Aunts Aren't Gentlemen (2 page)

Whatever these bimbos were protesting about, it was
obviously something they were taking to heart rather.
By the time I had got into their midst not a few of them had
decided that animal cries were insufficient to meet the case and
were saying it with bottles and brickbats, and the police who
were present in considerable numbers seemed not to be liking
it much. It must be rotten being a policeman on these
occasions. Anyone who has got a bottle can throw it at you, but
if you throw it back, the yell of police brutality goes up and
there are editorials in the papers next day.

But the mildest cop can stand only so much, and it seemed
to me, for I am pretty shrewd in these matters, that in about
another shake of a duck's tail hell's foundations would be
starting to quiver. I hoped nobody would scratch my paint.

Leading the procession, I saw with surprise, was a girl I knew.
In fact, I had once asked her to marry me. Her name was Vanessa Cook, and
I had met her at a cocktail party, and such was her radiant beauty that it
was only a couple of minutes after I had brought her a martini and one of
those little sausages on sticks that I was saying to myself, 'Bertram, this
is a good thing. Push it along.' And in due season I suggested a merger. But
apparently I was not the type, and no business resulted.

This naturally jarred the Wooster soul a good deal at the
moment, but reviewing the dead past now I could see that my
guardian angel had been on the job all right and had known
what was good for me. I mean, radiant beauty is all very well,
but it isn't everything. What sort of a married life would I have
had with the little woman perpetually going on protest
marches and expecting me to be at her side throwing bottles at
the constabulary? It made me shudder to think what I might
have let myself in for if I had been a shade more fascinating.
Taught me a lesson, that did – viz. never to lose faith in your
guardian angel, because these guardian angels are no fools.

Vanessa Cook was accompanied by a beefy bloke without a
hat in whom I recognized another old acquaintance, O. J.
(Orlo) Porter to wit, who had been on the same staircase with
me at Oxford. Except for borrowing an occasional cup of sugar
from one another and hulloing when we met on the stairs we
had never been really close, he being a prominent figure at the
Union, where I was told he made fiery far-to-the-left
speeches, while I was more the sort that is content just to exist
beautifully.

Nor did we get together in our hours of recreation, for his
idea of a good time was to go off with a pair of binoculars and
watch birds, a thing that has never appealed to me. I can't see
any percentage in it. If I meet a bird, I wave a friendly hand at
it, to let it know that I wish it well, but I don't want to crouch
behind a bush observing its habits. So, as I say, Orlo Porter was
in no sense a buddy of mine, but we had always got on all right
and I still saw him every now and then.

Everybody at Oxford had predicted a pretty hot political
future for him, but it hadn't got started yet. He was now in the
employment of the London and Home Counties Insurance
Company and earned the daily b. by talking poor saps – I was
one of them – into taking out policies for larger amounts than
they would have preferred. Making fiery far-to-the-left
speeches naturally fits a man for selling insurance, enabling
him to find the
mot juste
and enlarging the vocabulary. I for
one had been corn before his sickle, as the expression is.

The bottle-throwing had now reached the height of its fever
and I was becoming more than ever nervous about my paint,
when all of a sudden there occurred an incident which took my
mind off that subject. The door of the car opened and what the
papers call a well-nourished body, male, leaped in and took a
seat beside me. Gave me a bit of a start, I don't mind
admitting, the Woosters not being accustomed to this sort of
thing so soon after breakfast. I was about to ask to what I was
indebted for the honour of this visit, when I saw that what I
had drawn was Orlo Porter and I divined that after the front
of the procession had passed from my view he must have said
or done something which London's police force could not
overlook, making instant flight a must. His whole demeanour
was that of the hart that pants for cooling streams when heated
in the chase.

Well, you don't get cooling streams in the middle of the
metropolis, but there was something I could do to give his
morale a shot in the arm. I directed his attention to the Drones
Club scarf lying on the seat, at the same time handing him my
hat. He put them on, and the rude disguise proved effective.
Various rozzers came along, but they were looking for a man
without a hat and he was definitely hatted, so they passed us
by. Of course, I was bareheaded, but one look at me was
enough to tell them that this polished boulevardier could not
possibly be the dubious character they were after. And a few
minutes later the crowd had melted.

'Drive on, Wooster,' said Orlo. 'Get a move on, blast you.'

He spoke irritably, and I remembered that he had always
been an irritable chap, as who would not have been, having to
go through life with a name like Orlo, and peddling insurance
when he had hoped to electrify the House of Commons with
his molten eloquence. I took no umbrage, accordingly, if
umbrage is the thing you take when people start ordering you
about, making allowances for his state of mind. I drove on, and
he said 'Phew' and removed a bead of persp. from the brow.

I hardly knew what to do for the best. He was still panting
like a hart, and some fellows when panting like harts enjoy
telling you all about it, while others prefer a tactful silence. I
decided to take a chance.

'Spot of trouble?' I said.

'Yes.'

'Often the way during these protest marches. What
happened?'

'I socked a cop.'

I could see why he was a bit emotional. Socking cops is a
thing that should be done sparingly, if at all. I resumed the
quiz.

'Any particular reason? Or did it just seem a good idea at the
time?'

He gnashed a tooth or two. He was a red-headed chap, and
my experience of the red-headed is that you can always expect
high blood pressure from them in times of stress. The first
Queen Elizabeth had red hair, and look what she did to Mary
Queen of Scots.

'He was arresting the woman I love.'

I could understand how this might well have annoyed him.
I have loved a fair number of women in my time, though it
always seems to wear off after a while, and I should probably
have drained the bitter cup a bit if I had seen any of them
pinched by the police.

'What had she done?'

'She was heading the procession with me and shouting a
good deal as always happens on these occasions when the
emotions of a generous girl are stirred. He told her to stop
shouting. She said this was a free country and she was entitled
to shout as much as she pleased. He said not if she was
shouting the sort of things she was shouting, and she called
him a Cossack and socked him. Then he arrested her, and I
socked him.'

A pang of pity for the stricken officer passed through me.
Orlo, as I have said, was well nourished, and Vanessa was one
of those large girls who pack a hefty punch. A cop socked by
both of them would have entertained no doubt as to his having
been in a fight.

But this was not what was occupying my thoughts. At the
words 'she was heading the procession with me' I had started
visibly. It seemed to me that, coupled with that 'woman I love'
stuff, they could mean only one thing.

'Good Lord,' I said. 'Is Vanessa Cook the woman you
love?'

'She is.'

'Nice girl,' I said, for there is never any harm in giving the
old salve. 'And, of course, radiant-beauty-wise in the top ten.'

A moment later I was regretting that I had pitched it so
strong, for the effect on Orlo was most unpleasant. His eyes
bulged, at the same time flashing, as if he were on the verge of
making a fiery far-to-the-left speech.

'You know her?' he said, and his voice was low and guttural,
like that of a bulldog which has attempted to swallow a chump
chop and only got it down half-way.

I saw that I would do well to watch my step, for it was
evident that what I have heard Jeeves call the green-eyed
monster that doth mock the meat it feeds on was beginning to
feel the rush of life beneath its keel. You never know what may
happen when the g.-e. m. takes over.

'Slightly,' I said. 'Very slightly. We just met for a moment at
some cocktail party or other.'

'That was all?'

'That was all.'

'You were not – how shall I put it? – in any sense intimate?'

'No, no. Simply on Good-morning-good-morning-lovely-morning-
is-it-not terms if I happened to run into her in the
street.'

'Nothing more?'

'Nothing more.'

I had said the right thing. He went off the boil, and when
he next spoke, it was without bulldog and chump chop effects.

'You call her a nice girl. That puts in a nutshell my own
opinion of her.'

'And she, I imagine, thinks highly of you?'

'Correct.'

'You're engaged, possibly?'

'Yes.'

'Many happy returns.'

'But we can't get married because of her father.'

'He objects?'

'Strongly.'

'But surely you don't have to have Father's consent in these
enlightened days?'

A look of pain came into his face and he writhed like an
electric fan. It was plain that my words had touched a sore s.

'You do if he is trustee for your money and you don't make
enough at your job to marry on. My Uncle Joe left me enough
to get married to twenty girls. He was Vanessa's father's
partner in one of those big provision businesses. But I can't
touch it because he made old Cook my trustee, and Cook
refuses to part.'

'Why?'

'He disapproves of my political views. He says he has no
intention of encouraging any damned Communists.'

I think at this juncture I may have looked askance at him a
bit. I hadn't realized that that was what he was, and it rather
shocked me, because I'm not any too keen on Communists.
However, he was my guest, so to speak, so I merely said that
that must have been unpleasant, and he said Yes, very
unpleasant, adding that only Cook's grey hairs had saved him
from getting plugged in the eye, which shows that it's not such
a bad thing to let your hair go grey.

'And in addition to disliking my political views he considers
that I have led Vanessa astray. He has heard about her going
on these protest marches, and he considers me responsible.
But for me, he says, she would never have done such a thing,
and that if she ever made herself conspicuous and got her name
in the papers, she would come straight home and stay there.
He has a big house in the country with a stable of racehorses,
as he can well afford to after his years of grinding the faces of
the widow and the orphan.'

I could have corrected him here, pointing out that you
don't grind people's faces by selling them pressed beef and
potato chips at a lower price than they would be charged
elsewhere, but, as I say, he was my guest, so I refrained. I
was conscious of a passing thought that Vanessa Cook would
not be remaining long in London now that she had
developed this habit of socking policemen, but I did not
share this with Orlo Porter, not wishing to rub salt into the
wound.

'But let's not talk about it any more,' he said, closing the
subject with a bang. 'You can drop me anywhere round here.
Thanks for the ride.'

'Don't mention it.'

'Where are you going?'

'Harley Street, to see a doctor. I've got spots on my chest.'

The effect of this disclosure was rather remarkable. A keen
go-getter look came into his face, and I could seem that Orlo
Porter the lover had been put in storage for the time being, his
place taken by Orlo Porter the zealous employee of the
London and Home Counties Insurance Company.

'Spots?' he said.

'Pink,' I said.

'Pink spots,' he said. 'That's serious. You'd better take out a
policy with me.'

I reminded him that I had already done so. He shook his
head.

'Yes, yes, yes, but that was only for accidents. What you
must have now is a life policy, and most fortunately,' he said,
drawing papers from his pocket like a conjuror taking rabbits
from a hat, 'I happen to have one on me. Sign here, Wooster,'
he said, this time producing a fountain pen.

And such was his magnetism that I signed there. He
registered approval.

'You have done the wise thing, Wooster. Whatever the
doctor may tell you when you see him, however brief your span
of life, it will be a comfort to you to know that your widow and
the little ones are provided for. Drop me here, Wooster.'

I dropped him, and drove on to Harley Street.

In spite of being held up by the protest march I was a bit
early for my appointment, and was informed on arrival
that the medicine man was tied up for the moment with
another gentleman. I took a seat and was flitting idly through
the pages of an
Illustrated London News
of the previous
December when the door of E. Jimpson Murgatroyd's
private lair opened and there emerged an elderly character
with one of those square, empire-building faces, much
tanned as if he was accustomed to sitting out in the sun
without his parasol. Seeing me, he drank me in for a while
and then said 'Hullo', and conceive my emotion when I
recognized him as Major Plank the explorer and Rugby
football aficionado, whom I had last seen at his house in
Gloucestershire when he was accusing me of trying to get
five quid out of him under false pretences. A groundless
charge, I need scarcely say, self being as pure as the driven
snow, if not purer, but things had got a bit difficult and the
betting was that they would become difficult now. I sat
waiting for him to denounce me and was wondering what the
harvest would be, when he spoke, to my astonishment, in the
most bonhomous way, as if we were old buddies.

'We've met before. I never forget a face. Isn't your name
Allen or Allenby or Alexander or something?'

'Wooster,' I said, relieved to the core. I had been anticipating
a painful scene. He clicked his tongue. 'I could have
sworn it was something beginning with Al. It's this malaria of
mine. Picked it up in Equatorial Africa, and it affects my
memory. So you've changed your name, have you? Secret
enemies after you?'

'No, no secret enemies.'

'That's generally why one changes one's name. I had to
change mine that time I shot the chief of the 'Mgombis. In
self-defence, of course, but that made no difference to his
widows and surviving relatives who were looking for me. If
they had caught me, they would have roasted me alive over a
slow fire, which is a thing one always wants to avoid. But I
baffled them. Plank was the man they were trying to contact,
and it never occurred to them that somebody called George
Bernard Shaw could be the chap they were after. They are not
very bright in those parts. Well, Wooster, how have you been
since we last met? Pretty bobbish?'

'Oh, fine, thanks, except that I've got spots on my chest.'

'Spots? That's bad. How many?'

I said I had not actually taken a census, but there were quite
a few, and he shook his head gravely.

'Might be bubonic plague or possibly sprue or schistosomiasis.
One of my native bearers got spots on his chest, and
we buried him before sundown. Had to. Delicate fellows,
these native bearers, though you wouldn't think so to look at
them. Catch everything that's going around – sprue, bubonic
plague, schistosomiasis, jungle fever, colds in the head – the
lot. Well, Wooster, it's been nice seeing you again. I would ask
you to lunch, but I have a train to catch. I'm off to the country.'

He left me, as you may imagine, in something of a twitter.
Bertram Wooster, as is well known, is intrepid and it takes a
lot to scare the pants off him. But his talk of native bearers who
had to be buried before sundown had caused me not a little
anxiety. Nor did the first sight of E. Jimpson Murgatroyd do
anything to put me at my ease. Tipton had warned me that he
was a gloomy old buster, and a gloomy old buster was what he
proved to be. He had sad, brooding eyes and long whiskers,
and his resemblance to a frog which had been looking on the
dark side since it was a slip of a tadpole sent my spirits right
down into the basement.

However, as so often happens when you get to know a
fellow better, he turned out to be not nearly as pessimistic a
Gawd-help-us as he appeared to be at first sight. By the time
he had weighed me and tied that rubber thing round my biceps
and felt my pulse and tapped me all over like a whiskered
woodpecker he had quite brightened up and words of good
cheer were pouring out of him like ginger beer from a bottle.

'I don't think you have much to worry about,' he said.

'You don't?' I said, considerably bucked up. 'Then it isn't
sprue or schistosomiasis?'

'Of course it is not. What gave you the idea it might be?'

'Major Plank said it might. The chap who was in here
before me.'

'You shouldn't listen to people, especially Plank. We were
at school together. Barmy Plank we used to call him. No, the
spots are of no importance. They will disappear in a few days.'

'Well, that's a relief,' I said, and he said he was glad I was
pleased.

'But,' he added.

This chipped a bit off my
joie de vivre.

'But what?'

He was looking like a minor prophet about to rebuke the
sins of the people – it was the whiskers that did it mostly,
though the eyebrows helped. I forgot to mention that he had
bushy eyebrows – and I could see that this was where I got the
bad news.

'Mr Wooster,' he said, 'you are a typical young man about
town.'

'Oh, thanks,' I responded, for it sounded like a compliment,
and one always likes to say the civil thing.

'And like all young men of your type you pay no attention
to your health. You drink too much.'

'Only at times of special revelry. Last night, for instance, I
was helping a pal to celebrate the happy conclusion of love's
young dream, and it may be that I became a mite polluted, but
that rarely happens. One Martini Wooster, some people call
me.'

He paid no attention to my frank manly statement, but
carried on regardless.

'You smoke too much. You stay up too late at night. You
don't get enough exercise. At your age you ought to be playing
Rugby football for the old boys of your school.'

'I didn't go to a Rugger school.'

'Where did you go?'

'Eton.'

'Oh,' he said, and he said it as if he didn't think much of
Eton. 'Well, there you are. You do all the things I have said.

You abuse your health in a hundred ways. Total collapse may
come at any moment.'

'At any moment?' I quavered.

'At any moment. Unless –'

'Unless?' Now, I felt, he was talking.

'Unless you give up this unwholesome London life. Go to
the country. Breathe pure air. Go to bed early. And get plenty
of exercise. If you do not do this, I cannot answer for the
consequences.'

He had shaken me. When a doctor, even if whiskered, tells
you he cannot answer for the consequences, that's strong stuff.
But I was not dismayed, because I had spotted a way of
following his advice without anguish. Bertram Wooster is like
that. He thinks on his feet.

'Would it be all right,' I asked, 'if I went to stay with my
aunt in Worcestershire?'

He weighed the question, scratching his nose with his
stethoscope. He had been doing this at intervals during our
get-together, being evidently one of the scratchers, like
Barbara Frietchie. The poet Nash would have taken to him.

'I see no objection to your staying with your aunt, provided
the conditions are right. Whereabouts in Worcestershire does
she live?'

'Near a town called Market Snodsbury.'

'Is the air pure there?'

'Excursion trains are run for people to breathe it.'

'Your life would be quiet?'

'Practically unconscious.'

'No late hours?'

'None. The early dinner, the restful spell with a good book
or the crossword puzzle and so to bed.'

'Then by all means do as you suggest.'

'Splendid. I'll ring her up right away.'

The aunt to whom I alluded was my good and deserving
Aunt Dahlia, not to be confused with my Aunt Agatha who
eats broken bottles and is strongly suspected of turning into a
werewolf at the time of the full moon. Aunt Dahlia is as good
a sort as ever said 'Tally Ho' to a fox, which she frequently did
in her younger days when out with the Quorn or Pytchley. If
she ever turned into a werewolf, it would be one of those jolly
breezy werewolves whom it is a pleasure to know.

It was very satisfactory that he had given me the green light
without probing further, for an extended quiz might have
revealed that Aunt Dahlia has a French cook who defies
competition, and I need scarcely explain that the first thing a
doctor does when you tell him you are going to a house where
there's a French cook is to put you on a diet.

'Then that's that,' I said, all buck and joviality. 'Many
thanks for your sympathetic co-operation. Lovely weather we
are having, are we not? Good morning, good morning, good
morning.'

And I slipped him a purse of gold and went off to phone
Aunt Dahlia. I had given up all idea of driving to Brighton for
lunch. I had stern work before me – viz. cadging an invitation
from this aunt, sometimes a tricky task. In her darker moods,
when some domestic upheaval is troubling her, she has been
known to ask me if I have a home of my own and, if I have,
why the hell I don't stay in it.

I got her after the delays inseparable from telephoning a
remote hamlet like Market Snodsbury, where the operators are
recruited exclusively from the Worcestershire branch of the
Jukes family.

'Hullo, aged relative,' I began, as suavely as I could manage.

'Hullo to you, you young blot on Western civilization,' she
responded in the ringing tones with which she had once
rebuked hounds for taking time off to chase rabbits. 'What's
on your mind, if any? Talk quick, because I'm packing.'

I didn't like the sound of this.

'Packing?' I said. 'Are you going somewhere?'

'Yes, to Somerset, to stay with friends of mine, the
Briscoes.'

'Oh, curses.'

'Why?'

'I was hoping I might come to you for a short visit.'

'Well, sucks to you, young Bertie, you can't. Unless you'd
like to rally round and keep Tom company.'

I h'm-ed at this. I am very fond of Uncle Tom, but the idea
of being cooped up alone with him in his cabin didn't appeal
to me. He collects old silver and is apt to hold you with a
glittering eye and talk your head off about sconces and
foliations and gadroon borders, and my interest in these is
what you might call tepid. 'No,' I said. 'Thanks for the kind
invitation, but I think I'll take a cottage somewhere.'

Her next words showed that she had failed to grasp the
gist.

'What is all this?' she queried. 'I don't get it. Why have you
got to go anywhere? Are you on the run from the police?'

'Doctor's orders.'

'What are you talking about? You've always been as fit as ten
fiddles.'

'Until this morning, when spots appeared on my chest.'

'Spots?'

'Pink.'

'Probably leprosy.'

'The doc thinks not. His view is that they are caused by my
being a typical young man about town who doesn't go to bed
early enough. He says I must leg it to the country and breathe
pure air, so I shall need a cottage.'

'With honeysuckle climbing over the door and old Mister
Moon peeping in through the window?'

'That sort of thing. Any idea how one sets about getting a
cottage of that description?'

'I'll find you one. Jimmy Briscoe has dozens. And Maiden
Eggesford, where he lives, is not far from the popular seaside
resort of Bridmouth-on-Sea, notorious for its invigorating air.
Corpses at Bridmouth-on-Sea leap from their biers and dance
round the maypole.'

'Sounds good.'

'I'll drop you a line when I've got the cottage. You'll like
Maiden Eggesford. Jimmy has a racing stable, and there's a big
meeting coming on soon at Bridmouth; so you'll have not only
pure air but entertainment. One of Jimmy's horses is running,
and most of the wise money is on it, though there is a school
of thought that maintains that danger is to be expected from a
horse belonging to a Mr Cook. And now for heaven's sake get
off the wire. I'm busy.'

So far, I said to myself as I put back the receiver, so g. I
would have preferred, of course, to be going to the aged
relative's home, where Anatole her superb chef dished up his
mouth-waterers, but we Woosters can rough it, and life in a
country cottage with the aged r. just around the corner would
be a very different thing from a country c. without her to come
through with conversation calculated to instruct, elevate and
amuse.

All that remained now was to break the news to Jeeves, and
I rather shrank from the prospect.

You see, we had practically settled on a visit to New York,
and I knew he was looking forward to it. I don't know what he
does in New York, but whatever it is it's something he gets a
big kick out of, and disappointment, I feared, would be
inevitable.

'Jeeves,' I said when I had returned to the Wooster GHQ,
'I'm afraid I have bad news.'

'Indeed, sir? I am sorry to hear that.'

One of his eyebrows had risen about an eighth of an inch,
and I knew he was deeply stirred, because I had rarely seen him
raise an eyebrow more than a sixteenth of an inch. He had, of
course, leaped to the conclusion that I was about to tell him
that the medicine man had given me three months to live,
or possibly two. 'Mr Murgatroyd's diagnosis was not
encouraging?'

I hastened to relieve his apprehensions.

'Yes, as a matter of fact it was. Most encouraging. He said
the spots
qua
spots . . . Is it
qua
?'

'Perfectly correct, sir.'

'His verdict was that the spots
qua
spots didn't amount to a
row of beans and could be disregarded. They will pass by me
like the idle wind which I respect not.'

'Extremely gratifying, sir.'

'Extremely, as you say. But pause before you go out and dance
in the streets, because there's more to come. It was to this that I
was alluding when I said I had bad news. I've got to withdraw to
the country and lead a quiet life. He says if I don't, he cannot
answer for the consequences. So I'm afraid New York is off.'