[Jeeves & Wooster] Ficlet: Mornington Crescent
I have not forgotten my challenges! storyfan supplied the idea of a chase scene. I questionably deliver.
There's chasing, all right, but it gets a bit ridiculous and may all go on a bit too long (2400 words WTF). Almost totally gen.
This ain't great, but I need to move on.
Mornington Crescent
I was leaving Paddington Station after seeing my cousin Angela back off to Brinkley, about to cross the road to rally a cab and make my way to home sweet h. The signal was taking a beastly long time to change, so I leaned against a lamppost and delivered a friendly 'what ho' of solidarity and commiseration to the chappie waiting with me.
It's worth noting, due to what was about to transpire, that said chappie was about six and a half feet tall and built along the lines of a stevedore or one of the larger household labour-saving devices. A veritable wall of checked yellow tweed absolutely bursting with muscle. The only sign it was a chap and not a questionably papered brick wall was the chewed-looking brown bowler hat screwed onto the top of the whole ensemble with the barest gleam of eyes squinting out from under the brim.
It is also worth noting that I did not know this fine example of manhood and fashion from Adam or anyone else; I should certainly have remembered such a character.
But when my fellow weary watcher of traffic squinted my direction, recognition dawned and squeezed the features into the sort of angry frown that might herald the last days of Pompeii. I have seen this look before, of course, and even had it directed to me a time or two, but in those cases I had at least ever seen the frowner before in my life, unlike this man of wrath.
The m. of w. knew me, though, or thought he did, because the f. went from angry to murderous as he boomed, "You!"
"Me?" I queried, looking hopefully behind and around me, and if I took a step back and my voice quavered a bit, who could blame me? "I say, old egg, have we met?"
I was blinded by yellow as he advanced upon me with a sort of growl or gurnt, and it's all well and good for the brave Woosters not to quail in the face of danger, but it is another matter entirely when attached to said face (at some point beneath thirty miles of yellow check) is an arm, and attached to that a meaty hand in which suddenly gleams a vorpal blade.
"I say!" I exclaimed, backing away more than a step now. "I think you've got me mixed up with--" Out of the corner of my eye I saw the signal, at last, change to green, and the old lady wheeling her shopping totter her way into the road. Let it never be said that Bertram Wooster cannot think on his feet. I ducked under the great raising arm and legged it across the road, deftly dodging the tottering auntly creature and tipping my hat as I did so.
A shout behind me caused me to look back, and there was the old lady, her shopping strewn about the thoroughfare, shaking her umbrella and cawing angrily at my unshaken pursuer, who approached even now like a lumbering yellow bear.
I sped down the pavement and through the doors of an obliging pub, thinking that even the most senseless of knife-wielding lunatics would not continue the wielding in full view of a crowd of pub-goers listening raptly to a fairly important bit of football.
"Beg your pardon," I panted at the publican, who shushed me until Arsenal had got the ball back away from Cardiff City and there was a bit of a huzzah, not that the sort of people who listen to football in pubs tend to say 'huzzah.' "Beg your pardon," I began again, but there's a rather large bloke in a yellow checked suit chasing me with a knife."
"Wuvyerdunnen?" he asked with a disinterested wipe at the glass, staring at the radio set as though he could see the match happening on it.
"Come again?"
The presumable proprietor stopped wiping and gave me a glare. "Yerdeffrsummink? Wuv. Yer. Dun. Nen."
"Done? Me? Nothing! He just clapped eyes on me and suddenly--" The door slammed open just as Arsenal's goalkeeper let the ball slide through his elbow, and a fitting lot of groaning and cursing went up from the crowd as the mustard menace lumbered towards me with no sign of stopping.
"Back door?" I asked urgently over all the shouting.
"Sinnakitchen. Nopunners."
I made out the 'kitchen' bit and made a break for it, unheeding of what might have been some vocal protest on the part of the barman, or was perhaps just more disappointment over the football.
I careened through a swinging door and into what I suppose passed for a kitchen in this estab., lobbing a harried greeting to the woman scooping the topping onto a pie and sliding on chip grease all the way out to a fragrant sort of alleyway festooned with overflowing bins. There were two ways out; with any luck, my aggressor would choose the wrong one. I veered left and soon found myself deposited on a sunny street.
I paused a moment to catch my breath, wondering if I'd made good my escape and sifting through the old onion for what on earth I could have done to incur such ire. Nobody I'd recently been engaged to had ever mentioned a large and terrible brother, and I rather thought any sister of this johnnie's might simply be a smaller version of him in a frock. Certainly not the sort of girl one is likely to forget.
But there was no more time for thinking; from the approaching crashing in the alleyway I knew that I shouldn't have taken the left and was yet pursued. I eyed the street in search of any ready help that might be nigh and spied a couple of constables a few doors down.
If there is one thing I know about police constables, it is that they possess some instinct that demands they give chase when they see a chap running, guilty or no. Therefore I strolled briskly past them, giving a glance at my watch lest they think I was the one who ought to be gone after, and ducked into a convenient doorway.
When the ape of a man came galumphing by, I shouted in the highest register the decidedly manly Wooster pipes could muster, "Stop! Thief!"
I imagine tall-dark-and-yellow might have issued a sound along the lines of 'unnh?' as he stopped and looked round for a moment, all confusion, before the rozzers gave chase and he legged it up the street away from them.
I beat a not-too-leisurely retreat back to the station and shoved myself in amongst Arsenal-kitted travellers muttering to one another and casting aspersions on the Welsh. I settled my weight against an obliging pole and sighed the sigh of one who has escaped a mysterious doom.
What on earth could he have wanted of me, I wondered again now that I had the luxury of time to put the workings of the bean into gear. Had I perhaps trod on his toe (not that I thought he would have felt it significantly) or elbowed ahead of him in a queue somewhere? Done him some great unknown wrong in younger days?
There was no telling. I determined to put the whole matter to Jeeves, who shone in the distance like a great stolid beacon of home comforts. Right about now, I thought as we juddered out of Paddington and squealed our way on to Edgware and Regents Park, he would be dusting the objets d'art and beginning preparations for the young master's dinner, possibly humming to himself. I had the idea that he hummed when I was not in attendance and clammed up when I was home out of some sort of feudal reticence. There was an appeal to thinking of him gliding soundlessly about, his very breath not putting a speck of dust out of place, but I much preferred to think he might be getting some little bit of enjoyment out of the tasks he at least affected to enjoy.
The train rumbled as far as Great Portland Street before I realized I was on wholly the wrong line, but at least I went astray in relative peace. But then I saw a terrible sight elbowing and grunting its way through the droves of Arsenal strip. Like some sort of hound on the scent, my vision in yellow had sniffed me out and made me his fox.
I muttered a none-too-gentlemanly utterance sotto voce and began equally to shove my way through. Or, rather, not equally. As you know, I'm of a somewhat willowy build, and between that and something like the business end of an articulated lorry, it's no great feat of intellect to guess which is better suited for parting a crowd.
Jeeves, I thought as the bounder gained on me, would surely have come out with some sort of authoritative statement to cleave the masses like the red sea. I gave the thing a desperate go myself. "Let me through! I'm a doctor!" I called urgently, as I'd once seen a chap in some film or other do.
Murmurs and exclamations of 'oh dear!' and 'oh my!' and 'doctor' and one rather forceful 'shift it, will you!' filtered through the car as my path to the door into the next one cleared. I'd failed to consider that they might assume the fellow chasing me was not chasing me, but was my assistant or possibly had been the one to fetch me to the side of some fit-haver or toppler-over, and would not simply close ranks behind me. They let the blighter through with gusto.
I judged that a quick change of plan was in order as we rolled into Kings Cross St. Pancras and hopped out the door, hoping that the crush of exchanging passengers would be enough to foil his astonishingly rapid lumbering.
Well, Fortune favours the whatsit, or in this case the Wooster. I legged it through the station and dove just in time into a Holborn-bound departure, no sign of the galloping foe but a few indignant shouts somewhere down the platform. I sunk down into a seat with a satisfied sigh and studied the map to work out how on earth one got home from here.
My planned route deposited me at Leicester Square, where I learned that Fortune also at times favours large ill-dressed coves, or perhaps they just strongarm Fortune into it with a flick-knife. I was placidly watching for the train I needed when one rolled in going the other direction. Across the expanse of the tracks when the view was clear of trains, there stood the man himself.
I made to slouch out of sight behind the elderly bird wheezing out 'Won't You Come Home, Bill Bailey?' on the accordion, but it was too late. A bellow of 'you!' drowned out the music, which squawked to a halt in surprise. I hesitated a moment, thinking surely no one would have the crust to scramble across two sets of electrified tracks, but this assaulter of Woosters had very little in the sanity department and crust in great abundance. He scrambled. I scarpered.
Up some stairs and down some others I sped. My hat was knocked from the onion by a low-hanging light fixture, but I had no desire to meet the same fate as what's-his-name's wife, though I would not be so much a pillar of Woosterine salt as a moaning pile of cuts and bruises. Jeeves had never liked the hat anyway due to its band being a bit too near the purple end of the spectrum (oh, all right, it was purple) to suit his sensibilities.
Hats utterly aside, or at the bottoms of staircases, I suppose, I popped with seconds to spare onto the good old Hampstead and Highgate. Stealth and cunning, I decided, were the words of the hour. I would not wait to be chased this time. I popped back off at Mornington Crescent and spent the next hour in the back room of a bookshop, affecting to show interest in some valuable old volume kept there. Let old yeller tramp through the Underground; Bertram was through.
When I judged it safe to emerge, I sniffed derisively at the book, pronounced it modern Dutch, and bid the spluttering bookseller good day. Lo and behold, standing at the till chatting with the winsome shopgirl was a sight for sore eyes, or perhaps sore legs.
"Jeeves!" I warbled. "Fancy meeting you here!"
I believe the old reliable registered genuine surprise in both of his eyebrows. "Indeed, sir." He picked up his hat from the counter and covered his finely appointed head with it. "This is my cousin, sir, Miss Eloise Kingsley."
I can't put my finger on why, really, but a sense of relief came over me at that statement. Possibly it was simply the knowledge that my ordeal was over and I could deliver myself into capable hands.
"What ho, Miss Kingsley," I said when the introductions were made. "Well, Jeeves, I'm for home. Shall we, or have you got more errands to be about?"
"No, sir, I was about to return myself."
"Jolly good, then. Let's away."
We awayed, no signs of yellow or checks or any bowler hats but a meticulously kempt size-fourteen black one on the horizon, or in the cab that bore us swiftly through the metrop.
"Pardon me, sir," Jeeves said about halfway home, "but have you not forgotten your hat?"
I sighed in a put-upon way. "I've lost it, if you want to know. It was a sad casualty of battle while I evaded capture by a great hulking bird with a flick-knife."
"Most disturbing, sir."
"That it was, Jeeves," I said, but something in the quirk of his eyebrow gave me pause.
No. It wasn't possible. Jeeves has come up with a dangerous scheme or two in his time, but he'd never go to such lengths just to dispose of a hat. Would he?
Notes: Highgate and Hampstead is now part of the Northern Line. Period-appropriate map is here: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/clive.billson/tubemaps/1927.html
And if you're wondering about the football references, here's info on the 1927 FA Cup final, which I stumbled on by a happy accident while trying to work out what should be on the pub radio.
There's chasing, all right, but it gets a bit ridiculous and may all go on a bit too long (2400 words WTF). Almost totally gen.
This ain't great, but I need to move on.
Mornington Crescent
I was leaving Paddington Station after seeing my cousin Angela back off to Brinkley, about to cross the road to rally a cab and make my way to home sweet h. The signal was taking a beastly long time to change, so I leaned against a lamppost and delivered a friendly 'what ho' of solidarity and commiseration to the chappie waiting with me.
It's worth noting, due to what was about to transpire, that said chappie was about six and a half feet tall and built along the lines of a stevedore or one of the larger household labour-saving devices. A veritable wall of checked yellow tweed absolutely bursting with muscle. The only sign it was a chap and not a questionably papered brick wall was the chewed-looking brown bowler hat screwed onto the top of the whole ensemble with the barest gleam of eyes squinting out from under the brim.
It is also worth noting that I did not know this fine example of manhood and fashion from Adam or anyone else; I should certainly have remembered such a character.
But when my fellow weary watcher of traffic squinted my direction, recognition dawned and squeezed the features into the sort of angry frown that might herald the last days of Pompeii. I have seen this look before, of course, and even had it directed to me a time or two, but in those cases I had at least ever seen the frowner before in my life, unlike this man of wrath.
The m. of w. knew me, though, or thought he did, because the f. went from angry to murderous as he boomed, "You!"
"Me?" I queried, looking hopefully behind and around me, and if I took a step back and my voice quavered a bit, who could blame me? "I say, old egg, have we met?"
I was blinded by yellow as he advanced upon me with a sort of growl or gurnt, and it's all well and good for the brave Woosters not to quail in the face of danger, but it is another matter entirely when attached to said face (at some point beneath thirty miles of yellow check) is an arm, and attached to that a meaty hand in which suddenly gleams a vorpal blade.
"I say!" I exclaimed, backing away more than a step now. "I think you've got me mixed up with--" Out of the corner of my eye I saw the signal, at last, change to green, and the old lady wheeling her shopping totter her way into the road. Let it never be said that Bertram Wooster cannot think on his feet. I ducked under the great raising arm and legged it across the road, deftly dodging the tottering auntly creature and tipping my hat as I did so.
A shout behind me caused me to look back, and there was the old lady, her shopping strewn about the thoroughfare, shaking her umbrella and cawing angrily at my unshaken pursuer, who approached even now like a lumbering yellow bear.
I sped down the pavement and through the doors of an obliging pub, thinking that even the most senseless of knife-wielding lunatics would not continue the wielding in full view of a crowd of pub-goers listening raptly to a fairly important bit of football.
"Beg your pardon," I panted at the publican, who shushed me until Arsenal had got the ball back away from Cardiff City and there was a bit of a huzzah, not that the sort of people who listen to football in pubs tend to say 'huzzah.' "Beg your pardon," I began again, but there's a rather large bloke in a yellow checked suit chasing me with a knife."
"Wuvyerdunnen?" he asked with a disinterested wipe at the glass, staring at the radio set as though he could see the match happening on it.
"Come again?"
The presumable proprietor stopped wiping and gave me a glare. "Yerdeffrsummink? Wuv. Yer. Dun. Nen."
"Done? Me? Nothing! He just clapped eyes on me and suddenly--" The door slammed open just as Arsenal's goalkeeper let the ball slide through his elbow, and a fitting lot of groaning and cursing went up from the crowd as the mustard menace lumbered towards me with no sign of stopping.
"Back door?" I asked urgently over all the shouting.
"Sinnakitchen. Nopunners."
I made out the 'kitchen' bit and made a break for it, unheeding of what might have been some vocal protest on the part of the barman, or was perhaps just more disappointment over the football.
I careened through a swinging door and into what I suppose passed for a kitchen in this estab., lobbing a harried greeting to the woman scooping the topping onto a pie and sliding on chip grease all the way out to a fragrant sort of alleyway festooned with overflowing bins. There were two ways out; with any luck, my aggressor would choose the wrong one. I veered left and soon found myself deposited on a sunny street.
I paused a moment to catch my breath, wondering if I'd made good my escape and sifting through the old onion for what on earth I could have done to incur such ire. Nobody I'd recently been engaged to had ever mentioned a large and terrible brother, and I rather thought any sister of this johnnie's might simply be a smaller version of him in a frock. Certainly not the sort of girl one is likely to forget.
But there was no more time for thinking; from the approaching crashing in the alleyway I knew that I shouldn't have taken the left and was yet pursued. I eyed the street in search of any ready help that might be nigh and spied a couple of constables a few doors down.
If there is one thing I know about police constables, it is that they possess some instinct that demands they give chase when they see a chap running, guilty or no. Therefore I strolled briskly past them, giving a glance at my watch lest they think I was the one who ought to be gone after, and ducked into a convenient doorway.
When the ape of a man came galumphing by, I shouted in the highest register the decidedly manly Wooster pipes could muster, "Stop! Thief!"
I imagine tall-dark-and-yellow might have issued a sound along the lines of 'unnh?' as he stopped and looked round for a moment, all confusion, before the rozzers gave chase and he legged it up the street away from them.
I beat a not-too-leisurely retreat back to the station and shoved myself in amongst Arsenal-kitted travellers muttering to one another and casting aspersions on the Welsh. I settled my weight against an obliging pole and sighed the sigh of one who has escaped a mysterious doom.
What on earth could he have wanted of me, I wondered again now that I had the luxury of time to put the workings of the bean into gear. Had I perhaps trod on his toe (not that I thought he would have felt it significantly) or elbowed ahead of him in a queue somewhere? Done him some great unknown wrong in younger days?
There was no telling. I determined to put the whole matter to Jeeves, who shone in the distance like a great stolid beacon of home comforts. Right about now, I thought as we juddered out of Paddington and squealed our way on to Edgware and Regents Park, he would be dusting the objets d'art and beginning preparations for the young master's dinner, possibly humming to himself. I had the idea that he hummed when I was not in attendance and clammed up when I was home out of some sort of feudal reticence. There was an appeal to thinking of him gliding soundlessly about, his very breath not putting a speck of dust out of place, but I much preferred to think he might be getting some little bit of enjoyment out of the tasks he at least affected to enjoy.
The train rumbled as far as Great Portland Street before I realized I was on wholly the wrong line, but at least I went astray in relative peace. But then I saw a terrible sight elbowing and grunting its way through the droves of Arsenal strip. Like some sort of hound on the scent, my vision in yellow had sniffed me out and made me his fox.
I muttered a none-too-gentlemanly utterance sotto voce and began equally to shove my way through. Or, rather, not equally. As you know, I'm of a somewhat willowy build, and between that and something like the business end of an articulated lorry, it's no great feat of intellect to guess which is better suited for parting a crowd.
Jeeves, I thought as the bounder gained on me, would surely have come out with some sort of authoritative statement to cleave the masses like the red sea. I gave the thing a desperate go myself. "Let me through! I'm a doctor!" I called urgently, as I'd once seen a chap in some film or other do.
Murmurs and exclamations of 'oh dear!' and 'oh my!' and 'doctor' and one rather forceful 'shift it, will you!' filtered through the car as my path to the door into the next one cleared. I'd failed to consider that they might assume the fellow chasing me was not chasing me, but was my assistant or possibly had been the one to fetch me to the side of some fit-haver or toppler-over, and would not simply close ranks behind me. They let the blighter through with gusto.
I judged that a quick change of plan was in order as we rolled into Kings Cross St. Pancras and hopped out the door, hoping that the crush of exchanging passengers would be enough to foil his astonishingly rapid lumbering.
Well, Fortune favours the whatsit, or in this case the Wooster. I legged it through the station and dove just in time into a Holborn-bound departure, no sign of the galloping foe but a few indignant shouts somewhere down the platform. I sunk down into a seat with a satisfied sigh and studied the map to work out how on earth one got home from here.
My planned route deposited me at Leicester Square, where I learned that Fortune also at times favours large ill-dressed coves, or perhaps they just strongarm Fortune into it with a flick-knife. I was placidly watching for the train I needed when one rolled in going the other direction. Across the expanse of the tracks when the view was clear of trains, there stood the man himself.
I made to slouch out of sight behind the elderly bird wheezing out 'Won't You Come Home, Bill Bailey?' on the accordion, but it was too late. A bellow of 'you!' drowned out the music, which squawked to a halt in surprise. I hesitated a moment, thinking surely no one would have the crust to scramble across two sets of electrified tracks, but this assaulter of Woosters had very little in the sanity department and crust in great abundance. He scrambled. I scarpered.
Up some stairs and down some others I sped. My hat was knocked from the onion by a low-hanging light fixture, but I had no desire to meet the same fate as what's-his-name's wife, though I would not be so much a pillar of Woosterine salt as a moaning pile of cuts and bruises. Jeeves had never liked the hat anyway due to its band being a bit too near the purple end of the spectrum (oh, all right, it was purple) to suit his sensibilities.
Hats utterly aside, or at the bottoms of staircases, I suppose, I popped with seconds to spare onto the good old Hampstead and Highgate. Stealth and cunning, I decided, were the words of the hour. I would not wait to be chased this time. I popped back off at Mornington Crescent and spent the next hour in the back room of a bookshop, affecting to show interest in some valuable old volume kept there. Let old yeller tramp through the Underground; Bertram was through.
When I judged it safe to emerge, I sniffed derisively at the book, pronounced it modern Dutch, and bid the spluttering bookseller good day. Lo and behold, standing at the till chatting with the winsome shopgirl was a sight for sore eyes, or perhaps sore legs.
"Jeeves!" I warbled. "Fancy meeting you here!"
I believe the old reliable registered genuine surprise in both of his eyebrows. "Indeed, sir." He picked up his hat from the counter and covered his finely appointed head with it. "This is my cousin, sir, Miss Eloise Kingsley."
I can't put my finger on why, really, but a sense of relief came over me at that statement. Possibly it was simply the knowledge that my ordeal was over and I could deliver myself into capable hands.
"What ho, Miss Kingsley," I said when the introductions were made. "Well, Jeeves, I'm for home. Shall we, or have you got more errands to be about?"
"No, sir, I was about to return myself."
"Jolly good, then. Let's away."
We awayed, no signs of yellow or checks or any bowler hats but a meticulously kempt size-fourteen black one on the horizon, or in the cab that bore us swiftly through the metrop.
"Pardon me, sir," Jeeves said about halfway home, "but have you not forgotten your hat?"
I sighed in a put-upon way. "I've lost it, if you want to know. It was a sad casualty of battle while I evaded capture by a great hulking bird with a flick-knife."
"Most disturbing, sir."
"That it was, Jeeves," I said, but something in the quirk of his eyebrow gave me pause.
No. It wasn't possible. Jeeves has come up with a dangerous scheme or two in his time, but he'd never go to such lengths just to dispose of a hat. Would he?
Notes: Highgate and Hampstead is now part of the Northern Line. Period-appropriate map is here: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/clive.billson/tubemaps/1927.html
And if you're wondering about the football references, here's info on the 1927 FA Cup final, which I stumbled on by a happy accident while trying to work out what should be on the pub radio.