‘I fear it will not be feasible, sir. The gong is sounding.’
‘So it is. Who’s sounding it? You said Seppings was in bed.’
‘The parlourmaid, sir, deputizing for Mr Seppings.’
‘I like her wrist work. Well, I’ll tell you later.’
‘Very good, sir. Pardon me, your tie.’
‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘Everything, sir. If you will allow me.’
‘All right, go ahead. But I can’t help asking myself if ties really matter at a time like this.’
‘There is no time when ties do not matter, sir.’
My mood was sombre as I went down to dinner. Anatole, I was thinking, would no doubt give us of his best, possibly his Timbale de ris de veau Toulousaine or his Sylphides à la crème d’écrevisses, but Spode would be there and Madeline would be there and Florence would be there and L. P. Runkle would be there.
There was, I reflected, always something.
8
* * *
IT HAS BEEN well said of Bertram Wooster that when he sets his hand to the plough he does not stop to pick daisies and let the grass grow under his feet. Many men in my position, having undertaken to canvass for a friend anxious to get into Parliament, would have waited till after lunch next day to get rolling, saying to themselves Oh, what difference do a few hours make and going off to the billiard-room for a game or two of snooker. I, in sharp contradistinction as I have heard Jeeves call it, was on my way shortly after breakfast. It can’t have been much more than a quarter to eleven when, fortified by a couple of kippers, toast, marmalade and three cups of coffee, I might have been observed approaching a row of houses down by the river to which someone with a flair for the mot juste had given the name of River Row. From long acquaintance with the town I knew that this was one of the posher parts of Market Snodsbury, stiff with householders likely to favour the Conservative cause, and it was for that reason that I was making it my first port of call. No sense, I mean, in starting off with the less highly priced localities where everybody was bound to vote Labour and would not only turn a deaf ear to one’s reasoning but might even bung a brick at one. Ginger no doubt had a special posse of tough supporters, talking and spitting out of the side of their mouths, and they would attend to the brick-bunging portion of the electorate.
Jeeves was at my side, but whereas I had selected Number One as my objective, his intention was to push on to Number Two. I would then give Number Three the treatment, while he did the same to Number Four. Talking it over, we had decided that if we made it a double act and blew into a house together, it might give the occupant the impression that he was receiving a visit from the plain clothes police and excite him unduly. Many of the men who live in places like River Row have a tendency to apoplectic fits as the result of high living, and a voter expiring on the floor from shock means a voter less on the voting list. One has to think of these things.
‘What beats me, Jeeves,’ I said, for I was in thoughtful mood, ‘is why people don’t object to somebody they don’t know from Adam muscling into their homes without a … without a what? It’s on the tip of my tongue.’
‘A With-your-leave or a By-your leave, sir?’
‘That’s right. Without a With-your-leave or a By-your-leave and telling them which way to vote. Taking a liberty, it strikes me as.’
‘It is the custom at election time, sir. Custom reconciles us to everything, a wise man once said.’
‘Shakespeare?’
‘Burke, sir. You will find the apothegm in his On The Sublime And Beautiful. I think the electors, conditioned by many years of canvassing, would be disappointed if nobody called on them.’
‘So we shall be bringing a ray of sunshine into their drab lives?’
‘Something on that order, sir.’
‘Well, you may be right. Have you ever done this sort of thing before?’
‘Once or twice, sir, before I entered your employment.’
‘What were your methods?’
‘I outlined as briefly as possible the main facets of my argument, bade my auditors goodbye, and withdrew.’
‘No preliminaries?’
‘Sir?’
‘You didn’t make a speech of any sort before getting down to brass tacks? No mention of Burke or Shakespeare or the poet Burns?’
‘No, sir. It might have caused exasperation.’
I disagreed with him. I felt that he was on the wrong track altogether and couldn’t expect anything in the nature of a triumph at Number Two. There is probably nothing a voter enjoys more than hearing the latest about Burke and his On The Sublime And Beautiful, and here he was, deliberately chucking away the advantages his learning gave him. I had half a mind to draw his attention to the Parable of the Talents, with which I had become familiar when doing research for that Scripture Knowledge prize I won at school. Time, however, was getting along, so I passed it up. But I told him I thought he was mistaken. Preliminaries, I maintained, were of the essence. Breaking the ice is what it’s called. I mean, you can’t just barge in on a perfect stranger and get off the mark with an abrupt ‘Hoy there. I hope you’re going to vote for my candidate!’ How much better to say ‘Good morning, sir. I can see at a glance that you are a man of culture, probably never happier than when reading your Burke. I wonder if you are familiar with his On The Sublime And Beautiful?’ Then away you go, off to a nice start.
‘You must have an approach,’ I said. ‘I myself am all for the jolly, genial. I propose, on meeting my householder, to begin with a jovial “Hullo there, Mr Whatever-it-is, hullo there”, thus ingratiating myself with him from the kick-off. I shall then tell him a funny story. Then, and only then, will I get to the nub – waiting, of course, till he has stopped laughing. I can’t fail.’
‘I am sure you will not, sir. The system would not suit me, but it is merely a matter of personal taste.’
‘The psychology of the individual, what?’
‘Precisely, sir. By different methods different men excel.’
‘Burke?’
‘Charles Churchill, sir, a poet who flourished in the early eighteenth century. The words occur in his Epistle To William Hogarth.’
We halted. Cutting out a good pace, we had arrived at the door of Number One. I pressed the bell.
‘Zero hour, Jeeves,’ I said gravely.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Carry on.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘Heaven speed your canvassing.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘And mine.’
‘Yes, sir.’
He pushed along and mounted the steps of Number Two, leaving me feeling rather as I had done in my younger days at a clergyman uncle’s place in Kent when about to compete in the Choir Boys Bicycle Handicap open to all those whose voices had not broken by the first Sunday in Epiphany – nervous, but full of the will to win.
The door opened as I was running through the high spots of the laughable story I planned to unleash when I got inside. A maid was standing there, and conceive my emotion when I recognized her as one who had held office under Aunt Dahlia the last time I had enjoyed the latter’s hospitality; the one with whom, the old sweats will recall, I had chewed the fat on the subject of the cat Augustus and his tendency to pass his days in sleep instead of bustling about and catching mice.
The sight of her friendly face was like a tonic. My morale, which had begun to sag a bit after Jeeves had left me, rose sharply, closing at nearly par. I felt that even if the fellow I was going to see kicked me downstairs, she would be there to show me out and tell me that these things are sent to try us, with the general idea of making us more spiritual.
‘Why, hullo!’ I said.
‘Good morning, sir.’
‘We meet again.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You remember me?’
‘Oh yes, sir.’
‘And you have not forgotten Augustus?’
‘Oh no, sir.’
&n
bsp; ‘He’s still as lethargic as ever. He joined me at breakfast this morning. Just managed to keep awake while getting outside his portion of kipper, then fell into a dreamless sleep at the end of the bed with his head hanging down. So you have resigned your portfolio at Aunt Dahlia’s since we last met. Too bad. We shall all miss you. Do you like it here?’
‘Oh yes, sir.’
‘That’s the spirit. Well, getting down to business, I’ve come to see your boss on a matter of considerable importance. What sort of chap is he? Not too short-tempered? Not too apt to be cross with callers, I hope?’
‘It isn’t a gentleman, sir, it’s a lady. Mrs McCorkadale.’
This chipped quite a bit off the euphoria I was feeling. I had been relying on the story I had prepared to put me over with a bang, carrying me safely through the first awkward moments when the fellow you’ve called on without an invitation is staring at you as if wondering to what he owes the honour of this visit, and now it would have to remain untold. It was one I had heard from Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright at the Drones and it was essentially a conte whose spiritual home was the smoking-room of a London club or the men’s wash-room on an American train – in short, one by no means adapted to the ears of the gentler sex; especially a member of that sex who probably ran the local Watch Committee.
It was, consequently, a somewhat damped Bertram Wooster whom the maid ushered into the drawing-room, and my pep was in no way augmented by the first sight I had of mine hostess. Mrs McCorkadale was what I would call a grim woman. Not so grim as my Aunt Agatha, perhaps, for that could hardly be expected, but certainly well up in the class of Jael the wife of Heber and the Madame Whoever-it-was who used to sit and knit at the foot of the guillotine during the French Revolution. She had a beaky nose, tight thin lips, and her eye could have been used for splitting logs in the teak forests of Borneo. Seeing her steadily and seeing her whole, as the expression is, one marvelled at the intrepidity of Mr McCorkadale in marrying her – a man obviously whom nothing could daunt.
However, I had come there to be jolly and genial, and jolly and genial I was resolved to be. Actors will tell you that on these occasions, when the soul is a-twitter and the nervous system not like mother makes it, the thing to do is to take a deep breath. I took three, and immediately felt much better.
‘Good morning, good morning, good morning,’ I said. ‘Good morning,’ I added, rubbing it in, for it was my policy to let there be no stint.
‘Good morning,’ she replied, and one might have totted things up as so far, so good. But if I said she said it cordially, I would be deceiving my public. The impression I got was that the sight of me hurt her in some sensitive spot. The woman, it was plain, shared Spode’s view of what was needed to make England a land fit for heroes to live in.
Not being able to uncork the story and finding the way her eye was going through me like a dose of salts more than a little trying to my already dented sangfroid, I might have had some difficulty in getting the conversation going, but fortunately I was full of good material just waiting to be decanted. Over an after-dinner smoke on the previous night Ginger had filled me in on what his crowd proposed to do when they got down to it. They were going, he said, to cut taxes to the bone, straighten out our foreign policy, double our export trade, have two cars in the garage and two chickens in the pot for everyone and give the pound the shot in the arm it had been clamouring for for years. Than which, we both agreed, nothing could be sweeter, and I saw no reason to suppose that the McCorkadale gargoyle would not feel the same. I began, therefore, by asking her if she had a vote, and she said Yes, of course, and I said Well, that was fine, because if she hadn’t had, the point of my arguments would have been largely lost.
‘An excellent thing, I’ve always thought, giving women the vote,’ I proceeded heartily, and she said – rather nastily, it seemed to me – that she was glad I approved. ‘When you cast yours, if cast is the word I want, I strongly advise you to cast it in favour of Ginger Winship.’
‘On what do you base that advice?’
She couldn’t have given me a better cue. She had handed it to me on a plate with watercress round it. Like a flash I went into my sales talk, mentioning Ginger’s attitude towards taxes, our foreign policy, our export trade, cars in the garage, chickens in the pot and first aid for the poor old pound, and was shocked to observe an entire absence of enthusiasm on her part. Not a ripple appeared on the stern and rockbound coast of her map. She looked like Aunt Agatha listening to the boy Wooster trying to explain away a drawing-room window broken by a cricket ball.
I pressed her closely, or do I mean keenly.
‘You want taxes cut, don’t you?’
‘I do.’
‘And our foreign policy bumped up?’
‘Certainly.’
‘And our exports doubled and a stick of dynamite put under the pound? I’ll bet you do. Then vote for Ginger Winship, the man who with his hand on the helm of the ship of state will steer England to prosperity and happiness, bringing back once more the spacious days of Good Queen Bess.’ This was a line of talk that Jeeves had roughed out for my use. There was also some rather good stuff about this sceptred isle and this other Eden, demi-something, but I had forgotten it. ‘You can’t say that wouldn’t be nice,’ I said.
A moment before, I wouldn’t have thought it possible that she could look more like Aunt Agatha than she had been doing, but she now achieved this breathtaking feat. She sniffed, if not snorted, and spoke as follows:
‘Young man, don’t be idiotic. Hand on the helm of the ship of state, indeed! If Mr Winship performs the miracle of winning this election, which he won’t, he will be an ordinary humble back-bencher, doing nothing more notable than saying “Hear, hear” when his superiors are speaking and “Oh” and “Question” when the opposition have the floor. As,’ she went on, ‘I shall if I win this election, as I intend to.’
I blinked. A sharp ‘Whatwasthatyousaid?’ escaped my lips, and she proceeded to explain or, as Jeeves would say, elucidate.
‘You are not very quick at noticing things, are you? I imagine not, or you would have seen that Market Snodsbury is liberally plastered with posters bearing the words “Vote for McCorkadale”. An abrupt way of putting it, but one that is certainly successful in conveying its meaning.’
It was a blow, I confess, and I swayed beneath it like an aspen, if aspens are those things that sway. The Woosters can take a good deal, but only so much. My most coherent thought at the moment was that it was just like my luck, when I sallied forth as a canvasser, to collide first crack out of the box with the rival candidate. I also had the feeling that if Jeeves had taken on Number One instead of Number Two, he would probably have persuaded Ma McCorkadale to vote against herself.
I suppose if you had asked Napoleon how he had managed to get out of Moscow, he would have been a bit vague about it, and it was the same with me. I found myself on the front steps with only a sketchy notion of how I had got there, and I was in the poorest of shapes. To try to restore the shattered system I lit a cigarette and had begun to puff, when a cheery voice hailed me and I became aware that some foreign substance was sharing my doorstep. ‘Hullo, Wooster old chap’ it was saying and, the mists clearing from before my eyes, I saw that it was Bingley.
I gave the blighter a distant look. Knowing that this blot on the species resided in Market Snodsbury, I had foreseen that I might run into him sooner or later, so I was not surprised to see him. But I certainly wasn’t pleased. The last thing I wanted in the delicate state to which the McCorkadale had reduced me was conversation with a man who set cottages on fire and chased the hand that fed him hither and thither with a carving knife.
He was as unduly intimate, forward, bold, intrusive and deficient in due respect as he had been at the Junior Ganymede. He gave my back a cordial slap and would, I think, have prodded me in the ribs if it had occurred to him. You wouldn’t have thought that carving knives had ever come between us.
‘And what are you d
oing in these parts, cocky?’ he asked.
I said I was visiting my aunt Mrs Travers, who had a house in the vicinity, and he said he knew the place, though he had never met the old geezer to whom I referred.
‘I’ve seen her around. Red-faced old girl, isn’t she?’
‘Fairly vermilion.’
‘High blood pressure, probably.’
‘Or caused by going in a lot for hunting. It chaps the cheeks.’
‘Different from a barmaid. She cheeks the chaps.’
If he had supposed that his crude humour would get so much as a simper out of me, he was disappointed. I preserved the cold aloofness of a Wednesday matinée audience, and he proceeded.
‘Yes, that might be it. She looks a sport. Making a long stay?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, for the length of my visits to the old ancestor is always uncertain. So much depends on whether she throws me out or not. ‘Actually I’m here to canvass for the Conservative candidate. He’s a pal of mine.’
He whistled sharply. He had been looking repulsive and cheerful; he now looked repulsive and grave. Seeming to realize that he had omitted a social gesture, he prodded me in the ribs.
‘You’re wasting your time, Wooster, old man,’ he said. ‘He hasn’t an earthly.’
‘No?’ I quavered. It was simply one man’s opinion, of course, but the earnestness with which he had spoken was unquestionably impressive. ‘What makes you think that?’
‘Never you mind what makes me think it. Take my word for it. If you’re sensible, you’ll phone your bookie and have a big bet on McCorkadale. You’ll never regret it. You’ll come to me later and thank me for the tip with tears in your—’
At some point in this formal interchange of thoughts by spoken word, as Jeeves’s Dictionary of Synonyms puts it, he must have pressed the bell, for at this moment the door opened and my old buddy the maid appeared. Quickly adding the word ‘eyes’, he turned to her.
‘Mrs McCorkadale in, dear?’ he asked, and having been responded to in the affirmative he left me, and I headed for home. I ought, of course, to have carried on along River Row, taking the odd numbers while Jeeves attended to the even, but I didn’t feel in the vein.