Well, this is just silly.

[wotwotleigh]

 

 It was one of those pleasant, lazy sorts of summer Sunday afternoons that crop up from time to time, and I was lounging on the sofa with a spine chiller. I was going in for round two with The Mystery of the Pink Crayfish, if memory serves. (I don’t know if this has been your experience, but I find it generally pays to read these fruity little thrillers a second time. One always picks up on clues that one missed the first time around.) Jeeves was pottering about in the kitchen, and from the gentle clattering that occasionally filtered through the woodwork, I gathered that he was messing around with the tea things.

We were thus occupied - self reading, Jeeves pottering - when our respective activities were interrupted by the tootling of the doorbell. Jeeves emerged from his lair and went to admit the visitor. When he returned a moment later, he looked positively rattled. There was a sort of wildness in his eyes, and the finely chiseled map, usually full of high healthy colour, looked pale and drawn.

“Mr. Fotheringay-Phipps,” he announced, and there was a distinctly pained timbre to his voice, if timbre is the word I want.

“Hullo, Bertie,” said Barmy, popping up from behind Jeeves like a cork. And as he popped, the cause of Jeeves’s distress was borne in upon me like a stuffed eel-skin to the solar plexus. The spine chiller fell from my nerveless fingers. Barmy was dressed from head to neatly-clad foot in a bilious blue and red suit, and around his neck I perceived a matching tie decorated with tiny footballs.

“Good lord, Barmy. What,” I demanded, cutting directly to the res, “are you made up as?”

Barmy laughed down from lazy eyelids and brushed a speck of dust from his irreproachable cerise cuff (the left one, as it happens; the other I would describe as cerulean). “Oh, the suit? Rather spiffing, what? It’s in the colours of the Thames Association Football Club.”

“Oh? And what the devil is the Thames Association Football Club?”

“Well, it’s new, don’t you know. The chaps over at the West Ham Stadium put it together, and I’m sort of backing them, as it were.”

“You don’t even like football, Barmy.”

“I do!”

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes I do!”

I spoke patiently, like a kindly father lecturing a particularly dim-witted child. “No you don’t, Barmy. You gave a lengthy speech on the subj. at Pongo Twistleton’s birthday party. You must have stood on that table for at least fifteen minutes, holding us spellbound with your silver-tongued oration. Your entire thesis hinged on the idea that everyone ought to jolly well stop talking about football. I thought you made a dashed convincing argument, but Tuppy took it rather big. You probably would have come to blows over it if Oofy Prosser hadn’t picked that moment to get his head caught in a chair.”

“I don’t remember any of that.”

“It was the highlight of the evening, old fruit. It’s still the talk of the Drones. Anyway, isn’t West Ham Stadium where they have the dog races? How is anyone going to play football there? They’ll get all tangled up with the greyhounds.”

“No, no, no, Bertie. The football will be on the weekends. The dog races are during the week.”

“Oh, ah.”

“Anyway, the West Ham Stadium fellows think it will make a packet of extra money for the stadium, so I invested in it.”

“How do you even know these West Ham coves?”

“One of them’s a friend of my cousin Algernon.”

“I didn’t know you had a cousin Algernon.”

“Well, I’ve got one, don’t you know.”

“I suppose I do now. But what did you come to see me about, anyway?”

His face lit up and then dimmed again like an incandescent bulb blowing out. “I say! I don’t remember.”

“That’s all right. I’m sure it will come to you. Since you’re here, you might as well stick around for tea.”

“Oh, thanks. Can’t stay long, though. I’m going to the Savoy to see a show with Algernon and my aunt Hortensia.”

I should mention that during the above spot of dialogue, Jeeves had trickled off, as is his wont when the quality arrives. Presently, he re-emerged from his lair - almost as if on cue at the word “tea” - and began laying out the accoutrements. Barmy and I drifted in his direction.

“Ah, the Savoy,” I said, nibbling a thoughtful tea biscuit. “I find that their shows tend to be a bit on the high-brow side, but entertaining enough if you go in for that sort of thing. What are you seeing?”

“Patience.”

“Not trying to rush you, old man. Give it as much time as you need.”

“No, no, that’s the name of the show. Patience. Some sort of opera thing. Written by two chaps, Godfrey and Sturdivant or something like that.”

I perceived a delicate cough proceeding from somewhere to the south-west of me. “Ah, Jeeves,” I said. “Do you know what the dickens he’s talking about?”

“I believe, sir, that the names for which Mr. Fotheringay-Phipps is searching are Gilbert and Sullivan.”

“Gosh!” interjected Barmy earnestly, if interjected is the right word. “You always do know, don’t you, Jeeves? What a corking good brain you’ve got!”

Jeeves discreetly averted his eyes from the harsh glare of the suit. “Thank you, sir.”

“When is this show of yours taking place, Barmy?” I enquired.

“Around 6:30.”

I glanced at the clock, the short hand of which loomed ominously close to the six. “Lord love a duck, Barmy, you do live dangerously. You’d better rush off if you want to have time to change.”

He gave one of those glib or airy laughs. “Oh, I’ll have plenty of time. I’m planning to just go as I am.”

Jeeves, who had been hovering over my tea with the silver creamer, started visibly and sloshed a generous dollop of cream over the edge of my cup. He murmured something contrite as he smoothly whisked away my cup and saucer, but I was too caught up in goggling at Barmy to catch what it was.

“Good god, man. You can’t go to the opera like that.”

Barmy drew himself up. “Oh? Why not?”

“Nobody will be able to hear the music over your suit.”

“It’s a perfectly good suit! I got it from a very reputable tailor in Bond Street.”

“What a tragedy. Does he know he’s gone colourblind?”

Barmy flung down his napkin. He was clearly pipped to the gills. “Now look here, Bertie,” he said, gesticulating emotionally with his teaspoon, “I won’t have you insulting me like this! Dash it, I just remembered what I came over here to show you, and now I know you won’t even jolly well appreciate it. You wouldn’t know a good thing if it came up and socked you in the jaw.”

I could see I had wounded his amour-propre. I chewed the lip a bit. We Woosters never like to hurt a pal. “I’m sorry, old fruit. What is it you wanted to show me?”

He brightened again. “Have a look, Bertie,” he said eagerly, and before I could say Steady on, you blighter, he was unhitching his braces and yanking down his trousers.

The room seemed to swim before me. I clutched the brow and uttered a hollow groan. Barmy’s loins were girded up with silk undergarments that exactly matched the grotesque outer crust: one leg red (or cerise, if you like), the other blue (or rather cerulean).

“And look!” he cried. Before I could stop him, he swung about on his heel to reveal the verso of the costume. The number “18” was embroidered in large block letters across the billowy portions, one digit stretched over each bulge.

There was a sound behind me like a water buffalo trying to pull its foot out of a swamp, and I turned to see that Jeeves had just reappeared with a fresh teacup. An almost imperceptible quiver ran through his frame, and the colour drained from his face. I could see that the terrible sight had got right in amongst him and wounded his finest feelings. He stood for a moment like a man in a trance, and then he retreated abruptly back from whence he came. In the chilling silence that followed, I could have sworn I heard a muffled sob. I could see that the time had arrived for some swift in-the-bud nipping.

“Barmy,” I said with quiet austerity, “it’s six o’clock. I think you’d better go.”

He rotated again to face me. “But Bertie . . .”

I cut him off with an imperious gesture and spoke once more with q. a. “Leave me, Barmy. I would be alone.”

A bit harsh, perhaps, but sometimes in these cases a firm hand is required. Looking hurt, he hoisted up the trousers again and shuffled out with drooping shoulders. As soon as the door had closed petulantly behind him, I made a dash for the kitchen.

Jeeves was seated at the kitchen table, clutching his fevered brow and grasping a freshly drained brandy glass with trembling fingers. He looked up at me with haunted, red-rimmed eyes. He gulped a couple of times before finding his voice.

“Forgive me, sir. Mr. Fotheringay-Phipps . . . His undergarments . . .”

I reached out to knead his shoulder. “I know, Jeeves. I’m sorry you had to see that.”

“His posterior . . . embroidered with great . . . numbers. Like a football jersey, sir.”

I pulled up a chair beside him and refilled his glass. “There, there. Don’t think of it, old chap.”

He drained the glass again, but his customary sangfroid failed to bounce back. He went in for a little more fevered brow clutching. “The colours, sir! I shall never stop seeing the colours!”

Tentatively, I put an arm around his shoulder. Unthinkable, I know, but desperate times call for desperate measures. “This too shall pass, Jeeves,” I soothed.

“He proposes to wear that . . . that garment to the opera, sir,” he groaned.

“It is a comic opera, though, what?” I offered hopefully. The balm failed to soothe.

“Still inexcusable, sir.”

“Come, come. Let us not be too hard on poor old Barmy. It’s just that, well, he hasn’t got a good, guiding influence in his life like I have. There but for the grace of you go I, Jeeves.”

He heaved a shuddering sigh. “Good heavens, sir. I hope not.”

“Perhaps not right away. These things are always insidious. A polka-dotted cravat here, a pair of lime-green socks there, always telling myself that I could take it or leave it, only to find out too late that I couldn’t. It’s so often the way. I shudder to think what might have happened if I hadn’t had you with me all these years to keep steering me down the straight and narrow path.”

“Well, sir . . .”

“Do you remember that necktie with the fish on it that I wanted to wear to the darts sweep a few years ago?”

He winced. “Oh, sir!”

“I’m sorry Jeeves. It was insensitive of me to bring it up at a moment like this. But as I recall, you commended it to the warm bosom of the fireplace, so it all ended well, what? I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but with the years I have come to see how right you were. Just yesterday, I was tempted by a pair of braces with a jolly orange stripe down the middle, but I thought of you and turned away with steely resolve.”

“Thank you, sir,” he said, in a voice brimming with quiet gratitude. It was clear that he was deeply moved.

We sat for a moment brooding in manly silence. Jeeves was regaining his composure, but his hand still trembled slightly as he refilled his glass.  I realized suddenly that my arm was still around his shoulder, and I started to pull it away, but he arrested me with a gentle hand on mine. “Not yet, sir,” he whispered.

I froze for a moment in astonishment, then allowed him to draw me closer. He trailed a finger over my tie. “Very sensible, sir,” he murmured, smiling wanly as his eyes locked with mine. “Perfectly suited to the heather mixture lounge. Most becoming.”

I felt a blush mantling the map. “You think so, Jeeves?”

“I do, sir.”

Unable to stop myself, I pulled him into a close embrace.

“Thank you, Jeeves,” I mumbled into the side of his neck.

“Thank you, sir.”