Joy in the Morning (7 page)

‘I was saying to Nobby, whom I drove down here in my car, how extraordinary it was that any girl should have fallen in love with you at first sight. I wouldn’t have thought it could be done.’

‘It came as quite a surprise to me, too. You could have knocked me down with a feather.’

‘I don’t wonder. Still, all sorts of unlikely people do seem to excite the spark of passion. Look at my Aunt Agatha.’

Ah.’

And Stilton.’

‘You know about Stilton?’

‘I ran into him in a jeweller’s, buying the ring, and he told me of his fearful predicament.’

‘Sooner him than me.’

‘Just how I feel. Nobby thinks it’s Florence’s profile that does it.’

‘Quite possibly.’

There was a silence, broken only by the musical sound of us having another go at the elixir. Then he heaved a sigh and said that life was rummy, to which I assented that in many respects it was very rummy.

‘Take my case,’ he said. ‘Did Nobby tell you what the position was?’

About Uncle Percy gumming the works, you mean? Oh, rather.’

A nice bit of box fruit, what?’

‘So it struck me. Decidedly. The heart bled.’

‘Fancy having to get anyone’s consent to your getting married in this enlightened age! The thing’s an anachronism. Why, you can’t use it as a motive for a story even in a woman’s magazine nowadays. Doesn’t your Aunt Dahlia run some sort of women’s rag?’

‘“Milady’s Boudoir”. Sixpence weekly. I once contributed an article to it on What the Well-Dressed Man is Wearing.’

‘Well, I’ve never read “Milady’s Boudoir”, but I have no doubt it is the lowest dregs of the publishing world. Yet if I were to submit a story to your aunt about a girl who couldn’t marry a fellow without some blasted head of the family’s consent, she would hoot at it. That is to say, I am not allowed to turn an honest penny by using this complication in my work, but it is jolly well allowed to come barging in and ruining my life. A pretty state of things!’

‘What happens if you go ahead regardless?’

‘I believe I get jugged. Or is that only when you marry a ward in Chancery without the Lord Chancellor hoisting the All Right flag?’

‘You have me there. We could ask Jeeves.’

‘Yes, Jeeves would know. Have you brought him?’

‘He’s following with the heavy luggage.’

‘How is he these days?’

‘Fine.’

‘Brain all right?’

‘Colossal.’

‘Then he may be able to think of some way out of this mess.’

‘We shan’t need Jeeves. I am handling the whole thing. I’m going to get hold of Uncle Percy and plead your cause.’

‘You?’

‘Oddly enough, that’s what Nobby said. In the same surprised tone.’

‘But I thought the man scared you stiff.’

‘He does. But I’ve been able to do him a good turn, and my drag with him is now substantial.’

‘Well, that’s fine,’ he said, brightening. ‘Snap into it, Bertie. But,’ he added, coming unbrightened again, ‘you’ve got a tough job.’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’

‘I do. After what happened at lunch to-day.’

I was conscious of a sudden, quick concern.

‘Your lunch with Uncle Percy?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘Didn’t it go well?’

‘Not too well.’

‘Nobby was anticipating that it would bring home the bacon.’

‘Ha! God bless her optimistic little soul.’

I gave him one of my keen looks. There was a sombre expression on his map. The nose was wiggling in an overwrought way. It was easy to perceive that pain and anguish racked the brow.

‘Tell me all,’ I said.

He unshipped a heavy sigh.

‘You know, Bertie, the whole idea was a mistake from the start. She should never have brought us together. And, if she had to bring us together, she ought not to have told me to be bright and genial. You know about her wanting me to be bright and genial?’

Yes. She said you were inclined to be a bit stiff in your manner with Uncle Percy.’

‘I am always stiff in my manner with elderly gentlemen who snort like foghorns when I appear and glare at me as if I were somebody from Moscow distributing Red propaganda. It’s the sensitive, highly strung artist in me. Old Hardened Arteries does not like me.’

‘So Nobby said. She thinks it’s because he regards you as a butterfly. My personal view is that it’s those grey flannel bags of yours.’

‘What’s wrong with them?’

‘The patch on the knee, principally. It creates a bad impression. Haven’t you another pair?’

‘Who do you think I am? Beau Brummel?’

I forbore to pursue the subject.

‘Well, go on.’

‘Where was I?’

‘You were saying you made a bloomer in trying to be bright and genial.’

‘Ah, yes. That’s right. I did. And this is how it came about. You see, the first thing a man has to ask himself, when he is told to be bright and genial, is “How bright? How genial?” Shall he, that is to say, be just a medium ray of sunshine, or shall he go all out and shoot the works? I thought it over, and decided to bar nothing and be absolutely rollicking. And that, I see now, is where I went wrong.’

He paused, and remained for a space in thought. I could see that some painful memory was engaging his attention.

‘I wonder, Bertie,’ he said, coming to the surface at length, ‘if you were present one day at the Drones when Freddie Widgeon sprang those Joke Goods on the lunchers there?’

‘Joke Goods?’

‘The things you see advertised in toy-shop catalogues as handy for breaking the ice and setting the table in a roar. You know. The Plate Lifter. The Dribble Glass. The Surprise Salt Shaker.’

‘Oh, those?’

I laughed heartily. I remembered the occasion well. Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright was suffering from a hangover at the moment, and I shall not readily forget his emotion when he picked up his roll and it squeaked and a rubber mouse ran out of it. Strong men had to rally round with brandy.

And then I stopped laughing heartily. The frightful significance of his words hit me, and I started as if somebody had jabbed a red-hot skewer through the epidermis.

‘You aren’t telling me you worked those off on Uncle Percy?’

Yes, Bertie. That is what I did.’

‘Golly!’

‘That about covers it.’

I groaned a hollow one. The heart had sunk. One has, of course, to make allowances for writers, all of them being more or less loony. Look at Shakespeare, for instance. Very unbalanced. Used to go about stealing ducks. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help feeling that in springing Joke Goods on the guardian of the girl he loved Boko had carried an author’s natural goofiness too far. Even Shakespeare might have hesitated to go to such lengths.

‘But why?’

‘I suppose the idea at the back of my mind was that I ought to show him my human side.’

‘Did he take it big?’

‘Pretty big.’

‘He didn’t like it?’

‘No. I can answer that question without reservation. He did not like it.’

‘Has he forbidden you the house?’

You don’t have to forbid people houses after looking at them as he looked at me over the Surprise Salt Shaker. The language of the eyes is enough. Do you know the Surprise Salt Shaker? You joggle it, and out comes a spider. The impression I received was that he was allergic to spiders.’

I rose. I had heard enough.

‘I’ll be pushing along,’ I said, rather faintly.

‘What’s your hurry?’

‘I ought to be going to Wee Nooke. Jeeves will be arriving at any moment with the luggage, and I shall have to get settled in.’

‘I see. I would come with you, only I am in the act of composing a well-expressed letter of apology to my Lord Worplesdon. I had better finish it, though it may not be needed, if all you say about being in a position to plead with him is true. Plead well, Bertie. Pitch it strong. Let the golden phrases come rolling out like honey. For, as I say, I don’t think you’ve got an easy job on your hands. Eloquence beyond the ordinary will be required. And, by the way. Not a word to Nobby about that lunch. The facts will have to be broken to her gently and by degrees, if at all.’

My mood, as I set a course for Wee Nooke, was, as you may well suppose, a good deal less effervescent than it had been. The idea of pleading with Uncle Percy had lost practically all its fascination.

There rose before me a vision of this relative by marriage, as he would probably appear directly I mentioned Boko’s name – the eyes glaring, the moustache bristling and the
tout ensemble
presenting a strong resemblance to a short-tempered tiger of the jungle which has just seen its peasant shin up a tree. And while it would be going too far, perhaps, to say that Bertram Wooster shuddered, a certain coolness of the feet unquestionably existed.

I was trying to hold the thought that, once that merger had gone through, joy would most likely reign so supreme that the old bounder would look even on Boko with the eye of kindliness, when there came the ting of a bicycle bell, and a voice called my name, Woostering with such vehemence that I immediately braked the car and glanced round. The sight I saw smote me like a blow.

Heaving alongside was Stilton Cheesewright, and on his face, as he alighted from his bicycle and confronted me, there was about as unpleasant a look as ever caught me in the eyeball. It was a look pregnant with amazement and hostility. A Gor-blimey-what’s-this-blighter-doing-here look. The sort of look, in fine, which the heroine of a pantomime gives the Demon King when he comes popping up out of a trap at her elbow. And I could follow what was passing in his mind as clearly as if it had been broadcast on a nation-wide hook-up.

All along, I had been far from comfortable when speculating as to what this Othello’s reactions would be on discovering me in the neighbourhood. The way in which he had received the information that I was an old acquaintance of Florence’s had shown that his thoughts had been given a morbid turn, causing him to view Bertram with suspicion, and I had been afraid that he was going to place an unfortunate construction on my sudden arrival in her vicinity. It was almost inevitable, I mean, that the thing should smack, in his view, far too strongly of Young Lochinvar coming out of the West. And, of course, my lips being sealed, I couldn’t explain.

A delicate and embarrassing situation.

And yet, amazing though you will find the statement, what was causing me to goggle at him with saucer eyes was not this look that told me that my fears had been well founded, but the fact that the face attached to it was topped by a policeman’s helmet. The burly frame, moreover, was clad in a policeman’s uniform, and on the feet one noted the regulation official boots or beetle crushers which go to complete the panoply of the awful majesty of the Law.

In a word, Stilton Cheesewright had suddenly turned into a country copper, and I could make nothing of it.

CHAPTER 8

I
  stared at the man.

‘Stap my vitals, Stilton,’ I cried, in uncontrollable astonishment. ‘Why the fancy dress?’

He, too, had a question to ask.

‘What the hell are you doing here, you bloodstained Wooster?’

I held up a hand. This was no time for side issues.

‘Why are you got up like a policeman?’

‘I am a policeman.’

‘A policeman?’

‘Yes.’

‘When you say “policeman”,’ I queried, groping, ‘do you mean “policeman”?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re a policeman?’

‘Yes, blast you. Are you deaf? I’m a policeman.’

I grasped it now. He was a policeman. And, my mind flashing back to yesterday’s encounter in the jewellery bin, I realized what had made his manner furtive and evasive when I had asked him what he did at Steeple Bumpleigh. He had shrunk from revealing the truth, fearing lest I might be funny at his expense – as, indeed, I would have been, extraordinarily funny. Even now, though the gravity of the situation forbade their utterance, I was thinking of at least three priceless cracks I could make.

‘What about it? Why shouldn’t I be a policeman?’

‘Oh, rather.’

‘Half the men you know go into the police nowadays.’

I nodded. This was undoubtedly true. Since they started that College at Hendon, the Force has become congested with one’s old buddies. I remember Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps describing to me with gestures his emotions on being pinched in Leicester Square one Boat Race night by his younger brother George. And much the same thing happened to Freddie Widgeon at Hurst Park in connection with his cousin Cyril.

‘Yes,’ I said, spotting a flaw, ‘but in London.’

‘Not necessarily.’

‘With the idea of getting into Scotland Yard and rising to great heights in their profession.’

‘That’s what I’m going to do.’

‘Get into Scotland Yard?’

‘Yes.’

‘Rise to great heights?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I shall watch your future progress with considerable interest,’ I said.

But I spoke dubiously. At Eton, Stilton had been Captain of the Boats, and he had also rowed assiduously for Oxford. His entire formative years, therefore, as you might say, had been spent in dipping an oar into the water, giving it a shove and hauling it out again. Only a pretty dumb brick would fritter away his golden youth doing that sort of thing – which, in addition to being silly, is also the deuce of a sweat – and Stilton Cheese-wright was a pretty dumb brick. A fine figure of a young fellow as far northwards as the neck, but above that solid concrete. I could not see him as a member of the Big Four. Far more likely that he would end up as one of those Scotland Yard bunglers who used, if you remember, always to be getting into Sherlock Holmes’s hair.

However, I didn’t say so. As a matter of fact, I didn’t say anything, for I was too busy pondering on this new and unforeseen development. I was profoundly thankful that Jeeves had voted against my giving Florence a birthday present. Such a gift, if Stilton heard of it, would have led to his tearing me limb from limb or, at the best, summoning me for failing to abate a smoky chimney. You can’t be too careful how you stir up policemen.