J&W Dictionary Fraglets, 18-20/20: Unfurnish, Skate/Break
This is the last of 'em! I really wanted them both to be a spectacular finale, but you get what you get. Not entertaining questions about what's next-- there will be a post here tomorrowish where I make my plans known.
Poor old Unfurnish is going to look a bit rubbish and tiny next to the other one, but there you have it.
Previous efforts || Table of doom
18. PG, 560 words
A theoretical snippet from the still-theoretical sequel to Somebody, featuring Topper, Colin, and a search.
Unfurnish
19/20. PG, 3719 (!!) words
In which it's Christmas, there's a sad thing in the past, there are a lot of loose threads and general all-over-the-place-ness, and actually no overt slash.
( Skate/Break )
Unfurnish
I looked down at the scrap of paper Uncle Bertie had given me and back up at the number over the door of the tall brick building that looked like it had been in sore need of new paint since sometime last century. "This is it."
"Are you sure?" Colin asked. "Isn't it a bit-- well, squalid?"
"Don't be a tit. Of course it's squalid. Brokenhearted people always find somewhere squalid to languish away."
"You're incurable." He gave me a light shove.
"You adore me."
"Oh, without a doubt." If only he would mean it. "Anyway, I thought you said this long-lost whosit inherited a business. Why would he live somewhere like this?"
"I don't know, do I? Come on."
The lift was helpfully out of service and probably had been since the last time the place was painted, so we legged up eight floors of creaky staircases through the sounds of crying babies and shouting. Colin complained the entire way up about at least getting a good view for his trouble at the Statue of Liberty.
Then the chipped and crooked door of 8E was before us. I stared at it, wondering what I'd say if Jeeves was on the other side of it. 'Hallo there, remember me?' wouldn't likely get much out of him.
"What are you waiting for?" Colin pushed past me and applied a solid knock to the door.
"It's open!" a female and American voice called out.
Had we come all this way only to find him happily married? I swallowed my nerves and turned the knob, admitting us into dingy flat that was bare to the rafters but for a woman about my mum's age pulling cushions off a sofa about England's age.
"The elevator's broken," she said without looking at us, "so I dunno how you're gonna to get it down, but that's your job."
"I'm sorry," I said. "I think we may have the wrong address."
The woman adjusted the dirty kerchief on her head and unbent to look at us. "Oh. I thought you were the movers. What can I do for youse?"
"Well, er. Have you always lived here?" I asked.
"Kid, I don't live here now and I wouldn't if ya paid me. My uncle bit the dust last week and I'm cleanin' his place out. Give ya a fiver to move this couch, though."
"Oh, lord," I breathed, clapping a hand over my mouth. We were too late!
Colin pinched my arm roughly. "I beg your pardon, ma'am, but what was your uncle's name?" he asked.
"Rocko McGrath, why?"
I nearly melted with relief.
"Thank you, ma'am," Colin said, pushing me back out the door. "Sorry to have troubled you." When we were on our way back down the stairs he smacked the back of my head. "Idiot. Of course he's not dead. You can look that sort of thing up and Yax would've known about it."
"Right," I said, still a bit wobbly. I wanted so badly for everything to turn out for Uncle Bertie, because that would mean it wasn't all doomed.
And now we have two prompts that bled into one and got a bit out of hand. The Break bit is an answer to detective_wolf's lovely drawing here. And this may be 3700 words long and by rights a proper fic, but it was written rapid-fire like the rest, so don't go looking for proper-fic standards. I may do it up nicely somewhere in the far future.
20. PG, 3719 (!!) words
In which it's Christmas, there's a sad thing in the past, there are a lot of loose threads and general all-over-the-place-ness, and actually no overt slash.
Skate/Break
There are better venues for the bringing of figgy puddings and harking of herald angels-- I find myself in mind of tropical climes where one may have as little or as much society as one wants and there is no talk of the cold damp task of building snowmen in meadows-- but if one is obliged to jingle one's bells beneath the greyish skies of Dear Old Blighty, one could do far worse than Brinkley Court. Anatole outdoes himself with the edibles, Seppings & co. outdo themselves with the decking of the halls, and the whole place simply oozes with ding-dong-merrilies, both on high and elsewhere.
No, it wasn't bad at all. Tuppy and Angela were firmly and happily engaged, possibly owing to the large and sparkly bauble of which he'd made her an early present after a lucky racing tip. Milady's Boudoir was for once not plagued by wolves at its door, and Uncle Tom had just come by a horrifying but suitably antique silver wotsit from the Annual Market Snodsbury Jumble Sale to Benefit Widows and Orphans for practically nothing. In a nutshell, G. was in his h. and though it was a bit cold for the snails and larks to be out and about, all was right with the world.
Bar one thing. And that was the one thing where I most disliked not having all r. with the w. Id est, to put it in a scholarly way, Jeeves. He's well accustomed to the young master putting his foot down on the subj. of haring off to exotic climes, of course, but never was he so dashed twitchy about it as during the twelve days of C.
Not that I'd never noticed it before, but this year in particular my unflappable Man Friday seemed to be showing distinct signs of flapping. He did not smirk long-sufferingly at my jokes, nor quirk an eyebrow one-sixteenth of an inch when I passed on an interesting bit of news about this or that. The stuffed-frog regard had never looked more stuffed, in fact.
"Is it Spain?" I asked after two days of this gloomy atmosphere.
"Is what Spain, sir?" Jeeves asked without raising his gaze from the pouring of my morning tea.
"That's got you in this rummy and illish humour," I said. "Is it a pining for strangely chilled wine and mussels?"
"No, sir, I am not pining for Spain. Will there be anything else, sir, or shall I draw your bath?"
"Er, no, thank you, Jeeves. Draw away." I stared consideringly after him.
"Is it the decorations?" I asked that evening. "Too much for you, are they?"
"The decorations are tasteful and festive, sir. The staff have done an admirable job." He bunged the nightcap into its rightful spot.
I wasn't letting him get away this time. "Well, then, what? You know you didn't have to come here, so it's a bit puzzling that it seems you'd rather be somewhere else." Possibly anywhere else, which I must say stung a bit.
"If I have offended you in some way, sir--"
"I'm offended? You're the one going about looking offended, Jeeves." I noticed the rather stern way he was handling the nightwear as he laid it out. "Is it the purple pyjamas that have got you out of sorts?" If that was it, the widows and orphans could have them.
"If I may, sir, you seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that I am out of sorts."
"But you are!" I protested. "You're always out of sorts at Christmastime!"
He said nothing, simply continued with his laying-out of sleeping accoutrements in markedly stony silence, which persisted until we got to the bit where he said, "Good night, sir."
After my bit of commentary, the soupiness only got soupier. The Jeeves that greeted me Christmas Eve morn reminded me not a little bit of Jeeveses past who were restraining the urge to cosh the Wooster bean with a banjolele, or who believed Biffy had jilted their nieces. If Spain, Christmas decorations, and pyjamas were not causing this malaise of his, if that's the word I want, what was? And what about the year before that, and the year before that?
Perhaps it was something in the realm of none-of-my-business, but Jeeves had never hesitated to declare, 'None of your bally business, Wooster,' (albeit in a more feudal and Jeevesishly phrased manner) in such cases. All rhymes and reasons aside, the idea of Jeeves walking about under a cloud of discontentment distressed me unaccountably. It wasn't just that knowing he wasn't having a good time made any kicks I was getting feel a bit hollow and guilty, or that if the glumness remained it could lead to Jeeves's tragic departure.
No, it was simply that I didn't want him to be unhappy. Unravelling the mysteries of what made the dark clouds form is Jeeves's forte. Mine, if I've got one, is more in the line of brightening the horizon.
Not that I knew how to accomplish the task. Well into the luncheon hour, the Wooster onion was engaged in some very heavy thinking. Anyone else I knew could be put in better spirits by some good spirits-- that is, a nice glass of consolation and a jolly tune-- but somehow, I didn't think a tall scotch and a rousing chorus of 'I Want to Be Bad' were quite going to be the stuff for the troops in these circs.
I asked myself: what does Jeeves like? Improving books went without saying, but there was already a three-volume set of same wrapped up with his name on. According to Bingo he apparently enjoyed cutting a bit of a rug, but I couldn't precisely take him dancing. Fishing, too, was right out, as even if there had been any fish sporting enough in Brinkley's bit of pond, it was frozen over.
Wait a mo. That was it! A frozen pond and somebody who liked dancing had a natural and perfect conclusion.
I got a decidedly what's-all-this-then look from Seppings when I made my request, but he obliged me with the needful, and I'm sure I got a just-what-do-you-think-you're-about or two when I shoved my way below stairs with arms full of said needful.
Jeeves registered clear surprise when I knocked at his door and announced, "Get your coat, Jeeves. We are going ice skating."
"I presume you wish me to accompany yourself and Miss Travers, sir?" He eyed the blades as if they were daggers making stabbing motions towards his vulnerable portions.
"No, Jeeves," I said patiently. "If I had meant that I would have said that. I meant we." I waved a finger between us, fumbling a skate in the process. Jeeves caught it and did not hand it back.
"Sir, it would hardly be--"
"I will brook no objections, my good man."
He hesitated a tick, and I wondered if I ought to be brooking after all. What if he hated ice skating? An edicted 'well, dash it, you'll skate and you'll like it!' would only make the gloom gloomier. But then he very-good-sir'd me and did as requested. He even did a fair approximation of his usual self on the walk to the pond, imparting facts and figures about the intricacies of snowflakes.
"What chap was it with the bit about snow going missing?" I asked as we came whiffling through the last bit of wood and up the crest of a hill.
"I believe you refer to the poet Villon, sir, who queried, 'Ou sont les neiges d'antan?'"
"That's the one. I suppose he didn't have you to tell him about melting points."
"He was not literally in search of the snow, sir. The refrain is an allusion to the fleeting and ephemeral nature of life." He looked out across the landscape as though life was indeed fleeting away right over it.
Pensive, that was the word for it. The sort of thing one didn't like to snap a chap out of, but we had arrived. "Jeeves? This is it."
I thought I heard him sigh, but I could not be sure. He brushed the layer of white stuff off the little stone bench at the water's edge (or ice's edge, rather) and was crouched down be-skating my feet before I could tell him not to trouble himself. "I can do it," I protested before he got himself all snowy, or more snowy. "Just sit down and get yours on."
He did sit, but made no move to apply the necessary equipment. "On reflection I find myself disinclined to attempt ice skating, sir," he said after a moment.
"Oh, come now, Jeeves! This entire excursion was for your benefit, you know." So much for keeping the battle plans under the hat.
"My benefit, sir?" he asked with a puzzled eyebrow.
"Well, yes." I looked down at my hands. "You've been distinctly un-cheery of late-- not that you're ever terribly effervescent, but one can sense these things-- and I thought, 'Well, he likes fishing and dancing, a pond and a bit of twirling about could be the very thing.'" Said out like that, it sounded like a great load ofblibbering. One couldn't really blame him for finding my grand scheme lacking.
"I must offer my apologies sir. I will endeavour to present a more felicitous manner."
"Dash it, man, that's not what I mean at all! I don't care a fig what you present if these dark undercurrents are still gnawing away. You would tell me, wouldn't you, if it was some bloomer on my part that had done it?"
"I assure you that you are not the cause, sir. If you will permit me to remain in London following my visit to my sister on Boxing Day, I believe I will be much improved on your return."
"If that's what you want, Jeeves, I will not stand in your way." I wasn't terribly fond of the notion, but what could I do? "If there's nothing else I can do, that is. Fair enough skating won't do it, but if there's anything that would make it a bit brighter, just say the word."
"Thank you, sir, but nothing comes to mind."
"I think you'd call it taking a liberty, but I've heard my ears are very good for the pouring-into of troubles." Which one of us would be taking said liberty wasanyone's guess.
"You are correct, sir, that I hardly think it appropriate to detail the entire history, but as my unfortunate state has importuned you to such a degree, I believe you have a right to some explanation." I couldn't get in edgewise to nay-say that before he said, "I lost a very dear friend some years ago around this date. It has affected me this year more than recent ones, as precisely a decade will have passed tomorrow."
How perfectly awful, to have something like that happen on Christmas. It was bad enough any other day of the year. I wanted to ask who and how, but he'd already said details were not forthcoming, so I settled for a heartfelt, "Oh, Jeeves. I'm sorry." And by Jove, I was.
"It was my carelessness that led to a wound which eventually proved fatal," he said after a moment, really more to the ground than to me.
It had been in the War, then. I'd never been too sure what he'd meant by saying he'd 'dabbled,' but never given it too much thought. "I'm sure you did all you could," I said, for lack of anything else. My ears may be good for soaking up troubles, but the rest of me is not terribly good at soothing them.
"I often wonder, sir," he said quietly, then waved a hand at my feet. "It would be considerable effort wasted if you did not venture onto the ice."
Right, discussion over. I read that loud and clear. "Loses rather a bit of its charm as a solitary pastime," I admitted with a rueful shrug. "Are you sure you don't want to?"
"I have never ice skated, sir."
"Never? Really? I sort of thought you'd done everything there was to do in the world."
"Not by a wide margin, sir."
"Well, you've simply got to try it. Zipping about with the wind in one's hair, it's dashed invigorating-- do I mean invigorating?"
"Invigorating or exhilarating, yes, sir."
"One little turn about the pond. If you don't feel like a new man by the end of it, I'll never say another word about it."
I would have said that making Jeeves look undignified was a more or less impossible task, but it turns out that all it takes is a pair of ice skates to very nearly manage it. Until now I had never seen him take a step that so much as hinted at being ungraceful, but at present he was taking quite a few that more than hinted at it. It only got worse when we reached the ice, as there was no longer any ground for the blades to sink into. He was sprawled on his back within seconds.
"I believe I am ill-suited to this sport, sir," Jeeves said as I came to the aid of the party and pulled him back to his feet.
"Nonsense. I've never met a thing you weren't suited to. It's that noble bearing of yours, old thing. You've got to lose it. Bend your knees and hunch over like the ceiling's a bit too low, see?" I demonstrated, he imitated. "Much better, isn't it?"
"Slightly, sir."
"Here." I spun around to face him and held out my hands. "You go forwards, I'll go backwards." He stared at said hands as though they were some curious species, but gravity made the decision for him and he had to grab on to avoid another spill. I'd never considered his hands too closely, but although his gloves were not velvet, they were indeed rather like iron, or anyway his grip was. It took a bit of a shove to get us going, and the first few feet were not so much gliding as lumbering, but we eventually built up a good bit of speed. It was not a properly zipping pace, but there was a distinct breeziness to it.
Just as Jeeves's hold on my hands became a bit less vice-like and I thought I'd begun to detect a slight upturn of one corner of his mouth, I was reminded rather harshly of the perils of backward skating on ponds. My foot caught something, a root or a bit of wood that had been caught unawares by the freeze, and with a great flailing 'oof!' the pair of us crashed onto the ice.
"Blast," I coughed windedly from beneath Jeeves's considerable weight. "All right, Jeeves?"
He made to push himself up, I think, but he fell back onto me full-force with a cry of what sounded rather like anguish.
"Jeeves?" I asked with alarm.
"I believe my arm is broken, sir," he said with considerable strain. It must have been his right, because he used his left successfully to sit up, and was cradling the other close to his chest, discomfort if not out-and out pain writ across his map.
I will admit that I rather panicked. I had always seen Jeeves as an unassailable fortress, above such trifles as broken bones andheadcolds. "Damn it! What do I do? This is all my fault! Tell me what to do!"
He calmy staunched my gibbering. "If you would assist me off the ice, sir, I believe the most expedient course would be to return to the house so that the doctor may be sent for."
"Right! Off the ice. Can do." We were near the edge, so there happily wasn't far to go and I managed it by giving us both a good shove sideways so that we slid into the bank. I spared not a thought for my trousers or the cold wet seeping into them as I scrabbled with trembling hands tounclamp the skates, all the while talking a streak of 'sorry' and 'should never have made you' and similar. I slung Jeeves's good arm round my shoulder and hauled us both up. There was no way to carry the skates, and I decided they could go hang for all I cared. "Can you walk?" I asked.
"My legs are not broken, sir."
"Small wonder with blighters like me around," I muttered.
"You must not blame yourself, sir," Jeeves said. "The opposite could easily have occurred."
"Yes, and it would still be my fault," I sighed. "Lean on me. Off we go."
"I can walk unaided, sir," Jeeves said as we set off at a slowish pace back towards the house.
"I'm dashed if I'm going to let you fall again," I said, keeping my arm firmly round him. "No need for the stiff upper lip, you know. I'm quite aware it must hurt like the very dickens."
"It does not hurt badly, sir. I believe the phase of shock has not yet passed."
"Well, let's hope it doesn't before the doc can get something into you."
It did. In the midst of Aunt Dahlia blaming me very vocally and Seppings blaming me silently and a housemaid bursting into tears for some reason while we awaited the doctor's arrival and applied towels of ice to the injured limb, I learned the difference between what discomfort and pain looked like on the Jeevesian countenance. It was not a heartwarming sight. He was clearly making a manful attempt not to show it, but I spoke fluent Jeeves and could tell.
"If you wouldn't mind terribly, O Ancient One," I said rather sharply to the relation, "I am well aware this is my fault, but I don't think your shouting the walls down about it is going to do Jeeves any good."
Aunt Dahlia glared daggers but belted up and stomped out muttering something involving huns, dragging the sobbing maid out behind her. Presumably she had some sort of soft spot for Jeeves, but I didn't bother asking about it.
"Mr Seppings, if you would be so good as to send for more ice?" Jeeves asked in a tight sort of way.
Seppings capitulated, and I alone remained. "Would you like me to go as well, Jeeves?" I hoped he'd say no and I hoped he'd say yes, torn as I was between not wanting to leave him alone in pain and not wanting to see him this way.
"Your presence would be a welcome distraction, sir, if it would not inconvenience you to remain."
"Inconvenience me? I don't want to hear another word about inconveniencing me, Jeeves. I got you into this mess, and while I can't get you out of it, I'm at the ready to do what I can to ease the way through it." I planted myself in what little of the settee was not taken up by his formidable form. I don't know what made me do it, other than it seeming like the thing to do at the time, but I took up his left hand and gave it a squeeze. "I know it must hurt awfully."
He squeezed back with enough force that I wondered if the doctor might have to be healing more than one broken bone today. "Like hell, sir."
I couldn't help a chuckle. Apart from some rather strong words (or so I suspected) in Italian he'd once used on a would-be pickpocket, I'd never heard him say anything stronger than 'good heavens.' "Doctor Barclay will be here soon, old fruit."
When said man of medicine arrived, his first order was to shoo me out. I shooed, but only because Jeeves gave me a nod. Pacing outside the sitting room, I felt rather like one of those nervous chappies one sees in the pictures waiting in the maternity hospital for news of their bundle of joy. Not that Jeeves's arm was a bundle of joy, or that there was anything joyous about this occasion, but I was waiting for news, and very nervously too.
After an eternity, during which I was accosted again by Aunt Dahila as well Angela (the latter apparently still holding onto a grudge about the fracture of her big toe when we were five), Dr Barclay emerged.
"Well?" I said expectantly.
"It's a clean fracture, I think, and I've splinted it, but it'll need a proper cast and an x-ray in hospital. And he's your manservant, is he?"
"Yes," I said, rather feeling I was being judged in some way.
"Well, I'm not a specialist, but I'd say he shouldn't do any work with that arm for at least a month. Maybe longer depending."
"But it'll heal up? Back to normal after however long it takes?" I could come round to living with temporarily maiming Jeeves, but not permanently.
"I don't see any reason why not, as long as it's looked after," this so-called doctor said with a pointed look. The nerve of the man, assuming I'd just put him right back to toiling away!
"You can be sure of that. We're going direct to London to the very best shop they've got for the fixing-up of bones."
That seemed to satisfy him, for he smiled. "Give him a bit to rest before you go dragging him through the countryside."
At last I was let back into the room. I was thoroughly aware of there being a bone broken and all that went along with it, but I was wholly unprepared for the sight of Jeeves, glassy-eyed with his arm bandaged and held up in a sling. If his bones broke, what hope was there for the rest of us? I choked up more than a little as I went to his side. There was a strong and unexplainable urge to throw myself upon his neck and possibly sob, but I settled for his shoulder. "I'm sorry, Jeeves," I said for what felt like the thousandth time, and ten thousand more would not be enough.
He patted my back, and he must have been a bit on the woozy side from all the pain-killing concoctions because his head dropped down to rest atop mine. "I will heal, sir."
And that's all she wrote! Someone expressed an interest in having all 20 in one place together; I'll try to put together a pdf at some point soon, but not today. Oh, and if you missed the cracktastic zombie!fic chaoschick13 and I whacked together, it's over here. Oh! And here's the song Bertie mentions: I Want to Be Bad. I think it plays automatically so beware if that'd get you in trouble.
Poor old Unfurnish is going to look a bit rubbish and tiny next to the other one, but there you have it.
Previous efforts || Table of doom
18. PG, 560 words
A theoretical snippet from the still-theoretical sequel to Somebody, featuring Topper, Colin, and a search.
Unfurnish
19/20. PG, 3719 (!!) words
In which it's Christmas, there's a sad thing in the past, there are a lot of loose threads and general all-over-the-place-ness, and actually no overt slash.
( Skate/Break )
Unfurnish
I looked down at the scrap of paper Uncle Bertie had given me and back up at the number over the door of the tall brick building that looked like it had been in sore need of new paint since sometime last century. "This is it."
"Are you sure?" Colin asked. "Isn't it a bit-- well, squalid?"
"Don't be a tit. Of course it's squalid. Brokenhearted people always find somewhere squalid to languish away."
"You're incurable." He gave me a light shove.
"You adore me."
"Oh, without a doubt." If only he would mean it. "Anyway, I thought you said this long-lost whosit inherited a business. Why would he live somewhere like this?"
"I don't know, do I? Come on."
The lift was helpfully out of service and probably had been since the last time the place was painted, so we legged up eight floors of creaky staircases through the sounds of crying babies and shouting. Colin complained the entire way up about at least getting a good view for his trouble at the Statue of Liberty.
Then the chipped and crooked door of 8E was before us. I stared at it, wondering what I'd say if Jeeves was on the other side of it. 'Hallo there, remember me?' wouldn't likely get much out of him.
"What are you waiting for?" Colin pushed past me and applied a solid knock to the door.
"It's open!" a female and American voice called out.
Had we come all this way only to find him happily married? I swallowed my nerves and turned the knob, admitting us into dingy flat that was bare to the rafters but for a woman about my mum's age pulling cushions off a sofa about England's age.
"The elevator's broken," she said without looking at us, "so I dunno how you're gonna to get it down, but that's your job."
"I'm sorry," I said. "I think we may have the wrong address."
The woman adjusted the dirty kerchief on her head and unbent to look at us. "Oh. I thought you were the movers. What can I do for youse?"
"Well, er. Have you always lived here?" I asked.
"Kid, I don't live here now and I wouldn't if ya paid me. My uncle bit the dust last week and I'm cleanin' his place out. Give ya a fiver to move this couch, though."
"Oh, lord," I breathed, clapping a hand over my mouth. We were too late!
Colin pinched my arm roughly. "I beg your pardon, ma'am, but what was your uncle's name?" he asked.
"Rocko McGrath, why?"
I nearly melted with relief.
"Thank you, ma'am," Colin said, pushing me back out the door. "Sorry to have troubled you." When we were on our way back down the stairs he smacked the back of my head. "Idiot. Of course he's not dead. You can look that sort of thing up and Yax would've known about it."
"Right," I said, still a bit wobbly. I wanted so badly for everything to turn out for Uncle Bertie, because that would mean it wasn't all doomed.
And now we have two prompts that bled into one and got a bit out of hand. The Break bit is an answer to detective_wolf's lovely drawing here. And this may be 3700 words long and by rights a proper fic, but it was written rapid-fire like the rest, so don't go looking for proper-fic standards. I may do it up nicely somewhere in the far future.
20. PG, 3719 (!!) words
In which it's Christmas, there's a sad thing in the past, there are a lot of loose threads and general all-over-the-place-ness, and actually no overt slash.
Skate/Break
There are better venues for the bringing of figgy puddings and harking of herald angels-- I find myself in mind of tropical climes where one may have as little or as much society as one wants and there is no talk of the cold damp task of building snowmen in meadows-- but if one is obliged to jingle one's bells beneath the greyish skies of Dear Old Blighty, one could do far worse than Brinkley Court. Anatole outdoes himself with the edibles, Seppings & co. outdo themselves with the decking of the halls, and the whole place simply oozes with ding-dong-merrilies, both on high and elsewhere.
No, it wasn't bad at all. Tuppy and Angela were firmly and happily engaged, possibly owing to the large and sparkly bauble of which he'd made her an early present after a lucky racing tip. Milady's Boudoir was for once not plagued by wolves at its door, and Uncle Tom had just come by a horrifying but suitably antique silver wotsit from the Annual Market Snodsbury Jumble Sale to Benefit Widows and Orphans for practically nothing. In a nutshell, G. was in his h. and though it was a bit cold for the snails and larks to be out and about, all was right with the world.
Bar one thing. And that was the one thing where I most disliked not having all r. with the w. Id est, to put it in a scholarly way, Jeeves. He's well accustomed to the young master putting his foot down on the subj. of haring off to exotic climes, of course, but never was he so dashed twitchy about it as during the twelve days of C.
Not that I'd never noticed it before, but this year in particular my unflappable Man Friday seemed to be showing distinct signs of flapping. He did not smirk long-sufferingly at my jokes, nor quirk an eyebrow one-sixteenth of an inch when I passed on an interesting bit of news about this or that. The stuffed-frog regard had never looked more stuffed, in fact.
"Is it Spain?" I asked after two days of this gloomy atmosphere.
"Is what Spain, sir?" Jeeves asked without raising his gaze from the pouring of my morning tea.
"That's got you in this rummy and illish humour," I said. "Is it a pining for strangely chilled wine and mussels?"
"No, sir, I am not pining for Spain. Will there be anything else, sir, or shall I draw your bath?"
"Er, no, thank you, Jeeves. Draw away." I stared consideringly after him.
"Is it the decorations?" I asked that evening. "Too much for you, are they?"
"The decorations are tasteful and festive, sir. The staff have done an admirable job." He bunged the nightcap into its rightful spot.
I wasn't letting him get away this time. "Well, then, what? You know you didn't have to come here, so it's a bit puzzling that it seems you'd rather be somewhere else." Possibly anywhere else, which I must say stung a bit.
"If I have offended you in some way, sir--"
"I'm offended? You're the one going about looking offended, Jeeves." I noticed the rather stern way he was handling the nightwear as he laid it out. "Is it the purple pyjamas that have got you out of sorts?" If that was it, the widows and orphans could have them.
"If I may, sir, you seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that I am out of sorts."
"But you are!" I protested. "You're always out of sorts at Christmastime!"
He said nothing, simply continued with his laying-out of sleeping accoutrements in markedly stony silence, which persisted until we got to the bit where he said, "Good night, sir."
After my bit of commentary, the soupiness only got soupier. The Jeeves that greeted me Christmas Eve morn reminded me not a little bit of Jeeveses past who were restraining the urge to cosh the Wooster bean with a banjolele, or who believed Biffy had jilted their nieces. If Spain, Christmas decorations, and pyjamas were not causing this malaise of his, if that's the word I want, what was? And what about the year before that, and the year before that?
Perhaps it was something in the realm of none-of-my-business, but Jeeves had never hesitated to declare, 'None of your bally business, Wooster,' (albeit in a more feudal and Jeevesishly phrased manner) in such cases. All rhymes and reasons aside, the idea of Jeeves walking about under a cloud of discontentment distressed me unaccountably. It wasn't just that knowing he wasn't having a good time made any kicks I was getting feel a bit hollow and guilty, or that if the glumness remained it could lead to Jeeves's tragic departure.
No, it was simply that I didn't want him to be unhappy. Unravelling the mysteries of what made the dark clouds form is Jeeves's forte. Mine, if I've got one, is more in the line of brightening the horizon.
Not that I knew how to accomplish the task. Well into the luncheon hour, the Wooster onion was engaged in some very heavy thinking. Anyone else I knew could be put in better spirits by some good spirits-- that is, a nice glass of consolation and a jolly tune-- but somehow, I didn't think a tall scotch and a rousing chorus of 'I Want to Be Bad' were quite going to be the stuff for the troops in these circs.
I asked myself: what does Jeeves like? Improving books went without saying, but there was already a three-volume set of same wrapped up with his name on. According to Bingo he apparently enjoyed cutting a bit of a rug, but I couldn't precisely take him dancing. Fishing, too, was right out, as even if there had been any fish sporting enough in Brinkley's bit of pond, it was frozen over.
Wait a mo. That was it! A frozen pond and somebody who liked dancing had a natural and perfect conclusion.
I got a decidedly what's-all-this-then look from Seppings when I made my request, but he obliged me with the needful, and I'm sure I got a just-what-do-you-think-you're-about or two when I shoved my way below stairs with arms full of said needful.
Jeeves registered clear surprise when I knocked at his door and announced, "Get your coat, Jeeves. We are going ice skating."
"I presume you wish me to accompany yourself and Miss Travers, sir?" He eyed the blades as if they were daggers making stabbing motions towards his vulnerable portions.
"No, Jeeves," I said patiently. "If I had meant that I would have said that. I meant we." I waved a finger between us, fumbling a skate in the process. Jeeves caught it and did not hand it back.
"Sir, it would hardly be--"
"I will brook no objections, my good man."
He hesitated a tick, and I wondered if I ought to be brooking after all. What if he hated ice skating? An edicted 'well, dash it, you'll skate and you'll like it!' would only make the gloom gloomier. But then he very-good-sir'd me and did as requested. He even did a fair approximation of his usual self on the walk to the pond, imparting facts and figures about the intricacies of snowflakes.
"What chap was it with the bit about snow going missing?" I asked as we came whiffling through the last bit of wood and up the crest of a hill.
"I believe you refer to the poet Villon, sir, who queried, 'Ou sont les neiges d'antan?'"
"That's the one. I suppose he didn't have you to tell him about melting points."
"He was not literally in search of the snow, sir. The refrain is an allusion to the fleeting and ephemeral nature of life." He looked out across the landscape as though life was indeed fleeting away right over it.
Pensive, that was the word for it. The sort of thing one didn't like to snap a chap out of, but we had arrived. "Jeeves? This is it."
I thought I heard him sigh, but I could not be sure. He brushed the layer of white stuff off the little stone bench at the water's edge (or ice's edge, rather) and was crouched down be-skating my feet before I could tell him not to trouble himself. "I can do it," I protested before he got himself all snowy, or more snowy. "Just sit down and get yours on."
He did sit, but made no move to apply the necessary equipment. "On reflection I find myself disinclined to attempt ice skating, sir," he said after a moment.
"Oh, come now, Jeeves! This entire excursion was for your benefit, you know." So much for keeping the battle plans under the hat.
"My benefit, sir?" he asked with a puzzled eyebrow.
"Well, yes." I looked down at my hands. "You've been distinctly un-cheery of late-- not that you're ever terribly effervescent, but one can sense these things-- and I thought, 'Well, he likes fishing and dancing, a pond and a bit of twirling about could be the very thing.'" Said out like that, it sounded like a great load ofblibbering. One couldn't really blame him for finding my grand scheme lacking.
"I must offer my apologies sir. I will endeavour to present a more felicitous manner."
"Dash it, man, that's not what I mean at all! I don't care a fig what you present if these dark undercurrents are still gnawing away. You would tell me, wouldn't you, if it was some bloomer on my part that had done it?"
"I assure you that you are not the cause, sir. If you will permit me to remain in London following my visit to my sister on Boxing Day, I believe I will be much improved on your return."
"If that's what you want, Jeeves, I will not stand in your way." I wasn't terribly fond of the notion, but what could I do? "If there's nothing else I can do, that is. Fair enough skating won't do it, but if there's anything that would make it a bit brighter, just say the word."
"Thank you, sir, but nothing comes to mind."
"I think you'd call it taking a liberty, but I've heard my ears are very good for the pouring-into of troubles." Which one of us would be taking said liberty wasanyone's guess.
"You are correct, sir, that I hardly think it appropriate to detail the entire history, but as my unfortunate state has importuned you to such a degree, I believe you have a right to some explanation." I couldn't get in edgewise to nay-say that before he said, "I lost a very dear friend some years ago around this date. It has affected me this year more than recent ones, as precisely a decade will have passed tomorrow."
How perfectly awful, to have something like that happen on Christmas. It was bad enough any other day of the year. I wanted to ask who and how, but he'd already said details were not forthcoming, so I settled for a heartfelt, "Oh, Jeeves. I'm sorry." And by Jove, I was.
"It was my carelessness that led to a wound which eventually proved fatal," he said after a moment, really more to the ground than to me.
It had been in the War, then. I'd never been too sure what he'd meant by saying he'd 'dabbled,' but never given it too much thought. "I'm sure you did all you could," I said, for lack of anything else. My ears may be good for soaking up troubles, but the rest of me is not terribly good at soothing them.
"I often wonder, sir," he said quietly, then waved a hand at my feet. "It would be considerable effort wasted if you did not venture onto the ice."
Right, discussion over. I read that loud and clear. "Loses rather a bit of its charm as a solitary pastime," I admitted with a rueful shrug. "Are you sure you don't want to?"
"I have never ice skated, sir."
"Never? Really? I sort of thought you'd done everything there was to do in the world."
"Not by a wide margin, sir."
"Well, you've simply got to try it. Zipping about with the wind in one's hair, it's dashed invigorating-- do I mean invigorating?"
"Invigorating or exhilarating, yes, sir."
"One little turn about the pond. If you don't feel like a new man by the end of it, I'll never say another word about it."
I would have said that making Jeeves look undignified was a more or less impossible task, but it turns out that all it takes is a pair of ice skates to very nearly manage it. Until now I had never seen him take a step that so much as hinted at being ungraceful, but at present he was taking quite a few that more than hinted at it. It only got worse when we reached the ice, as there was no longer any ground for the blades to sink into. He was sprawled on his back within seconds.
"I believe I am ill-suited to this sport, sir," Jeeves said as I came to the aid of the party and pulled him back to his feet.
"Nonsense. I've never met a thing you weren't suited to. It's that noble bearing of yours, old thing. You've got to lose it. Bend your knees and hunch over like the ceiling's a bit too low, see?" I demonstrated, he imitated. "Much better, isn't it?"
"Slightly, sir."
"Here." I spun around to face him and held out my hands. "You go forwards, I'll go backwards." He stared at said hands as though they were some curious species, but gravity made the decision for him and he had to grab on to avoid another spill. I'd never considered his hands too closely, but although his gloves were not velvet, they were indeed rather like iron, or anyway his grip was. It took a bit of a shove to get us going, and the first few feet were not so much gliding as lumbering, but we eventually built up a good bit of speed. It was not a properly zipping pace, but there was a distinct breeziness to it.
Just as Jeeves's hold on my hands became a bit less vice-like and I thought I'd begun to detect a slight upturn of one corner of his mouth, I was reminded rather harshly of the perils of backward skating on ponds. My foot caught something, a root or a bit of wood that had been caught unawares by the freeze, and with a great flailing 'oof!' the pair of us crashed onto the ice.
"Blast," I coughed windedly from beneath Jeeves's considerable weight. "All right, Jeeves?"
He made to push himself up, I think, but he fell back onto me full-force with a cry of what sounded rather like anguish.
"Jeeves?" I asked with alarm.
"I believe my arm is broken, sir," he said with considerable strain. It must have been his right, because he used his left successfully to sit up, and was cradling the other close to his chest, discomfort if not out-and out pain writ across his map.
I will admit that I rather panicked. I had always seen Jeeves as an unassailable fortress, above such trifles as broken bones andheadcolds. "Damn it! What do I do? This is all my fault! Tell me what to do!"
He calmy staunched my gibbering. "If you would assist me off the ice, sir, I believe the most expedient course would be to return to the house so that the doctor may be sent for."
"Right! Off the ice. Can do." We were near the edge, so there happily wasn't far to go and I managed it by giving us both a good shove sideways so that we slid into the bank. I spared not a thought for my trousers or the cold wet seeping into them as I scrabbled with trembling hands tounclamp the skates, all the while talking a streak of 'sorry' and 'should never have made you' and similar. I slung Jeeves's good arm round my shoulder and hauled us both up. There was no way to carry the skates, and I decided they could go hang for all I cared. "Can you walk?" I asked.
"My legs are not broken, sir."
"Small wonder with blighters like me around," I muttered.
"You must not blame yourself, sir," Jeeves said. "The opposite could easily have occurred."
"Yes, and it would still be my fault," I sighed. "Lean on me. Off we go."
"I can walk unaided, sir," Jeeves said as we set off at a slowish pace back towards the house.
"I'm dashed if I'm going to let you fall again," I said, keeping my arm firmly round him. "No need for the stiff upper lip, you know. I'm quite aware it must hurt like the very dickens."
"It does not hurt badly, sir. I believe the phase of shock has not yet passed."
"Well, let's hope it doesn't before the doc can get something into you."
It did. In the midst of Aunt Dahlia blaming me very vocally and Seppings blaming me silently and a housemaid bursting into tears for some reason while we awaited the doctor's arrival and applied towels of ice to the injured limb, I learned the difference between what discomfort and pain looked like on the Jeevesian countenance. It was not a heartwarming sight. He was clearly making a manful attempt not to show it, but I spoke fluent Jeeves and could tell.
"If you wouldn't mind terribly, O Ancient One," I said rather sharply to the relation, "I am well aware this is my fault, but I don't think your shouting the walls down about it is going to do Jeeves any good."
Aunt Dahlia glared daggers but belted up and stomped out muttering something involving huns, dragging the sobbing maid out behind her. Presumably she had some sort of soft spot for Jeeves, but I didn't bother asking about it.
"Mr Seppings, if you would be so good as to send for more ice?" Jeeves asked in a tight sort of way.
Seppings capitulated, and I alone remained. "Would you like me to go as well, Jeeves?" I hoped he'd say no and I hoped he'd say yes, torn as I was between not wanting to leave him alone in pain and not wanting to see him this way.
"Your presence would be a welcome distraction, sir, if it would not inconvenience you to remain."
"Inconvenience me? I don't want to hear another word about inconveniencing me, Jeeves. I got you into this mess, and while I can't get you out of it, I'm at the ready to do what I can to ease the way through it." I planted myself in what little of the settee was not taken up by his formidable form. I don't know what made me do it, other than it seeming like the thing to do at the time, but I took up his left hand and gave it a squeeze. "I know it must hurt awfully."
He squeezed back with enough force that I wondered if the doctor might have to be healing more than one broken bone today. "Like hell, sir."
I couldn't help a chuckle. Apart from some rather strong words (or so I suspected) in Italian he'd once used on a would-be pickpocket, I'd never heard him say anything stronger than 'good heavens.' "Doctor Barclay will be here soon, old fruit."
When said man of medicine arrived, his first order was to shoo me out. I shooed, but only because Jeeves gave me a nod. Pacing outside the sitting room, I felt rather like one of those nervous chappies one sees in the pictures waiting in the maternity hospital for news of their bundle of joy. Not that Jeeves's arm was a bundle of joy, or that there was anything joyous about this occasion, but I was waiting for news, and very nervously too.
After an eternity, during which I was accosted again by Aunt Dahila as well Angela (the latter apparently still holding onto a grudge about the fracture of her big toe when we were five), Dr Barclay emerged.
"Well?" I said expectantly.
"It's a clean fracture, I think, and I've splinted it, but it'll need a proper cast and an x-ray in hospital. And he's your manservant, is he?"
"Yes," I said, rather feeling I was being judged in some way.
"Well, I'm not a specialist, but I'd say he shouldn't do any work with that arm for at least a month. Maybe longer depending."
"But it'll heal up? Back to normal after however long it takes?" I could come round to living with temporarily maiming Jeeves, but not permanently.
"I don't see any reason why not, as long as it's looked after," this so-called doctor said with a pointed look. The nerve of the man, assuming I'd just put him right back to toiling away!
"You can be sure of that. We're going direct to London to the very best shop they've got for the fixing-up of bones."
That seemed to satisfy him, for he smiled. "Give him a bit to rest before you go dragging him through the countryside."
At last I was let back into the room. I was thoroughly aware of there being a bone broken and all that went along with it, but I was wholly unprepared for the sight of Jeeves, glassy-eyed with his arm bandaged and held up in a sling. If his bones broke, what hope was there for the rest of us? I choked up more than a little as I went to his side. There was a strong and unexplainable urge to throw myself upon his neck and possibly sob, but I settled for his shoulder. "I'm sorry, Jeeves," I said for what felt like the thousandth time, and ten thousand more would not be enough.
He patted my back, and he must have been a bit on the woozy side from all the pain-killing concoctions because his head dropped down to rest atop mine. "I will heal, sir."
And that's all she wrote! Someone expressed an interest in having all 20 in one place together; I'll try to put together a pdf at some point soon, but not today. Oh, and if you missed the cracktastic zombie!fic chaoschick13 and I whacked together, it's over here. Oh! And here's the song Bertie mentions: I Want to Be Bad. I think it plays automatically so beware if that'd get you in trouble.