Bertram Wilberforce Wooster and the Helen of W1
by Utopian Trunks
Part 2
Pairings: Heaps, scads, dozens, nay, thousands!
Rating: PG-13
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.
"You goggle-eyed blighter!"
It may tell you something about the membership of the Drones Club that when I strode into the smoking room thus declaiming, everyone present lifted their eyes to me like the little dog by the gramaphone hearing his master's voice. "Gussie!" I specified, and most of them went back to their own occupations.
Gussie was standing off in one corner, leaning against the wall, the spitting image of the cat who has eaten the family budgerigar and is sitting under the cage with feathers in his whiskers. He gulped a bit. "Hallo, Bertie," he said.
"Don't you 'hallo, Bertie' me," I said.
"Then what should I say to you?"
"I think something along the lines of 'forgive me, friend of my youth, for my base betrayal,' accompanied by some general breast-beating and bewailing your outcast state would fit the facts of the case nicely, don't you?"
"Oh, but Bertie--" Gussie started.
"Not a word of it," I said, holding up one imperious hand. "You disappoint me sorely, young Gussie. One would think a lifetime of friendship would earn some loyalty, some decent human feeling, some brother sentiment! And yet you, you go snaking about in the grass like a... snaky thing. Which lives in grass. Trying to hire my valet out from under my nose, behind my back, and having me write the letter! Well, really, Gussie, I ask you."
"Bertie--"
"And, to the left, Gussie, what are you doing in my club? I called at your hotel and was told you'd come here."
"I'm a member," said Gussie, drawing himself up a bit. It wasn't a terribly impressive display, but for Gussie, a straightening of the spine was a significant step.
"Who on earth put you up?"
"I did, old man," said a voice by my elbow, "years ago."
"Bingo!" said I.
"Hallo," said Bingo Little. "What's all the shouting about? Thought I heard Stilton from the other room."
I stiffened. Whatever you may say of B. Wooster, he is not the sort of fellow to go about the place shouting "Ho!" at all and sundry and threatening violence against spines. "Why," I asked in a calmer voice, "would you put Gussie up for membership?"
"We were at school together," said Bingo, eyeing me as though he suspected I had put away a few too many for this time of day.
"What?" I gave him a touch of the old eyebrow.
"Bertie," said Bingo, "I was at school with you since Kindergarten."
"Yes."
"And you were at school with Gussie, weren't you?"
"Yes," I admitted.
"So."
"Well, I'm dashed," I said. Although I would readily have copped to going to school with either Bingo or Gussie, I couldn't recall ever, in all those years, having seen them together. It was as though they belonged to two different childhoods. "You know each other, then?"
"Of course," said Bingo.
"Well," I said, folding my arms and glaring at Gussie out of the corner of my eye, "you and I clearly made a bad choice of pals, Bingo."
"Oh, come now, Bertie."
"There's no 'come now' about it! He's trying to hire Jeeves off me!"
At this, at least, Bingo looked suitably taken aback. He looked at Gussie. "Surely not?"
"He had me writing the letter all afternoon," I said, "thinking it was for his fiancée. He sent it to Jeeves!"
"Is that what you two were working on," said Bingo. "Well, Gussie?"
"I'm not trying to hire him!" said Gussie.
"'Your brains give me the shivers,'" I said icily. "I might have known."
"But I don't want to hire him!" Gussie protested. He lowered his voice to a fierce whisper. "I'm in love, Bertie."
"I know you are," I said. "That's no excuse to steal my valet. He's certainly helped you enough in my employ."
"No, no, no," hissed Gussie, his voice so low now that Bingo and I were forced to lean in to hear him. "I'm in love with him. With Jeeves."
There was a moment of silence. I looked at Bingo. Bingo looked at me. United, we looked at Gussie, who blinked back fishily.
"Well, now, look here, Gussie," said Bingo.
"Yes. As he said, look here." I did so, as well. Looked there, that is. At Bingo, I mean to say.
"That was about it, really," said Bingo, abashed.
"You can't be in love with Jeeves, Gussie," I said, taking the baton, so to speak.
"Why not?" demanded Gussie.
"Bingo will tell you," I said.
Bingo shot me an unfriendly look. "It isn't the done thing," he said.
"Exactly," I agreed.
"I don't care if it's the done thing," said Gussie, thrusting out his chin defiantly. He hasn't so terribly much of one to be thrusting about with abandon like that, but thrust it he did.
"He says he doesn't care, Bertie."
"Yes."
Bingo and I took a moment to light a pair of cigarettes and commune withal as the wheels turned.
"He is rather a corker, your Jeeves," said Bingo thoughtfully.
"What a mind!" Gussie said devoutly.
"Of course," I allowed. "But--"
"Quite good looking, too," said Bingo, "objectively speaking."
"Tall, dark and handsome," sighed Gussie.
"True, if you like," I said, "but that is not the point at issue."
"And he's ever so strong," said Gussie with a sigh, like the dreamy-eyed heroines you found in Rosie M. Banks novels.
"Is he?" said Bingo.
"Rather," I answered. "I've seen him sling a man my size over his shoulder like he was a down pillow."
"Really?" Gussie breathed in an enraptured voice. I saw this had not been the time or place.
"What for?" Bingo asked.
"He was drunk. Wilmot, Lord Pershore, that is; not Jeeves. Jeeves had to carry him in to bed."
Gussie's mien took a distressing turn for the pink, transforming him from trout to ornamental carp. "I wish Jeeves would carry me to bed."
I swallowed a stream of smoke and coughed for a minute like the combined tuberculosis ward of St. Francis. "Contain yourself, Gussie," I said once I had recovered, and was about to add harsher words when Bingo laid a hand on my shoulder as if to say, "Steady on," so I subsided.
"What brought all this on, Gussie?" Bingo asked in a kind, brotherly sort of manner.
Gussie gave another of those deep, simpering sighs. It made the skin crawl. "It was a few weeks ago in Totleigh-in-the-Wold," he said. "You remember, Bertie?"
"Distinctly," said I.
"I was being pursued by this ghastly policeman," Gussie told Bingo, eyes bright, "and I climbed up a tree to escape."
"Oh dear, Gussie," Bingo clucked. "We really neglected your education at Eton, didn't we?" I agreed with him there. If there is one thing any red-blooded English schoolboy knows, it's not to get himself treed like a cat at the drop of a hat.
"Well," continued Gussie, "I was up there with no means of escape, and the constable just waiting for me to come down. And sooner or later, I should have been forced to."
I began to see where the problem had arisen, but I held my peace. There was Gussie, up a tree which may as well have been an ivory tower, exhibiting all the symptoms of a Medieval damsel in distress treed, or rather towered, by a dragon. I had seen him exhibiting the same s. when I myself stepped in at Totleigh Towers to chase off Roderick Spode, who was intent on kicking Gussie's spine through his hat, viz., the worshipful gaze, the tremulous voice as he spoke my name and then went on to praise my courage in the face of dragons and dictators. Still, to my knowledge, Gussie had not fallen in love with me over this incident. Of course, Gussie had known me since we were in sailor suits; he had witnessed the results of my accepting a challenge to eat a half-pound of red peppers, and that does tend to take the glamour off.
When I tuned in again, Gussie was reenacting the climax of the story, and I had to duck to avoid being brained by an enthusiastic mime of Jeeves sloshing Constable Oates over the head with a stout tree limb. Gussie was only using his clasped hands, but it still wasn't a blow I thought bore stopping with my head. "He went down like a sack of cement," Gussie crowed. "It was a thing of beauty and a joy forever, wasn't it, Bertie?"
"Oh, ah, rather. Look, Gussie," I said, with gentle sympathy, "I see why it would have made quite the impression on you, and all that, but nevertheless..."
"Oh, gosh!" Gussie exclaimed and pulled out his pocket watch. "I must get back to my hotel! I'm in the middle of an experiment. If I don't give the test group their supplement on time, I'll have to start over from scratch. Good afternoon, Bertie, Bingo!"
He legged it, muttering things about newts that were no doubt inappropriate for mixed company--luckily there was none of that about--and I put out my cigarette, furrowed the b., and frowned after him.
"Nevertheless what?" Bingo asked.
"Eh?"
"You said you understood Jeeves making an impression on the poor blighter, but nevertheless..."
"Oh," I said, "I don't know. I think I was going to say something about Jeeves having an allergy to newts."
"Has he?"
"Not that I know of. But he might have."
"Tut, Bertie," Bingo said with a reproving shake of the bean.
I sighed. "You're quite right, Bingo. But what should I do? I don't think Jeeves would be as tolerant in his views of Gussie's... er... fascination as you or I. You know how he is. Soft-fronted shirts with evening wear give him fits. What will he do if he finds out one of my friends is harbouring feelings for him warmer than those of mere friendship?"
"You've a point there," Bingo agreed. He puffed thoughtfully for a moment. "No," he said, "nothing will come of it. Before Gussie plucks up the courage to send a signed letter, the whole thing will have vanished from his mind like the morning dew."
"You think so, do you?" I asked.
"Sure of it, old thing. You know, what you need is a drink," he added, taking my arm and leading me towards the bar. "Buy us one, Bertie?"
I acquiesced, and we tipped back a cup or two each of the old familiar before heading out. Robinson, the cloakroom attendant, popped in with our coats.
"Don't be too harsh on old Gussie," Bingo said as Robinson popped out again. "All that newt business has just slowed down his natural development. After all, at Eton, you and I..." You have my word, he said it just like that, without a blush.
I picked up his slack, so to speak, in re blushing. "If you must bring up childhood foibles, Bingo, yes," I whispered, searching out of the corner of my eye for the resurgence of Robinson. "But that ended at Eton."
"What about at Oxford, then?"
If the heat in my cheeks was any indication, I was doing a fair impression of a particularly spectacular sunset. "That was once!" I said.
"Twice."
"That didn't count."
"You never were strong in maths."
"Anyhow, with you and me it was different," I said, turning my back on him to mask my agitation. "And besides, I take no responsibility. You took advantage of my generous nature."
"Really." I had just time to register a familiar, rummy tone in his voice before he seized my lapel to turn me towards him, pushed me up against the wall and kissed me.
My attempted cry of protest resulted only in allowing Bingo's tongue access to places it had no right being, especially in the vestibule of the Drones. I tried to push him away, but Bingo has the advantage of me in height and build, and at that juncture he also had it in balance, as he had upset mine in shoving me, and what was keeping me upright was largely the support of the leg he had planted between my own. When I made my attempt to shift him and escape, therefore, the result was rather more friction in a delicate area --and I don't mean the Drones Club vestibule--than prescribed for a young gentleman in a public place. I shuddered and subsided, defeated, and Bingo took his time to make his point.
When he deigned to allow me to breathe, I was flushed from collar to earlobes and somewhat short on wind. "You ass," I hissed.
Bingo looked challengingly into my eyes. Then his gaze flicked downward, and back up to meet mine, and if the expression distorting his map was not a fiendish smirk, many experts on the matter shall have to retire. He released my lapels and stepped back. "Your generous nature is showing, Bertie."
Before I collected my thoughts enough to form a rejoinder, the front door had swung shut, leaving me to look desperately round for observers--thankfully discovering none--and button my overcoat carefully all the way down before making my way home.
I entered the flat in restive mood, if restive is the word I want. No sooner had I doffed my coat and hat than Jeeves shimmered up with a glass of the needful. He is a boon when my mind is ill at ease, a positive Rock of Ages. I mean to say, hardly had I brought my wearied brow on the premises, and here was Jeeves rushing forth with the hand--or in this case the gin and tonic--to soothe it. Worthy fellow!
"Do you know what I like best about you, Jeeves?" I asked over the rim of the glass.
"No, sir," he said, "but I am agog to learn." He looked it, too. I don't know how he does it, with only that quarter-inch of eyebrow movement he allows himself. Perhaps it was the keen sparkle in his eye, or a certain adjustment to his already perfect posture, but if he wasn't positively brimming with interest, there was a place waiting for him at the Royal Shakespeare Company.
"Well, I mean," I said, "besides your sterling qualities as a valet and general Solomonish fixer-of-rummy-situations type of thing."
"Thank you, sir."
"Not at all. But beyond that, Jeeves, you are not the type of man to go shoving chaps around and taking liberties with their persons in general."
Jeeves's right eyebrow climbed the prescribed eighth of an inch above the left. "I should hope not, sir."
"Although," I said, taking another sip, "you have been known on occasion to club the constabulary with tree limbs."
"Unfortunately true, sir," said Jeeves, undergoing another of his mysterious shifts of attitude wherein, without twitching more than two facial muscles, the config. of the map had altered to convey a sort of stoic chagrin.
"You were possessed of the right public spirit at the time, Jeeves," I hastened to add. "Desperate times, you know."
"Thank you, sir. While Constable Oates, were he in possession of all the facts, would certainly feel I had taken a liberty as regards him, I would not like for you to feel I had done so towards yourself, sir."
"No fear, Jeeves." I set down my empty glass, feeling the tissues admirably restored. "Though," I added, to myself, "there were some unintended consequences to that bit of knight errantry."
"Sir?" said Jeeves.
"Oh, nothing, Jeeves. Ah, I shall be lunching and dining at home. I think I've had all I can stick of the Drones, today."
"Very good, sir."
Jeeves floated off to the kitchen and I retrieved a book from my nightstand--Avery Jones and the Ruby Emblem--and made myself comfortable on the sofa to wait for lunch.
There was something soothingly domestic about sitting there, hearing faint noises from the kitchen and imagining Jeeves working his magic in there, soon to bring me my daily b. in the comfort and tranquility of my own cosy flat. Not quite soothing enough, however, because I found myself reading and rereading one paragraph until the scene where private detective Avery Jones--who looked rather like Bingo in a trench coat, in my mind's eye--meets his lady client was practically etched into my eyelids. The events of the day were weighing on my mind.
The fact towards which Bingo had so insistently steered my attention was that such things--chaps writing love letters to their fellow men and so forth--did have its heyday at Eton. What with several hundred boys coming into the full flower of youth, as it were, in the same place, some high, and perhaps misplaced, feelings were inevitable. In the absence of any of the actual delicately nurtured, the thing became a question of degree; what I mean is, the attention due the d. n. fell instead to those more delicately nurtured than oneself. Even I, the undersigned B. Wooster, received a cerain amount of said attention, chiefly during my first year at Eton, when I still wore my hair long and exhibited, so Bingo tells me, a certain gentle reticence (which I maintain was purely the outward manifestation of a proper upbringing). This attention came most notably from certain year sevens in our House, and occasioned some hard feelings on Bingo's part, resulting in the incident with the itching powder in several upperclassmen's wardrobes, Bingo's harrowing experience with the Headmaster, and a certain deepening of our friendship beyond the constraints usual to English society outside public school walls.
As I understand it, this is the usual progression. First steps in romantic directions are taken with whomever is about, and subsequently a man goes on to woo girls as per spec. Bingo had certainly pursued enough girls for several men, even if he hadn't as many engagements to his name as I had. Aside from Bingo, and those year sevens, I had been saved from much unpleasantness by a timely haircut and the arrival of the next class of first years, which brought with it Edmond Carmichael-Worthington, a.k.a. Eddie, a.k.a. the Helen of Eton.
Poor Eddie took the pressure right off the incoming classes for the next three years. He was smallish--a frailer specimen than I, at any rate--he was blond and had made the same mistake as I in coming to Eton with his primary school locks intact, and he had the largest, most arresting blue eyes I have ever encountered in England. He looked as though he'd fallen out of one of those Church murals you see all over Italy, so full of cherubs it's a wonder anyone can move without tripping over one.
The romantically inclined of the school lost their heads over him. They followed him about, hung on his every word, slipped him their pudding at dinner and so forth as though they were paying court to Cleopatra. Or, rather, Helen, as that was the nickname he earned himself. I don't suppose he was dreadfully pleased with it, himself, but he seemed to bear it, and all the boys fawning over him, with grace enough. I suppose it was better than some of the harassment other first-years put up with.
In the end, it all sorted itself out. The autumn of our fifth year--Eddie's fourth--we came back from holidays and Eddie had shot up about a foot, traded in the choir's prize soprano for a baritone that squeaked like a sofa stuffed with field mice, and contracted a case of spots that wanted the touch of a saint to cure it. Helen of Eton was no more. Everyone who had gone off his head went back to seeing Eddie as one of the lads, and that was that.
Jeeves shimmered into the dining room bearing a tray: veal cutlet and roasted vegetables, French onion soup and a glass of red wine. He was on the point of disappearing again when I called, "Jeeves?"
He paused in the doorway. "Yes, sir?"
"Your voice has already changed, hasn't it?" I asked.
"Indeed, sir."
I inclined the coconut. "Not much chance of it changing again, I suppose?"
"The contingency is a remote one, sir." His right eyebrow began the upwards climb.
"Already more or less reached maximum height, eh?"
"I expect so, sir, yes."
"And, ah... rather past the age for spots, what?" I asked. Reaching a bit, yes, but it was silly, I felt, to leave stones unturned.
"Yes, sir."
"Blast," I said. Chaps in books always seemed to be finding the answer to their present pickles in fond memories of the past. There would be a chapter delving into the childhood of the hero, then, bang, on page one of the next chapter, he'd cry out, "Of course! He's hidden the Bishop's ring in the old schoolyard where first he espied Evelyn Gloucester!" My recollection of my youth hadn't done the trick at all, but I suppose that's the result of spending said y. with the sort of Johnnies who wrote love letters to one another.
"Sir?"
"Oh, never mind," I said. I set down my book and installed myself at table. "Thank you, Jeeves."
"Bon appetit, sir."
--Utopian Trunks
October 2, 2007
On to Part 3
Drop me a line
East of Sanity