The Jeeves Omnibus (341 page)

‘Sir?’

‘If the fuzz search my room, I’m sunk.’

‘Have no anxiety, sir. A police officer is not permitted to enter private property without authority, nor do the regulations allow him to ask the owner of such property for permission to enter.’

‘You’re sure of that?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Well, that was a crumb of comfort, but it would be deceiving my public if I said that Bertram Wooster was his usual nonchalant self. Too many things had been happening one on top of the other for him to be the carefree boulevardier one likes to see. If I hoped to clarify the various situations which were giving me the pip and erase the dark circles already beginning to form beneath the eyes, it would, I saw, be necessary for me to marshal my thoughts.

‘Jeeves,’ I said, leading him from the room, ‘I must marshal my thoughts.’

‘Certainly, sir, if you wish.’

‘And I can’t possibly do it here with crises turning hand-springs on every side. Can you think of a good excuse for me to pop up to London for the night? A few hours alone in the peaceful surroundings of the flat are what I need. I must concentrate, concentrate.’

‘But do you require an excuse, sir?’

‘It’s better to have one. Aunt Dahlia is on a sticky wicket and would be hurt if I deserted her now unless I had some good reason. I can’t let her down.’

‘The sentiment does you credit, sir.’

‘Thank you, Jeeves. Can you think of anything?’

‘You have been summoned for jury duty, sir.’

‘Don’t they let you have a longish notice for that?’

‘Yes, sir, but when the post arrived containing the letter from the authorities, I forgot to give it to you, and only delivered it a moment ago. Fortunately it was not too late. Would you be intending to leave immediately?’

‘If not sooner. I’ll borrow Ginger’s car.’

‘You will miss the debate, sir.’

‘The what?’

‘The debate between Mr Winship and his opponent. It takes place tomorrow night.’

‘What time?’

‘It is scheduled for a quarter to seven.’

‘Taking how long?’

‘Perhaps an hour.’

‘Then expect me back at about seven-thirty. The great thing in life, Jeeves, if we wish to be happy and prosperous, is to miss as many political debates as possible. You wouldn’t care to come with me, would you?’

‘No, thank you, sir. I am particularly anxious to hear Mr Winship’s speech.’

‘He’ll probably only say “Er”,’ I riposted rather cleverly.

16

IT WAS WITH
a heart-definitely-bowed-down mood and the circles beneath my eyes darker than ever that I drove back next day in what is known as the quiet evenfall. I remember Jeeves saying something to me once about the heavy and the weary weight of this unintelligible world … not his own, I gathered, but from the works of somebody called Wordsworth, if I caught the name correctly … and it seemed to me rather a good way of describing the depressing feeling you get when the soup is about to close over you and no life-belt is in sight. I was conscious of this heavy and weary weight some years ago, that time when my cousins Eustace and Claude without notifying me inserted twenty-three cats in my bedroom, and I had it again, in spades, at the present juncture.

Consider the facts. I had gone up to London to wrestle in solitude with the following problems:

and I was returning with all four still in status quo. For a night and day I had been giving them the cream of the Wooster brain, and for all I had accomplished I might have been the aged relative trying to solve the
Observer
crossword puzzle.

Arriving at journey’s end, I steered the car into the drive. About half-way along it there was a tricky right-hand turn, and I had slowed down to negotiate this, when a dim figure appeared before me, a voice said, ‘Hoy!’, and I saw that it was Ginger.

He seemed annoyed about something. His ‘Hoy!’ had had a note of reproach in it, as far as it is possible to get the note of reproach into a ‘Hoy!’, and as he drew near and shoved his
torso
through the window I received the distinct impression that he was displeased.

His opening words confirmed this.

‘Bertie, you abysmal louse, what’s kept you all this time? When I lent you my car, I didn’t expect you’d come back at two o’clock in the morning.’

‘It’s only half-past seven.’

He seemed amazed.

‘Is that all? I thought it was later. So much has been happening.’

‘What has been happening?’

‘No time to tell you now. I’m in a hurry.’

It was at this point that I noticed something in his appearance which I had overlooked. A trifle, but I’m rather observant.

‘You’ve got egg in your hair,’ I said.

‘Of course I’ve got egg in my hair,’ he said, his manner betraying impatience. ‘What did you expect me to have in my hair, Chanel Number Five?’

‘Did somebody throw an egg at you?’

‘Everybody threw eggs at everybody. Correction. Some of them threw turnips and potatoes.’

‘You mean the meeting broke up in disorder, as the expression is?’

‘I don’t suppose any meeting in the history of English politics has ever broken up in more disorder. Eggs flew hither and thither. The air was dark with vegetables of every description. Sidcup got a black eye. Somebody plugged him with a potato.’

I found myself in two minds. On the one hand I felt a pang of regret for having missed what had all the earmarks of having been a political meeting of the most rewarding kind: on the other, it was like rare and refreshing fruit to hear that Spode had got hit in the eye with a potato. I was conscious of an awed respect for the marksman who had accomplished this feat. A potato, being so nobbly in shape, can be aimed accurately only by a master hand.

‘Tell me more,’ I said, well pleased.

‘Tell you more be blowed. I’ve got to get up to London. We want to be there bright and early tomorrow in order to inspect registrars and choose the best one.’

This didn’t sound like Florence, who, if she ever gets through an engagement without breaking it, is sure to insist on a wedding with bishops, bridesmaids, full choral effects, and a
reception
afterwards. A sudden thought struck me, and I think I may have gasped. Somebody made a noise like a dying soda-water syphon and it was presumably me.

‘When you say “we”, do you mean you and M. Glendennon?’

‘Who else?’

‘But how?’

‘Never mind how.’

‘But I do mind how. You were Problem (d) on my list, and I want to know how you have been solved. I gather that Florence has remitted your sentence—’

‘She has, in words of unmistakable clarity. Get out of that car.’

‘But why?’

‘Because if you aren’t out of it in two seconds, I’m going to pull you out.’

‘I mean why did she r your s?’

‘Ask Jeeves,’ he said, and attaching himself to the collar of my coat he removed me from the automobile like a stevedore hoisting a sack of grain. He took my place at the wheel, and disappeared down the drive to keep his tryst with the little woman, who presumably awaited him at some prearranged spot with the bags and baggage.

He left me in a condition which can best be described as befogged, bewildered, mystified, confused and perplexed. All I had got out of him was (a) that the debate had not been conducted in an atmosphere of the utmost cordiality, (b) that at its conclusion Florence had forbidden the banns and (c) that if I wanted further information Jeeves would supply it. A little more than the charmers got out of the deaf adder, but not much. I felt like a barrister, as it might be Ma McCorkadale, who has been baffled by an unsatisfactory witness.

However, he had spoken of Jeeves as a fount of information, so my first move on reaching the drawing-room and finding no one there was to put forefinger to bell button and push.

Seppings answered the summons. He and I have been buddies from boyhood – mine, of course, not his – and as a rule when we meet conversation flows like water, mainly on the subject of the weather and the state of his lumbago, but this was no time for idle chatter.

‘Seppings,’ I said, ‘I want Jeeves. Where is he?’

‘In the servants’ hall, sir, comforting the parlourmaid.’

I took him to allude to the employee whose gong-work I had admired on my first evening, and, pressing though my business
was,
it seemed only humane to offer a word of sympathy for whatever her misfortunes might be.

‘Had bad news, has she?’

‘No, sir, she was struck by a turnip.’

‘Where?’

‘In the lower ribs, sir.’

‘I mean where did this happen?’

‘At the Town Hall, sir, in the later stages of the debate.’

I drew in the breath sharply. More and more I was beginning to realize that the meeting I had missed had been marked by passions which recalled the worst excesses of the French revolution.

‘I myself, sir, narrowly escaped being hit by a tomato. It whizzed past my ear.’

‘You shock me profoundly, Seppings. I don’t wonder you’re pale and trembling.’ And indeed he was, like a badly set blancmange. ‘What caused all this turmoil?’

‘Mr Winship’s speech, sir.’

This surprised me. I could readily believe that any speech of Ginger’s would be well below the mark set by Demosthenes, if that really was the fellow’s name, but surely not so supremely lousy as to start his audience throwing eggs and vegetables; and I was about to institute further enquiries, when Seppings sidled to the door, saying that he would inform Mr Jeeves of my desire to confer with him. And in due season the hour produced the man, as the expression is.

‘You wished to see me, sir?’ he said.

‘You can put it even stronger, Jeeves. I yearned to see you.’

‘Indeed, sir?’

‘Just now I met Ginger in the drive.’

‘Yes, sir, he informed me that he was going there to await your return.’

‘He tells me he is no longer betrothed to Miss Craye, being now affianced to Miss Glendennon. And when I asked him how this switch had come about, he said that you would explain.’

‘I shall be glad to do so, sir. You wish a complete report?’

‘That’s right. Omit no detail, however slight.’

He was silent for a space. Marshalling his thoughts, no doubt. Then he got down to it.

‘The importance attached by the electorate to the debate,’ he began, ‘was very evident. An audience of considerable size had assembled in the Town Hall. The Mayor and Corporation were
there,
together with the flower of Market Snodsbury’s aristocracy and a rougher element in cloth caps and turtleneck sweaters who should never have been admitted.’

I had to rebuke him at this point.

‘Bit snobbish, that, Jeeves, what? You are a little too inclined to judge people by their clothes. Turtleneck sweaters are royal raiment when they’re worn for virtue’s sake, and a cloth cap may hide an honest heart. Probably frightfully good chaps, if one had got to know them.’

‘I would prefer not to know them, sir. It was they who subsequently threw eggs, potatoes, tomatoes and turnips.’

I had to concede that he had a point there.

‘True,’ I said. ‘I was forgetting that. All right, Jeeves. Carry on.’

‘The proceedings opened with a rendering of the national anthem by the boys and girls of Market Snodsbury elementary school.’

‘Pretty ghastly, I imagine?’

‘Somewhat revolting, sir.’

‘And then?’

‘The Mayor made a short address, introducing the contestants, and Mrs McCorkadale rose to speak. She was wearing a smart coat in fine quality repp over a long-sleeved frock of figured marocain pleated at the sides and finished at the neck with—’

‘Skip all that, Jeeves.’

‘I am sorry, sir. I thought you wished every detail, however slight.’

‘Only when they’re … what’s the word?’

‘Pertinent, sir?’

‘That’s right. Take the McCorkadale’s outer crust as read. How was her speech?’

‘Extremely telling, in spite of a good deal of heckling.’

‘That wouldn’t put her off her stroke.’

‘No, sir. She impressed me as being of a singularly forceful character.’

‘Me, too.’

‘You have met the lady, sir?’

‘For a few minutes – which, however, were plenty. She spoke at some length?’

‘Yes, sir. If you would care to read her remarks? I took down both speeches in shorthand.’

‘Later on, perhaps.’

‘At any time that suits you, sir.’

‘And how was the applause? Hearty? Or sporadic?’

‘On one side of the hall extremely hearty. The rougher element appeared to be composed in almost equal parts of her supporters and those of Mr Winship. They had been seated at opposite sides of the auditorium, no doubt by design. Her supporters cheered, Mr Winship’s booed.’

‘And when Ginger got up, I suppose her lot booed him?’

‘No doubt they would have done so, had it not been for the tone of his address. His appearance was greeted with a certain modicum of hostility, but he had scarcely begun to speak when he was rapturously received.’

‘By the opposition?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Strange.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Can you elucidate?’

‘Yes, sir. If I might consult my notes for a moment. Ah, yes. Mr Winship’s opening words were, “Ladies and gentlemen, I come before you a changed man.” A Voice: “That’s good news.” A second Voice: “Shut up, you bleeder.” A third Voice …’

‘I think we might pass lightly over the Voices, Jeeves.’

‘Very good, sir. Mr Winship then said, “I should like to begin with a word to the gentleman in the turtleneck sweater in that seat over there who kept calling my opponent a silly old geezer. If he will kindly step on to this platform. I shall be happy to knock his ugly block off. Mrs McCorkadale is
not
a silly old geezer.” A Voice … Excuse me, sir, I was forgetting. “Mrs McCorkadale is
not
a silly old geezer,” Mr Winship said, “but a lady of the greatest intelligence and grasp of affairs. I admire her intensely. Listening to her this evening has changed my political views completely. She has converted me to hers, and I propose, when the polls are opened, to cast my vote for her. I advise all of you to do the same. Thank you.” He then resumed his seat.’