During my absence from the smoking-room Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright had taken the chair next to mine, and I lost no time in sounding him out on the subject of Jas Waterbury.
‘You remember you were telling me about theatrical agents, Catsmeat. Did you ever happen to come across one called Waterbury?’
He pondered awhile.
‘The name seems vaguely familiar. What does he look like?’
‘Nothing on earth.’
‘That doesn’t place him. All theatrical agents look like nothing on earth. But it’s odd that I seem to know the name. Waterbury? Waterbury? Ha! Is he a greasy bird?’
‘Very greasy.’
‘And is his first name Jas?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Then I know the chap you mean. I never met him myself – I doubt if he was going at the time when I was hoofing it from agent to agent – but I’ve heard of him from Freddie Widgeon and Oofy Prosser.’
‘Yes, he said they were friends of his.’
‘He’d revise that view if he could listen to them talking about him. Oofy in particular. Jas Waterbury once chiselled him out of two thousand pounds.’
I was amazed.
‘He chiselled Oofy out of two thousand pounds?’ I gasped, wondering if I could believe my e. Oofy is the Drones Club millionaire, but it is well known that it’s practically impossible to extract as much as five bob from him without using chloroform and a forceps. Dozens have tried it and failed.
‘That’s what Freddie Widgeon told me. Freddie says that once Jas Waterbury enters your life, you can kiss at least a portion of your holdings goodbye. Has he taken anything off you?’
‘Fifteen quid.’
‘You’re lucky it wasn’t fifteen hundred.’
If you’re saying to yourself that these words of Catsmeat’s must have left me uneasy and apprehensive, you are correct to the last drop. A quarter to four found me pacing the Wooster carpet with furrowed brow. If it had been merely a matter of this grease-coated theatrical agent tapping Freddie Widgeon for a couple of bob, it would have been different. A child can tap Freddie. But when it came to him parting Oofy Prosser, a man in whose wallet moths nest and raise large families, from a colossal sum like two thousand pounds, the brain reeled and one sought in vain for an explanation. Yet so it was. Catsmeat said it was impossible to get the full story, because every time Jas’s name was mentioned Oofy just turned purple and spluttered, but the stark fact remained that Jas’s bank balance was that amount up and Oofy’s that amount down, and it made me feel like a fellow in a novel of suspense who suddenly realizes that he’s up against an Octopus of Crime and hasn’t the foggiest how he’s going to avoid the menacing tentacles.
But it wasn’t long before Reason returned to its throne and I saw that I’d been alarming myself unnecessarily. Nothing like that was going to happen to me. It might be that Jas Waterbury would have a shot at luring me into some business venture with the ultimate aim of leaving me holding the baby, but if he did he would find himself stymied by a firm nolle prosequi, so, to cut a long story s, by the time the front door bell rang Bertram was himself again.
I answered the bell, for it was Jeeves’s afternoon off. Once a week he downs tools and goes off to play Bridge at the Junior Ganymede. I opened the door and Jas and his niece came in, and I stood gaping dumbly. For an instant, you might say I was spellbound.
Not having attended the performance of a pantomime since fairly early childhood, I had forgotten how substantial Fairy Queens were, and the sight of Trixie Waterbury was like a blow from a blunt instrument. A glance was enough to tell me why the dramatic critic of the Leeds Evening Chronicle had called her buxom. She stood about five feet nine in her short French vamps and bulged in every direction. Also the flashing eyes and the gleaming teeth. It was some moments before I was able to say Good Afternoon.
‘Afternoon,’ said Jas Waterbury. He looked about him approvingly. ‘Nice little place you’ve got here. Costs a packet to keep up, I’ll bet. This is Mr Wooster, Trixie. You call him Bertie.’
The Fairy Queen said wouldn’t ‘sweetie-pie’ be better, and Jas Waterbury told her with a good deal of enthusiasm that she was quite right.
‘Much more box office,’ he agreed. ‘Didn’t I say she would be right for the part, cocky? You can rely on her to give a smooth West End performance. When do you expect your lady friend?’
‘Any moment now.’
‘Then we’d better be dressing the stage. Discovered, you sitting in that chair there with Trixie on your lap.’
‘What!’
He seemed to sense the consternation in my voice, for he frowned a little under the grease.
‘We’re all working for the good of the show,’ he reminded me austerely. ‘You want the scene to carry conviction, and there’s nothing like a sight gag.’
I could see there was much in what he said. This was not a time for half measures. I sat down. I don’t say I sat blithely, but I sat, and Wigan’s favourite Fairy Queen descended on my lap with a bump that made the stout chair tremble like an aspen. And scarcely had she started to nestle when the door bell rang.
‘Curtain going up,’ said Jas Waterbury. ‘Let’s have that passionate embrace, Trixie, and make it good.’
She made it good, and I felt like a Swiss mountaineer engulfed by an avalanche smelling of patchouli. Jas Waterbury flung wide the gates, and who should come in but Blair Eggleston, the last caller I was expecting.
He stood goggling. I sat goggling. Jas Waterbury goggled, too. One could understand how he was feeling. Anticipating the entrance of the female star and observing coming on left centre a character who wasn’t a member of the cast at all, he was pardonably disconcerted. No impresario likes that sort of thing.
I was the first to speak. After all, I was the host and it was for me to get the conversation going.
‘Oh, hullo, Eggleston,’ I said. ‘Come along in. I don’t think you’ve met Mr Waterbury, have you. Mr Eggleston, Mr Jas Waterbury. And his niece Miss Trixie Waterbury, my fiancée.’
‘Your what?’
‘Fiancée. Betrothed. Affianced.’
‘Good Lord!’
Jas Waterbury appeared to be feeling that as the act had been shot to pieces like this, there was no sense in hanging around.
‘Well, Trix,’ he said, ‘your Bertie’ll be wanting to talk to his gentleman friend, so give him a kiss and we’ll be getting along. Pleased to have met you, Mr What-is-it,’ and with a greasy smile he led the Fairy Queen from the room.
Blair Eggleston seemed still at a loss. He looked at the door through which they had passed as if asking himself if he had really seen what he thought he had seen, then turned to me with the air of one who intends to demand an explanation.
‘What’s all this, Wooster?’
‘What’s all what, Eggleston? Be more explicit.’
‘Who on earth is that female?’
‘Weren’t you listening? My fiancée.’
‘You’re really engaged to her?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Who is she?’
‘She plays Fairy Queens in pantomime. Not in London owing to jealousy in high places, but they think a lot of her in Leeds, Wigan, Hull and Huddersfield. The critic of the Hull Daily News describes her as a talented bit of all right.’
He was silent for a space, appearing to be turning this over in his mind. Then he spoke in the frank, forthright and fearless way these modern novelists have.
‘She looks like a hippopotamus.’
I conceded this.
‘There is a resemblance, perhaps. I suppose Fairy Queens have to be stoutish if they are to keep faith with their public in towns like Leeds and Huddersfield. Those audiences up North want lots for their money.’
‘And she exudes a horrible scent which I am unable at the moment to identify.’
‘Patchouli. Yes, I noticed that.’
He mused again.
‘I can’t get over you being engaged to her.’
‘Well, I am.’
‘It’s official?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Well, this will be great news for Honoria.’
I didn’t get his drift.
‘For Honoria?’
‘Yes. It will relieve her mind. She was very worried about you, poor child. That’s why I’m here. I came to break it to you that she can never be yours. She’s going to marry me.’
I stared at him. My first impression was that even though the hour was only about four-thirty he was under the influence of alcoholic stimulants.
‘But I learned from a usually reliable source that that was all off.’
‘It was, but now it’s on again. We have had a complete reconciliation.’
‘Well, fancy that!’
‘And she shrank from coming and telling you herself. She said she couldn’t bear to see the awful dumb agony in your eyes. When I tell her you’re engaged, she’ll go singing about the West End of London, not only because of the relief of knowing that she hasn’t wrecked your life but because she’ll be feeling what a merciful escape she’s had. Just imagine being married to you! It doesn’t bear thinking of. Well, I’ll be going along and telling her the good news,’ he said, and took his departure.
A moment later the bell rang. I opened the door and found him on the mat.
‘What,’ he asked, ‘was that name again?’
‘Name?’
‘Your fiancée’s.’
‘Trixie Waterbury.’
‘Good God!’ he said, and pushed off. And I returned to the reverie he had interrupted.
There was a time when if somebody had come to me and said ‘Mr Wooster, I have been commissioned by a prominent firm of publishers to write your biography and I need some intimate stuff which only you can supply. Looking back, what would you consider the high spot in your career?’, I would have had no difficulty in slipping him the info. It occurred, I would have replied, in my fourteenth year when I was a resident pupil at Malvern House, Bramley-on-Sea, the private school conducted by that prince of stinkers, Aubrey Upjohn, M.A. He had told me to present myself in his study on the following morning, which always meant six of the juiciest with a cane that bit like a serpent and stung like an adder, and blowed if when morning came I wasn’t all over pink spots. I had contracted measles and the painful interview was of course postponed sine die, as the expression is.
That had always been my supreme moment. Only now was I experiencing to an even greater extent the feeling of quiet happiness which comes to you when you’ve outsmarted the powers of darkness. I felt as if a great weight had been lifted off me. Well, it had of course in one sense, for the Fairy Queen must have clocked in at fully a hundred and sixty pounds ring-side, but what I mean is that a colossal burden had been removed from the Wooster soul. It was as though the storm clouds had called it a day and the sun come smiling through.
The only thing that kept the moment from being absolutely perfect was that Jeeves was not there to share my hour of triumph. I toyed with the idea of ringing him up at the Junior Ganymede, but I didn’t want to interrupt him when he was probably in the act of doubling six no trumps.
The thought of Aunt Dahlia presented itself. She of all people should be the one to hear the good news, for she was very fond of Roddy Glossop and had shown herself deeply concerned when informed of his in-the-soup-ness. Furthermore, she could scarcely not be relieved to learn that a loved nephew had escaped the fate that is worse than death – viz. marrying Honoria. It was true that my firm refusal to play Santa Claus at her children’s party must still be rankling, if that’s the word, but at our last meeting I had found her far less incandescent than she had been, so there was reason to suppose that if I looked in on her now I should get a cordial reception. Well, not absolutely cordial, perhaps, but something near enough to it. So I left a note for Jeeves saying where I’d gone and hared off to her address in a swift taxi.
It was as I had anticipated. I don’t say her face lit up when she saw me, but she didn’t throw her Perry Mason at me and she called me no new names, and after I had told my story she was all joviality and enthusiasm. We were saying what a wonderful Christmas present the latest development would be for Pop Glossop and speculating as to what it would feel like being married to his daughter Honoria and, for the matter of that, being married to Blair Eggleston, and we had just agreed that both Honoria and Blair had it coming to them, when the telephone rang. The instrument was on a table near her chair, and she reached for it.
‘Hullo?’ she boomed. ‘Who?’ Or, rather, WHO, for when at the telephone her vocal delivery is always of much the same calibre as it used to be on the hunting field. She handed me the receiver. ‘One of your foul friends wants you. Says his name’s Waterbury.’
Jas Waterbury, placed in communication with self, seemed perplexed. In rather an awed voice he asked:
‘Where are you, cocky? At the Zoo?’
‘I don’t follow you, Jas Waterbury.’
‘A lion just roared at me.’
‘Oh, that was my aunt.’
‘Sooner yours than mine. I thought the top of my head had come off.’
‘She has a robust voice.’
‘I’ll say she has. Well, cully, I’m sorry I had to disturb her at feeding time, but I thought you’d like to know that Trix and I have been talking it over and we both think a simple wedding at the registrar’s would be best. No need for a lot of fuss and expense. And she says she’d like Brighton for the honeymoon. She’s always been fond of Brighton.’
I was at something of a loss to know what on earth he was talking about, but reading between the lines I gathered that the Fairy Queen was thinking of getting married. I asked if this was so, and he chuckled greasily.
‘Always kidding, Bertie. You will have your joke. If you don’t know she’s going to get married, who does?’
‘I haven’t a notion. Who to?’
‘Why, you, of course. Didn’t you introduce her to your gentleman friend as your fiancée?’
I lost no time in putting him straight.
‘But that was just a ruse. Surely you explained it to her?’
‘Explained what?’
‘That I just wanted her to pretend that we were engaged.’
‘What an extraordinary idea. What would I have done that for?’
‘Fifteen quid.’
‘I don’t remember any fifteen quid. As I recall it, you came to me and told me you’d seen Trixie as the Fairy Queen in Cinderella at the Wigan Hippodrome and fallen in love with her at first sight, as so many young fellows have done. You had found out somehow that she was my niece and you asked me to bring her to your address. And the moment we came in I could see the love light in your eyes, and the love light was in her eyes, too, and it wasn’t five minutes after that that you’d got her on your lap and there you were, as snug as two bugs in a rug. Just a case of love at first sight, and I don’t mind telling you it touched me. I like to see the young folks getting together in Springtime. Not that it’s Springtime now, but the principle’s the same.’
At this point Aunt Dahlia, who had been simmering gently, intervened to call me a derogatory name and ask what the hell was going on. I waved her down with an imperious hand. I needed every ounce of concentration to cope with this misunderstanding which seemed to have arisen.
‘You’re talking through your hat, Jas Waterbury.’
‘Who, me?’
‘Yes, you. You’ve got your facts all wrong.’
‘You think so, do you?’
‘I do, and I will trouble you to break it to Miss Waterbury that those wedding bells will not ring out.’
‘That’s what I was telling you. Trixie wants it to be at the registrar’s.’
‘Well, that registrar won’t ring out, either.’
He said I amazed him.
‘You don’t want to marry Trixie?’
‘I wouldn’t marry her with a ten-foot pole.’
An astonished ‘Lord lo
ve a duck’ came over the wire.
‘If that isn’t the most remarkable coincidence,’ he said. ‘Those were the very words Mr Prosser used when refusing to marry another niece of mine after announcing his betrothal before witnesses, same as you did. Shows what a small world it is. I asked him if he hadn’t ever heard of breach of promise cases, and he shook visibly and swallowed once or twice. Then he looked me in the eye and said “How much?” I didn’t get his meaning at first, and then it suddenly flashed on me. “Oh, you mean you want to break the engagement,” I said, “and feel it’s your duty as a gentleman to see that the poor girl gets her bit of heart balm,” I said. “Well, it’ll have to be something substantial,” I said, “because there’s her despair and desolation to be taken into account.” So we talked it over and eventually settled on two thousand quid, and that’s what I’d advise in your case. I think I can talk Trixie into accepting that. Nothing, mind you, can ever make life anything but a dreary desert for her after losing you, but two thousand quid would help.’
‘BERTIE!’ said Aunt Dahlia.
‘Ah,’ said Jas Waterbury, ‘there’s that lion again. Well, I’ll leave you to think it over. I’ll come and see you tomorrow and get your decision, and if you feel that you don’t like writing that cheque, I’ll ask a friend of mine to try what he can do to persuade you. He’s an all-in wrestler of the name of Porky Jupp. I used to manage him at one time. He’s retired now because he broke a fellow’s spine and for some reason that gave him a distaste for the game. But he’s still in wonderful condition. You ought to see him crack Brazil nuts with his fingers. He thinks the world of me and there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for me. Suppose, for instance, somebody had done me down in a business transaction, Porky would spring to the task of plucking him limb from limb like some innocent little child doing She-loves-me she-loves-me-not with a daisy. Good-night, good-night,’ said Jas Waterbury, and rang off.
I would have preferred, of course, after this exceedingly unpleasant conversation to have gone off into a quiet corner somewhere and sat there with my head between my hands, reviewing the situation from every angle, but Aunt Dahlia was now making her desire for explanatory notes so manifest that I had to give her my attention. In a broken voice I supplied her with the facts and was surprised and touched to find her sympathetic and understanding. It’s often this way with the female sex. They put you through it in no uncertain manner if you won’t see eye to eye with them in the matter – to take an instance at random – of disguising yourself in white whiskers and stomach padding, but if they see you are really up against it, their hearts melt, rancour is forgotten and they do all they can to give you a shot in the arm. It was so with the aged relative. Having expressed the opinion that I was the king of the fatheads and ought never to be allowed out without a nurse, she continued in gentler strain.
The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 5: (Jeeves & Wooster) Page 39
