Jeeves and the Wedding Bells

by Sebastian Faulks

  Amelia began to sob. I shuffled about doing a bit of plate-clearing, hoping that some stage business might ease the tension.

  Bicknell responded to his stricken master’s gesture and refilled his glass to the brim.

  Rupert Venables glanced up and down the table with a look that you might, had you not known the circumstances, have taken for satisfaction.

  ‘I’m sorry that the news had to emerge in this way, Sir Henry,’ he said. ‘I had hoped for a chance to speak to you alone before dinner.’

  ‘And what about Georgie?’ said Amelia.

  ‘I’m all right, Ambo,’ said Georgiana in a very small voice.

  At this point I was required on chicken fricassee duty in the kitchen. After a hectic few minutes to and fro, I settled into a steadier rhythm of touring with the broccoli dish – making sure to come in from the left-hand side. I couldn’t help noticing as I did so, the worrying shade of purple that Sir Henry’s face had taken on.

  ‘I wish you and your family the very best good fortune in the future,’ said Rupert Venables, ‘and I trust that in the circumstances …’

  He tailed off as a noise like an exploding water main came from Sir Henry. ‘For heaven’s sake be quiet, you ridiculous young popinjay,’ said the baronet. ‘How dare you come into my house, sir, make up to my niece then discard her in this impudent manner?’

  Rupert Venables looked round the table for support. He smiled, a touch nervously. ‘I think I’ve explained, Sir Henry. Personal matters which it would be indelicate to reveal, have made it impossible for me to—’

  ‘To hell with your personal matters,’ said Sir Henry. ‘Georgiana’s father was my wife’s brother. He was as fine a man as ever drew breath, if somewhat overfond of port. I take my responsibility to his daughter very seriously. As for you, young man … You can pack your bag and leave my house. At once.’

  One might at this point have expected either of the senior Venableses to stick in a word for the fruit of their loins or Lady H to offer a calming ‘there, there’ to her niece. But the next voice to be heard – a warmish baritone – belonged to P. Beeching.

  ‘Sir Henry, might I, with due respect, urge a moment’s calm on us all? The happiness of many is at stake. There is another engagement here that is not, if I may say so, eiusdem generis. And if—’

  ‘Don’t give me that Latin nonsense, Beeching. You’re not in the High Court now. And if you still think you’re going to marry my daughter, you’d better think again pretty smartly.’

  Amelia let out a stricken cry and Georgiana began to sob silently. Lady Hackwood said, ‘Really, Henry!’

  For all I could tell, Dame Judith Puxley might at this moment have put in her two bob’s worth, but all conversation was brought to a sudden end by the sound of the front door bell ringing clangorously in the hall.

  With heavy and suspicious tread, Bicknell left the dining room.

  A cathedral hush came over the company. I stood like a dummy by the sideboard; I could think of no consolation except to tell myself that things could not possibly get worse.

  How wrong I was.

  The double door from the hall swung open and filled with butler.

  Clearing his throat, Bicknell drew himself up to his fullest height and announced to one and all: ‘Lord Etringham.’

  THE WOOSTERS ARE generally acknowledged to be made of stern stuff. We did our bit in the Crusades and, I’m told, were spotted galloping into the French at Agincourt under a steady downpour of arrows. We don’t duck a challenge.

  When the time comes for a strategic withdrawal, however, we withdraw alongside the best of them. I couldn’t see how anything helpful to the happiness of those near or dear to me could emerge in the next few minutes; and just as in the normal day there is a sense of noblesse oblige, so in my position of humble footman I could see no way to be of further service. I therefore exercised the historic right of the worker to down tools and call it a day.

  I was into the kitchen, through the corridor, up the back stairs and inside my simple quarters – pausing only to gather up an unregarded bottle from the dresser – before you could say Burke and Debrett.

  It was a flummoxed, wits-endish Wooster who, an hour later, became conscious of a polite knocking at the door. Wondering only what fresh curses might have been called down on my head, I went to open it.

  Outside stood Mrs Tilman. To my surprise, the good woman was neither sobbing nor distraught; in fact she wore a benign, almost cheerful expression.

  ‘Mr Wooster,’ she said, ‘Sir Henry would like to see you in the library.’

  ‘Mr Woo-Woo-Wooster?’

  ‘You won’t remember me, sir. We met some years ago when I was chief housemaid at Sir Henry Dalgleish’s house in Berkshire. My name is Amy Charlton. I was married to Mr Tilman soon afterwards. He was Sir Henry’s butler.’

  ‘I’d like to say I remember, Mrs Tilman, but the truth is—’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, love. Everything’s been sorted out downstairs. Sir Henry knows who you are and who Mr Jeeves is.’

  ‘But isn’t he furious?’

  ‘Sir Henry is unpredictable, sir. It’s his nature. But he’s a kindly man underneath. He’s become fond of Mr Jeeves. If he takes to someone, he takes to them. His best friend for years was the chauffeur. It broke his heart when he had to let him go.’

  ‘And Lord Etringham? The real one?’

  ‘He’s an elderly gentleman, sir. Very mild-mannered. And he’s interested in history as well as fossils. He and Sir Henry seem to have taken a shine to each other already.’

  This was all rather a turn-up for the book, of course, but I can’t pretend there was much of a spring in the step as I crossed the mighty hall, as bidden, and for the first time entered the library under my own name.

  Assembled in that bookish room were, reading from left to right: G. Meadowes, looking more spry, less like patience on a monument, as I’ve heard Jeeves put it, than she had an hour earlier; R. Jeeves, the valet lately known as Lord Etringham, inscrutable, yet visibly at ease; Sir H. Hackwood, foxy, animated; A. Hackwood, flushed and a-tremble; and a white-haired old cove with horn-rimmed glasses, barely five feet tall, with the fussy air of the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland.

  ‘Ah, Wooster. Glad to meet you properly,’ said Sir Henry, extending the hand of friendship from the cuff of his smoking jacket. ‘May I now introduce Lord Etringham?’

  A second handshake followed. The ensuing explanations rambled over an hour or more, lubricated by the contents of that hospitable ottoman. The salient points, which were few, went as follows.

  Lord Etringham (the bona fide one, not Jeeves) had for some time been treated for aggra-something by the well-known loony doctor, Sir Roderick Glossop. Progress was now so marked that he was proposing to join an expedition to Egypt with Howard Carter the following spring. As part of the limbering up, Sir Roderick encouraged his patient to travel in England – beginning with a trip on foot to the village post office and coming to a peak with a steam-train excursion to the Jurassic Coast of Dorset, some few miles from Melbury Hall. Lord E had planned to visit in August, but decided to come at once when an old friend in Sherborne sent him a copy of the Melbury Courier with a photograph of a cricket team under which the caption revealed that his lordship was being impersonated by a stranger.

  In the course of the peer’s story, Sir Henry established that Lord Etringham had booked into a modest bed and breakfast at Lyme Regis and insisted that he stay on at Melbury Hall, in the corner room that his namesake had previously occupied, using the house as a base for his expeditions. The nervous Lord E was obviously relieved to find himself enveloped in such a welcome rather than take pot luck with a seaside landlady. They had further discovered a shared interest in the Hundred Years War, though Lord Etringham drew the historical line at the Battle of Bosworth – later events, in his view, falling into the ‘modern’ period.

  It was clear to me that not only had Sir Henry turned on the charm he generally ke
pt hidden under a pretty all-obliterating bushel, but that Georgiana had also not been backward in dishing it out. If you had spent the best part of half a century in a draughty Westmorland house with only bits of old rock for company, it must have come as quite something to find yourself caught in the beam of that girl’s twin headlights as she discovered a sudden interest in geology. The old boy was clearly wondering whether the Pleistocene era was quite all it was cracked up to be when the modern day seemed to have so much more to offer.

  ‘So, Wooster, Bobby Etringham and I are friends already,’ Sir Henry concluded. ‘By the way, Bobby, you must feel free to take the car for your fossil-hunting.’

  ‘Most kind of you, Henry, but I have never learned to drive. My condition, you see …’ The old boy’s voice was reedy, and the words hard to distinguish.

  ‘Then Georgiana shall be your chauffeur!’

  ‘With pleasure, Uncle Henry. So long as I’m here.’

  Well of course one couldn’t help but wonder how much excitement the old nerve-patient could take; but I thought it best not to throw a spanner in the works.

  ‘Sure you won’t have a glass of brandy, Bobby?’ said Sir Henry.

  ‘No, I really can’t. Roddy Glossop is absolutely strict on that point. The powders he has diagnosed must never be mixed with alcohol. He said I should fall asleep almost at once.’

  There was the sound of a throat being cleared, and long experience made me glance in Jeeves’s direction.

  ‘Might I suggest, Sir Henry, that we leave you and Lord Etringham together? I’m sure that Mrs Tilman will have reor-ganised the sleeping arrangements by now.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Georgiana. ‘Come on, Ambo.’

  Sensing that wiser heads than mine were on to something, I shuffled off with the gang and left the peer and baronet alone. Jeeves accompanied me to my new quarters at the end of the corridor on the second floor, a small but charming room with a fine view over the lawns towards the tennis court – in so far as one could see past a giant wellingtonia. Mrs Tilman had done a sterling job in restoring all my clothes to chest and wardrobe.

  ‘Well, Jeeves,’ I said. ‘Business as usual, what?’

  ‘So it would appear, sir. I confess that I shall be happy to resume my normal duties. I found myself suffering a degree of indigestion after so many of Mrs Padgett’s meals.’

  ‘And the bed a fraction soft, was it?’

  ‘I have long favoured a firmer mattress as being beneficial to the posture, sir.’

  I glanced round the new arrangements. I felt I should sleep like a lamb.

  ‘Old Etringham’s a very forgiving chap, isn’t he?’ I said.

  ‘A most mild-mannered and agreeable gentleman, sir.’

  ‘A bachelor, is he?’

  ‘Yes, sir. He has no issue.’

  ‘So what happens to the Etringham fortune when he pops off?’

  ‘I did some research at the Junior Ganymede when we were in London and I believe he has favoured a number of educational trusts and charities, sir.’

  A thought struck me. ‘I say, Jeeves, you don’t think Sir Henry has … that he’s planning …’

  ‘I think that in extremis, as he now finds himself, Sir Henry would consider all options. It is conceivable that he sees in Lord Etringham a deus ex machina.’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘Perhaps the phrase “a white knight” would be more readily illuminating, sir.’

  ‘It might. But how would it work out?’

  ‘I should not care to hazard a conjecture, sir. However, I felt it imperative that we leave them alone, the better to get to know one another.’

  ‘Well, miracles do happen, don’t they, even at the eleventh hour? What I want to know first is how on earth I’m to face Lady H and Dame Judith in the morning.’

  ‘Might I suggest breakfast in bed, sir? After that you will be required for rehearsal in the drawing room, where neither lady will be present.’

  ‘And lunch? Perhaps a sandwich and a half-bottle in the sunken garden?’

  ‘Indeed, sir. Following which the ladies will be occupied by the fete. There will then be only the evening’s festivities to negotiate before we can return to London.’

  I heaved a deepish one. As I did so, I noticed Jeeves’s eye on my burgundy dressing gown with the paisley pattern, which was hanging on the door.

  He saw me seeing him, if you catch my drift.

  ‘Go on, Jeeves,’ I said. ‘Keep the thing. It can be a souvenir of a pretty sticky few days.’

  ‘That is most generous of you, sir. It is a splendid garment.’

  The bed turned out to be everything I had foreseen, and the sun was already well up in the heavens when Jeeves came in with the laden breakfast tray. Having missed dinner in all the previous night’s excitement, I set to with a will.

  ‘What’s the latest from Bedlam?’ I said, forking up the last of the kedgeree. ‘I hardly dare ask.’

  ‘There has been an alteration to this evening’s programme, sir.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ I said. And I dare say there was a note of wariness – or even of dread – in my tone.

  ‘Yes, sir. It appears that Sir Henry and Lord Etringham sat up deep into the night. His lordship’s agoraphobia—’

  ‘Yes, I meant to ask, what is this aggra-thing?’

  ‘The word derives from the ancient Greek, sir. It means a morbid fear of the marketplace – or by implication of any open space. It is the opposite of claustrophobia, which is—’

  ‘I know, Jeeves. I’m not a complete ass, you know. Carry on.’

  ‘As I was saying, sir, his lordship’s agoraphobia has responded well to treatment so far, but Sir Roderick Glossop has advised him that a full return of confidence may come only after he has faced down his worst fear – that of appearing and speaking in public.’

  ‘In the marketplace?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Or in this case the village hall. Sir Henry has offered him the part of Bottom in the scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’

  ‘But that’s my part, Jeeves!’

  ‘I assured Sir Henry that you would not begrudge it to Lord Etringham and that such a gesture on your part would make amends for the small deceit you were compelled to practise on our host.’

  I took a thoughtful draught of coffee. ‘That’s as may be, but you seem to be missing the point, Jeeves. The character of Bottom is a robust one. Old Etringham is about as robust as a feather duster. He wouldn’t say boo to a goose even if that goose was served up roast with red cabbage and apple sauce. The standees won’t take kindly to a whispering Bottom. Trust me, Jeeves. I have experience of the parish hall. I know whereof I speak. Remember King’s Deverill. Esmond Haddock brought the house down by enthusiasm and sheer volume. These things matter.’

  ‘I remember it only too well, sir. But the two gentlemen seem set on the plan. I believe Lord Etringham is confident that a dose of the specific prescribed by Sir Roderick, taken an hour beforehand, will calm his nerves sufficiently.’

  I still didn’t think much of the development. We amateur thespians have our defining roles, and this Athenian weaver was mine. A thin-voiced dotard was never going to cut the mustard.

  ‘You seem to know a devil of a lot about what’s going on, Jeeves.’

  ‘After our successes on the Turf, Sir Henry is reluctant to dispense with my advice sir.’

  ‘Sensible chap.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. I took the liberty of pointing out that it might be possible for him to allow a part of Melbury Hall to be used for educational purposes while retaining ownership of the house and grounds.’

  ‘So he wouldn’t have to get rid of the whole boiling.’

  ‘Indeed, sir.’

  ‘But which part?’

  ‘The home farm, sir, and the stable block, being contiguous, form a natural entity. They enjoy their own access to the high street and could be converted to boarding accommodation if necessary.’

  ‘Where would the thoroughbreds go?’
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br />   ‘The horses would have to be sold, sir. This would raise some much-needed cash and would serve the further purpose of reconciling Lady Hackwood to the scheme.’

  I nodded. I’d begun to catch his drift. ‘And then the lads from the London youth clubs, from Walworth and Bethnal Green, come down in a charabanc to get a whiff of country air and learn about fossils at the same time.’

  ‘Indeed, sir, with little or no inconvenience to the household. However, the success of the plan is dependent on Lord Etringham’s performance this evening. He must be made to feel a welcome part of the village and the surrounding districts. I fear nothing less than a standing ovation will do.’

  ‘Presumably you’ll spend the day buying beer for the lads in the Red Lion.’

  ‘Sir Henry has already despatched Hoad to start work on the more obdurate element.’

  ‘Hoad? That’s rather playing with fire, isn’t it?’

  ‘Alas, Sir Henry was unaware of Hoad’s particular weakness. He pressed five pounds into his hand and told him to do his best.’

  ‘Golly,’ I said, not for the first time. ‘And is that all?’

  ‘No, sir, there is one other thing.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Mr Venables was in need of a straight man or feed for his crosstalk act.’

  I passed a hand across the fevered brow. ‘Tell me it’s not so, Jeeves.’

  ‘There was only one player who was unexpectedly available, sir.’

  ‘But what about Woody?’

  ‘No, sir. Mr Beeching is to play Snout the tinker.’

  ‘Well, what about Bicknell?’

  ‘Mr Bicknell would consider it infra dignitatem, sir.’

  ‘I see what you mean. But what about Hoad? It would serve him right. And after all he specialises in funny turns.’

  ‘Most amusing, sir. But Hoad is already cast, as Flute the bellows-mender.’

  ‘Was bellows-mending really a full-time occupation in Athens?’

  ‘I am not in a position to say, sir. I fancy there may be a degree of poetic licence.’