Bertram Wilberforce Wooster and the Helen of W1
by Utopian Trunks
Part 3
Parings: on the compost heap at the end of the garden, please.
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 (in episode 3-5) and an unmarried Bingo at the time of.
Thanks: to Xparrot and Saki101 for beta-reading.
I think the saying goes that those who do not learn from history are doomed to eat it. Eating history doesn't sound quite right... Perhaps it's an American expression. The upshot, at any rate, is that one ought to learn from one's past, and this was driven home to me when I walked into the Drones Club the following evening and opened the dining room door onto a standing room only crowd, in what appeared to be the full swing of a bachelor party, to judge from the volume of the uplifted voices. Just as I was about to collar one of the merrymakers and ascertain the nature of the celebration so that I could properly take part, a roar rose from what looked to be a hundred throats and sounded like more, and that roar was, "To Jeeves!"
I froze in the doorway. For a moment, I stared blankly at the scene before me, the wheels upstairs vainly turning, but the brain had no solution to offer. I retreated a brace of steps and closed the door. For a minute or so, I stared at it. The mot juste, in hindsight, might have been, "What fresh Hell is this?" but the Bertram of the hour was struck speechless.
"You've seen it, then, have you, Bertie?" said Bingo's voice at my back. I swung round, and looked at him with a wild surmise. Gussie lingered in the background, looking several budgerigars guiltier than the day before.
"What...?" I began. "What... That is to say, what?"
Bingo took my arm kindly and steered me into the vestibule. "What?" I asked again plaintively as he helped me into my coat and handed me my hat. I obediently donned it, and he led me outside, Gussie trailing behind.
"No good dining here, old thing," said Bingo gently. "Let's find ourselves a restaurant, eh?"
"What on earth was going on at the Drones?" I demanded, when the three of us were safely ensconced at a secluded table at the Ritz, cocktails in hand.
"Gussie stirred them up," said Bingo.
I looked at Gussie, who was, as ever, drinking orange juice. He had resorted to brandy in Totleigh-in-the-Wold, so at least according to him, I reasoned, the worst had not yet come.
"I was only talking to Bingo," said Gussie.
"About Jeeves," supplied the other half of the sketch.
"Yes, well, about how he'd helped me out of the soup with Spode--"
"What, again?" I asked.
"The first time, I mean," said Gussie.
"Oh, all right, carry on."
"So, as I say, how he helped me out of the situation with Spode, and then again with the law--"
"To say nothing of your fiancée," I said.
"Yes, to say nothing of her," said Gussie coldly. "Anyhow, then Claude came round--"
"Who?" I asked.
"Catsmeat," said Bingo.
"And Barmy looked in," said Gussie, "and they wanted to know what we were talking about, and I told them about how Jeeves brought Sippy--"
"Who?" asked Bingo.
"Cambridge," I explained.
Bingo snorted.
Gussie gave him a brief glare, but continued, "Jeeves brought Sippy and his fiancée together, and then they told me about--"
"Long story short," said Bingo, "there was a certain amount of tale-telling, and chaps just kept joining in."
"Most of them were drinking," said Gussie.
"Not orange juice, I suppose," I said.
"No," said Gussie. "And everyone agreed what a fine man Jeeves was, and began toasting him and so on..."
"He has done a bit of good for a lot of us," said Bingo.
"All right," I said. Bertram Wooster is a man with a positive outlook. Life has treated me well, and so I tend towards the sunnier view of things, if two are available and the choice mine. Now, if the entire membership of the Drones Club, and half of London besides, wanted to drink toasts to my valet, then fair play to them, I thought, though the toastee might have felt himself better done by as recipient of one or two of those drinks. Three things, however, held me back from this harmless interpretation of the circs. The first was an instinct, an intuition, a general rummy feeling I'd had on entering that dining room, like a horse who had nosed open the door to the glue factory. The other two things were seated across from me, looking sheepish. The suspense was too great: I flipped to the final page.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
Gussie and Bingo exchanged a look. They both made to speak, but Bingo was quicker off the mark: "I didn't mention Helen of Eton."
"Oh, no," I said.
"But someone did," said Gussie.
"Oh, no," I repeated.
"That's about the size of it, old man," said Bingo. "It seems some of the Drones from Charterhouse had a similar bit of rannygazoo, only they called their star Cleopatra, and the boys in St. John's at Oxford even had a Venus."
"You'd think they'd have outgrown it by university," I said, "but that's St. John's for you."
Bingo and Gussie nodded sagely. I hadn't known the St. John's boys at Cambridge were bounders, too, but there you have it from the mouths--or chins--of babes, sucklings and teetotallers.
"So, ah," said Bingo. He had another shot at his drink. "What's happened is, you see... They've declared Jeeves the Helen of W1."
"I see," I said. Chilled steel.
There was a certain amount of throat-clearing and glancing about, and then very slow, thoughtful sipping of drinks. A waiter--wearing, I could not help noticing, a handsome white mess jacket--arrived and we occupied ourselves a while longer with chin-stroking over menus and asking after specials. When he had pushed off, Bingo said, "Well, I expect it'll blow over quickly enough. You know how trends come and go at the Drones. Right, Gussie?"
"Oh, yes."
"I expect you're right," I said. The prospect of quiche had cheered me.
"Certainly I'm right," said Bingo. "Even Helen of Eton's day passed."
"Yes," I said. "That one autumn when he came back twice his original size and rather spotty. The scales fell from everyone's eyes, what?"
"And, of course," said Bingo, "when he did, he gave Mad-dog Gaffleigh quite the drubbing."
"Did he?" I said. "Why?"
Bingo looked at me, the old eyebrows reaching for the sky as if they'd been threatened in an American Western. "The Battle of Troy, of course, Bertie."
"The what?"
Gussie gave a sort of pitying snort. "The Battle of Troy, Bertie. Even I know about that."
"Well, you were more or less on the front lines, weren't you, Gussie?" said Bingo, and they both nodded knowingly.
"What on earth are you two drivelling about?" I said.
"Good Lord, Bertie," said Bingo. "You can't possibly have missed it? It was the talk of the school for ages. You would've--oh, but you were out for about a month, that year, weren't you? Right before summer holidays. Pox, wasn't it?"
"Yes," I said, stiffening.
"Rather late in life," said Gussie.
"You might say that," I said coldly. It occurred to me to comment that he was the last person in my acquaintance by whom I wished to be lectured on late development, but we Woosters are a gallant clan, so I bit the lip.
"So you missed the whole thing," said Bingo with a sort of wonder in his voice. "Imagine that. Missed the Battle of Troy."
"Because of the chicken pox," Gussie agreed, and they nodded and 'ahhed' together for a while.
"I am glad that's sorted out for you," I said. "I would hate for either of you to be labouring in the dark, as it were." Bitter, perhaps, but Bertram felt he was being sorely tried.
Bingo seemed to get the g. "It was Hawtrey House, Bertie."
"Ah?"
"You remember, don't you, beforehand? Old Eddie was in Villiers, with us, so we were the Spartans."
I inclined the bean--it seemed to help others of a more intellectual bent when they were casting the lines back into the great sea of memory, but it did me no good. "Can't say as I do, Bingo."
"Well, we were. And Walpole decided to be Athens, and I think Baldwin's Bec might've taken Crete..."
This was getting complex. I'd had no idea the boys were taking such an active interest in ancient history. "Right," I said, cutting him off before he listed any more cities. "But this war?"
"Well, the Houses who'd chosen the Greek side were the defenders of Helen, yes?" said Bingo. "And they sort of pitched in when other boys were giving Eddie a hard time--"
"Pinching and such," I offered.
"Exactly, yes. And then Mad-dog, the blighter, got his House up as the Trojans, and decided to really reenact the whole story, as per spec., you know."
"I'm a little hazy on the details, Bingo," I said. "How do you mean?"
"They kidnapped Helen," said Bingo. "That is to say, Eddie."
"What!"
"Managed to sneak in during House Prayers, and hauled him off in a sack or something."
"Never!"
"They did," Gussie averred. "Dickens of a row. Gaffleigh's room was next to mine."
"But that's Hawtrey House for you," said Bingo with a sniff, "through and through."
"I was in Hawtrey," said Gussie, giving Bingo the fish-eye.
Bingo smiled contritely. "Well, yes, but you're all right, Gussie."
"Hm!"
"Hawtrey did take Sports Day three years in a row," I offered. This business of insulting a fellow's school House is a prickly one. Even a poop might be roused to rash acts.
"Yes, we did," said Gussie, tilting up the old schnozz a bit. I thought he would add, "so there!" and perhaps a juicy raspberry for good measure, but he showed admirable manly restraint.
"Anyhow," continued Bingo, "they hauled Eddie off and imprisoned him, it seems, in Mad-dog's room. When the rest of us in Villiers found him gone, we had to wait till Lights Out, then we went round and gathered the rest of the Greek Houses and stormed Troy. Hawtrey, that is."
"How do you mean, stormed?"
"Just that, old thing! Went charging in as a great mob, under cover of darkness. Charged up the stairs like the bally Light Brigade, burst down the door and carried off our Housemate, victorious."
"It wasn't so simple as that," said Gussie.
"Well, if you insist," said Bingo, a sour note entering his voice at being corrected. "It took rather longer than that. And the prefects and the House Master, Dame, and the Maid were all on us. It was swarming with masters before long, grabbing boys, breaking up fights."
"There were split lips and black eyes everywhere," said Gussie. "Seemed like half the boys were absent from lessons the next day."
"My sainted aunt!" I said. I wasn't certain whether to be thoroughly pipped I had missed such a grand bit of public school mayhem, or relieved. The thought of crowds of masters, still in dressing gowns and nightcaps, roused from bed in the dead of night by general anarchy of the Houses rather made the old public school boy's heart swell. On the other hand, while the Woosters of old no doubt found their greatest joy facing odds of several hundred unbelievers to one preux chevalier, the line's ideas of a jolly evening out had been somewhat refined over the years, and when I tell you that Hawtrey House usually rose to victory on Sports Day on stepping stones of the mangled corpses of the more academically inclined Houses strewn liberally about the rugby field, you will understand why I might not have been keen to beard them in their den.
"You can say that again," said Bingo.
He had a point. "My sainted aunt," I said. "I suppose I can see why Eddie felt the need to reopen certain subjects when he got that growth spurt."
"Finished off by bunging Mad-dog in the swimming pool and holding him under. Took half the House just to pull him off."
"I say," I said. "Perhaps that was a bit of an overreaction?"
"No," said Gussie, "not really."
Bingo looked at him keenly. "Yes, you were next door, Gussie."
Gussie turned his glass of orange juice in his hands, then took a bracing draught. "Mad-dog had gotten a bit too far into character, I think," he said, frowning gravely. "Method acting, maybe--he always was a bit crazy for the plays and pantomimes--and, well, he fancied himself Paris, this time."
I furrowed the brow. "I thought you said Troy."
"Paris was the name of the bloke who carried off Helen to marry her himself. He was from Troy," said Gussie. He didn't add, "you idiot," but I could hear it waiting in the wings.
"All right," I said.
From the way Gussie now raised his eyebrows and widened his eyes at me--giving him rather the expression of a bass caught by his wife with a sturgeon--I could tell he meant me to read more into his cryptic mythological allusions, but I was at a loss.
Bingo got there first. "You don't mean--!" he said in an awed whisper. He leaned in, and I leaned in as well.
Gussie shook his head, a pained expression on the dial. "There were noises," he said, in much the same way you would expect a man to tell you about the body discovered floating in the pond.
"I don't--" I said.
"Bertie, you chump," said Bingo. "Paris took Helen to be his wife, you see?"
I looked at him. Then I looked at Gussie, who seemed caught in a frightening reverie. I rather wanted to shake his shoulder to bring him out of it. I looked at Bingo again. Paris, Helen; Mad-dog, Eddie; Kidnapping, wife. "Good Lord," I said. "Not... Oh, good Lord."
It just goes to show, if you follow me, the dangers of a classical education.
--Utopian Trunks
October 9, 2007
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