‘The bunch! The lasket!’
‘What, darling?’
‘The luncheon-basket!’
‘What about it, precious?’
‘It’s been left behind!’
‘Oh, has it?’ said Mrs Bingo.
I confess she had never fallen lower in my estimation. I had always known her as a woman with as healthy an appreciation of her meals as any of my acquaintance. A few years previously, when my Aunt Dahlia had stolen her French cook, Anatole, she had called Aunt Dahlia some names in my presence which had impressed me profoundly. Yet now, when informed that she was marooned on a bally prairie without bite or sup, all she could find to say was, ‘Oh, has it?’ I had never fully realised before the extent to which she had allowed herself to be dominated by the deleterious influence of the Pyke.
The Pyke, for her part, touched an even lower level.
‘It is just as well,’ she said, and her voice seemed to cut Bingo like a knife. ‘Luncheon is a meal better omitted. If taken, it should consist merely of a few muscatels, bananas and grated carrots. It is a well-known fact –’
And she went on to speak at some length of the gastric juices in a vein far from suited to any gathering at which gentlemen were present.
‘So, you see, darling,’ said Mrs Bingo, ‘you will really feel ever so much better and brighter for not having eaten a lot of indigestible food. It is much the best thing that could have happened.’
Bingo gave her a long, lingering look.
‘I see,’ he said. ‘Well, if you will excuse me, I’ll just go off somewhere where I can cheer a bit without exciting comment.’
I perceived Jeeves withdrawing in a meaning manner, and I followed him, hoping for the best. My trust was not misplaced. He had brought enough sandwiches for two. In fact, enough for three, I whistled to Bingo, and he came slinking up, and we restored the tissues in a makeshift sort of way behind a hedge. Then Bingo went off to interview bookies about the first race, and Jeeves gave a cough.
‘Swallowed a crumb the wrong way?’ I said.
‘No, sir, I thank you. It is merely that I desired to express a hope that I had not been guilty of taking a liberty, sir.’
‘How?’
‘In removing the luncheon-basket from the car before we started, sir.’
I quivered like an aspen. I stared at the man. Aghast. Shocked to the core.
‘You, Jeeves?’ I said, and I should rather think Caesar spoke in the same sort of voice on finding Brutus puncturing him with the sharp instrument. ‘You mean to tell me it was you who deliberately, if that’s the word I want –’
‘Yes, sir. It seemed to me the most judicious course to pursue. It would not have been prudent, in my opinion, to have allowed Mrs Little, in her present frame of mind, to witness Mr Little eating a meal on the scale which he outlined in his remarks this morning.’
I saw his point.
‘True, Jeeves,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘I see what you mean. If young Bingo has a fault, it is that, when in the society of a sandwich, he is apt to get a bit rough. I’ve picnicked with him before, many a time and oft, and his method of approach to the ordinary tongue or ham sandwich rather resembles that of the lion, the king of beasts, tucking into an antelope. Add lobster and cold chicken, and I admit the spectacle might have been something of a jar for the consort … Still … all the same … nevertheless –’
‘And there is anther aspect of the matter, sir.’
‘What’s that?’
‘A day spent without nourishment in the keen autumnal air may induce in Mrs Little a frame of mind not altogether in sympathy with Miss Pyke’s view on diet.’
‘You mean, hunger will gnaw and she’ll be apt to bite at the Pyke when she talks about how jolly it is for the gastric juices to get a day off?’
‘Exactly, sir.’
I shook the head. I hated to damp the man’s pretty enthusiasm, but it had to be done.
‘Abandon the idea, Jeeves,’ I said. ‘I fear you have not studied the sex as I have. Missing her lunch means little or nothing to the female of the species. The feminine attitude towards lunch is notoriously airy and casual. Where you have made your bloomer is in confusing lunch with tea. Hell, it is well known, has no fury like a woman who wants her tea and can’t get it. At such times the most amiable of the sex become mere bombs which a spark may ignite. But lunch, Jeeves, no. I should have thought you would have known that – a bird of your established intelligence.’
‘No doubt you are right, sir.’
‘If you could somehow arrange for Mrs Little to miss her tea … but these are idle dreams, Jeeves. By tea-time she will be back at the old home, in the midst of plenty. It only takes an hour to do the trip. The last race is over shortly after four. By five o’clock Mrs Little will have her feet tucked under the table and will be revelling in buttered toast. I am sorry, Jeeves, but your scheme was a wash-out from the start. No earthly. A dud.’
‘I appreciate the point you have raised, sir. What you say is extremely true.’
‘Unfortunately. Well, there it is. The only thing to do seems to be to get back to the course and try to skin a bookie or two and forget.’
Well, the long day wore on, so to speak. I can’t say I enjoyed myself much. I was distrait, if you know what I mean. Preoccupied. From time to time assorted clusters of spavined local horses clumped down the course with farmers on top of them, but I watched them with a languid eye. To get them into the spirit of one of these rural meetings it is essential that the subject have a good, fat lunch inside him. Subtract the lunch, and what ensues? Ennui. Not once but many times during the afternoon I found myself thinking hard thoughts about Jeeves. The man seemed to me to be losing his grip. A child could have told him that that footling scheme of his would not have got him anywhere.
I mean to say, when you reflect that the average woman considers she has lunched luxuriously if she swallows a couple of macaroons, half a chocolate éclair and a raspberry vinegar, is she going to be peevish because you do her out of a midday sandwich? Of course not. Perfectly ridiculous. Too silly for words. All that Jeeves had accomplished by his bally trying to be clever was to give me a feeling as if foxes were gnawing my vitals and a strong desire for home.
It was a relief, therefore, when, as the shades of evening were beginning to fall, Mrs Bingo announced her intention of calling it a day and shifting.
‘Would you mind very much missing the last race, Mr Wooster?’ she asked.
‘I am all for it,’ I replied cordially. ‘The last race means little or nothing in my life. Besides, I am a shilling and sixpence ahead of the game, and the time to leave off is when you’re winning.’
‘Laura and I thought we would go home. I feel I should like an early cup of tea. Bingo says he will stay on. So I thought you could drive our car, and he would follow later in yours, with Jeeves.’
‘Right ho.’
‘You know the way?’
‘Oh yes. Main road as far as that turning by the pond, and then across country.’
‘I can direct you from there.’
I sent Jeeves to fetch the car, and presently we were bowling off in good shape. The short afternoon had turned into a rather chilly, misty sort of evening, the kind of evening that sends a fellow’s thoughts straying off in the direction of hot Scotch-and-water with a spot of lemon in it. I put the foot firmly on the accelerator, and we did the five or six miles of main road in quick time.
Turning eastwards at the pond, I had to go a bit slower, for we had struck a wildish stretch of country where the going wasn’t so good. I don’t know any part of England where you feel so off the map as on the by-roads of Norfolk. Occasionally we would meet a cow or two, but otherwise we had the world pretty much to ourselves.
I began to think about that drink again, and the more I thought the better it looked. It’s rummy how people differ in this matter of selecting the beverage that is to touch the spot. It’s what Jeeves would call the psychology of the individual. Some fellows in my position m
ight have voted for a tankard of ale, and the Pyke’s idea of a refreshing snort was, as I knew from what she had told me on the journey out, a cupful of tepid pip-and-peel water or, failing that, what she called the fruit-liquor. You make this, apparently, by soaking raisins in cold water and adding the juice of a lemon. After which, I suppose, you invite a couple of old friends in and have an orgy, burying the bodies in the morning.
Personally, I had no doubts. I never wavered. Hot Scotch-and-water was the stuff for me – stressing the Scotch, if you know what I mean, and going fairly easy on the H2O. I seemed to see the beaker smiling at me across the misty fields, beckoning me on, as it were, and saying ‘Courage, Bertram! It will not be long now!’ And with renewed energy I bunged the old foot down on the accelerator and tried to send the needle up to sixty.
Instead of which, if you follow my drift, the bally thing flickered for a moment to thirty-five and then gave the business up as a bad job. Quite suddenly and unexpectedly, no one more surprised than myself, the car let out a faint gurgle like a sick moose and stopped in its tracks. And there we were, somewhere in Norfolk, with darkness coming on and a cold wind that smelled of guano and dead mangel-wurzels playing searchingly about the spinal column.
The back-seat drivers gave tongue.
‘What’s the matter? What has happened? Why don’t you go on? What are you stopping for?’
I explained.
‘I’m not stopping. It’s the car.’
‘Why has the car stopped?’
‘Ah!’ I said, with a manly frankness that became me well. ‘There you have me.’
You see, I’m one of those birds who drive a lot but don’t know the first thing about the works. The policy I pursue is to get aboard, prod the self-starter, and leave the rest to Nature. If anything goes wrong, I scream for an AA scout. It’s a system that answers admirably as a rule, but on the present occasion it blew a fuse owing to the fact that there wasn’t an AA scout within miles. I explained as much to the fair cargo and received in return a ‘Tchah!’ from the Pyke that nearly lifted the top of my head off. What with having a covey of female relations who have regarded me from childhood as about ten degrees short of a half-wit, I have become rather a connoisseur of ‘Tchahs’, and the Pyke’s seemed to me well up in Class A, possessing much of the timbre and brio of my Aunt Agatha’s.
‘Perhaps I can find out what the trouble is,’ she said, becoming calmer. ‘I understand cars.’
She got out and began peering into the thing’s vitals. I thought for a moment of suggesting that its gastric juices might have taken a turn for the worse owing to lack of fat-soluble vitamins, but decided on the whole not. I’m a pretty close observer, and it didn’t seem to me that she was in the mood.
And yet, as a matter of fact, I should have been about right, at that. For after fiddling with the engine for a while in a discontented sort of way the female was suddenly struck with an idea. She tested it, and it was proved correct. There was not a drop of petrol in the tank. No gas. In other words, a complete lack of fat-soluble vitamins. What it amounted to was that the job now before us was to get the old bus home purely by will-power.
Feeling that, from whatever angle they regarded the regrettable occurrence, they could hardly blame me, I braced up a trifle in fact, to the extent of a hearty ‘Well, well, well!’
‘No petrol,’ I said. ‘Fancy that.’
‘But Bingo told me he was going to fill the tank this morning,’ said Mrs Bingo.
‘I suppose he forgot,’ said the Pyke. ‘He would!’
‘What do you mean by that?’ said Mrs Bingo, and I noted in her voice a touch of what-is-it.
‘I mean he is just the sort of man who would forget to fill the tank,’ replied the Pyke, who also appeared somewhat moved.
‘I should be very much obliged, Laura,’ said Mrs Bingo, doing the heavy loyal-little-woman stuff, ‘if you would refrain from criticizing my husband.’
‘Tchah!’ said the Pyke.
‘And don’t say “Tchah!”’ said Mrs Bingo.
‘I shall say whatever I please,’ said the Pyke.
‘Ladies, ladies!’ I said. ‘Ladies, ladies, ladies!’
It was rash. Looking back, I can see that. One of the first lessons life teaches us is that on these occasions of back-chat between the delicately-nurtured, a man should retire into the offing, curl up in a ball, and imitate the prudent tactics of the opossum, which, when danger is in the air, pretends to be dead, frequently going to the length of hanging out crêpe and instructing its friends to stand round and say what a pity it all is. The only result of my dash at the soothing intervention was that the Pyke turned on me like a wounded leopardess.
‘Well!’ she said. ‘Aren’t you proposing to do anything, Mr Wooster?’
‘What can I do?’
‘There’s a house over there. I should have thought it would be well within even your powers to go and borrow a tin of petrol.’
I looked. There was a house. And one of the lower windows was lighted, indicating to the trained mind of the presence of a ratepayer.
‘A very sound and brainy scheme,’ I said ingratiatingly. ‘I will first honk a little on the horn to show we’re here, and then rapid action.’
I honked, with the most gratifying results. Almost immediately a human form appeared in the window. It seemed to be waving its arms in a matey and welcoming sort of way. Stimulated and encouraged, I hastened to the front door and gave it a breezy bang with the knocker. Things, I felt, were moving.
The first bang produced no result. I had just lifted the knocker for the encore, when it was wrenched out of my hand. The door flew open, and there was a bloke with spectacles on his face and all round the spectacles an expression of strained anguish. A bloke with a secret sorrow.
I was sorry he had troubles, of course, but, having some of my own, I came right down to the agenda without delay.
‘I say …’ I began.
The bloke’s hair was standing up in a kind of tousled mass, and at this juncture, as if afraid it would not stay like that without assistance, he ran a hand through it. And for the first time I noted that the spectacles had a hostile gleam.
‘Was that you making that infernal noise?’ he asked.
‘Er – yes,’ I said. ‘I did toot.’
‘Toot once more – just once,’ said the bloke, speaking in a low, strangled voice, ‘and I’ll shred you up into little bits with my bare hands. My wife’s gone out for the evening and after hours of ceaseless toil I’ve at last managed to get the baby to sleep, and you come along making that hideous din with your damned horn. What do you mean by it, blast you?’
‘Er –’
‘Well, that’s how matters stand,’ said the bloke, summing up. ‘One more toot – just one single, solitary suggestion of the faintest shadow or suspicion of anything remotely approaching a toot – and may the Lord have mercy on your soul.’
‘What I want,’ I said, ‘is petrol.’
‘What you’ll get,’ said the bloke, ‘is a thick ear.’
And, closing the door with the delicate caution of one brushing flies off a sleeping Venus, he passed out of my life.
Women as a sex are always apt to be a trifle down on the defeated warrior. Returning to the car, I was not well received. The impression seemed to be that Bertram had not acquitted himself in a fashion worthy of his Crusading ancestors. I did my best to smooth matters over, but you know how it is. When you’ve broken down on a chilly autumn evening miles from anywhere and have missed lunch and look like missing tea as well, mere charm of manner can never be a really satisfactory substitute for a tinful of the juice.
Things got so noticeably unpleasant, in fact, that after a while, mumbling something about getting help, I sidled off down the road. And, by Jove, I hadn’t gone half a mile before I saw lights in the distance and there, in the middle of this forsaken desert, was a car.
I stood in the road and whooped as I had never whooped before.
‘Hi!�
� I shouted. ‘I say! Hi! Half a minute! Hi! Ho! I say! Ho! Hi! Just a second if you don’t mind.’
The car reached me and slowed up. A voice spoke.
‘Is that you, Bertie?’
‘Hullo, Bingo! Is that you? I say, Bingo, we’ve broken down.’
Bingo hopped out.
‘Give us five minutes, Jeeves,’ he said, ‘and then drive slowly on.’
‘Very good, sir.’
Bingo joined me.
‘We aren’t going to walk, are we?’ I asked. ‘Where’s the sense?’
‘Yes, walk, laddie,’ said Bingo, ‘and warily withal. I want to make sure of something. Bertie, how were things when you left? Hotting up?’
‘A trifle.’
‘You observed symptoms of a row, a quarrel, a parting of brass rags between Rosie and the Pyke?’
‘There did seem a certain liveliness.’
‘Tell me.’
I related what had occurred. He listened intently.
‘Bertie,’ he said as we walked along, ‘you are present at a crisis in your old friend’s life. It may be that this vigil in a broken-down car will cause Rosie to see what you’d have thought she ought to have seen years ago – viz: that the Pyke is entirely unfit for human consumption and must be cast into outer darkness where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. I am not betting on it, but stranger things have happened. Rosie is the sweetest girl in the world, but, like all women, she gets edgy towards tea-time. And today, having missed lunch … Hark!’
He grabbed my arm, and we paused. Tense. Agog. From down the road came the sound of voices, and a mere instant was enough to tell us that it was Mrs Bingo and the Pyke talking things over.
I had never listened in on a real, genuine female row before, and I’m bound to say it was pretty impressive. During my absence, matters appeared to have developed on rather a spacious scale. They had reached the stage now where the combatants had begun to dig into the past and rake up old scores. Mrs Bingo was saying that the Pyke would never have got into the hockey team at St Adela’s if she hadn’t flattered and fawned upon the captain in a way that it made Mrs Bingo, even after all these years, sick to think of. The Pyke replied that she had refrained from mentioning it until now, having always felt it better to let bygones be bygones, but that if Mrs Bingo supposed her to be unaware that Mrs Bingo had won the Scripture prize by taking a list of the Kings of Judah into the examination room, tucked into her middy-blouse, Mrs Bingo was vastly mistaken.
The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 3 Page 62
