The Jeeves Omnibus (325 page)

‘Aunt Dahlia tells me you are staying with her in order to be handy to Market Snodsbury while giving the electors there the old oil,’ I said.

‘Yes, she very decently invited me. She was at school with my mother.’

‘So she told me. I wonder if her face was as red in those days. How do you like it there?’

‘It’s a wonderful place.’

‘Grade A. Gravel soil, main drainage, spreading grounds and Company’s own water. And, of course, Anatole’s cooking.’

‘Ah!’ he said, and I think he would have bared his head, only he hadn’t a hat on. ‘Very gifted, that man.’

‘A wizard,’ I agreed. ‘His dinners must fortify you for the tasks you have to face. How’s the election coming along?’

‘All right.’

‘Kissed any babies lately?’

‘Ah!’ he said again, this time with a shudder. I could see that I had touched an exposed nerve. ‘What blighters babies are, Bertie, dribbling, as they do, at the side of the mouth. Still, it has to be done. My agent tells me to leave no stone unturned if I want to win the election.’

‘But why do you want to win the election? I’d have thought you wouldn’t have touched Parliament with a ten-foot pole,’ I said, for I knew the society there was very mixed. ‘What made you commit this rash act?’

‘My fiancée wanted me to,’ he said, and as his lips framed the word ‘fiancée’ his voice took on a sort of tremolo like that of a male turtle dove cooing to a female turtle dove. ‘She thought I ought to be carving out a career for myself.’

‘Do you want a career?’

‘Not much, but she insisted.’

The uneasiness I had felt when he told me the beazel had made him knock off cocktails deepened. His every utterance rendered it more apparent to an experienced man like myself that he had run up against something too hot to handle, and for a moment I thought of advising him to send her a telegram saying it was all off and, this done, to pack a suitcase and catch the next boat to Australia. But feeling that this might give offence I merely asked him what the procedure was when you stood for Parliament – or ran for it, as they would say in America. Not that I particularly wanted to know, but it was something to talk about other than his frightful fiancée.

A cloud passed over his face, which I ought to have mentioned earlier was well worth looking at, the eyes clear, the cheeks tanned, the chin firm, the hair ginger and the nose shapely. It topped off, moreover, a body which also repaid inspection, being muscular and well knit. His general aspect, as a matter of fact, was rather like that presented by Esmond Haddock, the squire of Deverill Hall, where Jeeves’s Uncle Charlie Silversmith drew his monthly envelope. He had the same poetic look, as if at any moment about to rhyme June with moon, yet gave the impression, as Esmond did, of being able, if he cared to, to fell an ox with a single blow. I don’t know if he had ever actually done this, for one so seldom meets an ox, but in his undergraduate
days
he had felled people right and left, having represented the University in the ring as a heavyweight a matter of three years. He may have included oxen among his victims.

‘You go through hell,’ he said, the map still clouded as he recalled the past. ‘I had to sit in a room where you could hardly breathe because it was as crowded as the Black Hole of Calcutta and listen to addresses of welcome till midnight. After that I went about making speeches.’

‘Well, why aren’t you down there, making speeches, now? Have they given you a day off?’

‘I came up to get a secretary.’

‘Surely you didn’t go there without one?’

‘No, I had one all right, but my fiancée fired her. They had some sort of disagreement.’

I had pursed the lips a goodish bit when he had told me about his fiancée and the cocktails, and I pursed them to an even greater extent now. The more I heard of this girl he had got engaged to, the less I liked the sound of her. I was thinking how well she would get on with Florence Craye if they happened to meet. Twin souls, I mean to say, each what a housemaid I used to know would have called an overbearing dishpot.

I didn’t say so, of course. There is a time to call someone an overbearing dishpot, and a time not to. Criticism of the girl he loved might be taken in ill part, as the expression is, and you don’t want an ex-Oxford boxing Blue taking things in ill part with you.

‘Have you anyone in mind?’ I asked. ‘Or are you just going to a secretary bin, accepting what they have in stock?’

‘I’m hoping to get hold of an American girl I saw something of before I left London. I was sharing a flat with Boko Fittle-worth when he was writing a novel, and she came every day and worked with him. Boko dictates his stuff, and he said she was tops as a shorthand typist. I have her address, but I don’t know if she’s still there. I’m going round there after lunch. Her name’s Magnolia Glendennon.’

‘It can’t be.’

‘Why not?’

‘Nobody could have a name like Magnolia.’

‘They could if they came from South Carolina, as she did. In the southern states of America you can’t throw a brick without hitting a Magnolia. But I was telling you about this
business
of standing for Parliament. First, of course, you have to get the nomination.’

‘How did you manage that?’

‘My fiancée fixed it. She knows one of the Cabinet ministers, and he pulled strings. A man named Filmer.’

‘Not A. B. Filmer?’

‘That’s right. Is he a friend of yours?’

‘I wouldn’t say exactly a friend. I came to know him slightly owing to being chased with him on to the roof of a sort of summerhouse by an angry swan. This drew us rather close together for the moment, but we never became really chummy.’

‘Where was this?’

‘On an island on the lake at my Aunt Agatha’s place at Steeple Bumpleigh. Living at Steeple Bumpleigh, you’ve probably been there.’

He looked at me with a wild surmise, much as those soldiers Jeeves has told me about looked on each other when on a peak in Darien, wherever that is.

‘Is Lady Worpledon your aunt?’

‘And how.’

‘She’s never mentioned it.’

‘She wouldn’t. Her impulse would be to hush it up.’

‘Then, good Lord, she must be your cousin.’

‘No, my aunt. You can’t be both.’

‘I mean Florence. Florence Craye, my fiancée.’

It was a shock, I don’t mind telling you, and if I hadn’t been seated I would probably have reeled. Though I ought not to have been so surprised. Florence was one of those girls who are always getting engaged to someone, first teaming up with Stilton Cheesewright, then me, and finally Percy Gorringe, who was dramatizing her novel
Spindrift
. The play, by the way, had recently been presented to the public at the Duke of York’s theatre and had laid an instantaneous egg, coming off on the following Saturday. One of the critics said he had perhaps seen it at a disadvantage because when he saw it the curtain was up. I had wondered a good deal what effect this had had on Florence’s haughty spirit.

‘You’re engaged to Florence?’ I yipped, looking at him with a wild surmise.

‘Yes. Didn’t you know?’

‘Nobody tells me anything. Engaged to Florence, eh? Well, well.’

A less tactful man than Bertram Wooster might have gone on to add ‘Oh, tough luck!’ or something along those lines, for there was no question but that the unhappy man was properly up against it, but if there’s one thing the Woosters have in heaping measure, it is tact. I merely gripped his hand, gave it a shake and wished him happiness. He thanked me for this.

‘You’re lucky,’ I said, wearing the mask.

‘Don’t I know it!’

‘She’s a charming girl,’ I said, still wearing as above.

‘That just describes her.’

‘Intellectual, too.’

‘Distinctly. Writes novels.’

‘Always at it.’

‘Did you read
Spindrift
?’

‘Couldn’t put it down,’ I said, cunningly not revealing that I hadn’t been able to take it up. ‘Did you see the play?’

‘Twice. Too bad it didn’t run. Gorringe’s adaptation was the work of an ass.’

‘I spotted him as an ass the first time I saw him.’

‘It’s a pity Florence didn’t.’

‘Yes. By the way, what became of Gorringe? When last heard of, she was engaged to him.’

‘She broke it off.’

‘Very wise of her. He had long side-whiskers.’

‘She considered him responsible for the failure of the play and told him so.’

‘She would.’

‘What do you mean she would?’

‘Her nature is so frank, honest and forthright.’

‘It is, isn’t it.’

‘She speaks her mind.’

‘Invariably.’

‘It’s an admirable trait.’

‘Oh, most.’

‘You can’t get away with much with a girl like Florence.’

‘No.’

We fell into a silence. He was twiddling his fingers and a sort of what-d’you-call-it had come into his manner, as if he wanted to say something but was having trouble in getting it out. I remembered encountering a similar diffidence in the Rev. Stinker Pinker when he was trying to nerve himself to ask me to come to Totleigh Towers, and you find the same thing in
dogs
when they put a paw on your knee and look up into your face but don’t utter, though making it clear that there is a subject on which they are anxious to touch.

‘Bertie,’ he said at length.

‘Hullo?’

‘Bertie.’

‘Yes?’

‘Bertie.’

‘Still here. Excuse me asking, but have you any cracked gramophone record blood in you? Perhaps your mother was frightened by one?’

And then it all came out in a rush as if a cork had been pulled.

‘Bertie, there’s something I must tell you about Florence, though you probably know it already, being a cousin of hers. She’s a wonderful girl and practically perfect in every respect, but she has one characteristic which makes it awkward for those who love her and are engaged to her. Don’t think I’m criticizing her.’

‘No, no.’

‘I’m just mentioning it.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Well, she has no use for a loser. To keep her esteem you have to be a winner. She’s like one of those princesses in the fairy tales who set fellows some task to perform, as it might be scaling a mountain of glass or bringing her a hair from the beard of the Great Cham of Tartary, and gave them the brush-off when they couldn’t make the grade.’

I recalled the princesses of whom he spoke, and I had always thought them rather fatheads. I mean to say, what sort of foundation for a happy marriage is the bridegroom’s ability to scale mountains of glass? A fellow probably wouldn’t be called on to do it more than about once every ten years, if that.

‘Gorringe,’ said Ginger, continuing, ‘was a loser, and that dished him. And long ago, someone told me, she was engaged to a gentleman jockey and she chucked him because he took a spill at the canal turn in the Grand National. She’s a perfectionist. I admire her for it, of course.’

‘Of course.’

‘A girl like her is entitled to have high standards.’

‘Quite.’

‘But, as I say, it makes it awkward for me. She has set her
heart
on my winning this Market Snodsbury election, heaven knows why, for I never thought she had any interest in politics, and if I lose it, I shall lose her, too. So …’

‘Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party?’

‘Exactly. You are going to canvass for me. Well, canvass like a ton of bricks, and see that Jeeves does the same. I’ve simply got to win.’

‘You can rely on us.’

‘Thank you, Bertie, I knew I could. And now let’s go in and have a bite of lunch.’

4

HAVING RESTORED THE
tissues with the excellent nourishment which Barribault’s hotel always provides and arranged that Ginger was to pick me up in his car later in the afternoon, my own sports model being at the vet’s with some nervous ailment, we parted, he to go in search of Magnolia Glendennon, I to walk back to the Wooster G.H.Q.

It was, as you may suppose, in thoughtful mood that I made my way through London’s thoroughfares. I was reading a novel of suspense the other day in which the heroine, having experienced a sock in the eye or two, was said to be lost in a maze of mumbling thoughts, and that description would have fitted me like the paper on the wall.

My heart was heavy. When a man is an old friend and pretty bosom at that, it depresses you to hear that he’s engaged to Florence Craye. I recalled my own emotions when I had found myself in that unpleasant position. I had felt like someone trapped in the underground den of the Secret Nine.

Though, mark you, there’s nothing to beef about in her outer crust. At the time when she was engaged to Stilton Cheesewright I remember recording in the archives that she was tall and willowy with a terrific profile and luxuriant platinum-blonde hair; the sort of girl who might, as far as looks were concerned, have been the star unit of the harem of one of the better-class Sultans; and though I hadn’t seen her for quite a while, I presumed that these conditions still prevailed. The fact that Ginger, when speaking of her, had gone so readily into his turtle dove impersonation seemed to indicate as much.

Looks, however, aren’t everything. Against this pin-up-ness of hers you had to put the bossiness which would lead her to expect the bloke she married to behave like a Hollywood Yes-man. From childhood up she had been … I can’t think of the word … begins with an i … No, it’s gone … but I can give you the idea. When at my private school I once won a
prize
for Scripture Knowledge, which naturally involved a lot of researching into Holy Writ, and in the course of my researches I came upon the story of the military chap who used to say ‘Come’ and they cometh and ‘Go’ and they goeth. I have always thought that that was Florence in a nutshell. She would have given short shrift, as the expression is, to anyone who had gone when she said ‘Come’ or the other way round. Imperious, that’s the word I was groping for. She was as imperious as a traffic cop. Little wonder that the heart was heavy. I felt that Ginger, mistaking it for a peach, had plucked a lemon in the garden of love.

And then my meditations took a less sombre turn. This often happens after a good lunch, even if you haven’t had a cocktail. I reminded myself that many married men positively enjoy being kept on their toes by the little woman, and possibly Ginger might be one of them. He might take the view that when the little w made him sit up and beg and snap lumps of sugar off his nose, it was a compliment really, because it showed that she was taking an interest.