Laughing Gas (11 page)

'H'm,' I said.

'Yes, I'd be careful, if I were you. Restrain that love of fun of yours. The trouble with you, my Joseph, is that your sense of comedy is too keen. Anything for a laugh is your motto. Well, good night, old cut-up.'

'Good night.'

'Comfy?'

'Fine, thanks.'

'Better get to sleep as quick as you can. You've a busy day to-morrow.' She gave me what seemed to me a significant glance - why, I didn't know. 'Very busy, eh?'

'Oh, rather,' I said, not wishing to betray ig.

'It's all fixed for to-morrow evening.'

'Oh, yes?'

'Yes. Well, good night.'

She kissed me on top of the head and pushed off, leaving me to lie there in thoughtful mood. One of the major catches of having been changed into little Joey Cooley, I perceived, was that, until I began to get the hang of things, I wasn't going to be able to understand what people were talking about half the time. A dashed nuisance, of course, but one that had to be faced.

I lay there, gazing pensively at the open window, which had turned into a dark-blue oblong with a couple of stars in it. And, as I gazed, these stars suddenly disappeared. Some substantial body had inserted itself between them and me, and I could hear the slither of a leg coming over the sill.

I switched on the light. A figure was standing in the room. It was the figure of a beefy bird in a quiet grey suit,

its lower limbs finished off with powder-blue socks matching the neat tie and melting, as it were, into tasteful suede shoes. In fact, to cut a long story short, the third Earl of Havershot in person.

' 'Attaboy!' said this figure in a satisfied tone of voice. 'Here we are at last.'

Chapter
11

T
he
first thing I noticed about this new and revised edition of little Joey Cooley was that he didn't appear to be at all disturbed by what had occurred. The recent switch seemed to have made little or no impression on him. He was absolutely calm and quite collected. Insouciant would about describe his demeanour. He strolled across to the bed and sat down on it as if he hadn't a care in the world.

I suppose the fact of the matter is that in Hollywood you get to learn to take the rough with the smooth, and after you've lived there for a time nothing rattles you - not even waking up and finding yourself in someone else's body. You simply say: 'Ah, someone else's body, eh? Well, well!' and carry on. His opening remarks did not deal with the switch, but with my supper menu.

'Prunes
!
' he said, eyeing the stones with a slight shudder. 'It would be prunes. I don't suppose there's a kid alive that's eaten more prunes than I have. Well, buddy, you're welcome to them.'

And adding something in a low voice about spinach, he produced from his breast pocket a rather tired-looking icecream cone and flicked a bit of dust off it.

The spectacle affected me profoundly. Every fibre in my being seemed to call out for that cone.

'Hi!
Give me a lick!
' I cried, in a voice vibrant with emotion.

He passed it over without hesitation. If he had been Sir Philip Sidney with the wounded soldier, he couldn't have been nippier.

'Sure,' he said agreeably. 'You can have it all. It's a funny thing, but I don't seem to like ice-cream cones so much as I used to. I could eat my weight in them once, but now they don't kind of have any fascination for me.

And it's the same with chocolate cake and fudge and pumpkin pie and doughnuts and —'

I cut him short with a passionate cry.

'Stop it!’

'Eh?'

'Don't mention those things to me. Do you think I am made of marble?' 'Oh, sorry.'

There was a silence. I finished the cone.

'Gee! You look a scream,' he said.

'So do you look a scream,' I retorted.

'I guess we both look screams,' he went on amiably. 'How do you suppose all this happened? Quite a surprise to me, it was. I woke up in the wrong room with a strange dentist pushing a glass at me and telling me to rinse, and then I found that I was somebody else, and I looked in the mirror and saw that it was you. Handed me a big laugh, that did.'

'I don't see anything funny about it.'

'Maybe you're right. But it tickled me at the time. Hello, I says to myself, there's a mistake somewhere. Have you any idea how the thing was worked?'

I advanced my theory that there had been a mix-up in the fourth dimension. He seemed to think well of it.

'Yessir, that's just about what it must have been, I guess. You never know what's going to happen to you next under this Administration, do you?'

'Well, it doesn't matter how it happened. The point is that it is all most irregular and I want to know what the dickens we're going to do about it?'

'Don't seem to me there's anything we can do about it.'

'We could issue statements.'

'What, tell people you're me and I'm you. Sure we could, if you don't mind being put in the booby-hatch.' 'You think that would be the upshot?' 'Well, wouldn't it?'

'I suppose it would,' I said, having mus
ed. 'Yes, I see what you mean
There was no question about it that he was right. A clear, shrewd thinker, this kid. The loony-bin is inevitably the portion of those who go about the place telling that kind of story. I saw now that it would not, as I had at one time supposed, be merely a matter of incredulity and let it go at that on the part of one's audience. Strait waistcoats would be called for and padded cells dusted off.

'Besides,' he said, 'I've no kick coming. I call this a good break for me. I like it.'

In spite of the fact that I was in his debt for that icecream cone, I found his manner jarring upon me not a little. A dashed sight too smug, was my verdict.

'You do, do you?'

'Sure. I've always wanted to be big, and I am big. Swell I The way I look at it, everything's jakesey-jooksey.'

My annoyance increased. His airy nonchalance gave me the pip. The young blighter appeared to have no thought except for self.

'Jakesey-jooksey, eh?'

'Jakesey-jooksey is right.'

'For you, yes.'

'Well, it's me I'm thinking about.' 'Then think about me for a bit.' 'You?'

'Yes, me. If you want
to know my views, I'm extremely
sick about the whole bally b
usiness. I have a very definite
feeling that I have been handed the sticky end of the deal. There I was, buzzing al
ong perfectly happy as a member
of the British peerage, eatin
g well, sleeping well, nice in
come from rents and so on, and just got my golf handicap down to single figures. An
d what ensues? All of a sudden,
without being consulte
d, I'm changed into a child who
has to look slippy in order not to be bathed by females and whose social position seems to be that of some
male
factor doing a five-year stretch at Dartmoor or somewhere. Ordered hither, ordere
d thither ... lugged into cars,
lugged out of them ... ha
uled upstairs, bunged into bed
rooms '

He gave me an enquiring look. 'I see you've met the old girl.' 'I have.'

'Did she get hold of your wrist and pull?' 'She did.'

'She used to get hold of my wrist and pull. Full of energy, that dame. I think she eats a lot of yeast.' 'It isn't just energy. There was animus behind it.' 'Eh?'

'I say her actions were inspired by animus. It is patent that she hates your gizzard.'

'Well, yes, we've never been really buddies.' 'And why not?' 'I don't know.'

'I do. Because you didn't conciliate her. Because you never bothered to exercise tact and suavity. A little more geniality on your part, a little more of the pull-together spirit, and she might have been a second mother to you. To take a simple instance, did you ever bring her a red apple?'

'No.'

'You see!'

'What would I do that for?'

'To conciliate her. It's a well-known method. Ask any of the nibs at the nearest kindergarten. It would have been the easiest of tasks to bring her a red apple. You could have done it on your head. Instead of which,' I said bitterly, 'you go about the place putting Mexican horned toads in her bed.'

He blushed a little.

'Why, yes.'

'There you are.'

'But that's nothing. What's a Mexican horned toad or so among friends?' 'Tchah!' 'I'm sorry.'

'Too late to be sorry now. You've soured her nature.' 'Well, she soured mine. All those prunes and spinach.'

'Tchah!' I said again. I was pretty shirty.

We fell into another silence. He shuffled his feet. I stared bleakly before me.

'Well, there it is,' he said, at length. He looked at my wrist watch. 'Say, I guess I'll have to be moving along in a minute. Before I go, let's get one or two things straightened out. Havershot you said your name was, didn't you?'

'Yes.'

'How do you spell it?'

'You will find a card-case in that coat.'

He fetched out the card-case.

'Gee!' he said. 'Are you one of those English Oils?'

'I am. Or, rather, I was.'

'I always thought they were string-bean sort of guys without any chins. That's the way they are in the pictures.'

'I used to go in for games, sports, and pastimes to a goodish extent, thus developing the thews and sinews.'

'Kind of an athlete, eh?'

'Precisely. And that's what makes me so particularly sick about all this. Look at that arm,' I said, exhibiting it. 'What's wrong with it?'

'What's wrong with it!
What future have I got with an arm like that? As far as boxing and football are concerned, it rules me out completely. While as for cricket, can I ever become a fast bowler again? I doubt if an arm like this will be capable of even slow, leg-theory stuff. It is the arm of one of Nature's long-stops. Its limit is a place somewhere down among the dregs of a house second eleven.'

'I don't know what you're talking about.'

'I'm talking about what's going to happen to me in a few years, when I go to school. Do you think I like the prospect of being a frightful little weed who will probably sing alto in the choir and for the privilege of kicking whose trouser seat the better element will fight like wolves?'

'Well, say, listen,' he rejoined hotly, 'do you think I

9i

like the prospect of going about for the rest of my life with a face like this?' 'We will not discuss my face.'

'No. Better hush it up, I guess. Golly, what a map!' 'Please!'

*Well, you started it.'

There was a rather stiff silence. We were both piqued. He looked at the watch again.

'I got to be going,' he said. 'I've a call to make down at Malibu. Got to see my press agent.'

'What for?'

'Oh, just to say hello.'

'You can't say hello to press agents looking like that.'

'Oh, yes, that's all right. He'll understand. Say, there's another thing I just thought of. Where do I go nights?'

'I beg your pardon?'

'Well, I've got to sleep somewhere, haven't I? Where were you living?'

'I told you. I have a bungalow at the Garden of the Hesperides.'

'That's all right, then. Well, anything you want to know?'

I thought for a moment. There were, of course, a hundred questions I wanted to ask, but I couldn't think of them. Then something occurred to me.

'What's all this about unveiling a statue?'

'Oh, that's just a statue of old Brinkmeyer.'

'I see.'

So they were shoving up a statue to the old boy, were they? Well, I had no objection. No doubt a thoroughly well-deserved honour. Whether a man who looked like a captive balloon was wise to allow statues of himself to be exhibited was, of course, a question to be decided by himself alone.

'Do I unveil it?'

'Of course you don't. Anything else?'

'They were saying something about some Michigan Mothers.'

'That's a deputation that's come over from Detroit. You receive them.' 'Admirers, are they?'

'That's right. The Michigan branch of the Joey Cooley Faithful Fan Club.*

'They come to pay their respects, as it were?'

'That's the idea. And you receive them.'

'Oh, well, I don't suppose I shall mind that.'

He seized the opening. It was plainly his desire to cheer and encourage.

'Sure you won't. You aren't going to mind anything. You mustn't believe all that stuff I was telling you in the waiting-room. I was feeling kind of down, on account that tooth of mine was giving me the devil. You'll find this a pretty soft racket you've dropped into. You've got about the biggest following of anyone in pictures. Wait till you see the fan mail. And it's sort of fun acting up in front of the camera. Yessir, I think you're going to like it. Well, I must be scramming. Pleased to have met you.'

He moved to the window and shoved a leg over the sill.

'Oh, say, look,' he said, pausing. 'About Ma Brinkmeyer I almost forgot to tell you. If you ever want another horned toad, you get it from the gardener with the squint and the wart on his nose. He's always around the place. Just tell him it's for putting in Miss Brinkmeyer's bed, and he won't charge you anything.'

He disappeared, to pop up again a moment later.

'Oh, say, look,' he said, 'there's something I ought to warn you about. I'll give you a ring to-morrow.'

I sat up, a-quiver.'

'Warn me about?'

'Yay. I haven't time to tell you now, but there's something you've got to watch out for. I'll phone you in the morning.'

He disappeared once more, and I lay back, still a-quiver.

I hadn't liked those last words. A sinister ring they had seemed to me to have.

However, I wasn't able to brood on them long. Nature took its toll of the tired frame. Before I knew where I was, my eyes were closing, and I was asleep.

My first day as Joey Cooley had ended.

Chapter 12

I
suppose
everybody's had the experience at one time or another of waking up after a nightmare in which they were chased by leopards or chewed by cannibals or some such thing and drawing a deep breath and saying to t
hemselves : 'Phew!
Good egg 1 It was only a dream, after all.' A dashed agreeable sensation it is, too.

That's how it was with me next morning when, opening my eyes to another day, I reviewed the recent events. It was as if a great weight had rolled off me. For about five seconds, the relief was amazing. 'Well, well,' I felt, 'how very droll, to be sure. Positively bizarre.' And then suddenly it all went phut.

It was catching sight of the sleeve of my pyjama jacket that first made me think a bit. It so
happens that in the matter of
pyjamas I've always been a trifle on the choosy side. I'm not one of those fellows who just charge into a hosier's and grab anything. They have to be silk for me, and a nice lively pattern, too. And this sleeve, it would have been plain to the most vapid and irreflective observer, was constructed of some foul patent health-conserving wool. It was, moreover, a light, bilious green in colour, like my cousin Egremont at breakfast-time.

'Hullo!' I said to myself. 'What, what?'

And then I saw a beastly little hand protruding from the end of the sleeve, and the truth came home to me. I didn't have to hop out of bed and look in the glass. That half-portion of a hand told its own story. It informed me absolutely officially that what I had been kidding myself was a dream had been no dream at all. I really had become this blasted Cooley child, complete to the last button, and what I had once more to ask myself was: What would the harvest be?

The shock was so severe that I just lay there on my back, staring at the ceiling. It was as if I had walked into a right swing while boxing with the village blacksmith.

However, I was not allowed much time for chewing the bitter cud. The kid Cooley's day apparently started early. I don't suppose I had been groaning in spirit more than about ten minutes or so when some kind of a secretary hove alongside with a fountain-pen and about a gross of photographs for me to sign. She was followed by a masseur. Then a facial rubber blew in to tune up my features. And after him a hairdresser, who attended to my curls.

And I was lying there, a bit used up, wondering whether the next item on the programme would be a chiropodist or somebody to put me through a course of rhythmical breathing, when the door opened and the butler manifested himself.

'Good morning, sir’
he said.

'Good morning,' I replied. I was glad to see him. As on the previous day, I found him consoling. The sight of that smooth, round face and sp
reading waistcoat had a restora
tive effect. 'Come in and take a seat,' I said hospitably, for I had long since become reconciled to the fact of my bedroom being a sort of meeting-place of the nations. 'Or are you just passing through?'

'I have brought your breakfast, sir.'

This had the effect of bucking me up still more, for breakfast in bed is always breakfast in bed, until he went out and reappeared with the tray, and I perceived that all it contained was milk, some stuff that looked like sawdust, and a further consignment of those blighted prunes. A nice bit of news to have to break to a stomach which had been thinking in terms of scrambled eggs and kidneys.

'Hey!'
I cried.

'Sir?'

'What's all this?'

'It is your customary breakfast, sir.' 'Hell 1' I said, with feeling. 'Well, all right. Better than nothing, I suppose.'

He regarded me with kindly sympathy as I dug into the sawdust.

'It's hard, sir, isn't it.' 'Pretty foul.'

'They tell me it's to keep your weight down.'

'Oh. I suppose they've got some sort of story.'