‘Mrs McCorkadale in, dear?’ he asked, and having been responded to in the affirmative he left me, and I headed for home. I ought, of course, to have carried on along River Row, taking the odd numbers while Jeeves attended to the even, but I didn’t feel in the vein.
I was uneasy. You might say, if you happened to know the word, that the prognostications of a human wart like Bingley deserved little credence, but he had spoken with such conviction, so like someone who has heard something, that I couldn’t pass them off with a light laugh.
Brooding tensely, I reached the old homestead and found the ancestor lying on a chaise longue, doing the Observer crossword puzzle.
9
* * *
THERE WAS A time when this worthy housewife, tackling the Observer crossword puzzle, would snort and tear her hair and fill the air with strange oaths picked up from cronies on the hunting field, but consistent inability to solve more than about an eighth of the clues has brought a sort of dull resignation and today she merely sits and stares at it, knowing that however much she licks the end of her pencil little or no business will result.
As I came in, I heard her mutter, soliloquizing like someone in Shakespeare, ‘Measured tread of saint round St Paul’s, for God’s sake’, seeming to indicate that she had come up against a hot one, and I think it was a relief to her to become aware that her favourite nephew was at her side and that she could conscientiously abandon her distasteful task, for she looked up and greeted me cheerily. She wears tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles for reading which make her look like a fish in an aquarium. She peered at me through these.
‘Hullo, my bounding Bertie.’
‘Good morning, old ancestor.’
‘Up already?’
‘I have been up some time.’
‘Then why aren’t you out canvassing? And why are you looking like something the cat brought in?’
I winced. I had not intended to disclose the recent past, but with an aunt’s perception she had somehow spotted that in some manner I had passed through the furnace and she would go on probing and questioning till I came clean. Any capable aunt can give Scotland Yard inspectors strokes and bisques in the matter of interrogating a suspect, and I knew that all attempts at concealment would be fruitless. Or is it bootless? I would have to check with Jeeves.
‘I am looking like something the cat brought in because I am feeling like something the c b in,’ I said. ‘Aged relative, I have a strange story to relate. Do you know a local blister of the name of Mrs McCorkadale?’
‘Who lives in River Row?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘She’s a barrister.’
‘She looks it.’
‘You’ve met her?’
‘I’ve met her.’
‘She’s Ginger’s opponent in this election.’
‘I know. Is Mr McCorkadale still alive?’
‘Died years ago. He got run over by a municipal tram.’
‘I don’t blame him. I’d have done the same myself in his place. It’s the only course to pursue when you’re married to a woman like that.’
‘How did you meet her?’
‘I called on her to urge her to vote for Ginger,’ I said, and in a few broken words I related my strange story.
It went well. In fact, it went like a breeze. Myself, I was unable to see anything humorous in it, but there was no doubt about it entertaining the blood relation. She guffawed more liberally than I had ever heard a woman guffaw. If there had been an aisle, she would have rolled in it. I couldn’t help feeling how ironical it was that, having failed so often to be well received when telling a funny story, I should have aroused such gales of mirth with one that was so essentially tragic.
While she was still giving her impersonation of a hyena which has just heard a good one from another hyena, Spode came in, choosing the wrong moment as usual. One never wants to see Spode, but least of all when someone is having a hearty laugh at your expense.
‘I’m looking for the notes for my speech tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Hullo, what’s the joke?’
Convulsed as she was, it was not easy for the ancestor to articulate, but she managed a couple of words.
‘It’s Bertie.’
‘Oh?’ said Spode, looking at me as if he found it difficult to believe that any word or act of mine could excite mirth and not horror and disgust.
‘He’s just been calling on Mrs McCorkadale.’
‘Oh?’
‘And asking her to vote for Ginger Winship.’
‘Oh?’ said Spode again. I have already indicated that he was a compulsive Oh-sayer. ‘Well, it is what I would have expected of him,’ and with another look in which scorn and animosity were nicely blended and a word to the effect that he might have left those notes in the summerhouse by the lake he removed his distasteful presence.
That he and I were not on Damon and Pythias terms seemed to have impressed itself on the aged relative. She switched off the hyena sound effects.
‘Not a bonhomous type, Spode.’
‘No.’
‘He doesn’t like you.’
‘No.’
‘And I don’t think he likes me.’
‘No,’ I said, and it occurred to me, for the Woosters are essentially fairminded, that it was hardly for me to criticize Spode’s Oh’s when my No’s were equally frequent. Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye, Wooster? I found myself asking myself, it having been one of the many good things I had picked up in my researches when I won that Scripture Knowledge prize.
‘Does he like anyone?’ said the relative. ‘Except, presumably, Madeline Bassett.’
‘He seems fond of L. P. Runkle.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘I overheard them exchanging confidences.’
‘Oh?’ said the relative, for these things are catching. ‘Well, I suppose one ought not to be surprised. Birds of a feather—’
‘Flock together?’
‘Exactly. And even the dregs of pond life fraternize with other dregs of pond life. By the way, remind me to tell you something about L. P. Runkle.’
‘Right ho.’
‘We will come to L. P. Runkle later. This animosity of Spode’s, is it just the memory of old Totleigh days, or have you done anything lately to incur his displeasure?’
This time I had no hesitation in telling her all. I felt she would be sympathetic. I laid the facts before her with every confidence that an aunt’s condolences would result.
‘There was this gnat.’
‘I don’t follow you.’
‘I had to rally round.’
‘You’ve still lost me.’
‘Spode didn’t like it.’
‘So he doesn’t like gnats either. Which gnat? What gnat? Will you get on with your story, curse you, starting at the beginning and carrying on to the end.’
‘Certainly, if you wish. Here is the scenario.’
I told her about the gnat in Madeline’s eye, the part I had played in restoring her vision to mid-season form and the exception Spode had taken to my well-meant efforts. She whistled. Everyone seemed to be whistling at me today. Even the recent maid on recognizing me had puckered up her lips as if about to.
‘I wouldn’t do that sort of thing again,’ she said.
‘If the necessity arose I would have no option.’
‘Then you’d better get one as soon as possible. Because if you keep on taking things out of Madeline’s eye, you may have to marry the girl.’
‘But surely the peril has passed now that she’s engaged to Spode.’
‘I don’t know so much. I think there’s some trouble between Spode and Madeline.’
I would be surprised to learn that in the whole W.1 postal section of London there is a man more capable than Bertram Wooster of bearing up with a stiff upper lip under what I have heard Jeeves call the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune; but at these frightful words I
confess that I went into my old aspen routine even more wholeheartedly than I had done during my get-together with the relict of the late McCorkadale.
And not without reason. My whole foreign policy was based on the supposition that the solidarity of these two consenting adults was something that couldn’t be broken or even cracked. He, on his own statement, had worshipped her since she was so high, while she, as I have already recorded, would not lightly throw a man of his eligibility into the discard. If ever there was a union which you could have betted with perfect confidence would culminate in a golden wedding with all the trimmings, this was the one.
‘Trouble?’ I whispered hoarsely. ‘You mean there’s a what-d’you-call-it?’
‘What would that be?’
‘A rift within the lute which widens soon and makes the music mute. Not my own, Jeeves’s.’
‘The evidence points in that direction. At dinner last night I noticed that he was refusing Anatole’s best, while she looked wan and saintlike and crumbled bread. And talking of Anatole’s best, what I wanted to tell you about L. P. Runkle was that zero hour is approaching. I am crouching for my spring and have strong hopes that Tuppy will soon be in the money.’
I clicked the tongue. Nobody could be keener than I on seeing Tuppy dip into L. P. Runkle’s millions, but this was no time to change the subject.
‘Never mind about Tuppy for the moment. Concentrate on the sticky affairs of Bertram Wilberforce Wooster.’
‘Wilberforce,’ she murmured, as far as a woman of her outstanding lung power could murmur. ‘Did I ever tell you how you got that label? It was your father’s doing. The day before you were lugged to the font looking like a minor actor playing a bit part in a gangster film he won a packet on an outsider in the Grand National called that, and he insisted on you carrying on the name. Tough on you, but we all have our cross to bear. Your Uncle Tom’s second name is Portarlington, and I came within an ace of being christened Phyllis.’
I rapped her sharply on the top-knot with a paper-knife of Oriental design, the sort that people in novels of suspense are always getting stabbed in the back with.
‘Don’t wander from the res. The fact that you nearly got christened Phyllis will, no doubt, figure in your autobiography, but we need not discuss it now. What we are talking about is the ghastly peril that confronts me if the Madeline-Spode axis blows a fuse.’
‘You mean that if she breaks her engagement, you will have to fill the vacuum?’
‘Exactly.’
‘She won’t. Not a chance.’
‘But you said—’
‘I only wanted to emphasize my warning to you not to keep on taking gnats out of Madeline’s eyes. Perhaps I overdid it.’
‘You chilled me to the marrow.’
‘Sorry I was so dramatic. You needn’t worry. They’ve only had a lovers’ tiff such as occurs with the mushiest couples.’
‘What about?’
‘How do I know? Perhaps he queried her statement that the stars were God’s daisy chain.’
I had to admit that there was something in this theory. Madeline’s breach with Gussie Fink-Nottle had been caused by her drawing his attention to the sunset and saying sunsets always made her think of the Blessed Damozel leaning out from the gold bar of heaven, and he said, ‘Who?’ and she said, ‘The Blessed Damozel’, and he said, ‘Never heard of her’, adding that sunsets made him sick, and so did the Blessed Damozel. A girl with her outlook would be bound to be touchy about stars and daisy chains.
‘It’s probably over by now,’ said the ancestor. ‘All the same, you’d better keep away from the girl. Spode’s an impulsive man. He might slosh you.’
‘He said he would.’
‘He used the word slosh?’
‘No, but he assured me he would butter me over the front lawn and dance on the remains with hobnailed boots.’
‘Much the same thing. So I would be careful if I were you. Treat her with distant civility. If you see any more gnats headed in her direction, hold their coats and wish them luck, but restrain the impulse to mix in.’
‘I will.’
‘I hope I have relieved your fears?’
‘You have, old flesh and blood.’
‘Then why the furrows in your brow?’
‘Oh, those? It’s Ginger.’
‘What’s Ginger?’
‘He’s why my brow is furrowed.’
It shows how profoundly the thought of Madeline Bassett possibly coming into circulation again had moved me that it was only now that I had remembered Bingley and what he had said about the certainty of Ginger finishing as an also-ran in the election. I burned with shame and remorse that I should have allowed my personal troubles to make me shove him down to the foot of the agenda paper in this scurvy manner. Long ere this I ought to have been inviting Aunt Dahlia’s views on his prospects. Not doing so amounted to letting a pal down, a thing I pride myself on never being guilty of. Little wonder that I b’d with s and r.
I hastened to make amends, if those are what you make when you have done the dirty on a fellow you love like a brother.
‘Did I ever mention a bloke called Bingley to you?’
‘If you did, I’ve forgotten.’
‘He was my personal attendant for a brief space when Jeeves and I differed about me playing the banjolele. That time when I had a cottage down at Chufnell Regis.’
‘Oh yes, he set it on fire, didn’t he?’
‘While tight as an owl. It was burned to a cinder, as was my banjolele.’
‘I’ve got him placed now. What about him?’
‘He lives in Market Snodsbury. I met him this morning and happened to mention that I was canvassing for Ginger.’
‘If you can call it canvassing.’
‘And he told me I was wasting my time. He advised me to have a substantial bet on Ma McCorkadale. He said Ginger hadn’t an earthly.’
‘He’s a fool.’
‘I must say I’ve always thought so, but he spoke as if he had inside information.’
‘What on earth information could he have? An election isn’t a horse race where you get tips from the stable cat. I don’t say it may not be a close thing, but Ginger ought to win all right. He has a secret weapon.’
‘Repeat that, if you wouldn’t mind. I don’t think I got it.’
‘Ginger defies competition because he has a secret weapon.’
‘Which is?’
‘Spode.’
‘Spode?’
‘My lord Sidcup. Have you ever heard him speak?’
‘I did just now.’
‘In public, fool.’
‘Oh, in public. No, I haven’t.’
‘He’s a terrific orator, as I told you, only you’ve probably forgotten.’
This seemed likely enough to me. Spode at one time had been one of those Dictators, going about at the head of a band of supporters in footer shorts shouting ‘Heil Spode’, and to succeed in that line you have to be able to make speeches.
‘You aren’t fond of him, nor am I, but nobody can deny that he’s eloquent. Audiences hang on his every word, and when he’s finished cheer him to the echo.’
I nodded. I had had the same experience myself when singing ‘The Yeoman’s Wedding Song’ at village concerts. Two or three encores sometimes, even when I blew up in the words and had to fill in with ‘Ding dong, ding dong, ding dong, I hurry along’. I began to feel easier in my mind. I told her this, and she said ‘Your what?’
‘You have put new heart into me, old blood relation,’ I said, ignoring the crack. ‘You see, it means everything to him to win this election.’
‘Is he so bent on representing Market Snodsbury in the Westminster menagerie?’
‘It isn’t that so much. Left to himself, I imagine he could take Parliament or leave it alone. But he thinks Florence will give him the bum’s rush if he loses.’
‘He’s probably right. She can’t stand a loser.’
‘So he told me. Remember what happened
to Percy Gorringe.’
‘And others. England is strewn with ex-fiancés whom she bounced because they didn’t come up to her specifications. Dozens of them. I believe they form clubs and societies.’
‘Perhaps calling themselves the Old Florentians.’
‘And having an annual dinner!’
We mused on Florence for awhile; then she said she ought to be going to confer with Anatole about dinner tonight, urging him to dish up something special. It was vital, she said, that he should excel his always high standard.
‘I was speaking, just now, when you interrupted me and turned my thoughts to the name Wilberforce, of L. P. Runkle.’
‘You said you had an idea he might be going to cooperate.’
‘Exactly. Have you ever seen a python after a series of hearty meals?’
‘Not to my knowledge.’
‘It gets all softened up. It becomes a kindlier, gentler, more lovable python. And if I am not greatly mistaken, the same thing is happening to L. P. Runkle as the result of Anatole’s cooking. You saw him at dinner last night.’
‘Sorry, no, I wasn’t looking. Every fibre of my being was concentrated on the foodstuffs. He would have repaid inspection, would he? Worth seeing, eh?’
‘He was positively beaming. He was too busy to utter, but it was plain that he had become all amiability and benevolence. He had the air of a man who would start scattering largesse if given a word of encouragement. It is for Anatole to see to it that this Christmas spirit does not evaporate but comes more and more to the boil. And I know that I can rely on him.’
‘Good old Anatole,’ I said, lighting a cigarette.
‘Amen,’ said the ancestor reverently; then, touching on another subject, ‘Take that foul cigarette outside, you young hellhound. It smells like an escape of sewer gas.’
Always glad to indulge her lightest whim, I passed through the French window, in a far different mood from that in which I had entered the room. Optimism now reigned in the Wooster bosom. Ginger, I told myself, was going to be all right, Tuppy was going to be all right, and it would not be long before the laughing love god straightened things out between Madeline and Spode, even if he had talked out of turn about stars and daisy chains.
The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 5: (Jeeves & Wooster) Page 8