Bertram Wilberforce Wooster and the Helen of W1
by Utopian Trunks
Part 1
Pairings: I shall take them to my grave or the next chapter, whichever's first.
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Main characters & universe created by P.G. Wodehouse, not me.
Notes: I'm taking advantage of the TV series timeline, which gives us both the kickoff event and an unmarried Bingo at the time of.
Thanks: to Xparrot and Saki101 for beta-reading. ♥
I suppose, to begin at the beginning of this particular yarn, as all conscientious wordsmiths should, one would have to go back to when God created the world. You know, the let there be light part--dreadfully impressive, dramatic bit, that, I always thought. Now, I once won a prize for Scripture Knowledge, back in school, and if I recall, it happened along these lines. Day One: heavens, earth, light. Days Two through Four: earth, water, stars, trees, grass, rhubarb, continents, mountains, I suppose--the general fixtures of the place. Then on Days Five and Six, God created all the living creatures, which must have kept Him frightfully busy, what with whales and elephants and things like peacocks which have all the little fiddly bits. What with there being such a bally lot of fauna charging about the place, it didn't get its own mention, but somewhere in there, in those two days, I mean, God created the newt.
And that is where the trouble began.
It hasn't yet been explained or quantified by science, but the newt exerts a kind of deadly fascination on chaps of a certain makeup, of the kind which causes them to lurk in dark rooms in remote corners of the countryside, goggling into damp tanks full of salamanders all day. Terrifying, really, but because it is such a rare affliction, this condition has not received the attention from the medical community that one might hope, or that I might hope, given that one of my oldest friends is a sufferer.
I have known Augustus Fink-Nottle since we were both in sailor suits, and as a child and young man he was as regular a chap as any, though perhaps a trifle more likely than most to hesitate when asked if he were man or mouse. Round about our entry into Eton, however, someone--the Fiend himself, I shouldn't wonder--introduced poor old Gussie to the study of newts, and the deal was sealed. The rest of us tried to shake him free of the reptile's clammy grasp, but there was nothing for it. After Cambridge, Gussie biffed off to Lincolnshire to answer the call of the newt and no one heard word nor saw hair of him for years until one day he surfaced in London, and in short order got himself engaged to a certain Miss Madeline Bassett. Rum ending for him, but rather a lucky escape for me, seeing as I was next in line for the chopping block.
It had taken a good amount of coaxing and scheming, a fair taxation of the grey matter on my own and my valet Jeeves's parts, and no small amount of exertion to slot Gussie into this engagement. In the months that followed I began to wonder if it hadn't been a mistake, if I shouldn't have sent him and his heartbreak over the Bassett straight back to Lincolnshire to commune with the tadpoles. Because, you see, once wrested from his den of glass and slime, he seemed reluctant to go back, and he began popping up in my midst with alarming frequency. That would have been all to the good, were he behaving like the friend of my youth and brother of my bosom he was supposed to be, but for a teetotalling, juice-guzzling poop who had socialised exclusively with amphibians for over a decade, Gussie's head had been turned by the whole engagement lark, and he had gotten increasingly above himself ever since. That is to say, whether he was making up for a wasted youth, or had simply snapped after trading lizards for a woman who spouted poetry like a Palgrave's with a leak, he now fancied himself equal to breaking and resuming his engagement, flirting with various members of the fairer s., appearing on stage, pinching dogs, and all manner of mischief for which he simply was not qualified. And who, when the music stopped, was left holding the bag? Good old Bertram, you can put your shirt on it.
That is why, come one Wednesday afternoon, I did not leap from my seat at the Drones Club bar and throw open my arms when Gussie arose beside me like the Ghost of Christmas Past or some such spectre. Instead, I nearly fell off my chair, and when I had clawed my way back level with my half-eaten lunch, responded to his greeting with a restrained, "Oh, hallo, Gussie. What brings you to the old metrop?"
My reservation and the chilliness of my regard were, as they are on so many thoughtless coves, lost on Gussie. "The highest calling, Bertie," said the young newt-fancier. "Love."
"Right ho," I said, and reapplied myself to the steak and kidney. It turned to ashes in my mouth, but I persevered. Dashed unfortunate, it seemed to me, that Gussie had ever sussed that a small enough newt tank was portable, and just as well off in London as anywhere.
Gussie had more to say, and after a minute or two watching me get outside my lunch, he gave up on my asking the leading q. and forged on alone. "Bertie," he said earnestly, "I need your help."
I might have replied that he'd had enough of that lately to exhaust the quota from this lifetime of bosom friendship and make a significant dent in the next, but when an old school chum, whose Eton collar I had many a time had to refasten, fixes me with the big and soulful, the Wooster heart is as a melty thing on a hot whatsit.
"Say away, Gussie, old thing," I said gallantly, for, I mean to say, what sort of preux chevalier abandons a friend in need, even if that friend is a newt-fancying social land mine? "What's troubling you?"
A look of deep relief and gratitude filled the poor fish's goggling eyes and he clambered onto the seat beside me. "Bertie," he said, "I need to write a love letter."
"Oh," I said. "Is that all?" My appetite, which had flown the coop at Gussie's unlooked for resurgence, poked its nose back round the door.
"I'm no good with fine words and so forth, Bertie, you know that."
"I should think being engaged to Madeline Bassett would've put you in training something frightful. It's nothing but fairies and rabbits and glittering tears sunup to sundown with her, isn't it?"
"That stuff's no good," said Gussie scornfully.
"She's heard it all before, being the avant-maître, you mean."
"The avant what?"
"Er... an old hand, I should think it means. Or maybe I've got it wrong. Think I heard it from Jeeves."
"Ah!" said Gussie with some emotion.
"Of course," I said. "You actually came to see Jeeves, didn't you?"
"No!" said Gussie, taking on the distinct look of a trout's underbelly. "Who told you that? Don't be ridiculous!"
Again the old brotherly warmth touched me between the third and fourth rib. Jolly decent of Gussie to spare my feelings, and all that, but I had got used to my pals calling on me just to lay their problems before Jeeves. "No, you're quite right, Gussie. Jeeves is just the man for the job. He's fuller of fine words than Shakespeare himself. In fact, he's applied himself to this very errand before. If you need to top old Madeline in the area of flowery verbiage, Jeeves--"
Gussie gave a sort of pained cry and gulped like a draining bath. "No," he said in a low, desperate sort of tone. "It must be you, Bertie!"
Well, this quite pacified me, and I would have leapt wholeheartedly to Gussie's aid even were it not in my own interests to keep the love light for Gussie firmly in the Bassett's wide blues.
We retired to the lounge, ensconced ourselves comfortably, and Gussie produced a pen and paper. At the top of one page it read, in the atrocious scrawl Gussie passes off as handwriting which seems to indicate paper is going at five shillings per square inch, My Dearest.
"That's as far as I'd got," said Gussie.
"Well, well," I said and cracked the old knuckles. "Well, well, well."
"It's no use sitting there saying 'well.' What shall I write?"
"I was thinking," said I.
"Is that what it sounds like."
"Yes," I said. "Anyway, how about opening up with a line of poetry? She likes that sort of thing."
Gussie gave me a strange look, and fiddled with his collar. "Yes," he said.
"There was something I learnt at Oxford, a right romantic wheeze. How did it go...? Oh! 'Ah Love, tum tumty tumty-tum, tum-tum tum-tumty something something.'"
"You want me to write, 'tumty-tum'?"
"Well, no. The actual lines would be favourite. I thought you might know them."
"I see."
"Er." I sensed my stock as love letter consultant was falling. "What about an opening of the heart, then? Show the true passion of Augustus as it has never before been revealed, what?"
Gussie looked dubious. I hastened to add, "We'll dress it up a bit, old man."
He consented to play along, and we batted the thing around like a couple of arthritic badminton players till we came out, fingers ink-stained and many a sheet of paper crumpled, with something that, considered in a certain light, very nearly resembled a letter.
"'My Dearest Madeline,'" I read. "'My heart beats double-time at your approach--' Good that, eh? 'The sound of your voice calms my fearful heart and nurtures in me a sense that all is well.' Does it really? Well, never mind. To each his own, I suppose. 'Your strength is like unto Hercules, or Atlas as he...' Really, Gussie, I wish you'd reconsider this part. She isn't Honoria Glossop."
"It stays," sniffed Gussie.
I sighed. It was hardly the sort of thing a romantic girl liked to be praised for, but Gussie had taken paternal pride in all of his contributions to the ghastly communication, and wouldn't budge. The sequel to that sentence, mentioning how Gussie became faint at these displays of most unfeminine hardiness, seemed to me to paint him in an extremely unflattering light, but he was adamant about that, too. One could only hope Madeline found it romantic, and perhaps Gussie knew best on that score--I certainly couldn't understand the confounded woman.
"The next part's better," I said. "'Your eyes speak of the wisdom of ages; in their rich brown depths I find the balm of my soul's cares.' That's a jolly good bit," I said proudly. I had cleaned it up from Gussie's initial, 'Your brains give me the shivers.' Madeline's brains do rather give me a shot of ice water along the spinal c., but no use being quite so honest. I thought my improvements rather inspired. 'Balm' had remained 'thingummy' for about an hour, too, until Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps passed through and I clicked. "I say, though, Gussie. Madeline's eyes are blue, aren't they?"
"Hm?" said young Gussie. He gave me that look again, like we were dining with the Borgias and he was hoping I would try the salmon mousse before he risked a go at it. "Oh, yes," he said, waving one hand dismissively. "I'll change it when I copy it out."
"Fancy forgetting that," I chided. "The eyes of the one you love."
"Yes," Gussie agreed with a faraway expression.
We pushed on. The moon and stars had been applied with a liberal hand, though we'd steered clear of rainbows, fairies and bunnies; there was some twilight, but just enough, I thought.
We hadn't quite finished the recital when Bingo Little popped his head in to remind me we were meeting Catsmeat and Barmy for dinner and the latest at the Palladium, so I made my excuses to Gussie and started off home to dress for dinner.
As I was collecting my hat and coat, Gussie ran out after me. "Bertie!" he cried. "How shall I sign it?"
"Oh, 'With love,' I should think," I said, buttoning up the coat and shooting the old cuffs.
"That's too banal, Bertie, I need something better."
I was anxious, by this point, to get alongside some more jovial company, a spot of dinner, and rather more than a spot of whiskey, as I had been bending the bean to this matter of the love letter for a little over three of the small hand and needed to undo the ill effects. I reached quickly through the mists and hit upon a wheeze that'd turned up in Love and Murder in the Gloaming. "Sign it 'Your Ardent Admirer.'"
"Your Ardent Admirer." Gussie tried it on. "That's not bad! Thanks awfully, Bertie!"
"Toodle-pip!" I said, and made my exit.
* * *
The dinner we had at the Savoy was all that could have been hoped. The musical comedy at the Palladium, sadly, was not, and Bingo and I cheesed it during the interval. I trickled back into the flat, therefore, just before ten. As I was closing the door, a smallish youth in some manner of uniform ran up to me in the hall and shoved an envelope into my hands. He remained ostentatiously in situ until I tipped him, then biffed off. I stepped inside and Jeeves, my man, materialised in my midst with a silver tray bearing the old w. and s.
"Good evening, sir," said the hardy fellow, setting the tray on the coffee table and moving to help me out of my coat and jacket. "Your slippers are just there."
"Good evening, Jeeves," I said. "Some infant's just toddled by with this for you." I glanced at the envelope before handing it over. "Looks like it's been addressed by a palsied chimpanzee."
"Thank you, sir. Was the entertainment at the Palladium not to your liking, sir?"
"A washout, Jeeves." I availed myself of the restorative he'd laid out for me.
"I am sorry to hear that, sir."
"You'll never guess who's in town again," I said.
"Who is that, sir?"
"Gussie Fink-Nottle!" I said. "For someone who used to shun the crowded places, he's been cropping up lately like a bad penny. Have his own flat in the metrop. before long. Had me working all afternoon like a bally scribe, and on what, do you fancy?"
"I could not guess, sir."
"No, by Jove, I'd rather say you couldn't! A love letter! If you'll credit it."
"That is a coincidence, sir. I find myself in receipt of such a missive this evening."
"Yes, that's what I said--what?" I turned round to see Jeeves holding a letter of two sheets before him, eyeing it as a collector might regard a silver creamer. "Jeeves, what did you say?"
"A love letter, it would appear, sir."
It has been said--most emphatically and often by my Aunt Agatha--that I have not the keenest mind in the Commonwealth, that I am Eton's least likely to be sought out by Scotland Yard to solve the mystery of the missing Crown Jewels, and similar slights against that which resides between my collar and top hat, but once in a while inspiration does visit me, like the moon emerging from behind the clouds on a dark night and so forth, enabling me to connect the dots, put two and two together, and generally cotton on. That is to say--sudden appearance of Gussie, confusion of fiancée's eye colour, exceedingly unfeminine description of same, abominable chicken-scratchings on envelope delivered to 6A Crichton Mansions...
"Jeeves," I said, with dawning horror, "how is the letter signed?"
"It is anonymous, sir."
"Yes, but the... closing, if that's the word I want?"
"It is, sir. It is signed 'Your Ardent Admirer.'"
"Good heavens," I said.
--Utopian Trunks
September 26, 2007
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