Jeeves and the Wedding Bells (25 page)

During the stampede for the free beer, I left the hall and went round to the stage door, or ‘back entrance’ as its homely architect might have termed it, there to join my fellow performers. Woody was coming the other way.

‘All set, Bertie?’

‘Yes, thanks. You?’

‘Fine. Snout only has a couple of lines. We’ve all been trying to ginger up old Etringham.’

‘Any luck?’

‘Not much. He sounds like a speak-your-weight machine. How’s your crosstalk script?’

‘Pitiful.’

‘There’s a splendid bar in the hall. I’ll send you through a zonker to put you in the mood.’

‘It may take more than that, old friend.’

The backstage area doubled as a shed where various agricultural machines and implements were kept. Georgiana was already in costume as Titania, wearing a tutu, if that’s the word I want – the sort of frilly thing you see in
Swan Lake
, anyway. There was a good deal of netting and feathery wings, and a tremendous amount of slender limb to boot; her hair was piled up and held by a fake-diamond tiara and her dark eyes were rimmed with some theatrical paint.

I became aware that I was unwittingly doing an impression of Monty Beresford’s golden retriever on the Fourth of June and moved to push the lower mandible back into some sort of connection with the upper. Georgiana seemed oblivious of her appearance as she fussed over old Etringham, who was now wrapped in a sheet with a pair of knitting needles stuck in his belt. My own costume consisted of no more than the addition of a rhododendron flower in the buttonhole and a deerstalker borrowed from Sir Henry. Venables hadn’t wanted the straight
man to catch the eye too much; he himself wore a red beard and a top hat.

The second half got under way with the Melbury Tetchett string quartet. The best thing you could say about them was that, unlike the barbershop chaps, they were quorate. Whether the scraping sounded better out front than backstage I was in no position to say, but the re-refreshed audience was in generous mood. While they played in front of the curtain, the Ladies’ Sewing Circle set the scene for their tableau vivant. A backdrop painted by the Sunday School showed a cloudy harbour with a couple of galleons. Stage left were two plasterboard pillars and a step. Centre stage was a rowing boat behind which a boy scout, concealed from the audience, lay flat on his face gently rocking the hull. The Ladies of the Sewing Circle disported themselves in set positions, representing King Solomon, the Queen of Sheba and sundry courtiers. The
coup de théâtre
, as we buffs call it, was the spotlight that shone through the backdrop towards the audience, bathing the whole scene in a twilight effect.

Sir Henry Hackwood announced: ‘“The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba” after Claude Lorrain.’ On went the spotlight, up went the curtain and the sewing ladies were revealed in their positions.

The day I had won the Scripture-knowledge prize at Malvern House, Bramley-on-Sea was but a distant memory, but I was fairly sure King Solomon’s court had not been all-female. And there was no mention in the Book of Kings that the visiting queen bore such a strong resemblance to Mrs Padgett, she of the pans and skillets.

However, there was something only too familiar about the voice that called out, ‘I seen her move! The fat one!’

It was the slurred tenor that had lately sung ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ among the cold frames, and it belonged to footman Hoad.

There is a nice balance to be struck in watering the standees. The more the merrier is my general rule, but when he reaches a certain point of liquidity, your standee demands something with a bit of snap. He needs action. Static seamstresses are not enough.

Hoad’s interruption seemed to open a floodgate. ‘That one looks seasick!’, ‘All hands on deck!’ were two clearly audible comments; they were followed by a burst of ‘What shall we do with the drunken sailor?’ It might have been worse had some unseen hand not rung down the curtain.

As a warm-up for my appearance with Venables, it was about as unpropitious as they go. I heard a female voice whisper ‘good luck’ as Venables and I pushed on from the wings to a rowdy welcome. The idea was that we should carry on for as long as it took them to get rid of King Solomon’s court and set up a Wood near Athens behind the curtain. Two minutes ought to have been ample in my view.

‘I say, I say,’ said Venables, prodding me in the chest with a rolled-up newspaper, ‘what did you make of the barbershop quartet?’

This opener was not in the script, but I’m nothing if not a trouper. ‘I’m tone deaf,’ I said. ‘What did you make of the barbershop quartet?’

‘I thought they hit the top notes pretty well. But it was a darn close shave.’

There are few silences more poignant than the one left for unforthcoming laughter. It was a sound – or absence – that was to become familiar over the next few minutes.

Old Venables, to give him his due, was a hard man to bring down. I suppose when you’ve ‘entertained’, to use the word at its loosest, the soldiery in the cantonments of Chanamasala after a hot day of polo and pig-sticking, the yokels of Melbury-cum-Kingston hold few fears.

We got through the Ladies’ Sewing Circle having him in stitches, the old one about her ladyship’s whereabouts (‘they’re still in the wash’) and something about the Queen of Sheba and Mrs Holloway’s conjuring brother that may have been indecent.

The ribs of the audience remained untickled. If the silence had been any stonier old Etringham could have taken out his little hammer and inspected it for the fossilised remains of B. Wooster. Somehow we got through it; eventually there was a cough from behind the curtain to let us know that the Wood near Athens was ready.

At the first sound of throat-clearing, I was off into the wings to hide my shame; Venables not only lingered but popped back for an uninvited encore. Eventually, even he had to concede that the game was up. All you could say was that the rotten eggs and tomatoes remained in their boxes at the feet of the standees. They were a patient lot – thus far; but no one likes to take home unthrown the market produce he has earmarked for other purposes.

I was watching from the wings as the curtain rose on the Wood near Athens. The Sunday School had provided another backdrop, this one of Greek temples and trees; the set consisted of a couple of potted birch saplings from Melbury Hall and a grassy bank made of papier mâché with an old green velvet curtain on which lay the slumbering form of Titania, queen of the fairies. A piercing whistle from the back of the hall greeted the sight.

On came the rude mechanicals, and with the words ‘Are we all met?’ Lord Etringham, as Bottom, got things under way. On the plus side, you could say that the writer of this scene was more gifted than the author of the crosstalk act that had gone before. On the debit side, was the main actor, Bottom. His voice was not only that of a fellow well past his prime, it was that of an old gentleman looking forward to his bed. King Lear, perhaps, after long exposure on the blasted heath; but Bottom, no.

The audience was quiet at first, but then, for reasons not entirely clear from where I stood, began to laugh.

‘If you think I am come hither as a lion, it were pity of my life,’ said Bottom with about as much bravado as the curate announcing the hymn at evensong.

They liked it, though. And as I shifted to get a better view, I saw that Hoad, in the person of Flute the bellows-mender, was doing a bit of scene-stealing. It was simple stuff, hand motions to match the words of the other actors, but he had finally found the funny bone of the locals. When Bottom was instructing the actor playing the Wall to hold his
fingers ‘thus’, Hoad’s gesture was met by a gush of hilarity.

Bottom, meanwhile, had gone from the lifeless to the near-comatose. Mrs Tilman as Puck led him off stage, as per the script, but once in the wings, he sat down on a hard chair, shut his eyes and nodded off.

Back on stage, Flute had his first line. By happy chance it was, ‘Must I speak now?’

The advice from the audience was pretty varied. ‘If you think you still can’ and ‘You tell ’em, Les!’ being two of the more repeatable. Hoad was swaying on his feet as he launched into some lines about ‘brisky juvenal and eke most lovely Jew’. It may have been the fact that he clearly had no idea what he was talking about or it may have been the word ‘eke’ that touched the simple souls at the back, those who had known this Hoad as man and boy. They laughed, they roared, they stamped their feet: ‘Eke, Les, eke!’

I was so wrapped up in the performance that I barely heard Titania in a stage whisper say, ‘Quick, Bertie, wrap a sheet round you. You’ll have to play Bottom.’

It was the hand of an assiduous gentleman’s personal gentleman that effected the lightning-fast costume change and, with a murmured ‘Forgive me, sir’, lowered an ass’s head over the occiput. It was the gentle shove of Mrs Tilman’s Puck that ushered me on stage.

I have made a few entrances in my time, but I can honestly say that none of them has gone over as big as this one. It turned out that what the standees had been wanting all along was a man in a donkey’s head. The sun had come out in their world.
The string quartet was forgiven, the Queen of Sheba forgotten; the Collector of Chanamasala was as dust beneath their chariot wheel.

Now all eyes were on Wooster, B. This was the part that for more than a dozen years I had been reciting blindfold in my sleep, yet when I asked myself for the line, it was like looking into a huge and awful void. I heard my cue, but no words came. This rude mechanical and I were utter strangers. From the wings came a respectful throat-clearing, followed by a prompt. ‘If I were, fair Thisby, I were only thine.’

It sounded familiar, so I said it. And I tried to give it a bit of weaver’s oomph. So we staggered through the next bit, with Jeeves prompting. The audience seemed to think this was all part of the show; and even if not, they couldn’t by now have cared less.

At last, Titania stirred. She spoke. ‘What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?’ There came a volley of whistles and catcalls as Georgiana unfolded the limbs and tiptoed over.

She came and stood by me with her hand lightly on my sleeve. As she gazed up at me in her fairy-queen rapture, an odd thing happened. The words of the part came back to me, and I let rip with the full Monty Beresford West Riding accent echoing through the ass’s head.

I thought Hoad’s line ‘Must I speak now?’ had got the biggest laugh of the night, but it was as nothing to Titania’s ‘Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful.’ The plaster was coming off the ceiling and the dust of decades was being beaten from the floorboards by the stamp of the standees’ boots.

Georgiana had wisely cut the end of the scene, where various fairies hop about, so we were now in the home straight. ‘And I do love thee: therefore go with me,’ she was saying, squeezing my arm with most realistic grip; and even through the ass’s headgear I was feeling the force of those brown, pleading eyes. ‘… And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep …’

Then something about the warmth of her low and throbbing voice seemed to calm the yokels at the back. ‘And I will purge thy mortal grossness so That thou shalt like an airy spirit go,’ she ended, and took me by the arm as the curtain fell.

The first thing we saw in the wings was Lord Etringham, sitting up, drinking a glass of water, apparently restored.

‘Quick, Bertie,’ said Georgiana, ‘give him back the ass’s head. He must take the credit.’

It was a relief to get the wretched thing off. Lord Etringham was struggling to keep up with events, but no one minds going on stage to a hero’s welcome, which is what he got. They cheered, they whistled, they clapped, and no one seemed to mind that Bottom had shrunk by almost a foot.

They came off stage at last, but the audience wanted them back for a curtain call.

‘Come on, Bertie, you come this time, too,’ said Georgiana.

I followed on, as in a dream. When we bowed again, Lord E removed the ass’s head, to the delight of the crowd. Even the two-bob seats were up on their feet, and Georgiana pushed him forwards to take a solo bow.

As he did so, she picked up the head, and put it on me. ‘Bless thee, Bottom,’ she said. ‘Bless thee! Thou art translated.’

Strictly speaking this was Quince’s line, but no one seemed to mind. Then she took it off again, stood on tiptoe and, to the unbridled delight of those watching, planted a big kiss on my lips. I thought the ceiling might now cave in completely. Not knowing what else to do, I grabbed the dear girl round the waist and returned the kiss, with interest.

When eventually we managed to get off stage, things happened rather fast. The players went to change their clothes, but in a minute we were reunited backstage round some bottles of light ale and champagne.

Georgiana was standing beside me when the door opened and in came Lady Hackwood and Dame Judith Puxley, clearly the only two people in the hall who had not been amused. They stood there like Scylla and Charybdis, and the channel between them to the open sea was a narrow one.

‘Well, young man,’ said Lady Hackwood. ‘Can you please explain yourself?’

‘Explain what, Lady H?’ I said.

‘Explain what you mean by kissing my niece like that in front of two hundred people.’

I looked at Georgiana, who was back in her normal clothes, though still with the tiara and the fairy-queen make-up. I felt that I had compromised her in public, and the code of the Woosters allowed for only one way out.

‘I kissed her, Lady Hackwood, because … Because … we are engaged to be married.’

The pause that followed had a silence that felt bottomless, as it were.

‘Is this true, Georgiana?’ said Lady Hackwood eventually.

‘I don’t know. Is it true, Bertie?’

‘It is if you want it to be, dear girl. Dashed odd proposal, I admit. But will you marry me? Could you bear it?’

‘I want it more than anything on earth. Come on, you ass, let’s go.’

‘Where to?’

‘I’ll tell you when we’re in the car.’

She grabbed me by the hand and led me from the room.

A couple of minutes later, the roof was down on the old two-seater as we purred between the fragrant hedgerows.