A Few Quick Ones (22 page)

"Have you a niece?" said Oofy, sorry for the unfortunate girl.

"I have three nieces," said Jas Waterbury, with a touch of the smugness of the man of property. "This one's in service as kitchen maid in Green Street, Mayfair. She does for the family when the cook's out, and never fails to give satisfaction."

Oofy, thinking it over, could see no objection to engaging this Myrtle Cootes, for such, it appeared, was her name. Mayfair kitchen maids, he knew, were always red-hot stuff with the roasts and boileds, and he shared his companion's dislike for paying fees. So it was arranged that on his return to the metrop he should call on her with a letter of introduction explaining the circs, and bright and early on the following morning he did so.

Myrtle Cootes proved to be very much the sort of niece you would have expected a an like Jas Waterbury to have. In features and expression she resembled a dead codfish on a slab. She wore steel-rimmed spectacles, topping them off with ginger hair and adenoids. But Oofy wasn't looking for a Venus de Milo or a Helen of Troy: what he wanted was a Grade A skillet wielder, and a private word with the cook assured him that the culinary arrangements of the training camp could safely be placed in this gargoyle's hands. The cook said she had taught Myrtle Cootes all she knew, and produced testimonials from former employers to show that what she knew was practically the whole art of dinner-dishing from soup to toothpicks.

So Myrtle was instructed to get in touch with the front office and explain that she was obliged to leave immediately owing to sickness at home, and next day Oofy drove her down to the cottage with her corded box and her adenoids and left her there. He stayed on to lunch to get a flash of her form, and was more than satisfied with the girl's virtuosity. She gave them a nourishing soup of the type that sticks to the ribs and puts hair on the chest, followed by a steak and kidney pie with two veg. and a rolypoly pudding with raisins in it, and the stuff fairly melted in their mouths.

The effect of these improved browsing conditions on the two mastodons was instantaneous and gratifying. They downed their soup as if in a roseate dream, and scarcely had the echoes died away when there was another sloshing sound as the milk of human kindness came surging back into them.

By the time the rolypoly pudding with raisins in it had gone down the hatch, all disagreement and unpleasantness had been forgotten. They beamed at each other with the old cordiality. Plug Bosher's voice, as he asked Porky Jupp to reach him the bread, would have passed anywhere for that of a turtle-dove cooing to its mate, and so would

Porky Jupp's when he said, "Right ho, cully, here she comes." Oofy was so enchanted that he actually went into the kitchen and gave Myrtle Cootes a treasury note for ten bob. And when Oofy voluntarily separates himself from ten bob, you can be pretty sure that his whole being has been stirred to its foundations.

It was on his way home that it suddenly occurred to him that he could set the seal on the day's good work by easing Freddie Widgeon out of the deal and so relieving the venture of the burden of that ten per cent commish of his. Right from the start the thought of having to slip Freddie ten per cent of the profits had been like a dagger in his heart. So when he met him in the club that night and Freddie began bleating for the lowdown on conditions at the front, he shoved on a look of alarm and despondency and told him that the whole thing was a wash-out. The rift between the two principals, he said, had got such a toe-hold that it was hopeless to attempt a reconciliation, and so, seeing no sense in going ahead and getting the bird from a slavering mob of infuriated Yorkshiremen, he had decided to cancel the whole project.

And when, as was natural, this caused Freddie to Oh-death-where-is-thy-sting a goodish bit, Oofy laid an affectionate hand on his shoulder and said he knew exactly how he felt.

"It's the thought of you that's been worrying me into a fever, Freddie old man. I know how you were looking forward to cleaning up with that ten per of yours. The first thing I said to myself was, I mustn't let good old Freddie down.' Well, it's a trifle, of course, to what you would have made, but I'm going to give you a tenner. Yes, yes, I insist. Just scribble me a
line as a matter of form, saying that you accept this in full settlement of all claims, and we'll be straight."

Freddie did so with a
tear of gratitude in his eye, and that was that.

In the days that followed I doubt if you could have met a chirpier millionaire than Oofy Prosser. He came into the club whistling, he hummed as he sauntered to and fro, and once, when at the bar, actually burst into song. And when Freddie, who happened to be in the bar at the time, expressed surprise at this jauntiness, he explained that he was merely wearing the mask.

"One must be British. The stiff upper lip, what?"

"Oh, rather," said Freddie.

Nor did Jas Waterbury's bulletins from the training camp do anything to diminish his exuberance. Jas Waterbury wrote that everything was going like a breeze. Brotherly love was getting stronger on the wing daily. Porky Jupp had suggested that when he jumped on Plug Bosher's stomach Plug Bosher should bite him in the ankle, and Plug Bosher had said he would be charmed to do so, only Porky Jupp must bite him on the nose, Jas Waterbury said that Oofy was missing something in not being there to taste Myrtle's Irish stew, and added that Plug Bosher had put on another inch the waist.

So rosy was the picture he drew that Oofy, after singing in the bar, went and sang in the hall, and those who were present said that they had never heard anything more carefree. Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright, in particular, compared it to the trilling of a nightingale. There is no question that at this juncture Oofy Prosser was sitting on top of the world.

It was consequently a shattering shock to him when Jas Waterbury's telegram arrived. Strolling into the club one afternoon with a song on his lips and finding a telegram for him. in the ‘P’ box, he opened it idly, with no premonition of an impending doom, and a moment later was feeling as if Porky Jupp had jumped on his stomach.

"Come running, cocky," wired his business associate, careful even in the stress of what was evidently a powerful emotion to keep it down to twelve words,

"Another rift within lute. Ruin stares eyeball. Regards. Waterbury."

I described Oofy's state of mind on his previous visit to the camp, if you remember, as dithery. It would be difficult to find an adjective capable of handling his emotions now, That telegram had got right in amongst him and churned him up good and proper.

He had been so sure that there would be no more unfortunate incidents and that he would soon be beaming through the grill at his receiving teller and drinking in the man's low whistle of respectful astonishment as he noted the figures on the cheque he was depositing. And now…It began to look to him as though there were a curse on this enterprise of his.

It was getting on for the quiet evenfall when he fetched up at the cottage. The air was cool and fragrant, and the declining sun, doing its stuff in and about the garden, lit up the trees and the little lawn. On the lawn he observed Porky Jupp plucking the petals from a daisy and heard, as he hurried past, his muttered, "She loves me, she loves me not"; while a short distance away, Plug Bosher, armed with a pocket knife, was carving on a tree a heart with an arrow through it. Neither appeared aware of the other's existence.

In the doorway stood Jas Waterbury, moodily regarding the pair. His sombre face lightened a little as he perceived Oofy, and he drew him into the house.

"You saw them, cocky ?" he said. "You took a good gander at them? Then there's no need for me to explain. That picture tells the story."

Oofy, recoiling, for the other was breathing heavily in his face and the first thing the man of sensibility does when Jas Waterbury breathes in his face is to recoil as far as possible, replied with some asperity that there was every need for him to explain. And Jas Waterbury said had he observed the daisy? Had he noticed the heart with the arrow through it? He had  Well, there you are, then.

"They're rivals in love, cocky, that's what's happened. They've both of 'em gone and got mushy on Myrtle."

You could have knocked Oofy down with a
feather. The thing didn't seem to him to make sense. With a
strong effort he succeeded in steadying his brain, which was going round in circles like a performing mouse. He stared at Jas Waterbury."

"With Myrtle?"

"That's right."

Oofy still found himself unable to grasp the gist. He stared harder than ever,

"With Myrtle?" he repeated. "Here, let's get this straight. You say these two blisters love Myrtle? The Cootes disaster, you mean? You are not speaking of some other Myrtle? Your reference is to the slabfaced human codfish in the kitchen?"

Jas Waterbury drew himself up with a touch of pique.

"I'd call Myrtle a nice-looking girl."

"I wouldn't."

"She's supposed to look like me."

"That's what I mean," said Oofy. "You must have got your facts twisted. Why would anyone fall in love with Myrtle?"

"Well, there's her cooking."

For the first time Oofy began to find the thing credible. Himself a
greedy hog, he could appreciate the terrific force of the impact of Myrtle Cootes's cooking on two men whose meals had previously been prepared by the woman who came in from the village. Fellows like Porky Jupp and Plug Bosher, he reminded himself, are practical. They do not seek for the softer feminine graces. Overlooking codfish faces and adenoids, they allow their affections to be ensnared by the succulent steak, the cunningly handled veg.. the firm, white, satisfying rolypoly pudding with raisins in it. Beauty fades, but these things remain.

"But this is frightful!" he yipped.

"Bad enough for me," assented Jas Waterbury. "They've got the idea that she thinks wrestling ungentlemanly, and they're considering chucking it and going in for something else. I heard Plug ask her yesterday if she could love a copper's nark, and I've seen Porky reading a correspondence course advertisement about how to make a large fortune breeding Angora rabbits. If you ask me if the outlook's black, I reply, 'Yes, cocky, blacker that Plug Bosher's nails.' I see no future in the racket."

At these words of doom, Oofy tottered to the window. He needed air. Looking out, he saw that Porky Jupp had finished plucking the petals of his daisy. He had crossed the lawn to where Plug Bosher was carving the heart on the tree and was gazing on his handiwork with an unpleasant sneer. He said nothing, but there was a quiet contempt in his manner which was plainly affecting the other like a bad notice in the Art section of the Spectator. With a sullen scowl Plug Bosher closed his pocket knife and walked away.

"See?" said Jas Waterbury. "That’s the way they go on all the time now. Rivals in love."

"Which one of them does she like?" asked Oofy dully.

"She doesn't like either of 'em. I keep telling them that, but they won't believe me. You can't drive reason into a wrestler's nut. Porky says there's something in the way she looks at him which convinces him that lie could put it over if only Plug wasn't always messing around; and Plug says you've only got to listen to the girl's quick breathing when he comes along to see that the thing's in the bag; only every time he's just going to pour out his heart, he steps on something and it's Porky, They're vain. That's what's the trouble with them. I've never met an all-in wrestler that didn't think he was Clark Gable. But listen, cocky, I've got an idea."

"I’ll bet it's rotten."

"It isn't any such tiling. It's a pip. It came to me like a flash while we were talking. Suppose somebody was to come along and cut both of 'em out. See what I mean? The handsome man about town from the city,"

Oofy had not expected to be impressed by any suggestion of this greasy bird's, but he had to admit that he had spoken what looked very like a mouthful. He said he believed that Jas Waterbury had got something there, and Jas Waterbury said he was convinced of it.

"You get two blokes that's rivals in love," he went on, elaborating his point, "and another bloke comes along and makes monkeys out of both of 'em, and what happens? It draws them together. They're so sore on the other bloke that they forget their little tiff. That's human nature."

In a cooler moment Oofy would probably have pointed out that the snag about that was that Porky Jupp and Plug Bosher weren't human, but he was too stirred to think of that now. He slapped Jas Waterbury on the back and said he was a genius, and Jas Waterbury said he had been from a child.

Then Oofy's joyous enthusiasm started to sag a bit. The thought that had sprung into his mind had been that here was a job right up Freddie Widgeon's street,. Freddie being the sort of chap who can make love to anything. But he couldn't approach Freddie. And, failing Freddie, who could handle the assignment? You couldn't just go to anyone and ask him to sit in. It would mean tedious explaining, and of course, one didn't want to let the whole world into the secrets of professional wrestling.

He put this to Jas Waterbury, who seemed surprised.

“I was thinking of you," he said.

"Me?"

"That’s right."

Oofy goggled.

"You expect me to make love to that…”

He paused, and Jas Waterbury in a rather cold voice said. "That what?” Oofy, loathe to wound an uncle's feelings, substituted the word "girl" for the "gargoyle" which he had been about to employ, and Jas Waterbury said that it seemed the only way.

"You want to protect your investment, don't you? You don't want all that lovely splosh to slip through your hands, do you? Well, then."

He had struck the right note. The last thing in the world Oofy wanted was to lose any lovely splosh. It was true that the last thing but one was to make advances to Myrtle Cootes, but, as his colleague had pointed out, it was the only way.

"Right ho," he said in a low voice, like a premier basso with tonsillitis. "How do I start?"

"Take her for a nice little spin in your car," suggested Jas Waterbury.

So Myrtle Cootes was summoned and told to put on her hat, coat and scent, and Oofy took her out for a nice little spin in his car.