Aunts Aren't Gentlemen (10 page)

'You want to go to Liverpool? A long journey.'

'No, sir. My aunt returned this morning and is at her home
in the village.'

'Then go to her, Jeeves, and heaven smile upon your reunion.'

'Thank you very much, sir. Should you have need of my
services, the address is Balmoral, Mafeking Road, care of Mrs
P. B. Pigott.'

'Oh, she isn't a Jeeves?'

'No, sir.'

He shimmered out, to return a moment later with the
information that Mr Graham was in the kitchen and would be
glad of a word with me. And it shows the extent to which the
strain and rush of life at Maiden Eggesford had taken its toll
that for a moment the name conveyed nothing to me. Then
memory returned to its throne, and I felt as anxious to see Mr
Graham as he apparently was to see me. Such was my
confidence in him as a returner of cats that I could not imagine
him failing in his mission, but I was naturally anxious to have
the full details.

'In the kitchen, you say?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Then bung him in, Jeeves. There is no one I'd rather give
audience to.'

And the hour, which was getting on for six o'clock,
produced the man.

I was struck, as before, by the intense respectability of his
appearance. He looked as though no rabbit or pheasant need
entertain the slightest tremors in his presence, and one could
readily picture him as the backbone of the choir when anthem
time came along. His gentle 'Good evening, sir' was a treat to
listen to.

'Good evening,' I said in my turn. 'Well? You accomplished
your mission? The cat is back at the old stand?'

His eyes darkened, as if I had brought to the surface a secret
sorrow.

'Well, yes and no, sir.'

'How do you mean, yes and no?'

'To the first of your questions the answer is in the affirmative.
I did accomplish my mission. But unfortunately the cat is
not at the old stand.'

'I don't get you.'

'It is here, sir, in your kitchen. I took it to Eggesford Court
as per contract and released it near the stables and started on
my homeward journey, happy to have earned the money which
you so generously paid me for my services. Picture my
astonishment and dismay when on reaching the village I
discovered that the cat had followed me. It is a very
affectionate animal, and we had become great friends. Would
you wish me to take it back again? Of course I should not feel
justified in charging my full fee, so shall we say ten pounds?'

If you want to know how this proposition affected me, I can
put it in a nutshell by saying that I read him like a book. Many
people are led by my frank and open countenance into
thinking that I am one of the mugs, but I know a twister when
I see one and I was in no doubt that one of these stood before
me now.

What stopped me drawing myself to my full height and
denouncing him was the reflection that the blighter had me in
a cleft stick. Refusal to come across would mean him going to
Pop Cook and getting a handsome fee from him for revealing
that the aged relative had paid him to purloin the cat, and in
spite of what she had said about her popularity in Maiden
Eggesford, resulting from her rendering 'Every Nice Girl
Loves A Sailor' in a sailor suit, I knew that her name would be
mud. I still wasn't sure she couldn't even be jugged, and what
a sock in the eye that would give Uncle Tom's digestion.

I disbursed the tenner. Not blithely, but I disbursed it, and
he went on his way.

For some little time after he had left I sat wrapped in
thought. And then, just as I was getting up to go and see Orlo,
in came Vanessa Cook.

She was accompanied by a dog of about the size of a young
elephant, yellow in colour and with large ears sticking up,
with whom I would willingly have fraternized, but after
drinking in the delicious scent of my trouser legs for a brief
moment it saw something out in the street which aroused its
interest and left us.

Vanessa, meanwhile, had picked up my
By Order Of The
Czar,
and I could see by the way she sniffed that she was about
to become critical. There had always been a strong strain of
book-reviewer blood in her.

'Trash,' she said. 'It really is time you began reading
something worth while. I don't expect you to start off with
Turgenev and Dostoievsky' she said, evidently alluding to a
couple of Russian exiles she had met in London who did a bit
of writing on the side, 'but there are plenty of good books
which are easier and at the same time educational. I have
brought one with me,' she went on, and I saw that she was
holding a slim volume bound in limp purple leather with some
sort of decoration in gold on the cover, and I shuddered
strongly. To a man who has seen as much of life as I have there
is always something sinister in a book bound in limp purple
leather. 'It is a collection of whimsical essays,
The Prose
Ramblings Of A Rhymester,
by Reginald Sprockett, a brilliant
young poet from whom the critics expect great things. His
style has been much praised, but it is the thought in these little
gems to which I particularly call your attention. I will leave
them here. I must be off. I only came to bring you the book . . .'

You probably think I reeled beneath this blow, but actually
my heart was not so heavy as it might have been, for my quick
brain had perceived how this would do me a bit of good. The
revolting object would make an admirable Christmas present
for my Aunt Agatha, always a difficult person to find Yule-
Tide gifts for. I was warming myself with this thought, when
Vanessa continued.

'Be very careful not to lose it. It has Reginald's autograph in
it,' and glancing at the title page I saw that this was indeed so,
which would have bucked Aunt Agatha up no little, but in
addition to inscribing the slim volume with his own foul name
the blighter had inscribed Vanessa's. 'To Vanessa, the fairest of
the fair, from a devoted admirer,' he had written, dishing my
plans completely. That was when my heart got heavy again.
For though she hadn't definitely said so, something told me
that later on I would be expected to pass an examination on the
little opus, and failure would have the worst effects.

Having said she must be off, she naturally stayed on for
another half-hour, much of which time was devoted to
pointing out additional defects in my spiritual make-up which
had occurred to her since our last meeting. It just showed how
strong the missionary spirit can be in women that she could
contemplate the idea of teaming up with a dubious character
like B. Wooster. Her best friends would have warned her
against it. 'Cast him into outer darkness where there is
weeping and gnashing of teeth,' they would have said. 'No
good trying to patch him up, he's hopeless.'

It was my membership of the Drones Club that now formed
the basis of her observations. She didn't like the Drones Club,
and she made it quite clear that at the conclusion of the honeymoon
I would cross its threshold only over her dead body.

So, reckoning up the final score, the Bertram Wooster who
signed the charge sheet in the vestry after the wedding
ceremony would be a non-smoker, a teetotaller (for I knew it
would come to that) and an ex-member of the Drones, in
other words a mere shell of his former self. Little wonder that,
as I listened to her, I gulped as Plank's native bearer must have
done when they were getting ready to bury him before
sundown.

The prospect appalled me, and while it was appalling me
Vanessa moved to the door, this time apparently really
intending to be off. And she had opened the door, Bertram
much too much of a shell of his former self to open it for her,
when she started back with a gasping cry.

'Father!' she cried gaspingly. 'He's coming up the garden
path.'

'He's coming up the garden
path
?' I said. I was at a loss to
imagine why Pop Cook should be calling on me. I mean to say
we weren't on those terms.

'He's stopped to tie his boot lace,' she cried, gaspingly as
before, and that concluded her share of the dialogue. With no
further words she bounded into the kitchen like a fox pursued
by both the Quorn and the Pytchley, slamming the door
behind her.

I could appreciate her emotion. She was aware of her
parent's distaste for the last of the Woosters, a distaste so
marked that he turned mauve and swallowed his lunch the
wrong way at the mention of my name, and
chez
me was the
last place he would wish to find her. Orlo Porter had thought
the worst on learning of what he called her clandestine visits to
the Wooster home, and a father would, of course, think worse
than Orlo. Pure though I was as the driven s., a fat chance I
had of persuading him that I wasn't a modern Casa something.
Not Casabianca. That was the chap who stood on the burning
deck. Casanova. I knew I'd get it.

And what he would do to Vanessa in his wrath would be
plenty. She was, as I have made clear, a proud beauty, but a
father of the calibre of Pop Cook can make even a proud
beauty wish she had thought twice before blotting her copybook.
He may not be able any longer to whale the tar out of
her with his walking stick as in the good old days, but he can
cut off her pocket money and send her to stay with her
grandmother at Tunbridge Wells, where she will have to look
after seven cats and attend divine service three times on
Sunday. Yes, one could understand her being perturbed on
seeing him tying up his boot lace outside Wee Nooke, which,
I forgot to mention earlier, was the name of my GHQ. (It had
been built, I learned subsequently, for a female cousin of Mrs
Briscoe's who painted water colours.)

And if she was perturbed, I was on the perturbed side, too.
It was with some trepidation – in fact, quite a lot of it – that I
awaited my visitor's arrival, a trepidation that was not
diminished when I saw that he had brought his hunting crop
with him.

I hadn't taken to him much at our previous meeting, and I
had the feeling that I wasn't going to get very fond of him now,
but I will say this for him, that he didn't waste time. He was a
man of quick, decisive speech who had no use for tedious
preliminaries but came to the point at once. I suppose you have
to in order to run a big business successfully.

'Well, Mr Wooster, as I understand you are calling yourself
now, it may interest you to know that Major Plank, who had
lost his memory, recovered it last night, and he told me all
about you.'

It was a nasty knock, and the fact that I had been expecting
it didn't make it any better. Oddly enough, I felt no animosity
towards Cook, holding Plank the bloke responsible for this
awkward situation. Roaming through Africa knee-deep in
poisonous snakes of every description and with more man-eating
pumas around than you could shake a stick at, he could
so easily have passed away, regretted by all. Instead of which,
he survived and went about making life tough for harmless
typical young men about town who simply wanted to be left
alone to restore their delicate health.

Cook was continuing, and getting nastier every moment.

'You are a notorious crook, known to your associates as
Alpine Joe, and your latest crime was to try to sell Major Plank
a valuable statuette which you had stolen from Sir Watkyn
Bassett of Totleigh Towers. You were arrested by Inspector
Witherspoon of Scotland Yard, fortunately before you had
accomplished your nefarious ends. I presume from the fact
that you are at large that you have served your sentence, and
you are now in the pay of Colonel Briscoe, who has employed
you to steal my cat. Have you anything to say?'

'Yes,' I said.

'No, you haven't,' he said.

'I can explain everything,' I said.

'No, you can't,' he said.

And, by Jove, I suddenly realized I couldn't. It would have
involved a long character analysis of Sir Watkyn Bassett,
another of my Uncle Tom, a third of Stephanie (Stiffy) Byng,
now Mrs Stinker Pinker, a fourth of Jeeves, and would have
taken about two hours and a quarter, provided he listened
attentively and didn't interrupt, which of course he would have
done.

Matters, therefore, seemed to be at what you might call a
deadlock, and the thought had suggested itself to me that my
best plan would be to leave his presence and start running and
keep on running till I reached the northern fringe of Scotland,
when a noise like an explosion in a gas works broke in on my
reverie, and I saw that he was holding the slim volume which
Vanessa, the silly ass, had omitted to take off-stage with her.

'This book!' he yowled.

I did my best.

'Ah, yes,' I said, 'Reggie Sprockett's latest. I always keep up
with his work. A brilliant young poet of whom the critics
expect great things. These, in case you are interested, are
whimsical essays. They are superb. Not only the style, but the
thought in these little gems . . .'

My voice died away. I had been about to urge him to buy a
copy, but I saw that he was not in the mood. He was staring at
the opening page with its inscription, and I knew that words
would be wasted, as the expression is.

He gave the hunting crop a twitch.

'My daughter has been here.'

'She did look in.'

'Ha!'

I knew what that 'Ha!' meant. It was short for 'I shall now
thrash you within an inch of your life.' A moment later he used
the longer version, as if in doubt as to whether he had made
himself clear.

If you were to come to me and say 'Wooster, to settle a bet,
which would you estimate is to be preferred, having your
insides torn out by somebody's bare hands or being thrashed
within an inch of your life?', I would find it difficult to decide.
Both are things you'd rather have happen to another chap. But
I think I would give my vote in favour of the last-named,
always provided the other fellow was doing it in a small room,
for there he would find that he had set himself a testing task.
The dimensions of the sitting-room of Wee Nooke did not
permit of a full swing. Cook had to confine himself to chip
shots, which an agile person like myself had little difficulty in
eluding.

I eluded them, therefore, with no great expenditure of
physical effort, but I would be deceiving my public if I said that
I was enjoying the episode. It offends one's pride when one has
to leap like a lamb in Springtime at the bidding of an elderly
little Gawd-help-us with whom it is impossible to reason. And
it was plain that Cook in his present frame of mind wouldn't
recognize reason if you served it up to him in an individual
plate with watercress round it.

That, of course, was what prevented me fulfilling myself in
the encounter, the fact that he
was
an elderly little Gawd-help-us.
It was the combination of age and size that kept me from
giving of my best. I might – indeed I would – have dotted in
the eye a small young Gawd-help-us or a Gawd-help-us of
riper years of the large economy size, but I couldn't possibly get
tough with an undersized little squirt who would never see
fifty-five again. The chivalry of the Woosters couldn't ever
contemplate such an action.

I thought once or twice of adopting the policy which had
occurred to me at the outset – viz. running up to the north of
Scotland. I had often wondered, when I read about fellows
getting horsewhipped on the steps of their club, why they
didn't just go up the steps and into the club, knowing that the
chap behind the horsewhip wasn't a member and wouldn't
have a chance of getting past the hall porter.

But the catch was that running up to Scotland would mean
turning my back, a fatal move. So we just carried on with our
rhythmic dance till my guardian angel, who until now had just
been sitting there, decided – and about time, too – to take a
hand in the proceedings. As might have been expected in a
cottage called Wee Nooke, there was a grandfather clock over
against the wall, and he now arranged that Cook should bump
into this and come a purler. And while he was still on the floor
I acted with the true Wooster resource.

I have stated that the previous owner of Wee Nooke
expressed herself as a rule in water colours, but on one occasion
she had changed her act. Over the mantelpiece there hung a
large oil painting depicting a bloke in a three-cornered hat and
riding breeches in conference with a girl in a bonnet and what
looked like muslin, and as it caught my eye I suddenly
remembered Gussie Fink-Nottle and the portrait at Aunt
Dahlia's place in Worcestershire.

Gussie – stop me if you've heard this before – while closely
pursued by Spode, now Lord Sidcup, who, if memory serves
me aright, wanted to break his neck, had taken refuge in my
bedroom and was on the point of having his neck broken when
he plucked a picture from the wall and brought it down on
Spode's head. The head came through the canvas, and Spode,
momentarily bewildered at finding himself wearing a portrait
of one of Uncle Tom's ancestors round his neck like an
Elizabethan ruff, gave me the opportunity of snatching a sheet
from the bed and enveloping him in it, rendering him null and
void, as the expression is.

I went through a precisely similar routine now, first
applying the picture and then the tablecloth. After which I
withdrew and went off to the Goose and Grasshopper to see
Orlo.