The Mating Season Page 9

  ‘Oh? Well, it’s a . . . How shall I put it? . . . It’s what is known as a cross-talk act. The principals are a couple of Irishmen named Pat and Mike, and they come on and . . . But I have the script here,’ I said, producing it. ‘If you glance through it, you’ll get the idea.’

  He took the script and studied it with a sullen frown. Watching him, I realized what a ghastly job it must be writing plays. I mean, having to hand over your little effort to a hardfaced manager and stand shuffling your feet while he glares at it as if it hurt him in a tender spot, preparatory to pushing it back at you with a curt ‘It stinks’.

  ‘Who wrote this?’ asked Gussie, as he turned the final page, and when I told him that Catsmeat was the author he said he might have guessed it. Throughout his perusal, he had been snorting at intervals, and he snorted again, a good bit louder, as if he were amalgamating about six snorts into one snort.

  ‘The thing is absolute drivel. It has no dramatic coherence. It lacks motivation and significant form. Who are these two men supposed to be?’

  ‘I told you. A couple of Irishmen named Pat and Mike.’

  ‘Well, perhaps you can explain what their social position is, for it is frankly beyond me. Pat, for instance, appears to move in the very highest circles, for he describes himself as dining at Buckingham Palace, and yet his wife takes in lodgers.’

  ‘I see what you mean. Odd.’

  ‘Inexplicable. Is it credible that a man of his class would be invited to dinner at Buckingham Palace, especially as he is apparently completely without social savoir-faire? At this dinner-party to which he alludes he relates how the Queen asked him if he would like some mulligatawny and he, thinking that there was nothing else coming, had six helpings, with the result that, to quote his words, he spent the rest of the evening sitting in a corner full of soup. And in describing the incident he prefaces his remarks at several points with the expressions “Begorrah” and “faith and begob”. Irishmen don’t talk like that. Have you ever read Synge’s Riders to the Sea? Well, get hold of it and study it, and if you can show me a single character in it who says “Faith and begob”, I’ll give you a shilling. Irishmen are poets. They talk about their souls and mist and so on. They say things like “An evening like this, it makes me wish I was back in County Clare, watchin’ the cows in the tall grass”.’

  He turned the pages frowningly, his nose wrinkled as if it had detected some unpleasant smell. It brought back to me the old days at Malvern House, Bramley-on-Sea, when I used to take my English essay to be blue-pencilled by the Rev. Aubrey Upjohn.

  ‘Here’s another bit of incoherent raving. “My sister’s in the ballet.” ‘You say your sister’s in the ballet?” “Yes, begorrah, my sister’s in the ballet.” “What does your sister do in the ballet?” “She comes rushing in, and then she goes rushing out.” “What does she have to rush like that for?” “Faith and begob, because it’s a Rushin’ ballet.” It simply doesn’t make sense. And now we come to something else that is quite beyond me, the word “bus”. After the line “Because it’s a Rushin’ ballet” and in other places throughout the script the word “bus” in brackets occurs. It conveys nothing to me. Can you explain it?’

  ‘It’s short for “business”. That’s where you hit Mike with your umbrella. To show the audience that there has been a joke.’

  Gussie started.

  Are these things jokes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I see. I see. Well, of course, that throws a different light on . . .’ He paused, and eyed me narrowly. ‘Did you say that I am supposed to strike my colleague with an umbrella?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And if I understood Pirbright correctly, the other performer in this extraordinary production is the local policeman?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘The whole thing is impossible and utterly out of the question,’ said Gussie vehemently. ‘Have you any idea what happens when you hit a policeman with an umbrella? I did so on emerging from the fountain in Trafalgar Square, and I certainly do not intend to do it again.’ A sort of grey horror came into his face, as if he had been taking a quick look into a past which he had hoped to forget. ‘Well, let me put you quite straight, Wooster, as to what my stand is in this matter. I shall not say “Begorrah”. I shall not say “Faith and begob”. I shall not assault policemen with an umbrella. In short, I absolutely and positively refuse to have the slightest association with this degraded buffoonery. Wait till I meet Miss Pirbright. I’ll tell her a thing or two. I’ll show her she can’t play fast and loose with human dignity like this.’

  He was about to speak further, but at this point his voice died away in a sort of gurgle and I saw his eyes bulge. Glancing around, I perceived Corky approaching. She was accompanied by Sam Goldwyn and was looking, as is her wont, like a million dollars, gowned in some clinging material which accentuated rather than hid her graceful outlines, if you know what I mean.

  I was delighted to see her. With Gussie in this non-cooperative mood, digging his feet in and refusing to play ball, like Balaam’s ass, it seemed to me that precisely what was needed was the woman’s touch. To decide to introduce them and leave her to take on the job of melting his iron front was with me the work of a moment.

  I had high hopes that she would be able to swing the deal. Though differing from my Aunt Agatha in almost every possible respect, Corky has this in common with that outstanding scourge: she is authoritative. When she wants you to do a thing, you find yourself doing it. This has been so from her earliest years. I remember her on one occasion at our mutual dancing class handing me an antique orange, a blue and yellow mass of pips and mildew, and bidding me bung it at our instructress, who had incurred her displeasure for some reason which has escaped my recollection. And I did it without a murmur, though knowing full well how bitter the reckoning would be.

  ‘Hoy!’ I said, eluding the cheesehound’s attempts to place his front paws on my shoulders and strop his tongue on my face. I jerked a thumb. ‘Gussie,’ I said.

  Corky’s face lit up in a tickled-to-death manner. She proceeded immediately to turn on the charm.

  ‘Oh, is this Mr Fink-Nottle? How do you do, Mr Fink-Nottle? I am so glad to see you, Mr Fink-Nottle. How lucky meeting you. I wanted to talk to you about the act.’

  ‘We’ve just been having a word or two on that subject,’ I said, ‘and Gussie’s kicking a bit at playing Pat.’

  ‘Oh, no?’

  ‘I thought you might like to reason with him. I’ll leave you to it,’ I said and biffed off. Looking around as I turned the corner, I saw that she had attached herself with one slim hand to the lapel of Gussie’s coat and with the other was making wide, appealing gestures, indicating to the most vapid and irreflective observer that she was giving him Treatment A.

  Well pleased, I made my way back to the Hall, keeping an eye skinned for prowling aunts, and won through without disaster to my room. I was enjoying a thoughtful smoke there about half an hour later when Gussie came in, and I could see right away that this was not the morose, sullen Fink-Nottle who had so uncompromisingly panned the daylights out of Pat and Mike in the course of our recent get-together. His bearing was buoyant. His face glowed. He was wearing in his buttonhole a flower which had not been there before.

  ‘Hallo there, Bertie,’ he said. ‘I say, Bertie, why didn’t you tell me that Miss Pirbright was Cora Starr, the film actress? I have long been one of her warmest admirers. What a delightful girl she is, is she not, and how unlike her brother, whom I consider and always shall consider England’s leading louse. She has made me see this cross-talk act in an entirely new light.’

  ‘I thought she might.’

  ‘It’s extraordinary that a girl as pretty as that should also have a razor-keen intelligence and that amazing way of putting her arguments with a crystal clarity which convinces you in an instant that she is right in every respect.’

  ‘Yes, Corky’s a persuasive young gumboil.’

  ‘I wou
ld prefer that you did not speak of her as a gumboil. Corky, eh? That’s what you call her, is it? A charming name.’

  ‘What was the outcome of your conference? Are you going to do the act?’

  ‘Oh, yes, it’s all settled. She overcame my objections entirely. We ran through the script after you had left us, and she quite brought me round to her view that there is nothing in the least degrading in this simple, wholesome form of humour. Hokum, yes, but, as she pointed out, good theatre. She is convinced that I shall go over big.’

  ‘You’ll knock ‘em cold. I’m sorry I can’t play Pat myself –’

  ‘A good thing, probably. I doubt if you are the type.’

  ‘Of course I’m the type,’ I retorted hotly. ‘I should have given a sensational performance.’

  ‘Corky thinks not. She was telling me how thankful she was that you had stepped out and I had taken over. She said the part wants broad, robust treatment and you would have played it too far down. It’s a part that calls for personality and the most precise timing, and she said that the moment she saw me she felt that here was the ideal Pat. Girls with her experience can tell in a second.’

  I gave it up. You can’t reason with hams, and twenty minutes of Corky’s society seemed to have turned Augustus Fink-Nottle from a blameless newt-fancier into as pronounced a ham as ever drank small ports in Bodegas and called people ‘laddie’. In another half jiffy, I felt, he would be addressing me as ‘laddie’.

  ‘Well, it’s no use talking about it,’ I said, ‘because I could never have taken the thing on. Madeline wouldn’t have approved of her affianced appearing in public in a green beard.’

  ‘No, she’s an odd girl.’

  It seemed to me that I might wipe that silly smile off his face by reminding him of something he appeared to have forgotten.

  And how about Dobbs?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘When last heard from, you were a bit agitated at the prospect of having to slosh Police Constable Dobbs with your umbrella.’

  ‘Oh, Dobbs? He’s out. He’s been given his notice. He came along when we were rehearsing and started to read Mike’s lines, but he was hopeless. No technique. No personality. And he wouldn’t take direction. Kept arguing every point with the management, until finally Corky got heated and began raising her voice, and he got heated and began raising his voice, and the upshot was that that dog of hers, excited no doubt by the uproar, bit him in the leg.’

  ‘Good Lord!’

  ‘Yes, it created an unpleasant atmosphere. Corky put the animal’s case extremely well, pointing out that it had probably been pushed around by policemen since it was a slip of a puppy and so was merely fulfilling a legitimate aspiration if it took an occasional nip at one, but Dobbs refused to accept her view that the offence was one calling for a mere reprimand. He took the creature into custody and is keeping it at the police station until he has been able to ascertain whether this was its first bite. Apparently a dog that has had only one bite is in a strong position legally’

  ‘Sam Goldwyn bit Silversmith last night.’

  ‘Did he? Well, if that comes out, I’m afraid counsel for the prosecution will have a talking-point. But, to go on with my story, Corky, incensed, and quite rightly, by Dobbs’s intransigent attitude, threw him out of the act and is getting her brother to play the part. There is the risk, of course, that the vicar will recognize him, which would lead to an unfortunate situation, but she thinks the green beard will form a sufficient disguise. I am looking forward to having Pirbright as a partner. I can think of few men whom it would give me more genuine pleasure to hit with an umbrella,’ said Gussie broodingly, adding that the first time his weapon connected with Catsmeat’s head, the latter would think he had been struck by a thunderbolt. It was plain that Time, the great healer, would have to put in a lot of solid work before he forgot and forgave.

  ‘But I can’t stay here talking,’ he went on. ‘Corky has asked me to lunch at the Vicarage, and I must be getting along. I just looked in to give you those poems.’

  ‘Those what?’

  ‘Those Christopher Robin poems. Here they are.’

  He handed me a slim volume of verse, and I gave it the perplexed eye.

  ‘What’s this for?’

  ‘You recite them at the concert. The ones marked with a cross. I was to have recited them, Madeline making a great point of it – you know how fond she is of the Christopher Robin poems – but now, of course, we have switched acts. And I don’t mind telling you that I feel extremely relieved. There’s one about the little blighter going hoppity-hoppity-hop which . . . Well, as I say, I feel extremely relieved.’

  The slim volume fell from my nerveless fingers, and I goggled at him.

  ‘But, dash it!’

  ‘It’s no good saying “But, dash it!” Do you think I didn’t say “But, dash it!” when she forced these nauseous productions on me? You’ve got to do them. She insists. The first thing she will want to know is how they went.’

  ‘But the tough eggs at the back of the back row will rush the stage and lynch me.’

  ‘I shouldn’t wonder. Still, you’ve got one consolation.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The thought that all that befalls you is part of the great web, ha, ha, ha,’ said Gussie, and exited smiling.

  And so the first day of my sojourn at Deverill Hall wore to a close, full to the brim of V-shaped depressions and unsettled outlooks.

  CHAPTER 10

  And as the days went by, these unsettled outlooks became more unsettled, those V-shaped depressions even V-er. It was on a Friday that I had clocked in at Deverill Hall. By the morning of Tuesday I could no longer conceal it from myself that I was losing the old pep and that, unless the clouds changed their act and started dishing out at an early date a considerably more substantial slab of silver lining than they were coming across with at the moment, I should soon be definitely down among the wines and spirits.

  It is bad to be trapped in a den of slavering aunts, lashing their tails and glaring at you out of their red eyes. It is unnerving to know that in a couple of days you will be up on a platform in a village hall telling an audience, probably well provided with vegetables, that Christopher Robin goes hoppity-hoppity-hop. It degrades the spirit to have to answer to the name of Augustus, and there are juicier experiences than being in a position where you are constantly asking yourself if an Aunt Agatha or a Madeline Bassett won’t suddenly arrive and subject you to shame and exposure. No argument about that. We can take that, I think, as read.

  But it was not these chunks of the great web that were removing the stiffening from the Wooster upper lip. No, the root of the trouble, the thing that was giving me dizzy spells and night sweats and making me look like the poor bit of human wreckage in the ‘before taking’ pictures in the advertisements of Haddocks’ Headache Hokies, was the sinister behaviour of Gussie Fink-Nottle. Contemplating Gussie, I found my soul darkened by a nameless fear.

  I don’t know if you have ever had your soul darkened by a nameless fear. It’s a most unpleasant feeling. I used to get it when I was one of the resident toads beneath the harrow at Malvern House, Bramley-on-Sea, on hearing the Rev. Aubrey Upjohn conclude a series of announcements with the curt crack that he would like to see Wooster in his study after evening prayers. On the present occasion I had felt it coming on during the conversation with Gussie which I have just related, and in the days that followed it had grown and grown until now I found myself what is known as a prey to the liveliest apprehension.

  I wonder if you spotted anything in the conversation to which I refer? Did it, I mean, strike you as significant and start you saying ‘What ho!’ to yourself ? It didn’t? Then you missed the gist.

  The first day I had had merely a vague suspicion. The second day this suspicion deepened. By nightfall on the third day suspicion had become a certainty. The evidence was all in, and there was no getting round it. Reckless of the fact that there existed at The Larches, Wimbledon Comm
on, a girl to whom he had plighted his troth and who would be madder than a bull-pup entangled in a fly-paper were she to discover that he was moving in on another, Augustus Fink-Nottle had fallen for Corky Pirbright like a ton of bricks.

  You may say ‘Come, come, Bertram, you are imagining things’ or ‘Tush, Wooster, this is but an idle fancy’, but let me tell you that I wasn’t the only one who had noticed it. Five solid aunts had noticed it.

  ‘Well, really,’ Dame Daphne Winkworth had observed bitterly just before lunch, when Silversmith had blown in with the news that Gussie had once again telephoned to say he would be taking pot-luck at the Vicarage. ‘Mr Wooster seems to live in Miss Pirbright’s pocket. He appears to regard Deverill Hall as a hotel which he can drop into or stay away from as he feels inclined.’

  And Aunt Charlotte, when the facts had been relayed to her through her ear-trumpet, for she was wired for sound, had said with a short, quick sniff that she supposed they ought to consider themselves highly honoured that the piefaced young bastard condescended to sleep in the bally place, or words to that effect.

  Nor could one fairly blame them for blinding and stiffing. Nothing sticks the gaff into your chatelaine more than a guest being constantly AWOL, and it was only on the rarest occasions nowadays that Gussie saw fit to put on the nosebag at Deverill Hall. He lunched, tea-ed and dined with Corky. Since that first meeting outside the post office he had seldom left her side. The human poultice, nothing less.

  You can readily understand, then, why there were dark circles beneath my eyes and why I had almost permanently now a fluttering sensation at the pit of the stomach, as if I had recently swallowed far more mice than I could have wished. It only needed a word from Dame Daphne Winkworth to Aunt Agatha to the effect that her nephew Bertram had fallen into the toils of a most undesirable girl – a Hollywood film actress, my dear – I could see her writing it as clearly as if I had been peeping over her shoulder – to bring the old relative racing down to Deverill Hall with her foot in her hand. And then what? Ruin, desolation and despair.