Young Men in Spats (3 page)

When he had finished, there was a longish silence. Mavis looked at old Bodsham. Old Bodsham looked at Mavis.

‘I don't quite understand, Frederick,' said Mavis at length.

‘You say this girl was a stranger?'

‘Why, yes,' said Freddie.

‘And you accosted her in the street?'

‘Why, yes,' said Freddie.

‘Oh?' said Mavis.

‘I was sorry for her,' said Freddie.

‘Oh?' said Mavis.

‘In fact, you might say that my heart bled for her.'

‘Oh?' said Mavis.

Old Bodsham let his breath go in a sort of whistling sigh.

‘Is it your practice, may I ask,' he said, ‘to scrape acquaintance in the public streets with young persons of the opposite sex?'

‘You must remember, Father,' said Mavis, in a voice which would have had an Esquimaux slapping his ribs and calling for the steam-heat, ‘that this girl was probably very pretty. So many
of these New York girls are. That would, of course, explain Frederick's behaviour.'

‘She wasn't!' yipped Freddie. ‘She was a gargoyle.'

‘Oh?' said Mavis.

‘Spectacled to bursting-point and utterly lacking in feminine allure.'

‘Oh?' said Mavis.

‘And when I saw her frail form bowed down by that dashed great suitcase . . . I should have thought,' said Freddie, injured, ‘that, having learned the salient facts, you would have fawned on me for my big-hearted chivalry.'

‘Oh?' said Mavis.

There was another silence.

‘I must be going, Father,' said Mavis. ‘I have some shopping to do.'

‘Shall I come with you?' said Freddie.

‘I would prefer to be alone,' said Mavis.

‘I must be going,' said old Bodsham. ‘I have some thinking to do.'

‘Thinking?' said Freddie.

‘Thinking,' said old Bodsham. ‘Some serious thinking. Some extremely serious thinking. Some very serious thinking indeed.'

‘We will leave Frederick to finish his cigarette,' said Mavis.

‘Yes,' said old Bodsham. ‘We will leave Frederick to finish his cigarette.'

‘But listen,' bleated Freddie. ‘I give you my honest word she looked like something employed by the Government for scaring crows in the cornfields of Minnesota.'

‘Oh?' said Mavis.

‘Oh?' said old Bodsham.

‘Come, Father,' said Mavis.

And old Freddie found himself alone, and not feeling so frightfully good.

Now, it was Freddie's practice – and a very prudent practice, too – to carry on his person, concealed in his hip pocket, a small but serviceable flask full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene. Friends whom he had made since his arrival in New York had advocated this policy, pointing out that you never knew when it would come in useful. His first act, accordingly, after the two Vice-Presidents of the Knickerbocker Ice Company had left him and he had begun to thaw out a bit, was to produce this flask and take a quick, sharp snort.

The effect was instantaneous. His numbed brain began to work. And presently, after a couple more swift ones, he saw daylight.

The whole nub of the thing, he perceived clearly, was the personal appearance of the girl Jennings. In the matter of her loved one's acts of chivalry towards damsels in distress, a fiancée holds certain definite views. If the damsels he assists are plain, he is a good chap and deserves credit. If they are pretty, he is a low hound who jolly well gets his ring and letters back by the first post.

Obviously, then, his only course was to return to Sixty-Ninth Street, dig up the Jennings, and parade her before Mavis. Her mere appearance, he was convinced, would clear him completely.

Of course, the thing would have to be done delicately. I mean to say, you can't just go to a comparatively strange female and ask her to trot round to see a friend of yours so that the latter can ascertain at first hand what a repellently unattractive girl she is. But Freddie, now full of the juice, fancied he could work it all right. All it wanted was just a little tact.

‘Yoicks!' said Freddie to himself. ‘Hark for'ard!' And, in his opinion, that about summed it up.

It was a lovely afternoon as Freddie got into his taxi outside the Ritz and tooled off up town. Alighting at Sixty-Ninth Street, he braced himself with a visible effort and started the long climb up the four flights of stairs. And presently he was outside the door of Flat 4B and tootling on the bell.

Nothing happened. He tootled again. He knocked. He even went so far as to kick the door. But there were no signs of human occupation, and after a bit he was reluctantly forced to the conclusion that the Jennings was out.

Freddie had not foreseen this possibility, and he leaned against the wall for a space, thinking out his next move. He had just come to the conclusion that the only thing to do was to edge away for the nonce and have another pop later on, when a door opposite opened and a female appeared.

‘Hullo,' said this bird.

‘Hullo,' said Freddie.

He spoke, he tells me, a little doubtfully, for a glance had shown him that this woman was not at all the kind of whom Mavis would have approved. A different species altogether. Her eyes were blue and totally free from spectacles. Her teeth were white and even. Her hair was a beautiful gold.

Judging by her costume, she seemed to be a late riser. The hour was three-thirty, but she had not yet progressed beyond the negligee and slippers stage. That negligee, moreover, was a soft pink in colour and was decorated throughout with a series of fowls of some kind. Love-birds, Freddie tells me he thinks they were. And a man who is engaged to be married and who, already, is not any too popular with the bride-to-be, shrinks –
automatically, as it were – from blue-eyed, golden-haired females in pink negligees picked out with ultramarine love-birds.

However, a fellow has to be civil. So, having said ‘Hullo!' he threw in a reserved, gentlemanly sort of smile for good measure.

He assures me that it was merely one of those aloof smiles which the Honorary Secretary of a Bible Class would have given the elderly aunt of a promising pupil: but it had the effect of encouraging the contents of the negligee to further conversation.

‘Looking for someone?' she asked.

‘Why, yes,' said Freddie. ‘I suppose you couldn't tell me when Miss Jennings will be in?'

‘Miss Who?'

‘Jennings.'

‘What name?'

‘Jennings.'

‘How do you spell it?'

‘Oh, much in the usual way, I expect. Start off with a J and then a good many “n”s and “g”s and things.'

‘Miss Jennings, did you say?'

‘That's right. Jennings.'

‘I'll tell you something,' said the female frankly. ‘I've never seen any Miss Jennings. I've never heard of any Miss Jennings. I don't know who she is. She means literally nothing in my life. And I'll tell you something else. I've been breaking my back for half an hour trying to open my living-room window, and do you think I can do it? No, sir! What do you advise?'

‘Leave it shut,' said Freddie.

‘But it's so warm. The weather, I mean.'

‘It
is
warm,' agreed Freddie.

‘I'm just stifling. Yes, sir. That's what I am. Stifling in my tracks.'

At this point, undoubtedly, old Freddie should have said ‘Oh?' or ‘Well, best o' luck!' or something of that order, and buzzed off. But once a fellow drops into the habit of doing acts of kindness, he tells me, it's dashed difficult to pull up. The thing becomes second nature.

So now, instead of hoofing it, he unshipped another of those polished smiles of his, and asked if there was anything he could do.

‘Well, it's a shame to trouble you . . .'

‘Not at all.'

‘I hate to impose on you . . .'

‘Not – a – tall,' said Freddie, becoming more
preux
every moment. ‘Only too pleased.'

And he trotted after her into the flat.

‘There it is,' said the female. ‘The window, I mean.'

Freddie surveyed it carefully. He went over and gave it a shake. It certainly seemed pretty tightly stuck.

‘The way they build these joints nowadays,' observed the female, with a certain amount of severity, ‘the windows either won't open at all or else they drop out altogether.'

‘Well, that's Life, isn't it?' said Freddie.

The thing didn't look any too good to him, but he buckled to like a man, and for some moments nothing was to be heard in the room but his tense breathing.

‘How are you getting on?' asked the female.

‘I've a sort of rummy buzzing in my head,' said Freddie. ‘You don't think it's apoplexy or something?'

‘I'd take a rest if I was you,' said his hostess. ‘You look warm.'

‘I
am
warm,' said Freddie.

‘Take your coat off.'

‘May I? Thanks.'

‘Your collar, too, if you like.'

‘Thanks.'

The removal of the upholstery made Freddie feel a little better.

‘I once knew a man who opened a window in a Pullman car,' said the female.

‘No, really?' said Freddie.

‘Ah, what a man!' sighed the female wistfully. ‘They don't make 'em like that nowadays.'

I don't suppose she actually intended anything in the way of a slur or innuendo, if you know what I mean, but Freddie tells me he felt a bit stung. It was as if his manly spirit had been challenged. Setting his teeth, he charged forward and had another go.

‘Try pulling it down from the top,' said the female.

Freddie tried pulling it down from the top, but nothing happened.

‘Try wiggling it sideways,' said the female.

Freddie tried wiggling it sideways, but his efforts were null and void.

‘Have a drink,' said the female.

This seemed to old Freddie by miles the best suggestion yet. He sank into a chair and let his tongue hang out. And presently a brimming glass stole into his hand, and he quaffed deeply.

‘That's some stuff I brought away from home,' said the female.

‘From where?' said Freddie.

‘Home.'

‘But isn't this your home?'

‘Well, it is now. But I used to live in Utica. Mr Silvers made this stuff. About the only good thing he ever did. Mr Silvers, I mean.'

Freddie pondered a bit.

‘Mr Silvers? Don't I seem to know that name?'

‘I wish I didn't,' said the female. ‘There was a palooka, if you want one.'

‘A what?'

‘A palooka. Mr Silvers. Slice him where you like, he was still boloney.'

The rather generous nature of the fluid he was absorbing was making Freddie feel a bit clouded.

‘I don't altogether follow this. Who is Mr Silvers?'

‘Ed. Silvers. My husband. And is he jealous? Ask me!'

‘Ask who?'

‘Ask
me
.'

‘Ask you what?'

‘I'm telling you. I left him flat, because he didn't have no ideals.'

‘Who didn't?'

‘Mr Silvers.'

‘Your husband?'

‘That's right.'

‘Ah!' said Freddie. ‘Now we've got it straight.'

He quaffed again. The foundation of the beverage manufactured by Mr Silvers seemed to be neat vitriol, but, once you had got used to the top of your head going up and down like the lid of a kettle with boiling water in it, the effects were far from unpleasant. Mr Silvers may not have had ideals, but he unquestionably knew what to do when you handed him a still and a potato.

‘He made me very unhappy,' said the female.

‘Who did?'

‘Mr Silvers.'

‘Mr Silvers made you unhappy?'

‘You're dern tooting Mr Silvers made me unhappy. Entertaining his low suspicions.'

Freddie was shocked.

‘Did Mr Silvers entertain low suspicions?'

‘He certainly did.'

‘Mr Ed. Silvers?'

‘That's right.'

‘I bet that made you unhappy.'

‘You never said a truer word.'

‘You poor little thing,' said Freddie. ‘You poor little Mrs Silvers.'

‘Mrs Ed. Silvers.'

‘You poor little Mrs Ed. Silvers. I never heard anything so dashed monstrous in my life. May I pat your hand?'

‘You bet your lavender spats you may pat my hand.'

‘I will,' said Freddie, and did so.

He even went further. He squeezed her hand. His whole attitude towards her, he tells me, was that of a brother towards a suffering sister.

And at this moment the door flew open, and a number of large objects crashed in. Without any warning the air had suddenly become full of bowler hats.

Freddie, gazing upon them, was conscious of an odd feeling. You know that feeling you sometimes feel of feeling you're feeling that something has happened which has happened before. I believe doctors explain it by saying that the two halves of the brain aren't working strictly on the up-and-up. Anyway, that was how Freddie felt at this point. He felt he had seen those bowler hats before – perhaps in some previous existence.

‘What ho!' he said. ‘Callers, what?'

And then his brain seemed to clear – or the two halves clicked together, or something – and he recognized the Bloke who had interrupted his
tête-à-tête
with Miss Myra Jennings that morning.

Now the last time Freddie had seen this Bloke, the latter had been bathed in confusion. You pictured his embarrassment. He was now looking far cheerier. He had the air of a bloke in a bowler hat who has won through to his objective.

‘We're in, boys,' he said.

The two subsidiary Blokes nodded briefly. One of them said: ‘Sure, we're in.' The other said: ‘Hot dog!'

The head Bloke scrutinized Freddie closely.

‘Well, I'm darned!' he exclaimed. ‘If it isn't you again! Boys,' he said, a note of respect creeping into his voice, ‘take a good slant at this guy. Eye him reverently. The swiftest worker in New York. Mark how he flits from spot to spot. You can't go anywhere without finding him. And he hasn't even got a bicycle.'