The Jeeves Omnibus (199 page)

Catsmeat chewed his lip. I knew what was passing in his mind. He was thinking, as others have thought, that the first essential for an enjoyable dinner-party is for Gussie not to be at it.

‘Give Gussie Fink-Nottle dinner?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Why don’t you?’

‘My Aunt Agatha wants me to take her son Thomas to the Old Vic.’

‘Give it a miss.’

‘I can’t. I should never hear the last of it.’

‘Well, all right.’

‘Heaven bless you, Catsmeat,’ I said.

So Gussie was off my mind. It was with a light heart that I retired to rest that night. I little knew, as the expression is, what the morrow was to bring forth.

THOUGH, AS A
matter of fact, in its early stages the morrow brought forth some pretty good stuff. As generally happens on these occasions when you are going to cop it in the quiet evenfall, the day started extremely well. Knowing that at 2.53 I was to shoot young Thos off to his seaside Borstal, I breakfasted with a song on my lips, and at lunch, I recall, I was in equally excellent fettle.

I took Thos to Victoria, bunged him into his train, slipped him a quid and stood waving a cousinly hand till he was out of sight. Then, after looking in at Queen’s Club for a game or two of rackets, I went back to the flat, still chirpy.

Up till then everything had been fine. As I put hat on hat-peg and umbrella in umbrella-stand, I was thinking that if God wasn’t in His heaven and all right with the world, these conditions prevailed as near as made no matter. Not the suspicion of an inkling, if you see what I mean, that round the corner lurked the bitter awakening, stuffed eelskin in hand, waiting to sock me on the occiput.

The first thing to which my attention was drawn on crossing the threshold was that there seemed to be a lot more noise going on than was suitable in a gentleman’s home. Through the closed door of the sitting room the ear detected the sound of a female voice raised in what appeared to be cries of encouragement and, mingled with this female voice, a loud barking, as of hounds on the trail. It was as though my boudoir had been selected by the management of the Quorn or the Pytchley as the site for their most recent meet, and my first instinct, as that of any householder would have been, was to look into this. Nobody can call Bertram Wooster a fussy man, but there are moments when he feels he has to take a firm stand.

I opened the door, accordingly, and was immediately knocked base over apex by some solid body with a tongue like an anteater’s. This tongue it proceeded to pass enthusiastically over my upper slopes and, the mists clearing away, I perceived that what I was tangled up with was a shaggy dog of mixed parentage. And standing beside us,
looking
down like a mother watching the gambols of her first-born, was Catsmeat’s sister Corky.

‘Isn’t he a lamb?’ she said. ‘Isn’t he an absolute seraph?’

I was not able wholly to subscribe to this view. The animal appeared to have an agreeable disposition and to have taken an immediate fancy to me, but physically it was no beauty-prize winner. It looked like Boris Karloff made up for something.

Corky, on the other hand, as always, distinctly took the eye. Two years in Hollywood had left her even easier to look at than when last seen around these parts.

This young prune is one of those lissom girls of medium height, constructed on the lines of Gertrude Lawrence, and her map had always been worth more than a passing glance. In repose, it has a sort of meditative expression, as if she were a pure white soul thinking beautiful thoughts, and, when animated, so dashed animated that it boosts the morale just to look at her. Her eyes are a kind of browny-hazel and her hair rather along the same lines. The general effect is of an angel who eats lots of yeast. In fine, if you were called upon to pick something to be cast on a desert island with, Hedy Lamarr might be your first choice, but Corky Pirbright would inevitably come high up in the list of Hon. Mentions.

‘His name’s Sam Goldwyn,’ she proceeded, hauling the animal off the prostrate form. ‘I bought him at the Battersea Home.’

I rose and dried the face.

‘Yes, so Catsmeat told me.’

‘Oh, you’ve seen Catsmeat? Good.’

At this point she seemed to become aware that we had skipped the customary pip-pippings, for she took time out to say how nice it was to see me again after all this time. I said how nice it was to see her again after all this time, and she asked me how I was, and I said I was fine. I asked her how she was, and she said she was fine. She enquired if I was still as big a chump as ever, and I satisfied her curiosity at this point.

‘I looked in yesterday, hoping to see you,’ she said, ‘but you were out.’

‘Yes, Jeeves told me.’

‘A small boy with red hair entertained me. He said he was your cousin.’

‘My Aunt Agatha’s son and, oddly enough, the apple of her eye.’

‘Why oddly enough?’

‘He’s the King of the Underworld. They call him The Shadow.’

‘I liked him. I gave him fifty of my autographs. He’s going to sell
them
to the boys at his school and expects to get sixpence apiece. He has long admired me on the screen, and we hit it off together like a couple of Yes-men. Catsmeat didn’t seem to take to him so much.’

‘He once put a drawing-pin on Catsmeat’s chair.’

‘Ah, that would account for the imperfect sympathy. Talking of Catsmeat, did he give you the Pat and Mike script?’

‘Yes, I’ve got it. I was studying it in bed last night.’

‘Good. It was sporting of you to rally round.’

I didn’t tell her that my rallying round had been primarily due to
force majeure
on the part of an aunt who brooks, if that’s the word, no back-chat. Instead, I asked who was to be my partner in the merry
mélange
of fun and topicality, sustaining the minor but exacting role of Mike, and she said an artiste of the name of Dobbs.

‘Police Constable Dobbs, the local rozzer. And in this connection, Bertie, there is one thing I want to impress upon you with all the emphasis at my disposal. When socking Constable Dobbs with your umbrella at the points where the script calls for it, don’t pull your punches. Let the blighter have it with every ounce of wrist and muscle. I want to see him come off that stage a mass of contusions.’

It seemed to me, for I am pretty quick, that she had it in for this Dobbs. I said so, and she concurred, a quick frown marring the alabaster purity of her brow.

‘I have. I’m devoted to my poor old Uncle Sidney, and this uncouth bluebottle is a thorn in his flesh. He’s the village atheist.’

‘Oh, really? An atheist, is he? I never went in for that sort of thing much myself. In fact, at my private school I once won a prize for Scripture Knowledge.’

‘He annoys Uncle Sidney by popping out at him from side streets and making offensive cracks about Jonah and the Whale. This cross-talk act has been sent from heaven. In ordinary life, I mean, you get so few opportunities of socking cops with umbrellas, and if ever a cop needed the treatment, it is Ernest Dobbs. When he isn’t smirching Jonah and the Whale with his low sneers, he’s asking Uncle Sidney where Cain got his wife. You can’t say that sort of thing is pleasant for a sensitive vicar, so hew to the line, my poppet, and let the chips fall where they may.’

She had stirred the Wooster blood and aroused the Wooster chivalry. I assured her that by the time they struck up ‘God Save The King’ in the old village hall Constable Dobbs would know he had been in a fight, and she thanked me prettily.

‘I can see you’re going to be good, Bertie. And I don’t mind telling you your public is expecting big things. For days the whole village has
been
talking of nothing else but the coming visit of Bertram Wooster, the great London comic. You will be the high spot of the programme. And goodness knows it can do with a high spot or two.’

‘Who are the performers?’

‘Just the scourings of the neighbourhood … and Esmond Haddock. He’s singing a song.’

The way she spoke that name, with a sort of frigid distaste as if it soiled her lips, told me that Catsmeat had not erred in saying that she was as sore as a gum-boil about E. Haddock’s in-and-out running. Remembering that he had warned me to approach the subject tactfully, I picked my words with care.

‘Ah, yes. Esmond Haddock. Catsmeat was telling me about Esmond Haddock.’

‘What did he tell you?’

‘Oh, this and that.’

‘Featuring me?’

‘Yes, to a certain extent featuring you.’

‘What did he say?’

‘Well, he seemed to hint, unless I misunderstood him, that the above Haddock hadn’t, as it were, done right by our Nell. According to Catsmeat, you and this modern Casanova were at one time holding hands, but after flitting and sipping for a while he cast you aside like a worn-out glove and attached himself to Gertrude Winkworth. Quite incorrect, probably. I expect he got the whole story muddled up.’

She came clean. I suppose a girl who has been going about for some weeks as sore as a gum-boil, and with the heart cracked in two places gets to feel that maidenly pride is all very well but that what eases the soul is confession. And, of course, making me her confidant was not like spilling the inside stuff to a stranger. No doubt the thought crossed her mind that we had attended the same dancing class, and it may be that a vision of the child Wooster in a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit and pimples rose before her eyes.

‘No, he didn’t get the story muddled up. We were holding hands. But Esmond didn’t cast me aside like a worn-out glove, I cast him aside like a worn-out glove. I told him I wouldn’t have any more to do with him unless he asserted himself and stopped crawling to those aunts of his.’

‘He crawls to his aunts, does he?’

‘Yes, the worm.’

I could not pass this. Better men than Esmond Haddock have crawled to their aunts, and I said so, but she didn’t seem to be listening. Girls seldom do listen to me, I’ve noticed. Her face was
drawn
and her eyes had a misty look. The lips, I observed, were a-quiver.

‘I oughtn’t to call him a worm. It’s not his fault, really. They brought him up from the time he was six, oppressing him daily, and it’s difficult for him to cast off the shackles, I suppose. I’m very sorry for him. But there’s a limit. When it came to being scared to tell them we were engaged, I put my foot down. I said he’d got to tell them, and he turned green and said Oh, he couldn’t, and I said All right, then, let’s call the whole thing off. And I haven’t spoken to him since, except to ask him to sing this song at the concert. And the unfortunate part of it all is, Bertie, that I’m crazier about him than ever. Just to think of him makes me want to howl and chew the carpet.’

At this point she buried her face in Sam Goldwyn’s coat, ostensibly by way of showing a proprietress’s affection, but really, I could see, being shrewd, in order to dry the starting tears. Personally, for the animal niffed to heaven, I would have preferred to use my cambric handkerchief, but girls will be girls.

‘Oh, well,’ she said, coming to the surface again.

It was a bit difficult to know how to carry on. A ‘There, there, little woman’ might have gone well, or it might not. After thinking it over for a moment, I too-badded.

‘Oh, it’s all right,’ she said, stiffening the upper lip. ‘Just one of those things. When do you go down to Deverill?’

‘This evening.’

‘How do you feel about it?’

‘Not too good. A certain coolness in the feet. I’m never at my best in the society of aunts and, according to Jeeves, they assemble in gangs at Deverill Hall. There are five of them, he says.’

‘That’s right.’

‘It’s a lot.’

‘Five too many. I don’t think you’ll like them, Bertie. One’s deaf, one’s dotty, and they’re all bitches.’

‘You use strong words, child.’

‘Only because I can’t think of any stronger. They’re awful. They’ve lived all their lives at that mouldering old hall, and they’re like something out of a three-volume novel. They judge everybody by the county standard. If you aren’t county, you don’t exist. I believe they swooned for weeks when their sister married Esmond’s father.’

‘Yes, Jeeves rather suggested that in their opinion he soiled the escutcheon.’

‘Nothing to the way I would have soiled it. Being in pix, I’m the scarlet woman.’

‘I’ve often wondered about that scarlet woman. Was she scarlet all over, or was it just that her face was red? However, that is not germane to the issue. So that’s how it is, is it?’

‘That’s how it is.’

I was rather glad that at this juncture the hound Sam Goldwyn made another of his sudden dives at my abdomen with the slogan ‘Back to Bertram’ on his lips, for it enabled me to bridge over an emotional moment. I was considerably concerned. What was to be done about it, I didn’t know, but there was no gainsaying that when it came to making matrimonial plans, the Pirbrights were not a lucky family.

Corky seemed to be feeling this, too.

‘It would happen, wouldn’t it,’ she said, ‘that the only one of all the millions of men I’ve met that I’ve ever wanted to marry can’t marry me because his aunts won’t let him.’

‘It’s tough on you,’ I agreed.

‘And just as tough on poor old Catsmeat. You wouldn’t think, just seeing him around, that Catsmeat was the sort of man to break his heart over a girl, but he is. He’s full of hidden depths, if you really know him. Gertrude means simply everything to him. And I doubt if she will be able to hold out against a combination of Esmond and her mother and the aunts.’

‘Yes, he told me pressure was being applied.’

‘How did you think he seemed?’

‘Low-spirited.’

‘Yes, he’s taking it hard,’ said Corky.

Her face clouded. Catsmeat has always been her ewe lamb, if you understand what I mean by ewe lamb. It was plain that she mourned for him in spirit, and no doubt at this point we should have settled down to a long talk about his spot of bother, examining it from every angle and trying to decide what was to be done for the best, had not the door opened and he blown in in person.

‘Hallo, Catsmeat,’ I said.