The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 3 (84 page)

‘A telegram has come for you. I think it may be important.’

He snorted in a bitter sort of way.

‘Do you suppose I’ve time to read telegrams now?’

‘But this one may be frightfully urgent,’ I said. ‘Here it is.’

But, if you understand me, it wasn’t. How I had happened to do it, I don’t know, but apparently, in changing the upholstery, I had left it in my other coat.

‘Oh, my gosh,’ I said. ‘I’ve left it behind.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘But it does. It’s probably something you ought to read at once. Immediately, if you know what I mean. If I were you, I’d just say a few words of farewell to the murder-squad and come back to the house right away.’

He raised his eyebrows. At least, I think he must have done, because the mud on his forehead stirred a little, as if something was going on underneath it.

‘Do you imagine,’ he said, ‘that I would slink away under Her very eyes? Good God! Besides,’ he went on, in a quiet, meditative voice, ‘there is no power on earth that could get me off this field until I’ve thoroughly disembowelled that red-haired bounder. Have you noticed how he keeps tackling me when I haven’t got the ball?’

‘Isn’t that right?’

‘Of course it’s not right. Never mind! A bitter retribution awaits that bird. I’ve had enough of it. From now on I assert my personality.’

‘I’m a bit foggy as to the rules of this pastime.’ I said. ‘Are you allowed to bite him.’

‘I’ll try, and see what happens,’ said Tuppy, struck with the idea and brightening a little.

At this point, the pall-bearers returned, and fighting became general again all along the Front.

There’s nothing like a bit of rest and what you might call folding of the hands for freshening up the shop-soiled athlete. The dirty work,
resumed
after this brief breather, started off with an added vim which it did one good to see. And the life and soul of the party was young Tuppy.

You know, only meeting a fellow at lunch or at the races or loafing round country-houses and so forth, you don’t get on to his hidden depths, if you know what I mean. Until this moment, if asked, I would have said Tuppy Glossop was, on the whole, essentially a pacific sort of bloke, with little or nothing of the tiger of the jungle in him. Yet there he was, running to and fro with fire streaming from his nostrils, a positive danger to traffic.

Yes, absolutely. Encouraged by the fact that the referee was either filled with the spirit of Live and Let Live or else had got his whistle choked up with mud, the result being that he appeared to regard the game with a sort of calm detachment, Tuppy was putting in some very impressive work. Even to me, knowing nothing of the finesse of the thing, it was plain that if Hockley-cum-Meston wanted the happy ending they must eliminate young Tuppy at the earliest possible moment. And I will say for them that they did their best, the red-haired man being particularly assiduous. But Tuppy was made of durable material. Every time the opposition talent ground him into the mire and sat on his head, he rose on stepping-stones of his dead self, if you follow me. And in the end it was the red-haired bloke who did the dust-biting.

I couldn’t tell you exactly how it happened, for by this time the shades of night were drawing in a bit and there was a dollop of mist rising, but one moment the fellow was hareing along, apparently without a care in the world, and then suddenly Tuppy had appeared from nowhere and was sailing through the air at his neck. They connected with a crash and a slither, and a little later the red-haired bird was hopping off, supported by a brace of friends, something having gone wrong with his left ankle.

After that, there was nothing to it. Upper Bleaching, thoroughly bucked, became busier than ever. There was a lot of earnest work in a sort of inland sea down at the Hockley end of the field, and then a kind of tidal wave poured over the line, and when the bodies had been removed and the tumult and the shouting had died, there was young Tuppy lying on the ball. And that, with the exception of a few spots of mayhem in the last five minutes, concluded the proceedings.

I drove back to the court in rather what you might term a pensive frame of mind. Things having happened as they had happened, there seemed to me a goodish bit of hard thinking to be done. There was a servitor of sorts in the hall, when I arrived, and I asked him to send
up
a whisky-and-soda, strongish, to my room. The old brain, I felt, needed stimulating. And about ten minutes later there was a knock at the door, and in came Jeeves, bearing tray and materials.

‘Hullo, Jeeves,’ I said, surprised. ‘Are you back?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘When did you get here?’

‘Some little while ago, sir. Was it an enjoyable game, sir?’

‘In a sense, Jeeves,’ I said, ‘yes. Replete with human interest and all that, if you know what I mean. But I fear that, owing to a touch of carelessness on my part, the worst has happened. I left the telegram in my other coat, so young Tuppy remained in action throughout.’

‘Was he injured, sir?’

‘Worse than that, Jeeves. He was the star of the game. Toasts, I should imagine, are now being drunk to him at every pub in the village. So spectacularly did he play – in fact, so heartily did he joust – that I can’t see the girl not being all over him. Unless I am greatly mistaken, the moment they meet, she will exclaim “My hero!” and fall into his bally arms.’

‘Indeed, sir?’

I didn’t like the man’s manner. Too calm. Unimpressed. A little leaping about with fallen jaw was what I had expected my words to produce, and I was on the point of saying as much when the door opened again and Tuppy limped in.

He was wearing an ulster over his football things, and I wondered why he had come to pay a social call on me instead of proceeding straight to the bathroom. He eyed my glass in a wolfish sort of way.

‘Whisky?’ he said, in a hushed voice.

‘And soda.’

‘Bring me one, Jeeves,’ said young Tuppy. ‘A large one.’

‘Very good, sir.’

Tuppy wandered to the window and looked out into the gathering darkness, and for the first time I perceived that he had got a grouch of some description. You can generally tell by a fellow’s back. Humped. Bent. Bowed down with weight of woe, if you follow me.

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.

Tuppy emitted a mirthless.

‘Oh, nothing much,’ he said. ‘My faith in woman is dead, that’s all.’

‘It is?’

‘You jolly well bet it is. Women are a wash-out. I see no future for the sex, Bertie. Blisters, all of them.’

‘Er – even the Dogsbody girl?’

‘Her name,’ said Tuppy, a little stiffly, ‘is Dalgleish, if it happens to interest you. And, if you want to know something else, she’s the worst of the lot.’

‘My dear chap!’

Tuppy turned. Beneath the mud, I could see that his face was drawn and, to put it in a nutshell, wan.

‘Do you know what happened, Bertie?’

‘What?’

‘She wasn’t there.’

‘Where?’

‘At the match, you silly ass.’

‘Not at the match?’

‘No.’

‘You mean, not among the throng of eager spectators?’

‘Of course I mean not among the spectators. Did you think I expected her to be playing?’

‘But I thought the whole scheme of the thing –’

‘So did I. My gosh!’ said Tuppy, laughing another of those hollow ones. ‘I sweat myself to the bone for her sake. I allow a mob of homicidal maniacs to kick me in the ribs and stroll about on my face. And then, when I have braved a fate worse than death, so to speak, all to please her, I find that she didn’t bother to come and watch the game. She got a ’phone-call from London from somebody who said he had located an Irish water-spaniel, and up she popped in her car, leaving me flat. I met her just now outside her house, and she told me. And all she could think of was that she was as sore as a sunburnt neck because she had had her trip for nothing. Apparently it wasn’t an Irish water-spaniel at all. Just an ordinary English water-spaniel. And to think I fancied I loved a girl like that. A nice life-partner she would make! “When pain and anguish wring the brow, a ministering angel thou” – I don’t think! Why, if a man married a girl like that and happened to get stricken by some dangerous illness, would she smooth his pillow and press cooling drinks on him? Not a chance? She’d be off somewhere trying to buy Siberian eel-hounds. I’m through with women.’

I saw that the moment had come to put in a word for the old firm.

‘My cousin Angela’s not a bad sort, Tuppy,’ I said, in a grave elder-brotherly kind of way. ‘Not altogether a bad egg, Angela, if you look at her squarely. I had always been hoping that she and you … and I know my Aunt Dahlia felt the same.’

Tuppy’s bitter sneer cracked the top-soil.

‘Angela!’ he woofed. ‘Don’t talk to me about Angela. Angela’s a rag and a bone and a hank of hair and an Al scourge, if you want to know. She gave me the push. Yes, she did. Simply because I had the manly courage to speak out candidly on the subject of that ghastly lid she was chump enough to buy. It made her look like a Peke, and I told her it made her look like a Peke. And instead of admiring me for my fearless honesty she bunged me out on my ear. Faugh!’

‘She did?’ I said.

‘She jolly well did,’ said young Tuppy. ‘At four-sixteen pm on Tuesday the seventeenth.’

‘By the way, old man,’ I said, ‘I’ve found that telegram.’

‘What telegram?’

‘The one I told you about.’

‘Oh, that one?’

‘Yes, that’s the one.’

‘Well, let’s have a look at the beastly thing.’

I handed it over, watching him narrowly. And suddenly, as he read, I saw him wobble. Stirred to the core. Obviously.

‘Anything important?’ I said.

‘Bertie,’ said young Tuppy, in a voice that quivered with strong emotion, ‘my recent remarks
re
your cousin Angela. Wash them out. Cancel them. Look on them as not spoken. I tell you, Bertie, Angela’s all right. An angel in human shape, and that’s official. Bertie, I’ve got to get up to London. She’s ill.’

‘Ill?’

‘High fever and delirium. This wire’s from your aunt. She wants me to come up to London at once. Can I borrow your car?’

‘Of course.’

‘Thanks,’ said Tuppy, and dashed out.

He had only been gone about a second when Jeeves came in with the restorative.

‘Mr Glossop’s gone, Jeeves.’

‘Indeed, sir?’

‘To London.’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘In my car. To see my cousin Angela. The sun is once more shining, Jeeves.’

‘Extremely gratifying, sir.’

I gave him the eye.

‘Was it you, Jeeves, who ’phoned to Miss What’s-her-bally-name about the alleged water-spaniel?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I thought as much.’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Yes, Jeeves, the moment Mr Glossop told me that a Mysterious Voice had ’phoned on the subject of Irish water-spaniels, I thought as much. I recognized your touch. I read your motives like an open book. You knew she would come buzzing up.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And you knew how Tuppy would react. If there’s one thing that gives a jousting knight the pip, it is to have his audience walk out on him.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘But, Jeeves.’

‘Sir?’

‘There’s just one point. What will Mr Glossop say when he finds my cousin Angela full of beans and not delirious?’

‘The point had not escaped me, sir. I took the liberty of ringing Mrs Travers up on the telephone and explaining the circumstances. All will be in readiness for Mr Glossop’s arrival.’

‘Jeeves,’ I said, ‘you think of everything.’

‘Thank you, sir. In Mr Glossop’s absence, would you care to drink this whisky-and-soda?’

I shook the head.

‘No, Jeeves, there is only one man who must do that. It is you. If ever anyone earned a refreshing snort, you are he. Pour it out, Jeeves, and shove it down.’

‘Thank you very much, sir.’

‘Cheerio, Jeeves!’

‘Cheerio, sir, if I may use the expression.’

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First published in this collection 1991
© in this collection the Trustees of the P.G. Wodehouse Estate 1991
Ring for Jeeves
© P.G. Wodehouse 1953
The Mating Season
© P.G. Wodehouse 1949
Very Good, Jeeves
© P.G. Wodehouse 1930

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