Jeeves and the Wedding Bells

by Sebastian Faulks

  There was a pause. I could see no way out of being the Collector’s stooge, unless … ‘Jeeves, couldn’t we persuade old Vishnu to take umbrage at all those things Sir Henry said to his son?’

  ‘So Mrs Venables urged, I believe, sir. But Mr Venables is somewhat thick-skinned.’

  ‘I’ve met elephants with thinner hides. Indian and African.’

  ‘Indeed, sir. Mr Venables was most reluctant to miss a chance of impressing an audience. Mrs Venables left in high dudgeon after a substantial breakfast, taking the nine-thirty train, but her husband will not follow her until tomorrow. He was not to be deterred from having his moment in the spotlight.’

  Rehearsals were well under way in the drawing room by the time I joined the company. Georgiana was directing operations, with old Venables sticking his oar in at every other line.

  The scene she’d chosen was the one in which the rude mechanicals rehearse their play in the presence of the sleeping Titania, queen of the fairies. She awakes to see Bottom in an ass’s head and, because Puck has done his stuff with the potion, at once falls in love with him; the scene ends as she leads him off hand in hand to the merriment of all. The good thing was that there was a line or two for everyone with only Bottom and Titania having much to learn.

  It was clear that old Etringham had sat up all night swotting his lines and had done a pretty good job of it. His work, however, lacked snap. His Bottom sounded less like a workman on a beano than an archdeacon giving a Lenten address. You couldn’t help wondering if he’d ever actually met a weaver.

  Mrs Tilman made an admirable Puck, but Amelia lacked the ethereal quality that the part of Titania demands; her performance had a bit too much of the tennis girl about it: her court coverage was good, but there was little sense of gossamer wings.

  Bed linen was to form the basic Athenian costume, with the addition of the odd jerkin or waistcoat, chisel and hammer; there was an outsize ass’s head for Bottom and wings for Puck and Titania that had been fetched from a costumier in Dorchester the day before. This was all quite satisfactory; it was the acting that was a cause for concern.

  ‘Sir Henry,’ said Mrs Tilman. ‘Could I make a suggestion?’

  ‘Certainly, Mrs T,’ said Sir Henry, who had landed the part of Quince the carpenter.

  ‘Suppose Miss Georgiana and Miss Amelia was to swap parts? So Miss Amelia was Starveling the tailor and Miss Georgiana was the fairy queen?’

  After a fair bit of ‘No, I can’t’ and ‘Yes, you must’ between the girls, Sir Henry settled the matter by giving his blessing to the switch.

  ‘All right, I’ll learn the lines at lunchtime,’ said Georgiana. ‘Are you quite sure you don’t mind, Ambo?’

  ‘No, I’ve always wanted to play Starveling,’ said Amelia – pretty sportingly, you’d have to say. Woody visibly swelled with pride.

  ‘Bertie,’ said Georgiana, ‘I think it would be a good idea if you and Mr Venables rehearsed your crosstalk act now. Perhaps you could go into the library.’

  ‘Right ho,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve got a script for you, young man,’ said old Vishnu, holding out a piece of paper. ‘But I warn you, I like to extemporise as we go along.’

  As we walked down the hall I glanced down at the paper in my hand. I saw the following words. ‘Feed: “I say, I say, what do you make of the Melbury Ladies’ Sewing Circle?” SV: “I found them most amusing. They had me in stitches.”’

  It was going to be a long day.

  The Melbury-cum-Kingston parish hall was ten minutes away in the two-seater. A red-brick, rectangular building designed by a chap who liked to keep things simple, it was set back from the road behind a blackthorn hedge. The date carved above the lintel was 1856 and one couldn’t help wondering which village worthy had stumped up for it. Or perhaps there had been a subscription to mark the end of the Crimean War; I briefly wondered how many sons of Melbury-cum-Kingston had died at Sevastopol.

  There were twenty minutes before kick-off, but the peasantry was already filing in by twos and threes. These sons of toil looked like men who knew what they liked, and I doubted whether bellows-menders or fairies came high on that list.

  During a solitary luncheon in the sunken garden, I had more or less mastered the lines old Venables had thrust on me and I glanced down now at the papers in my sweating palm. I breathed in deeply.

  ‘Very well, Jeeves. Let’s get it over with. Into the valley of death …’

  I pushed open the door and levered myself out of the car. Since I was not billed to go on until the second half, I decided to place myself at the rear of the hall, among the rougher element, to get a sense of what lay in store. From this vantage point I at once saw why so many of them had arrived early. It is normal practice for a village hall to have some sort of makeshift bar with cider and beer by the barrel, but this was an elaborate affair that took up half a side wall; its selection of beverages would not have disgraced a West End hotel, though the prices were such that any ploughman could keep plodding his weary way back for more. And plod they did.

  The general whiff in the village hall, of damp plaster and dead chrysanthemums, was rapidly being replaced by the smell of warm yeomanry, pipe smoke and alcohol. In other circumstances I don’t deny that I might have found it congenial. The two-bob seats filled rapidly with the local gentry, and I noted listlessly that Vishnu and I should be playing to a full house. A stiffish brandy and soda followed its twin down the hatch – and at that price, who could wonder that a third came close behind.

  Sir Henry Hackwood appeared from the wings, in front of the curtain, to a decent reception. The standees seemed pleased not to be subjected to a lecture from the vicar, as is often the case with such a bash, and were further cheered when Sir Henry told them he had paid for a barrel of beer from the Hare and Hounds for them to get stuck into during the interval. Sir Henry disappeared and the curtain rose on the Melbury Glee Club – six stout women in satin frocks and six sheepish-looking consorts wearing bowler hats. ‘Glee’ was not the word that first came to mind; ‘dejection’ might have been nearer the mark. The vicar’s wife at the upright piano seemed under the impression that she was playing a dirge; the sopranos were obliged to hang on and warble for all they were worth until she caught up. ‘The Ballad of Cranborne Chase’, by contrast, turned into a straight six-furlong sprint between choir and vicar’s wife, the latter apparently determined to make up for lost time. Either that, or she had remembered that she’d left dinner on the vicarage stove. The piano got home by a short head, with half a length separating tenors and sopranos for the places.

  Next on was one Susan Chandler, a ten-year-old schoolgirl with plaits and thick glasses who stood with her hands behind her back and her feet planted like a guardsman told to stand at ease. She eyed the audience in a threatening manner. ‘“By Last Duchess” by Robert Browdig,’ she announced. It was not only the child’s adenoids that made the next seven or eight minutes hard to endure; I hadn’t the faintest clue what old Browning was on about, and I’m pretty sure that no one else did either. At the end I was relieved to see there was no sign of young Susan getting the bird; the applause was tepid, but the right side of polite. A small flame of hope flickered in the Wooster bosom.

  The conjuring by Major Holloway’s wife’s brother would have gone down well in the Pink Owl in Brewer Street. The quick-fire patter seemed to have come from the paddock at some seaside racecourse, and the relish with which the conjuror withdrew the missing Queen of Hearts from the clothing of the saloon barmaid at the Hare and Hounds caused dismay in the two-bobbers. None of the above means the major’s wife’s brother was without his admirers; indeed, you could say that, so far as the standees were concerned, he was by some way the best thing yet. Just as well, because the Puddletown Barbershop Quartet, with which the first half closed, were a man short; and a barbershop quartet with only three barbers is bound to lack a certain something.

  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.