Bertram Wilberforce Wooster and the Helen of W1
by Utopian Trunks
Part 4
Pairings: name, rank and serial number, that's all you'll get from me.
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 (in episode 3-5) and an unmarried Bingo at the time of.
Thanks: to and Saki101 for beta-reading.
"How's the old Viking blood, Jeeves?" I asked, when he brought me my nightcap that p.m.
"Sir?"
"Is it rising? Calling you off to the high seas? Singing sea chanties in your ear, sending you dreams of striding the rolling deck and casting your nets, sort of thing?"
"Not particularly, sir."
"Ah."
"Will that be all, sir?"
"Er... hang on, Jeeves. Is there nowhere you wish to go? Nowhere the fish are biting especially well just now?"
"Being in the winter months as we are, sir, most of my favourite fishing spots would be inhospitable at the moment. If you are considering a vacation, sir--"
"Yes, Jeeves? You have a suggestion?"
"Well, sir, if you propose departing within the next month, I wonder if you might excuse me from accompanying you."
"Oh," I said, sagging somewhat at the shoulders. "Why?"
"The Junior Ganymede Club is considering new candidates for membership, and I have been asked to sit on the committee. Meetings will be held weekly throughout the month."
"I see." I bit the lip. "I don't suppose you could get out of it?"
"I would prefer to sit, sir. Last year I was not entirely in agreement with the committee's decisions, and I would prefer, if possible, to avert further ill-advised admissions."
"I'd wager you weren't on the committee when Brinkley was put up, eh, Jeeves?"
Jeeves pursed the lips slightly and raised the eyebrows. His sensory--incensed--censorious, that's the baby--his censorious look. "Precisely, sir. Most unfortunate."
"Well, quite," I said with a sigh. "I applaud your dedication to the guild. Never mind, then."
"If you wish to take a trip, sir, no doubt a suitable temporary replacement can be found."
"For you, Jeeves?" I said. "No. Pale shadows, yes. Incompetents, yes. Raving lunatics, certainly. But replacements, never."
Jeeves inclined the coconut humbly, the faintest hint of a smile sneaking round the edge of his lips, only to be chased off for its pains. "It is very kind of you to say so, sir. But about your holiday--"
"It will wait," I said. "No, it was just a thought. I wouldn't think of going on a cruise without you, anyhow. I know how you enjoy them."
"Thank you, sir."
"Well, good night, then, Jeeves."
"Good night, sir."
He switched out the light and pushed off to work whatever miracles it is he works after I roll up the sleave of care, or whatever it is I'm meant to do with it; making the flat safe for man and beast--although mostly man, really--after I've done with it. But the sleave of care was rather longer than usual, and rolling it no simple matter. My first, and what had seemed a rather promising, plan was scattered to the four winds, but one must soldier on. The ancient Woosters had come over with the Conqueror, and though I was unclear on precisely what they'd done afterwards, I was certain it wasn't to fold up the tents and leg it when one piffling plan went south.
What faced me was a general's dilemma. The campaign: shield the reactionary sensibilities of one hidebound valet, viz., Jeeves, from the attentions and missives of the currently Hellenistic Drones and any knowledge of their activities for as long as said activities persisted. As Bingo had pointed out, their interest couldn't last so terribly long. All it wanted was a little finesse to weather it.
I sighed. What a campaign that wanted finesse wanted, of course, was Jeeves's touch, but this was a task for Bertram and Bertram alone. It was up to the young master to defend the peace of his household, and come Hell or hayfever, defend it he would.
* * *
For the next few days, I gave the Drones Club a wide berth. I met Bingo twice for lunch, and otherwise I amused myself with solitary pursuits, chiefly the theatre and my mystery novel. It was beginning to look as though Avery Jones's lady client herself was the murderer, which would fit the pattern of most of my dealings with the fairer s. Deadlier than the m., don't you know. Although my present worries were occasioned by a largish herd of the m. of the s. To all things a balance, I suppose.
The second time I saw Bingo, he informed me Gussie was considering taking a flat in London. No good could come of that, I thought, and sure enough, there was a telegram on my breakfast tray the next morning. That was Jeeves's tact at work, you see. A lesser man might have brought it to me with my tea, but Jeeves knows better. Fortified though I was with tea, I was still not inspired by the sight of the envelope to leap from 'twixt the sheets and dance. I was still less so once I had absorbed the contents, as follows:
Bertram Wooster
Berkeley St.
London W1
Dreadfully sorry bruise your tender feelings thus but am at wits' end. Not seen Augustus since left for London one week ago for day trip. No word. Worried sick. Know it hurts you ever so but beg you to discover what has become of him. Know I may depend on your beautiful chivalrous soul.
Madeline
"Steep," I muttered.
"Sir?" Jeeves inquired. I looked up, somewhat startled, as I could have sworn he had floated out after depositing my eggs and b. Without thinking, I handed over the telegram. Directly I had, I felt that I had put my foot in it, but it was too late. I watched him scan the message, his well-chiselled features betraying no emotion. He handed the telegram back to me. "Most disturbing, sir."
"You think so, too, eh?" I said. Naturally, Jeeves would perceive the Bassett angle of the situation, having encountered the beast before. The situation, I mean, not Madeline. If I could keep his attention focussed on that aspect, perhaps it was safe enough to involve him.
"Yes, sir. It might be prudent to pursue the course of action Miss Bassett has suggested vis-ŕ-vis Mr. Fink-Nottle."
"Hunt him up, you mean."
"Indeed, sir. Miss Bassett's periods of disillusionment with Mr. Fink-Nottle have thus far resulted in difficulties for yourself, sir. Averting another would, I fancy, be wise."
"Well, the hunting has been done, Jeeves," I said. "Gussie is staying at the Langham; I saw him not five days ago. And there is nothing the matter with him. Nothing much, anyhow."
"Did Mr. Fink-Nottle confide in you the reason for his extended stay in the city, sir?"
"Well, ah... Not as such. But from a, er, psychological standpoint..."
"Yes, sir?"
"I think he's fed to the teeth with Madeline. Again."
"Then he is unwilling to return to Totleigh Towers, sir?"
If his recent interest in local real estate was any indication... "I think so, Jeeves. I mean," I added hurriedly, "I shouldn't read anything too sinister into it. Gussie's been cooped up in Lincolnshire for years, and then just when he begins to come out of his shell and stretch his wings and whatnot, he gets whisked away to Totleigh-in-the-Wold, which is practically as bad. Maybe he just wants to see a bit of what he's been missing. Experience a bit of the nightlife, take the bachelor experience for a spin and all that."
"Quite possibly, sir." Jeeves looked thoughtful.
I looked at the remains of my eggs and b. I scooped up a pensive forkful and let the brain work a bit more. It was daunting to think of the Wooster grey matter racing with the Jeeves model. A tortoise and the hare situation if ever there was one.
"If I might make a suggestion, sir?"
"Certainly, Jeeves."
"Mr. Fink-Nottle's retiring nature is not well-suited to city life, sir. I think that if he is left at liberty to experience the lifestyle which you yourself and many of the other young gentlemen of his acquaintance so enjoy, he will come to the same conclusion which he did originally upon leaving university, that is to say, that a quiet life in the country is what he most desires."
"Really?"
"I fancy so, sir, yes. Mr. Fink-Nottle's previous attempts to alter his personality, whether to become more assertive, or more outgoing in matters of... the heart, have always ended with a return to the status quo."
"Once a poop, always a poop, eh, Jeeves?"
"I would not have used that phrasing, sir, but yes. In light of which, my thought is to allow Mr. Fink-Nottle time to reach that same realization without endangering yourself, to which end, I would suggest dispatching a telegram to Miss Bassett in Mr. Fink-Nottle's name, and another under your own, shortly afterwards, to substantiate the contents of the first."
"Ah, I follow you, Jeeves! Right, take a telegram, then." Jeeves pulled a small notebook and pencil from the inside pocket of his jacket and stood at the ready. "As follows," I said. "Madeline. Unavoidably detained by newt epidemic. Dumb chums in devil of state. Thinking of you always, not alongside newts, understand, but foremost in thoughts and heart. Love, Augustus. That should put her off the scent, what?"
"I think so, sir. Though, if I might suggest, instead of 'dumb chums'--"
I waved a hand. "Dress it up as you like, Jeeves, I shall leave it to your whatsit."
"Discretion, sir?"
"Yes. What about this second telegram you said I should send?"
"One from yourself, sir, in answer to Miss Bassett's. Perhaps you could allude to this 'epidemic' as well."
"To back up the faux-Gussie's story."
"Yes, sir. I think sending it tomorrow would be best, but I can take your message down now."
"Alright, have it say: Madeline. Never fear. Watchful eye duly on Gussie. He has been closeted in hotel attempting to save dying newts, much distressed, sensitive plant that he is. Seems newts too sick to move. At first improvement, Gussie will return to Totleigh Towers. Bertie. Will that do, Jeeves?"
"It should meet the case, sir."
"Oh, wait, add this on: Gussie's troubled brow in need of soothing upon return. To stir the maternal instincts and so forth."
"Well, sir..."
"No good? Not strong enough?"
"The opposite, sir. I wonder if that might not prompt Miss Bassett to come to Mr. Fink-Nottle's aid immediately, rather than awaiting his return."
"Oh. Quite the wrong stuff, then. Strike it from the record. In fact, perhaps we should bung something into Gussie's telegram, saying that the newt plague could spread to humans, too. But then she might worry that Gussie wasn't safe, either. Er..."
"I will adjust the telegrams, sir," said Jeeves, "in order to produce the desired effect."
"Oh. Right, then. Yes, I suspect you're the man for the job, anyhow, Jeeves. Carry on."
Jeeves flowed out and I finished my breakfast in a more cheerful mood. This aspect of my Gussie-trouble, at least, was squared away. I could not lay the whole of it before Jeeves, but it was pleasant to feel that while part of my endeavours remained cloaked in secrecy, master and man were still working together.
In the afternoon, I chanced a look in at the club. It was busier than it had been since the last darts tournament. There were faces I hadn't seen there in ages, and, it seemed to me, a certain furtive aspect touched those faces when I greeted them with a cheerful "What ho." Conversations seemed to stop when I approached, that sort of thing. I slid off an hour or so later with a rummy feeling.
It was the same when I met Bingo there for dinner two nights later: small knots of Drones deep in conversation, who gave me the fish-eye when I came close. Similar a few days later, just before lunchtime, only with fewer Drones about, and this time I saw Gussie in amongst them, chatting with Catsmeat and two others whose names I was hazy on. Gussie's society has a tendency to bring Catsmeat out in a rash, so I slid over to rescue the poor blighter and as I hove alongside him, he shoved something that looked like a book behind his back.
"Hallo, Gussie, Catsmeat... er... Hallo, all," I said. "What's that, Catsmeat?"
"What's what?"
"That book?"
"Oh, er... nothing."
"I haven't seen you touch a book since we revised for exams at Oxford," I said.
"Unlike some," said Catsmeat, "I do crack open a book that doesn't have 'murder' in the title now and again." He gave a tense laugh and a look that fell short of Gussie's budgerigar-digestion model, but only because Gussie was using it at the moment and, I can only assume, had already written away for the patent. "Besides," he said, "it's never too late, eh?"
"Too late for what?" I asked.
Catsmeat fidgeted a bit with his collar and shuffled his feet. "Well. Er," and his voice fell so low on the next word that it seemed to travel through the air at half speed, "self-improvement... sort of thing."
I squinted at him for a moment, waiting for the word to swim its way upstream to my brain--by way of Egypt, I think. "Great Scott," I said. "Catsmeat, you don't mean... You're not reading... an improving book?"
"It's something I had off Madeline," Gussie interjected, saving Catsmeat some more squirming. I looked back and forth between the two, open-mouthed.
"My God, man," I said to Catsmeat. "You're reading that willingly?" I aimed an accusing look at Gussie, then thought better of it. Whatever one says of him, Gussie is simply not what one looks for in a brazen blackmailer. "What is it?" I asked.
Catsmeat shifted the book behind him, so as to more securely shield it from my view. "Not telling," he said.
"It must be beastly," I said, more alarmed by the second. "Gussie, what on earth have you done to him?"
"I--" Gussie started, indignant.
"He hasn't done anything," Catsmeat cut in, puffing up his chest and tilting up his chin, "but open my eyes to my own unworthiness."
"Unworthiness?" I repeated. Catsmeat, like any man, has his faults, and one of his happens to be that he doesn't admit that fact. "Unworthiness of what?"
"Of..." A faint pink crept into the chap's cheeks, driving the iron into my soul. "Of Jeeves, if you must know," he sniffed.
Round about there, I stopped. Not so much a conscious decision to freeze, or a woodland creature's clever instinct to play dead when confronted by a larger and toothier neighbour; the Wooster grey had simply overheated like the engine of a motor car crossing the noontime Sahara in August, and left me staring at these two rather large blots on the landscape, with the two other specimens hovering like a mirage in the background, with steam no doubt pouring out my ears. This was a spot of good luck, because if the brain hadn't called for an immediate shutdown of the whole Wooster apparatus, the body might have done something rash, viz., leaping about the room rolling the eyeballs and yelping for the police, and this would rather have given the game away. In the time it took for the area above my collar to resume operation as normal, Gussie and the other two eggs had begun to commentate... commissary... dash it, to gas on in sympathy with Catsmeat's aspirations to become worthy of Jeeves's many virtues, noticing nothing out of the ordinary about my glassy-eyed stare. When I came back to myself, they were paying me no mind at all, so I sidled away, mumbling something about getting another drink, then legged it from the club as though all the eligible women of good stock in England were snapping at my heels.
Steep. As Jeeves would say, approaching the perpendicular.
* * *
After that incident, wild horses could not have dragged me back to the Drones Club. Actually, I rather fancy they could have, but the point was I really didn't want them to. Luckily, none tried. When I was a lad, I had gone about in fear of these marauding herds of wild horses, poised to ambush the unwary and drag them places for motives unknown but no doubt sinister. Eventually, I was informed that it was a figure of speech, and anyways that there were no wild horses for miles round our village. As it happens, they are fairly rare in London, as well. For a week and a half I was left in peace to carry out Bingo's waiting-it-out plan. Jeeves's palliative measures in re Madeline had borne fruit in the form of a telegram from same, going on about Gussie's kind soul and my stoutness in acting in their interests when it was my fondest desire to cut the wedding cake hand in hand with Madeline, myself. This cheered me, as it seemed to indicate that there was world enough and time for Gussie's madness to run its course without landing me in the soup.
I little knew.
Bingo telephoned after dinner on Sunday.
"Bertie, I think you had better come round the Drones."
The club was as full of people as Oxford Street on a holiday afternoon. A newt would have found it a challenge to travel from the vestibule to the bar without being shouldered or treading on toes; for me it was impossible. Bingo met me at the door and we squeezed and pardon-me-ed our way through together. The conversations we passed through on the way chilled the blood.
"I saw him in Kensington High Street yesterday. Going into a tailor's. What impeccable taste he has!"
"I heard from my uncle's man how he tricked the old buzzard into doubling the man's salary, all by..."
"I've heard he plays darts sometimes at the Book and Beech. I've been down every night this week..."
"Do you suppose he'd approve of these spats?"
I looked at Bingo the way one character looks at another in a mystery novel when they have just opened the door to find a hooded figure with a largish knife on the doorstep. He nodded grimly. "It's Jeeves they're talking about, old thing. Two brandy and sodas." This last as we washed up at the bar like a pair of beached whales.
McGarry, the bartender, served up the restoratives without comment and retired to a corner of the bar to polish a glass. It seems to be a distinguishing mark of the breed--of bartenders, that is--some sort of hereditary defect, perhaps. Leave them without a glass near to hand, and they'll go about polishing everything they can get their hands on: doorknobs, hatstands, the elderly. Best to let them have free reign behind a bar, all things considered. Bingo and I availed ourselves of two empty bar chairs and for a moment we drank and surveyed the scene in silence.
Simply teeming with humanity it was. The air was filled with a low hum, the kind of noise only dozens and dozens of simultaneous quiet conversations can produce. No one was playing bread-roll cricket or batting shuttlecocks into the light fixtures. The billiards tables in the smoking room, I had a feeling, would be neglected. This, it seemed to me, was what was meant by the great unshaven masses. That is, well, they were shaven, actually, aside from a moustache here and there, but that was the feeling of it. A horde is what they were. A great bally horde of Huns and Visigoths... or, perhaps more to the point, Trojans.
"They can't all be Drones," I said. "Surely there aren't so many of us?"
"No," said Bingo, "a lot of them are guests of members, it seems."
"This is your idea of blowing over, then, is it, Bingo?"
"Well, what do you expect out of an idea of mine, really?"
"Fair play," I admitted. "I'm buying, I suppose?"
"Jolly decent of you."
"Think nothing of it. What's become of Gussie, by the by?"
"In the dining room, last I spotted him. Probably up on a table giving inspirational speeches, by now."
"I thought he'd repented stirring them up," I said, "but last week here he was, mingling away, and now--"
"Get a quart of orange juice into the old boy and he loses all sense of proportion."
"Ha!" said I. "Proportion, forsooth! The newt is the father of the man."
"The child, you mean, Bertie."
"No, the newt. It is all the fault of this dastardly amphibian. Ah, Bingo, had we but known back at Eton that it would come to this!" I gestured vaguely at the throng of Jeeves-admirers. "I should have smashed his tanks then and thrown the little beggars in the lake."
Bingo sighed and patted me on the back. "Here now, Bertie. You couldn't have guessed. No one could."
I shook my head and smiled a bitter one as I waved to McGarry for a second round. "What price our youthful naiveté, Bingo? Where does this madness end?"
"I suppose you'll have to put your foot down."
"My foot?"
"Yes. Go in there and set them straight."
"Me."
"Yes."
"How, exactly?"
"Go in there and tell them what's what, what?"
"What?"
"Er."
"This is another Bingo original, then?"
"Yes, well." Bingo frowned at his b. and s. "I wish we could consult Jeeves. He'd soon have the situation sorted."
I heaved a deep and soulful. "I wish we could, too. But we can't. Let there be no confusion. Jeeves discovering this state of affairs represents a crisis in mine. It is not to happen."
"Then you've got to do it yourself. Go sort them out, Bertie."
"Yes, well. The problem with that idea is that I haven't the foggiest what has possessed them--"
"Yes, you have."
"No, I mean besides... Besides whatever it is you're on about. I mean this return to schoolboyish tendencies in re their fellow men. Why now? Why my valet?"
"Well, the answer to that is Gussie." Bingo tapped his temple, raising his eyebrows meaningly. "Strategy, Bertie. You must outgeneral their general. Then the troops will be demoralized."
I was sceptical. I told him so. He signaled for a third round and restated his point.
"What have you to lose, Bertie?"
"Everything," I said, "if I lose Jeeves."
"Which is precisely why you must make a stand! What would your Crusader ancestors have done?"
This struck a chord. "By Jove, you're right, Bingo. Come on."
"Oh, er... I'm coming, too, am I?"
"Yes. What would your ancestors have done?"
"I'm not sure the Littles were in the Crusades."
"Certainly they were. And I've never known a Little to abandon an old school chum."
"Well, but Bertie..."
"Besides, you put him up for membership."
"Oh," sighed Bingo, "all right, then."
We dismounted our tall chairs somewhat more carefully than we had climbed up, and elbowed our way to the dining room, a pair of Daniels bound for the lions' den.
--Utopian Trunks
October 17, 2007
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