Aunts Aren't Gentlemen:

by P. G. Wodehouse

  That this had not been an intentional move on the human form's part was made clear by his opening remark on rising to the surface. It was the word 'Help!', and I had no difficulty in recognizing the voice of Orlo Porter.

  'Help!' he repeated.

  'Oh, hullo, Porter,' I said. 'Did you say "Help!"?'

  'Yes.'

  'Can't you swim?'

  'No.'

  'Then . . .' I was about to say 'Then surely it was rash to come bathing!', but I refrained, feeling that it would not be tactful. 'Then you could probably do with a helping hand,' I said.

  He said he could, and I gave him one. We were at the deep end, and I hauled him into the shallow end, where he immediately became more at his ease. Spitting out perhaps a couple of pints of water, he thanked me – brokenly, as you might say – and I begged him not to mention it.

  'Quite a surprise, meeting you like this,' I said. 'What are you doing in these parts, Porter?'

  'Call me Orlo.'

  'What are you doing in these parts, Orlo? Watching owls?'

  'I came to see that blasted Cook, Wooster.'

  'Call me Bertie.'

  'I came to see that blasted Cook, Bertie. You remember your advice. Approach the old child of unmarried parents after he has had dinner, you said, and the more I thought about it, the sounder the idea seemed. You really have an extraordinary flair, Bertie. You read your fellow man like a book.'

  'Oh, thanks. Just a matter of studying the psychology of the individual.'

  'Unfortunately you can't judge someone like Cook by ordinary standards. Do you know why this is, Bertie?'

  'No, Orlo. Why?'

  'Because he's a hellhound, and there's no telling what a hellhound will do. Planning strategy is hopeless when you're dealing with hellhounds.'

  'I gather that things did not go altogether as planned.'

  'And how right you are, Bertie. The thing was a flop. It couldn't have been a worse flop if I had been trying to get money out of a combination of Scrooge and Gaspard the Miser.'

  'Tell me, Orlo.'

  'If you have a moment, Bertie.'

  'All the time in the world, Orlo.'

  'You don't want to hurry away anywhere?'

  'No, I like it here.'

  'So do I. Pleasantly cool, is it not. Well, then, I arrived and told the butler I wanted to see Mr Cook on a matter of importance, and the butler took me to the library, where I found Cook smoking a fat cigar. I was confident when I saw it that I had chosen my time right. The cigar was plainly an after-dinner cigar, and he was drinking brandy. There could be no doubt that the man was full to the back teeth. You are following me, Bertie?'

  'I get the picture, Orlo.'

  'There was another man there. Some sort of African explorer, I gathered.'

  'Major Plank.'

  'His presence was an embarrassment because he would insist on telling us all about the fertility rites of the natives of Bongo on the Congo, which, take it from me, are too improper for words, but he left us after a while and I was able to get down to business. And a lot of good it did me. Cook refused to part with a penny.'

  I put a question which had been in my mind for some time. I don't say I had actually been worrying about Orlo's financial position, but it had seemed to me to need explaining.

  'What exactly is the arrangement about your money? Surely Cook can't just hang on to it?'

  'He can till I'm thirty.'

  'How old are you?'

  'Twenty-seven.'

  'Then in another three years –'

  For the first time he showed a flash of the old Orlo Porter who had been so anxious to tear out my insides with his bare hands. He didn't actually foam at the mouth, but I could see that he missed it by the closest of margins.

  'But I don't want to wait another three years, dammit. Do you know what my insurance company pays me? A pittance. Barely enough to keep body and soul together on. And I am a man who likes nice things. I want to branch out.'

  'A Mayfair flat?'

  'Yes.'

  'Champagne with every meal?'

  'Exactly.'

  'Rolls-Royces?'

  'Those, too.'

  'Leaving something over, of course, to slip to the hard-up proletariat? You'd like them to have what you don't need.'

  'There won't be anything I don't need.'

  It was a little difficult to know what to say. I had never talked things over with a Communist before, and it came as something of a shock to find that he wasn't so fond of the hard-up proletariat as I had supposed. I thought of advising him not to let the boys at the Kremlin hear him expressing such views, but decided that it was none of my business. I changed the subject.

  'By the way, Orlo,' I said, 'what brought you here?'

  'Haven't you been listening? I came to see Cook.'

  'I mean how did you come to fall into the pool?'

  'I didn't know it was there.'

  'You seemed to be running very fast. What was your hurry?'

  'I was escaping from a dog which was attacking me.'

  'A large dog with stand-up ears?'

  'Yes. You know it?'

  'We've met. But it wasn't attacking you.'

  'It sprang on me.'

  'In a purely friendly spirit. It springs on everyone. It's its way of being matey.'

  He drew a long breath of relief. It would have been longer, had he not lost his footing and disappeared into the depths. I reached about for him and hauled him up, and he thanked me.

  'A pleasure,' I said.

  'You have taken a weight off my mind, Bertie. I was wondering how I could get back in safety to the inn.'

  'I'll give you a lift in my car.'

  'No, thanks. Now that you have explained the purity of that dog's motives I'd rather walk. I don't want to catch cold. By the way, Bertie, there's just one point I'd like you to clarify for me. What are you doing here?'

  'Just strolling around.'

  'It struck me as odd that you should have been in the pool.'

  'Oh, no. Just cooling off, Orlo, just cooling off.'

  'I see. Well, good night, Bertie.'

  'Good night, Orlo.'

  'I can rely on the accuracy of your information about the dog?'

  'Completely, Orlo. His life is gentle, and the elements mixed in him just right,' I said, remembering a gag of Jeeves's.

  It was with water dripping from my person in all directions but with a song in my heart, as the expression is, that some minutes later I climbed from the pool and started to where I had left the car. In addition to having a song in it my heart ought of course to have been bleeding for Orlo, for I realized how long it was going to take him to get all those nice things we had been talking about, but the ecstasy of having parted from the cat left little room for sympathy for other people's troubles. My concern for Orlo was, I regret to say, about equal to his for the hard-up proletariat.

  All was quiet on the Cook front. No sign of Henry and his pal. The dog after fraternizing with Orlo had apparently curled up somewhere and was getting his eight hours.

  I drove on. The song in my heart rose to fortissimo as I got out of the car at the door of Wee Nooke, only to die away in a gurgle as something soft and furry brushed against my leg and looking down I saw the familiar form of the cat.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I should have to check with Jeeves, but I think the word to describe the way I slept that night is 'fitfully'. I turned and twisted like an adagio dancer, and no wonder, for what I have heard Jeeves call 'the fell clutch of circumstance' which was clutching me was not the ordinary fell clutch which can be wriggled out of by some simple ruse such as going on a voyage round the world and not showing up again till things have blown over.

  I had the option, of course, of disassociating myself entirely from the cat sequence and refusing to have anything more to do with the ruddy animal, but this would mean Colonel Briscoe scratching Simla's nomination, which would mean that a loved aunt would lose a packet and have to touch Uncle
Tom to make up the deficit, which would mean upsetting the latter's gastric juices for one didn't know how long, which would mean him pushing his plate away untasted night after night, which would mean Anatole, temperamental like all geniuses, getting deeply offended and handing in his resignation. Ruin, desolation and despair all round, in short.

  Manifestly, I think it's manifestly, the chivalry of the Woosters could not permit all that to happen. Somehow, whatever the perils involved, the cat had to be decanted somewhere where it could find its way back to its GHQ. But who was to do the decanting? Billy Graham had made it plain that no purse of gold, however substantial, could persuade him to brave the horrors of Eggesford Court, that sinister house. Jeeves had formally declared himself a non-starter. And Aunt Dahlia was disqualified by her unfortunate inability to move from spot to spot without having twigs snap beneath her feet.

  This put the issue squarely up to Bertram. And no chance for him to do a nolle prosequi, because if he did bang went his hopes, for quite a time at least, of enjoying Anatole's cooking.

  It was consequently in sombre mood that I went across to the Goose and Grasshopper for breakfast. I do not as a rule take the morning meal at six-thirty, but I had been awake since four, and the pangs of hunger could be resisted no longer.

  If there was one thing I had taken for granted, it was that I would be breakfasting alone. My surprise, therefore, at finding Orlo in the dining-room, tucking into eggs and bacon, was considerable. I couldn't imagine how he came to be in circulation at such an hour. Bird-watchers, of course, are irregular in their habits, but even if he had an appointment with a Clarkson's warbler you would have expected him to have made it for much nearer lunch.

  'Oh, hullo, Bertie,' he said. 'Glad to see you.'

  'You're up early, Orlo.'

  'A little before my usual time. I don't want to keep Vanessa waiting.'

  'You've asked her to breakfast?'

  'No, she will have had breakfast. Our date was for half-past seven. She may, of course, be late. It depends on how soon she can find the key of the garage.'

  'Why does she want the key of the garage?'

  'To get the Bentley.'

  'Why does she want the Bentley?'

  'My dear Bertie, we've got to elope in something.'

  'Elope?'

  'I ought to have explained that earlier. Yes, we're eloping, and thank goodness we've got a fine day for it. Ah, here are your eggs. You'll enjoy them. They're very good at the Goose and Grasshopper. Come, no doubt, from contented hens.'

  On seating myself at the table I had ordered eggs, and, as he justly observed, they were excellent. But I dug into them listlessly. I was too bewildered to give them the detached thought they deserved.

  'Do you mean to say,' I said, 'that you and Vanessa are e-lop-ing?'

  'The only sober sensible course to pursue. This comes as a surprise?'

  'You could knock me down with a ham sandwich.'

  'What seems to be puzzling you?'

  'I thought you weren't on speaking terms.'

  His response was a hyenaesque guffaw. It was plain that he was feeling his oats to no little extent – quite naturally, of course, Vanessa being the tree on which the fruit of his life hung, as I have heard it described. It made me reflect on the extraordinary extent to which tastes can differ. I, as I have shown, though momentarily attracted by her radiant beauty, had frozen in every limb at the prospect of linking my lot with hers, whereas he was obviously all for it. In just the same way my Uncle Tom dances round in circles if he can get hold at enormous expense of a silver oviform chocolate pot of the Queen Anne period which I wouldn't be seen in public with. Curious.

  He continued to guffaw.

  'You aren't up to the minute with your society gossip, Bertie. That's all a thing of the past. Admittedly relations were at one time strained and harsh words spoken about the colour of my liver, but we had a complete reconciliation last night.'

  'Oh, you met her last night?'

  'Shortly after I left you. She was taking a stroll preparatory to going to bed and bedewing her pillow with salt tears.'

  'Why should she do that?'

  'Because she thought she was going to marry you.'

  'I see. The fate that is worse than death, you might say.'

  'Exactly.'

  'Sorry she was troubled.'

  'Quite all right. She soon got over it when I told her I had been seeing Cook and demanding my money. When she heard that I had several times thumped the table, her remorse for having called me a sleekit cowering beastie was pitiful. She compared me with heroes of old Greek legend, to their disadvantage, and, to cut a long story short, flung herself into my arms.'

  'She must have got wet.'

  'Very wet. But she didn't mind that. An emotional girl wouldn't.'

  'I suppose not.'

  'We then decided to elope. You may be wondering what we're going to live on, but with my salary and a bit of money she has from the will of an aunt we shall be all right. So it was arranged that she should have an early breakfast, go to the garage, pinch the Bentley and put the other cars out of action, leaving Cook for pursuing purposes only the gardener's Ford.'

  'That ought to fix him.'

  'I think so. It is an excellent car for its purpose, but scarcely adapted to chasing daughters across country. Cook will never catch up with us.'

  'Though I don't see what he could do, even if he did catch up with you.'

  'You don't? What about that hunting crop of his?'

  'Ah, yes, I see what you mean.'

  I don't know if he would have developed this theme, but before he could speak there came from the street a musical tooting.

  'There she is,' he said, and went out.

  So did I. I had no wish to meet Vanessa. I slid out of the back door and returned to Wee Nooke. And I had picked up By Order Of The Czar and was hoping to discover what it was that he had ordered, my bet being that a lot of characters with names ending in 'sky' would be off to Siberia before they knew what had hit them, when who should enter hurriedly but Orlo.

  He had an envelope in his hand.

  'Oh, there you are, Bertie,' he said. 'I can only stop a minute. Vanessa's out there in the car.'

  'Ask her to come in.'

  'She won't come in. She says it would be too painful for you.'

  'What would?'

  'Meeting her, you ass. Gazing on her when you knew she is another's.'

  'Oh, I see.'

  'No sense in giving yourself a lot of agony if you don't have to.'

  'Quite.'

  'I wouldn't have disturbed you, only I wanted to give you this letter. It's a note I've written to Cook in place of the one Vanessa wrote last night.'

  'Oh, she wrote him a note?'

  'Yes.'

  'To be pinned to her pincushion?'

  'That was the idea. But she dropped it somewhere and couldn't be bothered to hunt around for it. So I thought I had better send him a line. If you're running away with a man's daughter, it's only civil to let him know. And I would put the facts before him much better than she would. Girls are apt not to stick to the point when writing letters. With the best intentions in the world they ramble and embroider. A University-trained man like myself who contributes to the New Statesman does not fall into this blunder. He is concise. He is lucid.'

  'I didn't know you wrote for the New Statesman.'

  'Occasional letters to the editor. And I rarely fail to enter for the weekly competitions.'

  'Absorbing work.'

  'Very.'

  'I'm a writer of sorts myself. When my Aunt Dahlia was running that paper of hers, Milady's Boudoir, I did a piece for it on What The Well-Dressed Man Is Wearing.'

  'Did you indeed? Next time we meet you must tell me all about it. Can't stop now. Vanessa's waiting and,' he added as the tooting of a horn broke the morning stillness, 'getting impatient. Here's the letter.'

  'You want me to take it to Cook?'

  'What do you think I want you
to do with it? Get it framed?'

  And so saying he legged it like a nymph surprised while bathing, and I picked up my By Order Of The Czar.

  As I did so I was thinking bitterly that I wished the general public would stop regarding me as an uncomplaining Hey- You on whom all the unpleasant jobs could be shovelled off. Whenever something sticky was afoot and action had to be taken the cry was sure to go up, 'Let Wooster do it'. I have already touched on my Aunt Agatha's tendency to unload her foul son Thos on me at all seasons. My Aunt Dahlia had blotted the sunshine from my life in the matter of the cat. And here was Orlo Porter coolly telling me to take the letter to Cook, as if entering Cook's presence in his present difficult mood wasn't much the same as joining Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, of whom I had read when I won that Scripture Knowledge prize at my private school, on their way to the burning fiery furnace. What, I asked myself, was to be done?

  It was a dilemma which might well have baffled a lesser man, but the whole point about the Woosters is that they are not lesser men. I don't suppose it was more than three-quarters of an hour before the solution flashed on me – viz. to write Cook's name and address on the envelope, stick a stamp on it and post it. Having decided to do this, I returned to my reading.

  But everything seemed to conspire today to prevent me making any real progress with By Order Of The Czar. Scarcely had I perused a paragraph when the door burst open and I found that I was seeing Cook after all. He was standing on the threshold looking like the Demon King in a pantomime.

  With him was Major Plank.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I have always rather prided myself on being a good host, putting visitors at their ease with debonair smiles and courteous wisecracks, but I am compelled to admit that at the sight of these two I didn't come within a mile of doing so, and the best I could do in the way of wisecracks was a hoarse cry like that of a Pekingese with laryngitis. It was left to Plank to get the conversation going.