The Jeeves Omnibus (100 page)

And I emitted a hard laugh – one of the sneering kind.

‘I always thought you were such friends,’ said Angela.

I let go another hard one, with a bit more top spin on it than the first time:

‘Friends? Absolutely not. One was civil, of course, when one met the fellow, but it would be absurd to say one was a friend of his. A club acquaintance, and a mere one at that. And then one was at school with the man.’

‘At Eton?’

‘Good heavens, no. We wouldn’t have a fellow like that at Eton. At a kid’s school before I went there. A grubby little brute he was, I recollect. Covered with ink and mire generally, washing only on alternate Thursdays. In short, a notable outsider, shunned by all.’

I paused. I was more than a bit perturbed. Apart from the agony of having to talk in this fashion of one who, except when he was looping back rings and causing me to plunge into swimming baths in correct evening costume, had always been a very dear and esteemed crony, I didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. Business was not resulting. Staring into the bushes without a yip, she appeared to be bearing these slurs and innuendos of mine with an easy calm.

I had another pop at it:

‘“Uncouth” about sums it up. I doubt if I’ve ever seen an uncouther kid than this Glossop. Ask anyone who knew him in those days to describe him in a word, and the word they will use
is
“uncouth”. And he’s just the same today. It’s the old story. The boy is the father of the man.’

She appeared not to have heard.

‘The boy,’ I repeated, not wishing her to miss that one, ‘is the father of the man.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’m talking about this Glossop.’

‘I thought you said something about somebody’s father.’

‘I said the boy was the father of the man.’

‘What boy?’

‘The boy Glossop.’

‘He hasn’t got a father.’

‘I never said he had. I said he was the father of the boy – or, rather, of the man.’

‘What man?’

I saw that the conversation had reached a point where, unless care was taken, we should be muddled.

‘The point I am trying to make,’ I said, ‘is that the boy Glossop is the father of the man Glossop. In other words, each loathsome fault and blemish that led the boy Glossop to be frowned upon by his fellows is present in the man Glossop, and causes him – I am speaking now of the man Glossop – to be a hissing and a byword at places like the Drones, where a certain standard of decency is demanded from the inmates. Ask anyone at the Drones, and they will tell you that it was a black day for the dear old club when this chap Glossop somehow wriggled into the list of members. Here you will find a man who dislikes his face; there one who could stand his face if it wasn’t for his habits. But the universal consensus of opinion is that the fellow is a bounder and a tick, and that the moment he showed signs of wanting to get into the place he should have been met with a firm
nolle prosequi
and heartily blackballed.’

I had to pause again here, partly in order to take in a spot of breath, and partly to wrestle with the almost physical torture of saying these frightful things about poor old Tuppy.

‘There are some chaps,’ I resumed, forcing myself once more to the nauseous task, ‘who, in spite of looking as if they had slept in their clothes, can get by quite nicely because they are amiable and suave. There are others who, for all that they excite adverse comment by being fat and uncouth, find themselves on the credit side of the ledger owing to their wit and sparkling humour. But this Glossop, I regret to say, falls into neither class. In addition to looking like one of those things that come out of hollow trees, he is
universally
admitted to be a dumb brick of the first water. No soul. No conversation. In short, any girl who, having been rash enough to get engaged to him, has managed at the eleventh hour to slide out is justly entitled to consider herself dashed lucky.’

I paused once more, and cocked an eye at Angela to see how the treatment was taking. All the while I had been speaking, she had sat gazing silently into the bushes, but it seemed to me incredible that she should not now turn on me like a tigress, according to specifications. It beat me why she hadn’t done it already. It seemed to me that a mere tithe of what I had said, if said to a tigress about a tiger of which she was fond, would have made her – the tigress, I mean – hit the ceiling.

And the next moment you could have knocked me down with a toothpick.

‘Yes,’ she said, nodding thoughtfully, ‘you’re quite right.’

‘Eh?’

‘That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking myself.’

‘What!’

‘“Dumb brick”. It just describes him. One of the six silliest asses in England, I should think he must be.’

I did not speak. I was endeavouring to adjust the faculties, which were in urgent need of a bit of first-aid treatment.

I mean to say, all this had come as a complete surprise. In formulating the well-laid plan which I had just been putting into effect, the one contingency I had not budgeted for was that she might adhere to the sentiments which I expressed. I had braced myself for a gush of stormy emotion. I was expecting the tearful ticking off, the girlish recriminations and all the rest of the bag of tricks along those lines.

But this cordial agreement with my remarks I had not foreseen, and it gave me what you might call pause for thought.

She proceeded to develop her theme, speaking in ringing, enthusiastic tones, as if she loved the topic. Jeeves could tell you the word I want. I think it’s ‘ecstatic’, unless that’s the sort of rash you get on your face and have to use ointment for. But if that is the right word, then that’s what her manner was as she ventilated the subject of poor old Tuppy. If you had been able to go simply by the sound of her voice, she might have been a court poet cutting loose about an Oriental monarch, or Gussie Fink-Nottle describing his last consignment of newts.

‘It’s so nice, Bertie, talking to somebody who really takes a sensible view about this man Glossop. Mother says he’s a good chap, which is
simply
absurd. Anybody can see that he’s absolutely impossible. He’s conceited and opinionative and argues all the time, even when he knows perfectly well that he’s talking through his hat, and he smokes too much and eats too much and drinks too much, and I don’t like the colour of his hair. Not that he’ll have any hair in a year or two, because he’s pretty thin on the top already, and before he knows where he is he’ll be as bald as an egg, and he’s the last man who can afford to go bald. And I think it’s simply disgusting, the way he gorges all the time. Do you know, I found him in the larder at one o’clock this morning, absolutely wallowing in a steak-and-kidney pie? There was hardly any of it left. And you remember what an enormous dinner he had. Quite disgusting, I call it. But I can’t stop out here all night, talking about men who aren’t worth wasting a word on and haven’t even enough sense to tell sharks from flatfish. I’m going in.’

And gathering about her slim shoulders the shawl which she had put on as a protection against the evening dew, she buzzed off, leaving me alone in the silent night.

Well, as a matter of fact, not absolutely alone, because a few moments later there was a sort of upheaval in the bushes in front of me, and Tuppy emerged.

I GAVE HIM
the eye. The evening had begun to draw in a bit by now and the visibility, in consequence, was not so hot, but there still remained ample light to enable me to see him clearly. And what I saw convinced me that I should be a lot easier in my mind with a stout rustic bench between us. I rose, accordingly, modelling my style on that of a rocketing pheasant, and proceeded to deposit myself on the other side of the object named.

My prompt agility was not without its effect. He seemed somewhat taken aback. He came to a halt, and, for about the space of time required to allow a bead of persp. to trickle from the top of the brow to the tip of the nose, stood gazing at me in silence.

‘So!’ he said at length, and it came as a complete surprise to me that fellows ever really do say ‘So!’ I had always thought it was just a thing you read in books. Like ‘Quotha!’ I mean to say, or ‘Odds bodikins!’ or even ‘Eh, ba goom!’

Still, there it was. Quaint or not quaint, bizarre or not bizarre, he had said ‘So!’ and it was up to me to cope with the situation on those lines.

It would have been a duller man than Bertram Wooster who had failed to note that the dear old chap was a bit steamed up. Whether his eyes were actually shooting forth flame, I couldn’t tell you, but there appeared to me to be a distinct incandescence. For the rest, his fists were clenched, his ears quivering, and the muscles of his jaw rotating rhythmically, as if he were making an early supper off something.

His hair was full of twigs, and there was a beetle hanging to the side of his head which would have interested Gussie Fink-Nottle. To this, however, I paid scant attention. There is a time for studying beetles and a time for not studying beetles.

‘So!’ he said again.

Now, those who know Bertram Wooster best will tell you that he is always at his shrewdest and most level-headed in moments of peril. Who was it who, when gripped by the arm of the law on Boat-Race
Night
not so many years ago and hauled off to Vine Street police station, assumed in a flash the identity of Eustace H. Plimsoll, of The Laburnums, Alleyn Road, West Dulwich, thus saving the grand old name of Wooster from being dragged in the mire and avoiding wide publicity of the wrong sort? Who was it …

But I need not labour the point. My record speaks for itself. Three times pinched, but never once sentenced under the correct label. Ask anyone at the Drones about this.

So now, in a situation threatening to become every moment more scaly, I did not lose my head. I preserved the old sang-froid. Smiling a genial and affectionate smile, and hoping that it wasn’t too dark for it to register, I spoke with a jolly cordiality:

‘Why, hallo, Tuppy. You here?’

He said, yes, he was here.

‘Been here long?’

‘I have.’

‘Fine. I wanted to see you.’

‘Well, here I am. Come out from behind that bench.’

‘No, thanks, old man. I like leaning on it. It seems to rest the spine.’

‘In about two seconds,’ said Tuppy, ‘I’m going to kick your spine up through the top of your head.’

I raised the eyebrows. Not much good, of course, in that light, but it seemed to help the general composition.

‘Is this Hildebrand Glossop speaking?’ I said.

He replied that it was, adding that if I wanted to make sure I might move a few feet over in his direction. He also called me an opprobrious name.

I raised the eyebrows again.

‘Come, come, Tuppy, don’t let us let this little chat become acrid. Is “acrid” the word I want?’

‘I couldn’t say,’ he replied, beginning to sidle round the bench.

I saw that anything I might wish to say must be said quickly. Already he had sidled some six feet. And though, by dint of sidling, too, I had managed to keep the bench between us, who could predict how long this happy state of affairs would last?

I came to the point, therefore.

‘I think I know what’s on your mind, Tuppy,’ I said. ‘If you were in those bushes during my conversation with the recent Angela, I dare say you heard what I was saying about you.’

‘I did.’

‘I see. Well, we won’t go into the ethics of the thing. Eavesdropping, some people might call it, and I can imagine stern critics drawing in the breath to some extent. Considering it – I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Tuppy – but considering it un-English. A bit un-English, Tuppy, old man, you must admit.’

‘I’m Scottish.’

‘Really?’ I said. ‘I never knew that before. Rummy how you don’t suspect a man of being Scottish unless he’s Mac-something and says “Och, aye” and things like that. I wonder,’ I went on, feeling that an academic discussion on some neutral topic might ease the tension, ‘if you can tell me something that has puzzled me a good deal. What exactly is it that they put into haggis? I’ve often wondered about that.’

From the fact that his only response to the question was to leap over the bench and make a grab at me, I gathered that his mind was not on haggis.

‘However,’ I said, leaping over the bench in my turn, ‘that is a side issue. If, to come back to it, you were in those bushes and heard what I was saying about you –’

He began to move round the bench in a nor’-nor’-easterly direction. I followed his example, setting a course sou’-sou’-west.

‘No doubt you were surprised at the way I was talking.’

‘Not a bit.’

‘What? Did nothing strike you as odd in the tone of my remarks?’

‘It was just the sort of stuff I should have expected a treacherous, sneaking hound like you to say.’

‘My dear chap,’ I protested, ‘this is not your usual form. A bit slow in the uptake, surely? I should have thought you would have spotted right away that it was all part of a well-laid plan.’

‘I’ll get you in a jiffy,’ said Tuppy, recovering his balance after a swift clutch at my neck. And so probable did this seem that I delayed no longer, but hastened to place all the facts before him.

Speaking rapidly and keeping moving, I related my emotions on receipt of Aunt Dahlia’s telegram, my instant rush to the scene of the disaster, my meditations in the car, and the eventual framing of this well-laid plan of mine. I spoke clearly and well, and it was with considerable concern, consequently, that I heard him observe – between clenched teeth, which made it worse – that he didn’t believe a damned word of it.

‘But, Tuppy,’ I said, ‘why not? To me the thing rings true to the last drop. What makes you sceptical? Confide in me, Tuppy.’

He halted and stood taking a breather. Tuppy, pungently though Angela might have argued to the contrary, isn’t really fat. During the winter months you will find him constantly booting the football with merry shouts, and in the summer the tennis racket is seldom out of his hand.

But at the recently concluded evening meal, feeling, no doubt, that after that painful scene in the larder there was nothing to be gained by further abstinence, he had rather let himself go and, as it were, made up leeway; and after really immersing himself in one of Anatole’s dinners, a man of his sturdy build tends to lose elasticity a bit. During the exposition of my plans for his happiness a certain animation had crept into this round-and-round-the-mulberry-bush jamboree of ours – so much so, indeed, that for the last few minutes we might have been a rather oversized greyhound and a somewhat slimmer electric hare doing their stuff on a circular track for the entertainment of the many-headed.