The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 3 (64 page)

I shook my head.

‘We cannot leave this thing to chance, Jeeves. Young Tuppy, singing “Sonny Boy”, is the likeliest prospect for the bird that I can think of – but, no – you must see for yourself that we can’t simply trust to luck.’

‘We need not trust to luck, sir. I would suggest that you approach your friend, Mr Bingham, and volunteer your services as a performer at his forthcoming entertainment. It could readily be arranged that you sang immediately before Mr Glossop. I fancy, sir, that, if Mr Glossop were to sing “Sonny Boy” directly after you, too, had sung “Sonny Boy”, the audience would respond satisfactorily. By the time Mr Glossop began to sing, they would have lost their taste for that particular song and would express their feelings warmly.’

‘Jeeves,’ said Aunt Dahlia, ‘you’re a marvel!’

‘Thank you, madam.’

‘Jeeves,’ I said, ‘you’re an ass!’

‘What do you mean, he’s an ass?’ said Aunt Dahlia hotly. ‘I think it’s the greatest scheme I ever heard.’

‘Me sing “Sonny Boy” at Beefy Bingham’s clean, bright entertainment? I can see myself!’

‘You sing it daily in your bath, sir. Mr Wooster,’ said Jeeves, turning to Aunt Dahlia, ‘has a pleasant, light baritone –’

‘I bet he has,’ said Aunt Dahlia.

I froze the man with a look.

‘Between singing “Sonny Boy” in one’s bath, Jeeves, and singing it before a hall full of assorted blood-orange merchants and their young, there is a substantial difference.’

‘Bertie,’ said Aunt Dahlia, ‘you’ll sing, and like it!’

‘I will not.’

‘Bertie!’

‘Nothing will induce –’

‘Bertie,’ said Aunt Dahlia firmly, ‘you will sing “Sonny Boy” on Tuesday, the third
prox
, and sing it like a lark at sunrise, or may an aunt’s curse –’

‘I won’t.’

‘Think of Angela!’

‘Dash Angela!’

‘Bertie!’

‘No, I mean, hang it all!’

‘You won’t?’

‘No, I won’t.’

‘That is your last word, is it?’

‘It is. Once and for all, Aunt Dahlia, nothing will induce me to let out so much as a single note.’

And so that afternoon I sent a pre-paid wire to Beefy Bingham, offering my services in the cause, and by nightfall the thing was fixed up. I was billed to perform next but one after the intermission. Following me, came Tuppy. And, immediately after him, Miss Cora Bellinger, the well-known operatic soprano.

‘Jeeves,’ I said that evening – and I said it coldly – ‘I shall be obliged if you will pop round to the nearest music-shop and procure me a copy of “Sonny Boy”. It will now be necessary for me to learn both verse and refrain. Of the trouble and nervous strain which this will involve, I say nothing.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘But this I do say –’

‘I had better be starting immediately, sir, or the shop will be closed.’

‘Ha!’ I said.

And I meant it to sting.

Although I had steeled myself to the ordeal before me and had set out full of the calm, quiet courage which makes men do desperate deeds with careless smiles, I must admit that there was a moment, just after I had entered the Oddfellows’ Hall at Bermondsey East and run an eye over the assembled pleasure-seekers, when it needed all the bulldog pluck of the Woosters to keep me from calling it a day and taking a cab back to civilization. The clean, bright entertainment was in full swing when I arrived, and somebody who looked as if he might be the local undertaker was reciting ‘Gunga Din’. And the audience, though not actually chi-yiking in the full technical sense of the term, had a grim look which I didn’t like at all. The mere sight of them gave me the sort of feeling Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego must have had when preparing to enter the burning, fiery furnace.

Scanning the multitude, it seemed to me that they were for the nonce suspending judgment. Did you ever tap on the door of one of those New York speakeasy places and see the grille snap back and
a
Face appear? There is one long, silent moment when its eyes are fixed on yours and all your past life seems to rise up before you. Then you say that you are a friend of Mr Zinzinheimer and he told you they would treat you right if you mentioned his name, and the strain relaxes. Well, these costermongers and whelkstallers appeared to me to be looking just like that Face. Start something, they seemed to say, and they would know what to do about it. And I couldn’t help feeling that my singing ‘Sonny Boy’ would come, in their opinion, under the head of starting something.

‘A nice, full house, sir,’ said a voice at my elbow. It was Jeeves, watching the proceedings with an indulgent eye.

‘You here, Jeeves?’ I said, coldly.

‘Yes, sir. I have been present since the commencement.’

‘Oh?’ I said. ‘Any casualties yet?’

‘Sir?’

‘You know what I mean, Jeeves,’ I said sternly, ‘and don’t pretend you don’t. Anybody got the bird yet?’

‘Oh, no, sir.’

‘I shall be the first, you think?’

‘No, sir. I see no reason to expect such a misfortune. I anticipate that you will be well received.’

A sudden thought struck me.

‘And you think everything will go according to plan?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Well, I don’t,’ I said. ‘And I’ll tell you why I don’t. I’ve spotted a flaw in your beastly scheme.’

‘A flaw, sir?’

‘Yes. Do you suppose for a moment that, if when Mr Glossop hears me singing that dashed song, he’ll come calmly on a minute after me and sing it too? Use your intelligence, Jeeves. He will perceive the chasm in his path and pause in time. He will back out and refuse to go on at all.’

‘Mr Glossop will not hear you sing, sir. At my advice, he has stepped across the road to the Jug and Bottle, an establishment immediately opposite the hall, and he intends to remain there until it is time for him to appear on the platform.’

‘Oh?’ I said.

‘If I might suggest it, sir, there is another house named the Goat and Grapes only a short distance down the street. I think it might be a judicious move –’

‘If I were to put a bit of custom in their way?’

‘It would ease the nervous strain of waiting, sir.’

I had not been feeling any too pleased with the man for having let me in for this ghastly binge, but at these words, I’m bound to say, my austerity softened a trifle. He was undoubtedly right. He had studied the psychology of the individual, and it had not led him astray. A quiet ten minutes at the Goat and Grapes was exactly what my system required. To buzz off there and inhale a couple of swift whisky-and-sodas was with Bertram Wooster the work of a moment.

The treatment worked like magic. What they had put into the stuff, besides vitriol, I could not have said; but it completely altered my outlook on life. That curious, gulpy feeling passed. I was no longer conscious of the sagging sensation at the knees. The limbs ceased to quiver gently, the tongue became loosened in its socket, and the backbone stiffened. Pausing merely to order and swallow another of the same, I bade the barmaid a cheery good night, nodded affably to one or two fellows in the bar whose faces I liked, and came prancing back to the hall, ready for anything.

And shortly afterwards I was on the platform with about a million bulging eyes goggling up at me. There was a rummy sort of buzzing in my ears, and then through the buzzing I heard the sound of a piano starting to tinkle: and, commending my soul to God, I took a good, long breath and charged in.

Well, it was a close thing. The whole incident is a bit blurred, but I seem to recollect a kind of murmur as I hit the refrain. I thought at the time it was an attempt on the part of the many-headed to join in the chorus, and at the moment it rather encouraged me. I passed the thing over the larynx with all the vim at my disposal, hit the high note, and off gracefully into the wings. I didn’t come on again to take a bow. I just receded and oiled round to where Jeeves awaited me among the standees at the back.

‘Well, Jeeves,’ I said, anchoring myself at his side and brushing the honest sweat from the brow, ‘they didn’t rush the platform.’

‘No, sir.’

‘But you can spread it about that that’s the last time I perform outside my bath. My swan-song, Jeeves. Anybody who wants to hear me in future must present himself at the bathroom door and shove his ear against the keyhole. I may be wrong, but it seemed to me that towards the end they were hotting up a trifle. The bird was hovering in the air. I could hear the beating of its wings.’

‘I did detect a certain restlessness, sir, in the audience. I fancy they has lost their taste for that particular melody.’

‘Eh?’

‘I should have informed you earlier, sir, that the song had already been sung twice before you arrived.’

‘What!’

‘Yes, sir. Once by a lady and once by a gentleman. It is a very popular song, sir.’

I gaped at the man. That, with this knowledge, he could calmly have allowed the young master to step straight into the jaws of death, so to speak, paralysed me. It seemed to show that the old feudal spirit had passed away altogether. I was about to give him my views on the matter in no uncertain fashion, when I was stopped by the spectacle of young Tuppy lurching on to the platform.

Young Tuppy had the unmistakable air of a man who has recently been round to the Jug and Bottle. A few cheery cries of welcome, presumably from some of his backgammon-playing pals who felt that blood was thicker than water, had the effect of causing the genial smile on his face to widen till it nearly met at the back. He was plainly feeling about as good as a man can feel and still remain on his feet. He waved a kindly hand to his supporters, and bowed in a regal sort of manner, rather like an Eastern monarch acknowledging the plaudits of the mob.

Then the female at the piano struck up the opening bars of ‘Sonny Boy’, and Tuppy swelled like a balloon, clasped his hands together, rolled his eyes up at the ceiling in a manner denoting Soul, and began. I think the populace was too stunned for the moment to take immediate steps. It may seem incredible, but I give you my word that young Tuppy got right through the verse without so much as a murmur. Then they all seemed to pull themselves together.

A costermonger, roused, is a terrible thing. I had never seen the proletariat really stirred before, and I’m bound to say it rather awed me. I mean, it gave you some idea of what it must have been like during the French Revolution. From every corner of the hall there proceeded simultaneously the sort of noise which you hear, they tell me, at one of those East End boxing places when the referee disqualifies the popular favourite and makes the quick dash for life. And then they passed beyond mere words and began to introduce the vegetable motive.

I don’t know why, but somehow I had got it into my head that the first thing thrown at Tuppy would be a potato. One gets these fancies. It was, however, as a matter of fact, a banana, and I saw in an instant that the choice had been made by wiser heads than mine. These blokes who have grown up from childhood in the knowledge
of
how to treat a dramatic entertainment that doesn’t please them are aware by a sort of instinct just what to do for the best, and the moment I saw the banana splash on Tuppy’s shirt-front I realized how infinitely more effective and artistic it was than any potato could have been.

Not that the potato school of thought had not also its supporters. As the proceedings warmed up, I noticed several intelligent-looking fellows who threw nothing else.

The effect on young Tuppy was rather remarkable. His eyes bulged and his hair seemed to stand up, and yet his mouth went on opening and shutting, and you could see that in a dazed, automatic way he was still singing ‘Sonny Boy’. Then, coming out of his trance, he began to pull for the shore with some rapidity. The last seen of him, he was beating a tomato to the exit by a short head.

Presently the tumult and the shouting died. I turned to Jeeves.

‘Painful, Jeeves,’ I said. ‘But what would you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘The surgeon’s knife, what?’

‘Precisely, sir.’

‘Well, with this happening beneath her eyes, I think we may definitely consider the Glossop-Bellinger romance off.’

‘Yes, sir.’

At this point old Beefy Bingham came out on to the platform.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said old Beefy.

I supposed that he was about to rebuke his flock for the recent expression of feeling. But such was not the case. No doubt he was accustomed by now to the wholesome give-and-take of these clean, bright entertainments and had ceased to think it worth while to make any comment when there was a certain liveliness.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said old Beefy, ‘the next item on the programme was to have been Songs by Miss Cora Bellinger, the well-known operatic soprano. I have just received a telephone-message from Miss Bellinger, saying that her car has broken down. She is, however, on her way here in a cab and will arrive shortly. Meanwhile, our friend Mr Enoch Simpson will recite “Dangerous Dan McGrew”.’

I clutched at Jeeves.

‘Jeeves! You heard?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘She wasn’t there!’

‘No, sir.’

‘She saw nothing of Tuppy’s Waterloo.’

‘No, sir.’

‘The whole bally scheme has blown a fuse.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Come, Jeeves,’ I said, and those standing by wondered, no doubt, what had caused that clean-cut face to grow so pale and set. ‘I have been subjected to a nervous strain unparalleled since the days of the early Martyrs. I have lost pounds in weight and permanently injured my entire system. I have gone through an ordeal, the recollection of which will make me wake up screaming in the night for months to come. And all for nothing. Let us go.’

‘If you have no objection, sir, I would like to witness the remainder of the entertainment.’

‘Suit yourself, Jeeves,’ I said moodily. ‘Personally, my heart is dead and I am going to look in at the Goat and Grapes for another of their cyanide specials and then home.’

It must have been about half-past ten, and I was in the old sitting room sombrely sucking down a more or less final restorative, when the front-door bell rang, and there on the mat was young Tuppy. He looked like a man who has passed through some great experience and stood face to face with his soul. He had the beginnings of a black eye.