giving you the runaround are they?’

‘Not at all. I’m in prime early-season form, thank you, Mrs P.’ This equine chat was catching. ‘Well, there’s a nice bit of veal left if you fancy it later, love.’

We sons of toil had taken our dinner early – some sort of cheese pie at about six-thirty – and it was still exacting a pretty heavy toll on the Wooster digestive system. The only thing I could, with any pleasure, envisage joining it was a glass or two of the distinguished red I’d seen Bicknell hauling out of the cellars that morning.

‘And how did that all go down, then?’ asked the proud cook. ‘Any nice comments?’

‘No one said anything,’ I replied truthfully, but then thought better of it. ‘Mr Venables senior enjoyed himself. He came back for more.’

‘And Miss Georgiana?’

‘She didn’t seem to have much appetite.’

‘Oh dear. That’s not like her!’

‘I know.’

Mrs Padgett gave me an odd look, like a miner’s wife who’d found a ferret in the coal – or whatever passed for odd in her native parts.

‘I mean, she looks like a healthy girl who’d enjoy one of your excellent dinners, Mrs P,’ I embroidered.

‘Any road,’ the stout woman sighed, ‘we’re almost done now. Just the gooseberry fool to go, and then we can all put our feet up. I’ll make you a nice cup of tea then.’

So saying, she pointed me towards a tray of glassware and I
elbowed my way back through the swing door into the lions’ den – a Daniel, if ever there was one, come to judgement.

Bicknell helped distribute the cut-glass receptacles, leaving me to lug round the heavy crystal bowl with Mrs P’s finest fool on board.

Say what you like about Sir Henry Hackwood’s guests, they didn’t let themselves get stuck for long on one topic. As I held the bowl out to Lady H, Rupert Venables made a polite inquiry about whether his future aunt-in-law, if that’s the term, had any travel plans for later in the summer.

The reply was brief and discouraging. ‘Our current situation will not permit us to travel beyond Wareham.’

‘Such a shame,’ said young Venables, warming to his moment in the spotlight. ‘The Mediterranean in late September is at its most charming. That’s the time of year I famously travelled by schooner to Sardinia.’

‘That’s my favourite of Roo’s books,’ purred Mrs Venables to her neighbours.

I thought I heard a sound of teeth grinding, but I supposed it was only Sir Henry pushing back his chair.

‘Yes, I like that one very much, too,’ said Georgiana.

‘Do you, my dear?’ said Rupert.

‘Yes, I do. Why?’

‘I thought you rather preferred the month of May for your travels in the Mediterranean.’

Young Venables smiled at the company, like an old vaudevillian who has just produced his catchphrase. The response was coolish.

‘The promenade at Nice,’ he went on regardless, ‘the seafront at Cannes … I thought you found them especially seductive in the spring.’

Well, I could have told him the old one about what to do when in a hole. As to what to do when in said orifice while being scrutinised by Dame Judith Puxley through her lorgnette … The maxim has yet to be coined, but in addition to a halt to all excavation, it would almost certainly recommend a change of subject.

Like his father, however, Venables the younger seemed a stranger to embarrassment. ‘You didn’t tell us, my dear,’ he went on languidly, if that’s the word I want, ‘the full story of your springtime adventure.’

Georgiana flushed an angry red, but said nothing.

‘Guinevere!’ called out Dame Judith, and I looked towards the door, wondering if we’d be joined by some new harridan, bringing the number of Weird Sisters to the optimum three. ‘What on earth is the young man talking about?’

‘He’s talking about a week Georgiana spent in France,’ said Lady Hackwood, answering to her Christian name, as I now gathered. ‘She was apparently pursued by some lunatic called Gloucester or Worcester.’

‘Good heavens,’ said Dame Judith. ‘Not Bertie Wooster, Agatha Worplesdon’s nephew? I thought Agatha had had him put away.’

Quite a number of things happened at that moment, and I suppose the exact order of them is unimportant, but I like to
keep the record straight. A small matter you may say, but we authors have our pride.

The crystal bowl of gooseberry fool, into which Dame Judith was dipping for a second time, jerked violently forwards, as though it had taken on an independent life.

Georgiana Meadowes flung down her napkin, pushed back her chair and stormed out of the dining room.

Rupert Venables followed her with his eyes, simpered and looked about the company.

For the umpteenth time, Bicknell refilled his master’s glass.

Back at Puxley Central, a desperate attempt was made to retrieve the situation. However, continued dippings into the fool had rendered the surface of the bowl slippery, while Jeeves’s reading glasses blurred my focus. It was perhaps a mistake to remove one hand and try to steady the bowl from beneath, as it may have been this manoeuvre that caused the wretched thing to flip over. It was certainly, on reflection, an error of judgement to attempt to remove approximately five helpings of gooseberry fool from Dame Judith Puxley’s lap with a Georgian tablespoon.

BY THE TIME
the commotion had finally died down, the dining room at Melbury Hall contained men only; and I hope it’s not ungallant to say that it seemed a better place for it.

Lady Hackwood had dispatched Amelia to inquire after Georgiana and had then taken Mrs Venables and Dame Judith up to her boudoir – there, one assumed, to coo over children’s photographs, swap horror stories about their husbands and, in Dame Judith’s case, to purge the outer garments of gooseberry.

In the dining room, Bicknell placed the port on the table and retired to his position in front of the double doors. I was told to clear the remains of the table while the men pushed up their chairs towards the host.

‘I think we’re all right for bowling,’ said Sir Henry, as though the events of dinner had been no more than a brief interruption. ‘I’ve got a local farmer called Harold Niblett. Runs like
a Jehu, bowls like the wind. Useful bat as well. Beeching can open from the other end.’

‘Thank you, Sir Henry, but to be honest, I was only ever a net bowler,’ said Woody.

‘Good enough in this company,’ said Sir Henry. ‘And that footman Liddle, the one I sacked last week. He can show us his wobblers.’

‘Are you happy to have him back so soon?’ said Jeeves.

‘Not happy, Etringham, no. But needs must. I’ve paid him a guinea to bowl eight overs and keep his hands off the silver. You can turn your arm over, too, I expect.’

‘It has been many a year since I had the opportunity,’ said Jeeves. ‘I fear time’s wingèd chariot may have—’

‘Well, go up and have a net tomorrow. Get some practice. What about you, Venables? Do you bowl?’

‘No, I’m an opening batsman. The Nizam of Hyderabad was kind enough to say I reminded him of Victor Trumper. I field at first slip. Hands like flypaper, they tell me.’

‘All right.’ Sir Henry ran his eye up and down the ex-Collector like a buyer inspecting the goods at an Irish horse fair, but bit his tongue.

‘What about you, young Venables? Fancy a few overs?’

‘I barely know the rules, I’m afraid,’ said Rupert Venables. ‘My tastes always ran more to the aesthetic. At school I was allowed to miss games because I was needed in the art room, and then of course there was Cambridge.’

‘What happened there?’ said Woody.

‘A little punting,’ said Rupert. ‘And study, of course. As
an undergraduate I was already developing my passion for travel.’

Sir Henry let out a noise like a mastiff sneezing and made a long arm for the port decanter. ‘Well, you can go in number eleven, then. Anyway, Etringham, we’re all right for bowling. What your man has to do is find me a pair of top-order batsmen.’

‘I feel confident that he will be able to do so by tomorrow evening. Might I venture to suggest a wager on the outcome of the match?’

Sir Henry’s face assumed a look of foxy interest. ‘What? A straight bet with their captain?’

‘I wonder if there could be a way of interesting the bookmaker in Dorchester,’ said Jeeves. ‘It is my experience of turf accountants that if they see a likely profit in it for themselves they are prepared to make a book on any event, however parochial. I might be able to link it to events at Ascot.’

‘Shall I leave that in your capable hands, Etringham?’

‘I should be happy to oblige. I assume that the abilities of the Dorset Gentlemen are well known in the district?’

‘They’ve been around for donkey’s years. The bookies should know their form all right.’

‘I remember,’ ‘Vishnu’ Venables began, ‘the final of the Uttar Pradesh Divisional Cup. One year it was held in Chanamasala, and as luck would have it I received a call from the Deputy High Commissioner saying, “Sidney, you’re the only man we can rely on …”’

I can’t say for what Venables was being relied on, however,
as by this time I had finished my clearing and was dismissed by a nod from Bicknell, who was still on duty by the doors to the hall.

It was with considerable relief that I sat down at the kitchen table and passed a hand across the brow. My schoolboy role as Bottom in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
had involved me in memorising and speaking many more lines than had been required of me in the part of Wilberforce, stand-in footman; but the stakes had not been as high. A momentary lapse or fluff from me, and Boggis-Rolfe minor sat ready, text in hand, to provide the missing line. A slip-up from Wilberforce, on the other hand … I had no doubt that the mayhem that had been narrowly avoided would have made the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse look like the warm-up act at the Melbury Tetchett Gymkhana.

‘Cup of tea, Mr Wilberforce?’

‘Thank you, Mrs P. I don’t suppose you could lay your hands on something a little stronger, could you? Did I see some of that claret making its way back?’

‘I don’t know as I should by rights. It’s Mr Bicknell’s little perk. But seeing as how there’s quite a bit … You wait there.’

A moment or so later, I was clutching a goblet of the blushful hippocrene, which I proceeded to lower with all speed lest Bicknell should come in and dash it from my lips. It seemed a pity to rush it, but it bucked me up no end.

Back in my billet, I stretched out the aching limbs and picked up
The Mystery of the Gabled House
. For once, however, it failed to divert. I was not sure if this was a new corpse in
the conservatory or one I had already known about. Oddly, it seemed not to matter.

I was distracted by a certain ferment inside the old bean. Georgiana had almost dropped me in the soup by using my real name – an odd lapse, I thought, for such a clever girl. Then I had blundered by letting Mrs Padgett see I knew that Georgiana’s normal appetite tended to the hearty. I thought I could survive a quizzical eyebrow from the cook, but the suspicious glare of Lady Hackwood and Dame Judith Puxley was altogether more ominous.

I consulted the alarm clock with its hideous twin bells. It was almost eleven, and I wondered if Lord Etringham might be needing anything before he turned in. By corridor, stair and landing, under the eyes of nine generations of painted Hackwood forebears, I found my way to his vast accommodation and knocked on the door. It was a relief to hear that familiar voice.

Jeeves was wearing my burgundy dressing gown over the remains of his evening dress, looking like the wronged husband in a West End comedy. He was seated in the armchair, holding a book at arm’s length, minus his reading glasses.