Aunts Aren't Gentlemen (11 page)

Anybody not in possession of the facts would probably
have been appalled at my rashness in placing myself
within disembowelling range of Orlo Porter, feeling that I was
tempting fate, and in about two ticks would be wishing I
hadn't.

But I, strong in the knowledge that Orlo P. had been
reduced to the level of a fifth-rate power, was able to approach
the coming interview in a bumps-a-daisy spirit which might
quite easily have led to my bursting into song.

Orlo, as I had predicted, was in the bar having a gin and
ginger. He lowered the beaker as I drew near and regarded me
in a squiggle-eyed manner like a fastidious luncher observing a
caterpillar in his salad.

'Oh, it's you,' he said.

I conceded this, for he was right. No argument about it.
Assured that he wasn't looking squiggle-eyed at the wrong
chap, he proceeded.

'What do you want?'

'A word with you.'

'So you have come to gloat?'

'Certainly not, Porter,' I said, 'when you hear what I have to
say, you will start skipping like the high hills, not that I've ever
seen high hills skip, or low hills for that matter. Porter, what
would you say if I told you all your troubles, all the little odds
and ends that are bothering you now, would be over 'ere yonder
sun had set?'

'It has set.'

'Oh, has it? I didn't notice.'

'And it is getting on for dinner time. So if you will kindly
get the hell out of here –'

'Not till I have spoken.'

'Are you going to speak some
more
?'

'Lots more. Let us examine the position you and I are in
calmly, and in a judicial spirit. Vanessa Cook has told me she
will marry me, and you are probably looking on me as a snake
in the grass. Well, let me tell you that any resemblance
between me and a snake in the grass is purely coincidental. I
couldn't issue a
nolle prosequi
, could I, when she said that? Of
course not. But all the while I was right-hoing I felt I was
behaving like a louse.'

'You are a louse.'

'No, that's where you make your error, Porter. I am a man
of sensibility, and a man of sensibility does not marry a girl
who's in love with somebody else. He gives her up.'

He finished his gin and ginger, and choked on it as he
suddenly got the gist.

'You would give her up to me?'

'Absolutely.'

'But, Wooster, this is noble. I'm sorry I said you were a
louse.'

'Quite all right. Sort of mistake anyone might make.'

'You remind me of Cyrano de Bergerac.'

'One has one's code.'

He had been all smiles – or pretty nearly all smiles – up to
this point, but now melancholy marked him for her own again.
He heaved a sigh, as if he had found a dead mouse at the
bottom of his tankard.

'It would be useless for you to make this sacrifice, Wooster.
Vanessa would never marry me.'

'Of course she would.'

'You weren't there when she broke the engagement.'

'My representative was. At least he was listening at the
door.'

'Then you know the general run of the thing.'

'He gave me a full report.'

'And you say she still loves me?'

'Like a ton of bricks. Love cannot be extinguished by a potty
little lovers' quarrel.'

'Potty little lovers' quarrel my left eyeball. She called me a
lily-livered poltroon. And a sleekit timorous cowering beastie.
One wonders where she picks up such expressions. And all
because I refused to go to old Cook and demand my money.
I'd been to him once and asked him in the most civil manner
to cough up, and she wanted me to go again and this time to
thump the table and generally throw my weight about.'

'You should, Orlo. That's just what you ought to do. What
happened last time?'

'He flatly refused.'

'How flatly?'

'Very flatly. And it would be the same if I went again.'

He had given me the cue I wanted. I had been wondering
how best to introduce what I had in mind. I smiled one of my
subtle smiles, and he asked me what I was grinning about.

'Not if you select your time properly,' I said. 'What time was
it you made your other try?'

'About five in the afternoon.'

'As I suspected. No wonder he gave you the bum's rush.
Five in the afternoon is when a man's sunny disposition is
down in the lowest brackets. Lunch wore off hours ago, and
cocktails are not yet in sight. He isn't in the mood to oblige
anyone about anything. Cook may be a hard-boiled egg, but
dinner softens the hardest. Approach him when he is full to
the brim, and you'll be surprised. Fellows at the Drones have
told me that, applying after he had tucked into the evening
meal, they have got substantial loans out of Oofy Prosser.'

'Who is Oofy Prosser?'

'The club millionaire, a man who by daylight watches his
disbursement like a hawk. Cook is probably just the same.

Tails up, Porter. Get cracking. Be bloody, bold and resolute,'
I said, remembering a gag from that play
Macbeth,
which I was
mentioning some while back.

He was impressed, as who would not have been. His face lit
up as if someone had pressed a button.

'Wooster,' he said, 'you're right. You have shown me the
way. You have made my path straight. Thank you, Wooster,
old man.'

'Not at all, Porter, old chap.'

'It's an extraordinary thing; anyone looking at you would
write you off as a brainless nincompoop with about as much
intelligence as a dead rabbit.'

'Thank you, Porter, old chap.'

'Not at all, Wooster, old man. Whereas all the time you
have this amazing insight into human psychology.'

'I have hidden depths, would you say?'

'You bet you have, Wooster, old horse.'

And in another jiffy he was pressing a gin and ginger on me
as if we had been bosom pals for years and the subject of my insides had never
come up between us.

Returning to Wee Nooke some twenty minutes later after
what had practically amounted to a love-feast, I had that jolly
feeling you don't often get nowadays that God was in his
Heaven and all right with the world, as the fellow said. I
counted my blessings one by one and found the sum total most
satisfactory. All was quiet on the Porter front, Billy Graham
was even now returning the cat to its little circle at Eggesford
Court, Porter and Vanessa Cook would soon be sweethearts
again, and if my popularity with Pop Cook was at a low ebb,
rendering unlikely any chance of a present from him next
Christmas, that was a small flaw in the ointment. Or is it fly?
I never can remember. Everything, in short, was just like
Mother makes it, and it was a blithe B. Wooster who, hearing
the telephone tootle, went to answer it with, as you might say,
a song on his lips.

It was the aged relative, and the dullest ear could have
spotted that she was in something of a doodah. For some
moments after we had established connection she confined
herself to gasps and gurgles such as might have proceeded
from some strong swimmer in his agony.

'Hullo,' I said. 'Is something up?'

In the course of this narrative I have had occasion to
mention several hacking laughs, but for sheer rasp and
explosiveness the one the old ancestor emitted at these words
topped the lot.

'Something up?' she boomed. 'You would say a thing like
that when I'm nearly off my rocker. Has that cat been returned
to store yet?'

'Billy Graham is in full control.'

'You mean he hasn't started yet?'

'Yes, and come back. But unfortunately the cat followed
him. So he says. Anyway, he arrived here with it in close
attendance, and he has now taken it off again. He's probably
decanting the animal at this moment. But why the agitation?'

'I'll tell you why the agitation. If that cat is not back where
it belongs immediately, if not sooner, ruin stares me in the
eyeball and Tom is in for the worst attack of indigestion he has
had since the time he ate all that lobster at his club. And only
myself to blame.'

'Did you say you were to blame?'

'Yes. Why?'

'I only wondered if I had heard you correctly.'

I have become so accustomed to being blamed for
everything that goes wrong that her words had touched me
deeply. You don't often find an aunt taking the rap when she
has a nephew at her disposal to shove the thing on to. It is
pretty universally agreed that that is what nephews are for. My
voice shook a bit as I applied for further details.

'What seems to be the trouble?' I asked.

Aunts as a class are seldom good listeners. She did not
answer the question, but embarked on what sounded as if it
was going to be a lecture on conditions in her native land.

'I'll tell you what's wrong with the England of today, Bertie.
There are too many people around with scruples and high
principles and all that sort of guff. You can't do the simplest
thing without somebody jumping on the back of your neck
because you've offended against his blasted code of ethics.
You'd think a man like Jimmy Briscoe would be broadminded,
but no. He couldn't have been more puff-faced if he'd been the
Archbishop of Canterbury. You probably put the blame on his
brother the vicar, but I don't agree. I can excuse him because
it's his job to be finicky about things. But Jimmy! He made me
feel as if I'd shot a fox or something. And it wasn't as if I was
getting anything out of it. It was a pure act of kindness because
I could see he had the interests of the organ at heart and was
really worried about it. Dammit, St Francis of Assisi would
have done the same and everybody would have said what a
splendid chap he was and what a pity there weren't more like
him, whereas the way Jimmy went on . . .'

I could see that if not checked with a firm hand this would
continue for a goodish time.

'I'm sorry if I seem slow in the uptake, aged r.,' I said, 'but,
if so, put it down to the fact that you appear to me to be
delirious. Your words are like the crackling of thorns under the
pot, as the fellow said. What on earth do you think you're
talking about?'

'Haven't you been listening?'

'I have been listening, yes, but without coming within a mile
and a quarter of getting the gist.'

'Oh, heavens, I might have known I would have to tell you
in words of one syllable. Here's what's happened in simple
language which even you can understand. I happened to be
talking to the vicar, and he told me what a weight on his mind
the church organ was, it being at its last gasp and no money to
pay the vet., because he'd already touched Jimmy for quite a bit
to mend the church roof, and if he tried to bite his ear again so
soon after that, there would, he said, be hell to pay. So what
the devil to do, he said, he didn't know.

'Well, you know me, Bertie. Being a woman with a heart
like butter and always anxious to spread a little happiness as I
pass by, I told him that if he wanted a bit of easy money, to put
his shirt on Jimmy's Simla for the big race. And I told him
about the cat, just to make it quite clear to him that he would
be betting on a sure thing.'

'But –'

'Put a sock in it and listen. Can't you stop talking for half a
second? I know what you were going to say – that you were
returning the cat. But this was before you told me. So I went
ahead, fearing nothing, just thinking of the happiness I was
bringing into his life. I ought to have known that a clergyman
was bound to have scruples, but it didn't occur to me at the
time and to cut a long story short he went to Jimmy and spilled
the beans, and Jimmy blew his top. "Take that cat back where
it belongs," he said, and a lot of stuff about being shocked and
horrified. Which wouldn't have mattered if he had confined
himself to telling me what he thought of me, but he didn't. He
said that if that cat wasn't back at Cook's within the hour he
would scratch Simla's nomination. Yessir, he said Simla would
not be among those present at the starting post, which meant
that bang would go the vast sum I had put on his nose.'

'But –'

'Yes, I know you had told me you were sending the cat back,
but how was I to be sure that, on thinking it over and realizing
what a good thing you would be passing up, you hadn't
changed your mind?'

I could see what she meant. A nephew with a lust for gold
and lacking the Wooster play-the-game spirit might quite well
have done as she said. No wonder she had been all of a doodah.
It was a pleasure to set her mind at rest.

'It's quite all right, old ancestor,' I said. 'Billy Graham is
already en route for the Cookeries, and ought to have got there
by now.'

'Complete with cat?'

'To the last drop.'

'Not to worry?'

'Not as far as Simla getting scratched is concerned.'

'Well, that's a weight off my mind, though it's disappointing
to feel that my bit of stuff isn't on a cert.'

'Teach you not to nobble horses.'

'Yes, there's that, I suppose.'

Some further talk followed, for an aunt who has got hold of
a telephone receiver does not lightly relinquish it, but
eventually she rang off, and I picked up
Daffodil Days
and gave
it a casual glance.

Its contents proved even less fit for human consumption
than I had expected. I turned away with rising nausea, and was
thus enabled to get a good view of Herbert Graham, who was
coming in from the kitchen.

The suddenness of his appearance, coupled with the fact
that I had supposed him to be up at Eggesford Court, had
made me bite my tongue, but in my concern I ignored the
anguish.

'Good Lord!' I ejaculated, if that's the word.

'Sir?'

'Haven't you gone yet? You should have been there and back
by this time.'

'Very true, sir, but something occurred which prevented me
making the immediate start which I had intended.'