A Few Quick Ones (20 page)

"You bet I'm off. I'm twenty minutes late already."

And I set a course for the Senior Conservative Club in Northumberland Avenue.

It was a relief to find on arriving at journey's end that the party of the second part had not yet shown up at the tryst. I was accommodated with a seat in the hall, and after another quarter of an hour, pleasantly spent in watching Senior Conservatives flit by en route for the trough, I saw the hall porter pointing me out to a man in a glistening top hat who had just come in. From the fact that he headed in my direction I deduced that this must be the author of that series of powerful novels which plumbed the passionate heart of Woman and all that sort of thing and rendered him in consequence an ideal set-up for an interview on the Modern Girl.

"Mr. Er-Ah? From the Sunday Dispatch} How do you do? I hope you have not been waiting long? I am a little late. I – er - I had to go home for something."

Horace Wanklyn was a long, thin, stringy man in the early fifties with a long, thin, stringy neck concealed at the moment behind the highest collar I had ever seen on human shirt. It seemed to be giving him a certain amount of discomfort, for he wriggled a good deal, and I thought he seemed ill at ease in the morning coat and striped trousers w7hich completed his costume. But there was no gainsaying their effectiveness as a spectacle. Solomon in all his glory and Ukridge in George Tupper's herring-bone double-breasted grey tweed with the custom-made lapels had nothing on this superbly upholstered man of letters.

I said I would appreciate it if he told me how he felt about the Modern Girl, and his eyes lit up as if he were glad I had asked him that. He sat down and began to talk, and right from the start it became evident that he took an extremely dim view of the Modern Girl. He resented her bossiness, her determination to have her own way, her lack of proper respect for her elders and her habit of keeping on and on about a thing like - I quote his words, as Bowles would have said - a damned governess.

"Nag, nag, nag!" said Horace Wanklyn, plainly brooding on some episode in his past of which I knew nothing. "Nag, nag, nag, nag, nag!"

It was after he had spoken for perhaps ten minutes, giving me a wealth of rich material for my column and a quarter, that he paused and looked at me intently.

"You married?"

I said I was not.

"No daughters?"

"No daughters."

"Ah!" It seemed to me that he sighed a little enviously. "I see you're wearing a soft shirt."

"Yes."

"With a soft collar."

"Yes."

"And grey flannel trousers, baggy at the knees."

"Yes."

"Lucky young devil!" said Horace Wanklyn.

As he spoke, a young man came in from the street and started to cross the hall. Catching sight of my companion, he halted, spellbound.

"Golly, Uncle Horace!" he exclaimed. "You look like Great Lovers Through The Ages. What's the idea of the fancy dress? Why are you disguised as a gentleman today?"

Horace Wanklyn sighed heavily. "Patricia made me go home and put them on."

"Your child? Your daughter Patricia?"

"She and her sister have been after me for months about the way I dressed."

"And rightly."

"It isn't rightly at all," Horace Wanklyn stirred uneasily, whether from annoyance or because the corner of his collar had jabbed him in the neck I was unable to say. "Why shouldn't I dress comfortably? I'm not a Duke. I'm not an Ambassador. I'm a literary man. Look at this young fellow, who is also a literary man. Soft shirt, soft collar and baggy flannel trousers. Look at Balzac. He used to wear a monk's robe. Look at…"

"I can't look at anything but you. I'm fascinated. But aren't those things you're wearing comfortable?"

"Of course they're not comfortable. I'm suffering agonies. But I had to put them on. Patricia and her sister insisted," said Horace Wanklyn, and I thought what a good sentence that would have been for the constable to have used on Ukridge. "Patricia drove me here in the car, nagging the whole way, and I had just got out and she was saying that if I persisted in going about looking like one of the submerged tenth, someone was going to come up to me and say 'Here, my good man' and give me a shilling, when I'm dashed if someone didn't come up to me and say 'Here, my good man' and give me a shilling."

"Right on cue."

“Yes," said Horace Wanklyn, and brooded for a moment in silence. "Well, you can guess the sequel," he resumed, having passed a finger round the inside of his collar in the apparent hope of loosening it. "Patricia said 'There!' - you know how women say 'There!' - and the long and the short of it was that I was compelled to go home and change into these damned things.'

"You look lovely."

"I know I look lovely, but I can't breathe."

"Do you want to ?"

"Certainly I want to. And I'll tell you another thing I want" - here Horace Wanklyn gritted his, teeth and there came" into his eyes a cold, purposeful gleam - "and that is some day, somewhere, to meet that 'Here, my good man' fellow again and deal with him faithfully. The idea I have in mind is to cut him into small pieces with a rusty knife."

"Having first sprinkled him with boiling oil ?"

"Yes," said Horace Wanklyn, weighing the suggestion and evidently approving of it. "Having first sprinkled him with boiling oil, I shall then dance on his remains." He turned to me. "There is nothing more I can tell you, Mr. Er-Ah?"

"Not a thing, thanks."

"Then I'll be getting along to the coffee-room and booking a table. I'm lunching with a nephew of Julia Ukridge's," he explained to the young man.

There I thought he was being too optimistic - or, it might be better to say pessimistic. I had a feeling that when I had conveyed to him the substance of the recent conversation, Ukridge might deem it the prudent course to absent himself from the feast. Ukridge had always been a good trencherman, particularly when a guest, but it spoils the most lavish meal if your host starts sprinkling you with boiling oil and cutting you into small pieces.

And I was right. As I waited in the street outside the club, he came bustling up.

"Hullo, old horse. Finished your interview?"

"Yes," I said. "And you've finished your lunch."

As he listened to the story I had to tell, his mobile features gradually lengthened. A lifetime of reeling beneath the slings and arrows of outrageous Fortune had left this man's fibres toughened, but not so toughened that he was able to bear the latest of them with nonchalance.

However, after we had walked some little distance, he seemed to rally.

"Ah, well," he said. "Oh, ever thus from childhood's hour I've seen my fondest hopes decay. I never loved a tree or flower but 'twas the first to fade away. I always remember those lines, Corky, having had to write them out five hundred times on the occasion at school when I brought a stink bomb into the form-room. The son-tutoring job would appear to be off,"

"If I read aright the message in Horace Wanklyn's eyes, yes."

"On the other hand, I've got this colossal sum of fifteen...no, it's a bit less than that now, isn't it? this colossal sum of…perhaps I'd better count it." He reached for his hip-pocket, and his jaw fell like a drooping lily. "Corky! My wallet's gone!"

"What!"

"I see it all. It was that blister I gave the sixpence to. You remember how he pawed me ?"

"I remember. You were touched."

"Touched," said Ukridge in a hollow voice, "is right."

A ragged individual came up. London seemed full of ragged individuals today. He took a brief look at the knees of my trousers, dismissed me as having ore-producing potentialities and transferred his attention to Ukridge.

'Pardon me addressing you, sir, but am I right in supposing that you are Captain the Honourable Anthony Wilberforce ?"

"No."

'You are not Captain the Honourable Anthony Wilberforce ?"

"No.”

"You look very like Captain the Honourable Anthony Wilberforce."

"I can't help that."

"I'm sorry you are not Captain the Honourable Anthony Wilberforce, because he is a very liberal, openhanded gentleman. If I had told Captain the Honourable Anthony Wilberforce that it is some considerable time since I tasted bread - "

"Come on, Corky!" said Ukridge.

The love feast was over. Deserving Poor Ordinaries were down in the cellar, with no takers.

10

Oofy, Freddie and the Beef Trust

CONVERSATIONS were in progress in the smoking room of the Drones with a view to making up a party to go and see the Wrestling Championship at the Albert Hall, and a Bean suggested that Oofy Prosser be invited to join the expedition. Oofy, he put it to the meeting, had more pimples than the man of taste liked to be seen about with and was perhaps the nearest approach to a piece of cheese which the human race had so far produced, but he possessed one outstanding merit which went far to counter-balance these defects - viz. a stupendous bank account, and it was quite conceivable that, if handled right, he might loosen up and stand supper after the performance.

The proposal was well received, and when Oofy entered a few moments later the Bean issued his invitation. To the general surprise, instead of seeming gratified by this demand for his society, the club millionaire recoiled with every evidence of loathing and horror. At the mention of the word "wrestling" a look of intense malevolence passed over his face.

"Wrestling?" he cried. "You ask me to spend good money on a wrestling match? You want me to pay out cash to witness the obscene gyrations of a couple of pot-bellied nitwits who fritter away their time wallowing on mats and behaving like lunatic osteopaths? Wrestlers, forsooth! The scum of the earth! I'd like to dig a hole in the ground and collect all the wrestlers in the world and dump them into it, having previously skinned them with a blunt knife and cooked them over a slow fire. Wrestlers, indeed. Bah! Pah! Faugh! Tchah!" said Oofy Prosser, and turned on his heel and left the room.

An Egg was the first to break the puzzled silence.

"Do you know what I think?' he said. "I don't believe Oofy likes wrestlers."

"Exactly the thought that occurred to me, reading between the lines," agreed the Bean.

"You are perfectly right," said a Crumpet. "Your intuition has not deceived you. I was about to warn you, when he came in. He was recently interested in a venture connected with wrestlers and lost quite a bit of money. And you know how Oofy feels about parting with money."

His hearers nodded. In matters of finance their club-mate's dogged adhesiveness was a byword. Not one of those present but in his time had endeavoured to dip into the Prosser millions, always without success.

"That's why he isn't speaking to Freddie Widgeon now. It was through him that he got mixed up in the thing. Owing to Freddie, Jas Waterbury entered Oofy's life. And once Jas Waterbury enters your life, Freddie tells me, you can kiss at least a portion of your holdings good-bye."

"I wonder if I have happened to mention this Jas Waterbury to you before. Did I tell you about the time when Freddie sang at that Amateur Night binge down in Bottleton East and was accompanied on the piano by a greasy bird whom he had picked up in the neighbourhood? I did? Well, that was Jas Waterbury. In a brawl in a pub later on in the evening, Freddie happened to save his life, and on the strength of this he has been rolling up to the club and touching his brave preserver ever since for sums ranging from sixpence to as much as half a crown.

"You would think that if Bloke A saves Bloke B's life, it ought to be the former who touches the latter and not vice versa, but the noblesse oblige of the Widgeons does not permit Freddie to see it that way. He recognizes Jas Waterbury's claim and continues to brass up."

The chain of events with which my narrative deals (proceeded the Crumpet) started to uncoil itself, or whatever chains do, about a month ago. It was on a breezy morning towards the middle of May that Freddie, emerging from the club, found Jas Waterbury lurking on the steps. A couple of bob changed hands, and Freddie was about to shift on, when the other froze on to his coat sleeve and detained him.

"Half a mo, cocky," said Jas Waterbury. "Do you want to make a packet?" And Freddie, who has been hoping to make a packet since he was sacked from his first kindergarten, replied that Jas Waterbury interested him strangely.

"That's the way to talk," said the greasy bird. "That's the spirit I like to see. Well, I can ease you in on the ground floor of the biggest thing since the Mint. Just slip me a couple of hundred quid for working expenses and we're off."

Freddie laughed a hollow, mirthless laugh. The only time he had ever had money like that in his possession was when his uncle, Lord Blicester, had given him his wallet to hold while he brushed his topper.

"A couple of hundred quid?" he said. "Gosh, Jas Waterbury, from the light-hearted way you speak of such sums one would think you thought I was Oofy Prosser."

“Oofy how much?"

“Prosser. The wealthiest bimbo in the Drones. Silk underwear, shoes by Lobb, never without a flower in the buttonhole, covered with pimples, each pimple produced by gallons of vintage champagne, and always with an unsightly bulge in his breast pocket, where he keeps his roll. Ask him for your couple of hundred quids, my misguided old chunk of grease, not a poor deadbeat who is pretty shortly going to find a difficulty in getting three square a day, unless the ravens do their stuff.

And he was starting to biff off, with another sardonic laugh at the idea of anyone mistaking him for a plutocrat, when Jas Waterbury uttered these momentous words.

“Well, why don’t you slip me an intro to this gentleman friend of yours? Then, if you puts up the splosh, you get a commish.”

Freddie stared at him with bulging eyes. If you had told him half an hour before that the moment would come when he would look upon Jas Waterbury as beautiful, he would have scorned the idea. But his was what was happening now?

“A commish?” he whispered. “Golly, now you’re talking. We’ll go round and see him now. What’s the time? Half past eleven? We ought to catch him at breakfast.”