Plum Pie

by P. G. Wodehouse

  "But what about this place of his?"

  "Sir?"

  "You don't get a Park Lane flat for nothing."

  "No, indeed, sir."

  "Let alone a vally."

  "Sir?"

  "You're a vally, aren't you?"

  "No, sir. I was at one time a gentleman's personal gentleman, but at the moment I am not employed in that capacity. I represent Messrs. Alsopp and Wilson, wine merchants, goods supplied to the value of three hundred and four pounds, fifteen shillings and eightpence, a bill which Mr. Wooster finds it far beyond his fiscal means to settle. I am what is technically known as the man in possession."

  A hoarse 'Gorblimey' burst from Jas's lips. I thought it rather creditable of him that he did not say anything stronger.

  "You mean you're a broker's man?"

  "Precisely, sir. I am sorry to say I have come down in the world and my present situation was the only one I could secure. But while not what I have been accustomed to, it has its compensations. Mr. Wooster is a very agreeable young gentleman and takes my intrusion in an amiable spirit. We have long and interesting conversations, and in the course of these he has confided his financial position to me. It appears that he is entirely dependent on the bounty of his aunt, a Mrs. Travers, a lady of uncertain temper who has several times threatened unless he curbs his extravagance to cancel his allowance and send him to Canada to subsist on a small monthly remittance. She is of course under the impression that I am Mr. Wooster's personal attendant. Should she learn of my official status, I do not like to envisage the outcome, though if I may venture on a pleasantry, it would be a case of outgo rather than outcome for Mr. Wooster."

  There was another pregnant s, occupied. I should imagine, by Jas Waterbury in wiping his brow, which one presumes had by this time become wet with honest sweat.

  Finally he once more said 'Gorblimey'.

  Whether or not he would have amplified the remark I cannot say, for his words, if he had intended uttering any, were dashed from his lips. There was a sound like a mighty rushing wind and a loud snort informed me that Aunt Dahlia was with us. In letting Jas Waterbury in, Jeeves must have omitted to close the front door.

  "Jeeves," she boomed, "can you look me in the face?"

  "Certainly, madam, if you wish."

  "Well, I'm surprised you can. You must have the gall of an Army mule. I've just found out that you're a broker's man in valet's clothing. Can you deny it?"

  "No, madam. I represent Messrs. Alsopp and Wilson, wines, spirits and liqueurs supplied to the value of three hundred and four pounds fifteen shillings and eightpence."

  The piano behind which I cowered hummed like a dynamo as the aged relative unshipped a second snort.

  "Good God! What does young Bertie do—bathe in the stuff? Three hundred and four pounds fifteen shillings and eightpence! Probably owes as much, too, in a dozen other places. And in the red to that extent he's planning, I hear, to marry the fat woman in a circus."

  "A portrayer of Fairy Queens in pantomime, madam."

  "Just as bad. Blair Eggleston says she looks like a hippopotamus."

  I couldn't see him, of course, but I imagine Jas Waterbury drew himself to his full height at this description of a loved niece, for his voice when he spoke was stiff and offended.

  "That's my Trixie you're talking about, and he's going to marry her or else get sued for breach of promise."

  It's just a guess, but I think Aunt Dahlia must have drawn herself to her full height, too.

  "Well, she'll have to go to Canada to bring her action," she thundered, "because that's where Bertie Wooster'll be off to on the next boat, and when he's there he won't have money to fritter away on breach of promise cases. It'll be as much as he can manage to keep body and soul together on what I'm going to allow him. If he gets a meat meal every third day, he'll be lucky. You tell that Trixie of yours to forget Bertie and go and marry the Demon King."

  Experience has taught me that except in vital matters like playing Santa Claus at children's parties it's impossible to defy Aunt Dahlia, and apparently Jas Waterbury realized this, for a moment later I heard the front door slam. He had gone without a cry.

  "So that's that," said Aunt Dahlia. "These emotional scenes take it out of one, Jeeves. Can you get me a drop of something sustaining?"

  "Certainly, madam."

  "How was I? All right?"

  "Superb, madam."

  "I think I was in good voice."

  "Very sonorous, madam."

  "Well, it's nice to think our efforts were crowned with success. This will relieve young Bertie's mind. I use the word mind loosely. When do you expect him back?"

  "Mr. Wooster is in residence, madam. Shrinking from confronting Mr. Waterbury, he prudently concealed himself. You will find him behind the piano."

  I was already emerging, and my first act was to pay them both a marked tribute. Jeeves accepted it gracefully, Aunt Dahlia with another of those snorts. Having snorted, she spoke as follows.

  "Easy enough for you to hand out the soft soap, but what I'd like to see is less guff and more action. If you were really grateful, you would play Santa Claus at my Christmas party."

  I could see her point. It was well taken. I clenched the hands. I set the jaw. I made the great decision.

  "Very well, aged relative."

  "You will?"

  "I will."

  "That's my boy. What's there to be afraid of? The worst those kids will do is rub chocolate eclairs on your whiskers."

  "Chocolate eclairs?" I said in a low voice.

  "Or strawberry jam. It's a tribal custom. Pay no attention, by the way, to stories you may have heard of them setting fire to the curate's beard last year. It was purely accidental."

  I had begun to go into my aspen act, when Jeeves spoke.

  "Pardon me, madam."

  "Yes, Jeeves?"

  "If I might offer the suggestion, I think that perhaps a maturer artist than Mr. Wooster would give a more convincing performance."

  "Don't tell me you're thinking of volunteering?"

  "No, madam. The artist I had in mind was Sir Roderick Glossop. Sir Roderick has a fine presence and a somewhat deeper voice than Mr. Wooster. His Ho-ho-ho would be more dramatically effective, and I am sure that if you approached him, you could persuade him to undertake the role."

  "Considering," I said, putting in my oar, "that he is always blacking up his face with burned cork."

  "Precisely, sir. This will make a nice change."

  Aunt Dahlia pondered.

  "I believe you're right, Jeeves," she said at length. "It's tough on those children, for it means robbing them of the biggest laugh they've ever had, but they can't expect life to be one round of pleasure. Well, I don't think I'll have that drink after all. It's a bit early."

  She buzzed off, and I turned to Jeeves, deeply moved. He had saved me from an ordeal at the thought of which the flesh crept, for I hadn't believed for a moment the aged r's story of the blaze in the curate's beard having been an accident. The younger element had probably sat up nights planning it out.

  "Jeeves," I said, "you were saying something not long ago about going to Florida after Christmas."

  "It was merely a suggestion, sir."

  "You want to catch a tarpon, do you not?"

  "I confess that it is my ambition, sir."

  I sighed. It wasn't so much that it pained me to think of some tarpon, perhaps a wife and mother, being jerked from the society of its loved ones on the end of a hook. What gashed me like a knife was the thought of missing the Drones Club Darts Tournament, for which I would have been a snip this year. But what would you? I fought down my regret.

  "Then will you be booking the tickets."

  "Very good, sir."

  I struck a graver note.

  "Heaven help the tarpon that tries to pit its feeble cunning against you, Jeeves," I said. "Its efforts will be bootless."

  Our Man in America

  "Not guilty!" spectators pouring out o
f a Denver, Colorado, courtroom shouted to the waiting crowds in the street, and a great cheer, went up, for public sympathy during the trial had been solidly with the prisoner in the dock, a parrot charged with using obscene language in a public spot.

  The bird, it seems, had been accustomed to sit outside its owner's house watching the passers-by, and one of these, a woman of strict views, had it arrested, claiming that every time she passed by it used what she delicately described as 'Waterfront language'.

  The jury would have liked to hear a few samples, but the parrot was too smart for that. Throughout the proceedings, no doubt on advice of counsel, it maintained a dignified silence, with the result that the rap could not be pinned on it. Later, when talking to reporters, it is said to have expressed itself with a good deal of frankness, being particularly candid about the ancestry of the deputy district attorney, who had conducted the prosecution.

  *

  Talking of reporters, considerable anxiety is being caused just now by the new trend which is creeping into the Presidential Press conferences, if creeping is what trends do. Until recently the gentlemen of the Press just sat around and asked questions, and everything was fine, but now that these conferences are televised it has become the practice to switch the camera off the President and turn it on to the reporter as he speaks, and this has brought out all the ham in the young fellows. As nice a bunch of modest, unassuming chaps as you could wish to meet they used to be, but today you find them out in the corridors peering into pocket mirrors and practising the quick, keen glance with which they hope to slay their public. They call each other 'Laddie' and ask friends if they caught them on the screen last Friday when they jumped in and saved the show.

  *

  A rather interesting story comes from Toledo, Ohio, where Cyril Murphy (aged eight) was up before the Juvenile Court, accused of having tried to purloin a tin of fruit juice from a parked delivery truck.

  He admitted the charge, but pleaded in extenuation that he had been egged on to the crime by the Devil. The Devil, he said, got into conversation with him and hearing that he was thirsty, for the day was warm, suggested that what he needed to correct this thirst was a good swig of fruit juice, which, he went on to point out, could be obtained from that delivery truck over there. Juvenile Court Referee Wade McBride advised him next time to make contact with an angel.

  Cyril described the Devil as covered with hair, bier balls of fire in his eyes, three horns, a long tail and four hooved feet, and the theory in New York theatrical circles is that what he met must have been a dramatic critic.

  *

  The news that Wayburn Mace, aged six, has been given a flashlight will probably have escaped the notice of the general public, but it is going to mean a lot to Mr Mace senior and the residents of Long Beach, California, for life for them should from now on become much more tranquil. It seems that Junior, suspecting the presence under his bed of Red Indians, went after them with a lighted candle, and the subsequent activities of the local fire brigade blocked traffic on all roads leading to the Mace home for several hours.

  It is generally felt that no blame attaches to the little fellow. Nothing is more annoying than to have Red Indians under your bed, and the verdict is that he did the right and spirited thing in taking a firm line with them.

  *

  It is not lightly that one described anyone as belonging to the old bulldog breed but surely George Clemens of Riverhead N.Y. is entitled to the accolade. He is fond of motoring and the other day this led to him appearing in the Riverside court before Justice of the Peace Otis J. Pike.

  "H'm," said Mr. Pike. "Driving without a licence, eh? Anything to say?"

  George had. He explained that every time he takes a driving test he gets so nervous that everything goes black and they turn him down, leaving him no option but to cut the red tape and carry on without the papers which mean so much to the rest of us. He had been driving without a licence for twenty years, he said.

  Mr. Pike consulted the charge sheet.

  "Reckless driving? Speeding? Improper turns? Going through seven red lights and refusing to stop when ordered to by a policeman? Looks bad, George."

  Mr. Clemens admitted that superficially his actions might seem to call for comment, but not if you got the full story.

  "It wasn't really my fault, your honour," he said. "I was drunk at the time."

  2. Sleepy Time

  In his office on the premises of Popgood and Grooly, publishers of the Book Beautiful, Madison Avenue, New York, Cyril Grooly, the firm's junior partner, was practising putts into a tooth glass and doing rather badly even for one with a twenty-four handicap, when Patricia Binstead, Mr. Popgood's secretary, entered, and dropping his putter he folded her in a close embrace. This was not because all American publishers are warmhearted impulsive men and she a very attractive girl, but because they had recently become betrothed. On his return from his summer vacation at Paradise Valley, due to begin this afternoon, they would step along to some convenient church and become man, if you can call someone with a twenty-four handicap a man, and wife.

  “A social visit?” he asked, the embrace concluded. “Or business?”

  "Business. Popgood had to go out to see a man about subsidiary rights, and Count Dracula has blown in. Well, when I say Count Dracula, I speak loosely. He just looks like him. His name is Professor Pepperidge Farmer, and he's come to sign his contract."

  "He writes books?"

  "He's written one. He calls it Hypnotism As A Device To Uncover The Unconscious Drives and Mechanism In An Effort To Analyse The Functions Involved Which Give Rise To Emotional Conflicts In The Waking State, but the title's going to be changed to Sleepy Time. Popgood thinks it's snappier."

  "Much snappier."

  "Shall I send him in?"

  "Do so, queen of my soul."

  "And Popgood says: ‘Be sure not to go above two hundred dollars for the advance.’" said Patricia, and a few moments later the visitor made his appearance.

  It was an appearance, as Patricia had hinted, of a nature to chill the spine. Sinister was the adjective that automatically sprang to the lips of those who met Professor Pepperidge Farmer for the first time. His face was gaunt and lined and grim, and as his burning eyes bored into Cyril's the young publisher was conscious of a feeling of relief that this encounter was not taking place down a dark alley or in some lonely spot in the country. But a man used to mingling with American authors, few of whom look like anything on earth, is not readily intimidated and he greeted him with his customary easy courtesy.

  "Come right in," he said. "You've caught me just in time. I'm off to Paradise Valley this afternoon."

  "A golfing holiday?" said the Professor, eyeing the putter.

  "Yes, I'm looking forward to getting some golf."

  "How is your game?"

  "Horrible," Cyril was obliged to confess. "Mine is a sad and peculiar case. I have the theory of golf at my fingertips, but once out in the middle I do nothing but foozle."

  "You should keep your head down."

  "So Tommy Armour tells me, but up it comes."

  "That's Life."

  "Or shall we say hell?"

  "If you prefer it."

  "It seems the mot juste. But now to business. Miss Binstead tells me you have come to sign your contract. I have it here. It all appears to be in order except that the amount of the advance has not been decided on."

  "And what are your views on that?"

  "I was thinking of a hundred dollars. You see," said Cyril, falling smoothly into his stride, "a book like yours always involves a serious risk for the publisher owing to the absence of the Sex Motif, which renders it impossible for him to put a nude female of impressive vital statistics on the jacket and no hope of getting banned in Boston. Add the growing cost of paper and the ever-increasing demands of printers, compositors, binders and...why are you waving your hands like that?"

  "I have French blood in me. On the mother's side."

  "Well, I wish
you wouldn't. You're making me sleepy."

  "Oh, am I? How very interesting. Yes, I can see that your eyes are closing. You are becoming drowsy. You are falling asleep…you are falling asleep...asleep...asleep...asleep..."

  It was getting on for lunch time when Cyril awoke. When he did so, he found that the recent gargoyle was no longer with him. Odd, he felt, that the fellow should have gone before they had settled the amount of his advance, but no doubt he had remembered some appointment elsewhere. Dismissing him from his mind, Cyril resumed his putting, and soon after lunch he left for Paradise Valley.

  On the subject of Paradise Valley the public relations representative of the Paradise Hotel has expressed himself very frankly. It is, he says in his illustrated booklet, a dream world of breath-taking beauty, and its noble scenery, its wide open spaces, its soft mountain breezes and its sun-drenched pleasances impart to the jaded city worker a new vim and vigour and fill him so full of red corpuscles that before a day has elapsed in these delightful surroundings he is conscious of a je ne sais quoi and a bien etre and goes about with his chin up and both feet on the ground, feeling as if he had just come back from the cleaner's. And, what is more, only a step from the hotel lies the Squashy Hollow golf course, of whose amenities residents can avail themselves on payment of a green fee.

  What, however, the booklet omits to mention is that the Squashy Hollow course is one of the most difficult in the country. It was constructed by an exiled Scot who, probably from some deep-seated grudge against the human race, has modelled the eighteen holes on the nastiest and most repellent of his native land, so that after negotiating—say—the Alps at Prestwick the pleasure-seeker finds himself confronted by the Stationmaster's Garden at St. Andrew's, with the Eden and the Redan just around the corner.