Aunts Aren't Gentlemen: Page 7

  'You gathered right. Ever hear of Captain Bligh of the Bounty?'

  'Yes, sir. I read the book.'

  'I saw the movie. Ever hear of Jack the Ripper?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'Put them together and what have you got? Cook. It's that hunting crop of his chiefly. You can face a man with fortitude if he has simply got the disposition of a dyspeptic rattlesnake and confines himself to coarse abuse, but put a hunting crop in his hand and that spells trouble. It was a miracle that I escaped from Eggesford Court with my trouser seat unscathed. But go on, Jeeves. What happened then?'

  'May I marshal my thoughts, sir?'

  'Certainly. Marshal them all you want.'

  'Thank you, sir. One aims at coherence.'

  Marshalling his thoughts took between twenty and thirty seconds. At the end of that period he resumed his blow-by- blow report of the dust-up between Vanessa Cook and O. J. Porter, which was beginning to look like the biggest thing that had happened since Gene Tunney and Jack Dempsey had their dispute at Chicago.

  'It was almost immediately after Mr Porter's refusal to go to Mr Cook and thump tables that Miss Cook introduced the cat into the conversation.'

  'Cat? What cat?'

  'The one you met at Eggesford Court, with which the horse Potato Chip formed such a durable friendship. Miss Cook was urging Mr Porter to purloin it.'

  'Golly!'

  'Yes, sir. The female of the species is more deadly than the male.'

  Neatly put, I thought.

  'Your own?' I said.

  'No, sir. A quotation.'

  'Well, carry on,' I said, thinking what a lot of good things Shakespeare had said in his time. Female of species deadlier than male. You had only to think of my Aunt Agatha and spouse to realize the truth of this. 'I get the idea, Jeeves. Porter, in possession of the cat, would have a bargaining point with Cook when it came to discussing trust funds.'

  'Precisely, sir. Rem acu tetigisti.'

  'So I take it that he is now at Eggesford Court putting the bite on old Captain Bligh.'

  'No, sir. His refusal to do as Miss Cook asked was unequivocal. "Not in a million years" was the expression he used.'

  'Not a very co-operative bloke, this O. J. Porter.'

  'No, sir.'

  'A bit like Balaam's ass,' I said, referring to one of the dramatis personae who had figured in the examination paper the time I won the Scripture Knowledge prize at my private school. 'If you recall, it too dug in its feet and refused to play ball.'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'That must have made Miss Cook as sore as a sunburned neck.'

  'I did gather from her remarks that she was displeased. She accused Mr Porter of being a lily-livered poltroon, and said that she never wished to speak to him again or hear from him by letter, telegram or carrier pigeon.'

  'Pretty final.'

  'Yes, sir.'

  I didn't actually heave a sigh, but I sort of half-heaved one.

  To a man of sensibility there is always something sort of sad about young love coming a stinker on the rocks. Myself, I couldn't imagine anyone wanting to marry Orlo Porter and it would have jarred me to the soles of my socks if I had had to marry Vanessa Cook, but they had unquestionably been all for teaming up, and it seemed a shame that harsh words had come between them and the altar rails.

  However, there was this to be said in favour of the rift, that it would do Vanessa all the good in the world to find that she had come up against someone she couldn't say 'Go' to and he goeth, as the fellow said. I mentioned this to Jeeves, and he agreed that there was that aspect to the matter.

  'Show her that she isn't Cleopatra or somebody.'

  'Very true, sir.'

  I would gladly have continued our conversation, but I knew he must be wanting to get back to his Spinoza. No doubt I had interrupted him just as Spinoza was on the point of solving the mystery of the headless body on the library floor.

  'Right-ho, Jeeves,' I said. 'That'll be all for the moment.'

  'Thank you, sir.'

  'If any solution of that "Has he brought it yet?" thing occurs to you, send me an inter-office memo.'

  I spoke lightly, but I wasn't feeling so dashed light. Those cryptic words of Angelica Briscoe had shaken me. They seemed to suggest that things were going on behind my back which weren't likely to dome any good. I had suffered so much in the past from girls of Angelica's age starting something – Stiffy Byng is a name that springs to the mind – that I have become wary and suspicious, like a fox that had had the Pytchley after it for years.

  By speaking in riddles, as the expression is, A. Briscoe had given me a mystery to chew on; and while mysteries are fine in books – I am never happier than when curled up with the latest Agatha Christie – you don't want them in your private life, for that's how you get headaches.

  I was beginning to get one now, when my mind was taken off the throbbing which had started. The front door was open, and through it came Vanessa Cook.

  She bore traces of the recent set-to. The cheeks were flushed, the eyes glittering, and looking at the teeth one was left in no doubt that they had been well gnashed in the not too distant past. Her whole demeanour was that of a girl whose emotional nature had been stirred up as if a cyclone had hit it.

  'Bertie,' she said.

  'Hullo?' I said.

  'Bertie,' she said, 'I will be your wife.'

  CHAPTER TEN

  You would have expected this to have drawn some comment from me such as 'Oh, my God!' or 'You'll be my What ?', but I remained sotto voce and the silent tomb, my eyes bulging like those of the fellows I've heard Jeeves mention, who looked at each other with a wild surmise, silent upon a peak in Darien.

  The thing had come on me as such a complete surprise. Her rejection of my addresses at the time when I proposed to her had been so definite that it had seemed to me that all danger from that quarter had passed and that from now on we wouldn't even be just good friends. Certainly she had given no indication that she would not prefer to be dead in a ditch rather than married to me. And now this. Is any man safe, one asked oneself. No wonder words failed me, as the expression is.

  She, on the other hand, became chatty. Getting the thing off her chest seemed to have done her good. The glitter of her eyes was practically switched off, and she was not clenching her teeth any more. I don't say that even now I would have cared to meet her down a dark alley, but there was a distinct general improvement.

  'We shall have quite a quiet wedding,' she said. 'Just a few people I know in London. And it may have to be even quieter than that. It all depends on Father. Your standing with him is roughly what that of a Public Enemy Number One would be at the annual Policeman's Ball. What you did to him I don't know, but I have never seen him a brighter mauve than when your name came up at the luncheon table. If he persists in this attitude, we shall have to elope. That will be perfectly all right with me. I suppose many people would say I was being rash, but I am prepared to take the chance. I know very little of you, true, but anyone the mention of whose name can make Father swallow his lunch the wrong way cannot be wholly bad.'

  At last managing to free my tongue from the uvula with which it had become entangled, I found speech, as I dare say those Darien fellows did eventually.

  'But I don't understand!'

  'What don't you understand?'

  'I thought you were going to marry Orlo Porter.'

  She uttered a sound rather like an elephant taking its foot out of a mud hole in a Burmese teak forest. The name appeared to have touched an exposed nerve.

  'You did, did you? You were mistaken. Would any girl with an ounce of sense marry a man who refuses to do the least little thing she asks him because he is afraid of her father? I shall always be glad to see Orlo Porter fall downstairs and break his neck. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to read his name in The Times obituary column. But marry him? What an idea! No, I am quite content with you, Bertie. By the way, I do dislike that name Bertie. I think I shall call
you Harold. Yes, I am perfectly satisfied with you. You have many faults, of course. I shall be pointing some of them out when I am at leisure. For one thing,' she said, not waiting till she was at leisure, 'you smoke too much. You must give that up when we are married. Smoking is just a habit. Tolstoy,' she said, mentioning someone I had not met, 'says that just as much pleasure can be got from twirling the fingers.'

  My impulse was to tell her Tolstoy was off his onion, but I choked down the heated words. For all I knew, the man might be a bosom pal of hers and she might resent criticism of him, however justified. And one knew what happened to people, policemen for instance, whose criticism she resented.

  'And that silly laugh of yours, you must correct that. If you are amused, a quiet smile is ample. Lord Chesterfield said that since he had had the full use of his reason nobody had ever heard him laugh. I don't suppose you have read Lord Chesterfield's Letters To His Son?'

  . . .Well, of course I hadn't. Bertram Wooster does not read other people's letters. If I were employed in the post office, I wouldn't even read the postcards.

  'I will draft out a whole course of reading for you.'

  She would probably have gone on to name a few of the authors she had in mind, but at this moment Angelica Briscoe came bursting in.

  'Has he brought it yet?' she yipped.

  Then she saw Vanessa, added the word 'Golly', and disappeared like an eel into mud. Vanessa followed her with an indulgent eye.

  'Eccentric child,' she said.

  I agreed that Angelica Briscoe moved in a mysterious way her wonders to perform, and shortly after Vanessa went off, leaving me to totter to a chair and bury my face in my hands.

  I was doing this, and very natural, too, considering that I had just become engaged to a girl who was going to try to make me stop smoking, when from outside the front door there came the unmistakable sound of an aunt tripping over a door mat. The next moment, my late father's sister Dahlia staggered in, pirouetted awhile, cursed a bit, recovered her equilibrium and said:

  'Has he brought it yet?'

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I am not, I think, an irascible man, particularly in my dealings with the gentler sex, but when every ruddy female you meet bellows 'Has he brought it yet?' at you, it does something to your aplomb. I gave her a look which I suppose no nephew should have given an aunt, and it was with no little asperity that I said:

  'If some of you girls would stop talking as if you were characters in By Order Of The Czar, the world would be a better place. Brought what?'

  'The cat, of course, you poor dumb-bell,' she responded in the breezy manner which had made her the popular toast of both the Quorn and the Pytchley fox-hunting organizations. 'Cook's cat. I'm kidnapping it. Or, rather, my agent is acting for me. I told him to bring it here.'

  I was reft, as they say, of speech. If there is one thing that affects a nephew's vocal cords, it is the discovery that a loved aunt is all foggy about the difference between right and wrong. Experience over the years ought to have taught me that where this aunt was concerned anything went and the sky was the limit, but nevertheless I was . . . I know there's a word that just describes it . . . Ah, yes, I thought I'd get it . . . I was dumbfounded.

  Well, of course, what every woman wants when she has a tale to tell is a dumbfounded audience, and it did not surprise me when she took advantage of my silence to carry on. Naturally aware that her goings-on required a bit of explanation, she made quite a production number of it. I won't say that she omitted no detail however slight, but she certainly didn't condense. She started off at ?? m.p.h. thus:

  'I must begin by making clear to the meanest intelligence – yours, to take an instance at random– how extremely sticky my position was on coming to stay with the Briscoes. Jimmy, when inviting me to Eggesford Hall, had written in the most enthusiastic terms of his horse Simla's chances in the forthcoming race. He said he was a snip and putting a large bet on him would be like finding money in the street. And I, poor weak woman, allowed myself to be persuaded. I wagered everything I possessed, down to my more intimate garments. It was only after I got here and canvassed local opinion that I realized that Simla was not a snip or anything like a snip. Cook's Potato Chip was just as fast and had just as much staying power. In fact, the thing would probably end in a dead-heat unless, get this, Bertie, unless one of the two animals blew up in its training. And then you came along with your special information about Potato Chip not being able to keep his mind on the race without this cat there to egg him on, and a bright light shone on me. "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings!" I said to myself. "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings!" '

  I could have wished that she had phrased it differently, but there was no chance of telling her so. When the aged relative collars the conversation, she collars it.

  'I was saying,' she proceeded, 'that I wagered on Simla everything I possessed. Correction. Change that to considerably more than I possessed. If I lost, it would mean touching Tom for a goodish bit before I could brass up, and you know how parting with money always gives him indigestion. You can picture my state of mind. If it hadn't been for Angelica Briscoe, I think I would have had a nervous breakdown. There were moments when only my iron will kept me from shooting up to the ceiling, shrieking like a banshee. The suspense was so terrific.'

  I was still dumbfounded, but I managed to say 'Angelica Briscoe?', at a loss to see where she got into the act, and the speaker spoke on.

  'Don't tell me you've forgotten her. I would have thought by this time you would have asked her to marry you, which seems to be your normal practice five minutes after you've met any girl who isn't actually repulsive. But I suppose you couldn't see straight after all that port. Angelica, daughter of the Rev. Briscoe. I had a long talk with her after you had left, and I found that she, too, had betted heavily on Simla and was wondering how she could pay up if he lost. I told her about the cat and she was enthusiastically in favour of stealing it, and she solved the problem which had been bothering me, the question of how it could be done. You see, it's not a job that's up everybody's street. Mine, for instance. You have to be like one of those Red Indians I used to read about in Fenimore Cooper's books when I was a child, the fellows who never let a twig snap beneath their feet, and I'm not built for that.'

  There was justice in this. I believe the old relative was sylphlike in her youth, but the years have brought with them a certain solidity, and any twig trodden on by her in the evening of her life would go off like the explosion of a gas main.

  'But Angelica pointed the way. There's a girl, that Angelica. Only a clergyman's daughter, but with all the executive qualities of a great statesman. She didn't hesitate a moment. Her face lighting up and her eyes sparkling. She said:

  '"This is a job for Billy Graham."'

  I could not follow her here. The name was familiar to me, but I never associated it with proficiency in the art of removing cats from Spot A to Spot B, especially cats belonging to someone else. Indeed, I should have thought that that was the sort of activity Mr Graham would rather have frowned on, being in his particular line of business.

  I mentioned this to the old ancestor, and she told me I had fallen into a natural error.

  'His real name is Herbert Graham, but everyone calls him Billy.'

  'Why?'

  'Rustic humour. There's a lot of that around here. He's the king of the local poachers, and you don't find any twigs snapping beneath his feet. All the gamekeepers for miles around have been trying for years to catch him with the goods, but they haven't a hope. It is estimated that seventy-six point eight per cent of the beer sold in the Goose and Grasshopper is bought by haggard gamekeepers trying to drown their sorrows after being baffled by Billy. I have this on the authority of Angelica, who is a great buddy of his. She told him about our anxiety, and he said he would attend to the matter immediately. He is particularly well situated to carry out operations at the Court, as his niece Marlene is the scullery maid there, so it arouses no suspicio
n if he is caught hanging around. He can always say he has come to see if she's getting on all right. Really, the whole thing has worked out so smoothly that one feels one is being watched over by Providence.'

  I went on being appalled. Her scheme of engaging the services of a hired bravo who would probably blackmail her for the rest of her life shook me to the core. As for Angelica Briscoe, one asked oneself what clergymen's daughters were coming to.

  I tried to reason with her.

  'You can't do this, old blood relation. It's as bad as nobbling a horse.'

  If you think that caused the blush of shame to mantle her cheek, you don't know much about aunts.

  'Well, isn't nobbling a horse an ordinary business precaution everyone would take if only they could manage it?' she riposted.

  The Woosters never give up. I tried again.

  'How about the purity of the turf ?'

  'No good to me. I like my turf impure. More genuine excitement.'

  'What would the Quorn say of this? Or, for the matter of that, the Pytchley?'

  'They would send me a telegram wishing me luck. You don't understand these small country meetings. It's not like Epsom or Ascot. A little finesse from time to time is taken for granted. It's expected of you. A couple of years ago Jimmy had a horse called Poonah running at Bridmouth, and a minion of Cook's got hold of the jockey on the eve of the race, lured him into the Goose and Grasshopper and filled him up with strong drink, sending him to the starting post next day with such a hangover that all he wanted to do was sit down and cry. He came in fifth, sobbing bitterly, and went to sleep before he was out of the saddle. Of course Jimmy guessed what had happened, but nothing was ever said about it. No hard feelings on either side. It wasn't till Jimmy fined Cook for moving pigs without a permit that relations became strained.'

  I put another point, a shrewd one.

  'What happens if this fellow of yours does get caught? His first move will be to give you away, blackening your reputation in Maiden Eggesford beyond repair.'

  'He's never caught. He's the local Scarlet Pimpernel. And nothing could blacken my reputation in Maiden Eggesford. I'm much too much the popular pet ever since I sang "Every Nice Girl Loves A Sailor" at the village concert last year. I had them rolling in the aisles. Three encores, and so many bows that I got a crick in the back.'