Saved from the bells!

Hello, and a happy new year from The Autolycan!

Last time I had a go at a Wodehouse story it was borne in on me that to do Wodehouse properly you had to have an aunt, preferably fierce.  Shreeves Boxes Clever hadn't got one, so didn't really count.  I started looking for stories about aunts, but found precious few of them in the papers.  Heaven knows where Wodehouse got his ideas from.  Eventually I did run one to earth though, and so Saved from the Bells does have an an aunt.  I hope she's as fierce as you could wish.      

                                                  SAVED FROM THE BELLS!

..........her forthcoming book - A Piece of Heart - will tell the story of an aunt lost to the family for decades then discovered.

                                                                                                          Daily Forward

I think I may have mentioned before that we Schusters have always upheld the finest traditions of Boat Race Night – ragging a few oiks, pinching a policeman's helmet and whatnot – and this year I was determined that Bertram's contribution would last long in the memory. I suppose it did in the end, if not quite in the way I'd intended.

I expect most fellows will know the awful feeling that you have the day after a particularly rumbustious night. You know the one. You eventually manage to prise the eyelids apart but you still can't see a lot and somewhere behind them some bird or other who should know better is playing the Toccata and Fugue. On steam hammers. The worst of it is though that you know that something is most fearfully wrong, and it's to do with something you did last night. You want to remember what it was, but then you don't really, if you see what I mean.

It was when Shreeves floated in with the tea that the full ghastly misery started to unfold.

'Good afternoon, sir. I trust you enjoyed a pleasant evening. I have taken the liberty of preparing a reviving cordial, sir – a recipe of my own which I believe you always find most efficacious in restoring a certain joie de vivre and bonhomie. I advise swallowing the cordial at a single gulp, sir.'

There must have been fully two or three minutes of pyrotechnics before I had sufficient presence of mind to reply to his courteous greeting.

'Whurr........' I ventured, as a kind of experiment. 'Urff....... arsh......' I continued, developing my theme with as much brio as poss in the circs.

'Precisely, sir. As you know, the preparation is a little disconcerting at first, but you will find that memory and feelings soon start to return. Shall I pour the tea now, sir?'

I think it must have been the words 'memory' and 'return.' A dreadful foreboding of what I'd done was hammering away insistently at the Schuster cranium, demanding to be let in. Whatever it was, the consequences of pinching a policeman's helmet were as nothing.

'Shreeves,' I enquired slowly 'when I arrived home, did I describe the evening at all?'

'At some length, sir. I understood that the Boat Race celebrations passed off successfully, with no more than the usual appearance before a magistrate to follow, which I believe is scheduled for tomorrow. Thereafter, I gather that the festivities took a more personal turn.'

'Go on, Shreeves.'

'I recall enquiring, sir, why the cuff of your shirt was adorned with half a dozen sets of initials, the top five being marked with a cross. Adjacent to the bottom one however was what I can only describe as a joyous and exuberant tick.'

'Bring me the shirt, Shreeves.'

It was exactly as he described. At the bottom of the list, the initials 'AB' bore a most threatening and downright oppressive tick - a tick to freeze a chap's very marrow.

'I confess I was unable to ascertain the significance of the initials, sir.'

'Shreeves,' I faltered, at the very edge of doom 'I have done a catastrophic thing. Last night's festivities got a touch out of hand. I believe I proposed my rather shaky hand in marriage to a number of young ladies. Five had the robust good sense to turn me down. That frightful pill Augusta Blenkinsop who has been trying to bag a husband for years accepted. Shreeves, I am engaged to be married.'

I believe that even his poise was momentarily shaken. There was a long pause.

'Very good, sir.'

'Shreeves!' I blathered 'It is not very good! I am engaged to be married, and to that ghastly Blenkinsop creature of all people!'

If you live forever, and then have another go and live forever all over again, you will never come close to imagining the cataclysmic effect of his rejoinder.

'I fear that I can be of limited assistance only, sir. You will know that I have always made it a point of principle not to enter or remain in the employ of married gentlemen. I must therefore reluctantly proffer notice to terminate my employment. I believe one month is the usual period.'

A stake had been driven through my heart. I fell back against the pillows. Shreeves vanished from the room, only to return shortly after, carrying the morning's letters.

When you chat to coves at the Drones about this and that they are often inclined to offer the opinion that misfortunes run in threes. I have never really understood why, mostly I suppose because of Shreeves' matchless ability to smooth over all those bally little rough edges and botherations which pop up in every fellow's life from time to time. Nevertheless, my attention now fell on an envelope addressed in a hand so terrifying it must have come from some frightful blackguard or other - Ivan the Terrible at a guess. I opened it with mounting dread.

'Shreeves,' I croaked 'this letter is from a fearsome termagant of a great aunt of mine. Great Aunt Matilda has been estranged from the family for years, mostly as a result of her habit of passing her pitchforks on to the Devil when she's worn them out. She now proposes to redouble my misery, were that possible, by visiting early next week.'

'Very good, sir.'

'Shreeves! I am engaged to be married, I am to lose my manservant and now this fearful fire breather has invited herself to visit!'

'Most distressing, sir.'

'Most distressing, Shreeves? Most distressing? As some author chappie once put it, affliction is enamoured of something or other and I am... erm.....' The quote escaped me.

'Wedded to calamity, sir?'

I motioned him to leave. Sometimes a fellow needs to be alone with his thoughts, and besides, I still had the small matter of a court appearance in the morning. It was after I returned from this, roundly ticked off by the beak, that I found Shreeves in his pantry. His enormous brain had been flickering and whirring and clanking, and great beads of perspiration stood on his brow.

'May we assume, sir, that it is not possible to call off the engagement?'

'We may, Shreeves. Old man Blenkinsop spends half his life in court suing perfectly decent chaps who've crossed some line or other known only to him. A clear breach of contract in relation to that dreadful harpy he's been trying to get off his hands for years, well......' I tailed off.

'I thought not, sir'

He was lost in thought again.

It was not long after I'd forked down the eggs and b the next Monday that there came a thunderous cacophony at the door, and Shreeves announced the tempestuous arrival of Great Aunt Matilda. She eyed me in the manner of a kestrel selecting its breakfast from the teeming fields below.

'What ho!' I essayed, hoping to break the ice. To no avail. A sort of combative snarl informed me that I was not to address the antiquated kith in that impertinent manner.

'Did you have a pleasant journey, Great Aunt Matilda?'

'I did not come here for the pleasure of the journey. I came here, against my better judgement, to fulfil a promise I made to your grandmother many years ago. I promised to try to ensure that you led an upright and sober life. I fear she would be grievously disappointed.'

At that point Shreeves appeared with tea, which turned out to be of a variety which made the antediluvian kin extraordinarily vexed. Conversation with her from then on rather fell away from the comparatively gracious and benevolent opening salvoes.

I honestly couldn't thing of another thing to say when there came another knock at the door, a tad more decorous and demure I must say than its predecessor, and and I thought my utter wretchedness was complete when Shreeves announced the unexpected arrival of Miss Augusta Blenkinsop, my ill favoured and distinctly surplus fiancée.

If my crest had fallen pretty low before, it now lay in ruins at my feet. I was astounded that Shreeves had let the serpent in. And now he had vanished. I searched frantically to locate brain, voice and mouth, but utterly flunked the tricky business of coordinating their activities. I stammered, but no intelligible sound emerged.

Great Aunt Matilda regarded me the way a shark might regard an incautious swimming party. Augusta resembled the swimming party at the very moment the awful realisation was dawning. Belatedly I grasped that a strident bellow was escaping from the flesh and blood's lips.

'Well?'

'Sorry, Great Aunt Matilda?'

Her voice took on the tone of an enraged glacier.

'I said, you numbskull, aren't you going to introduce us?'

I think I got the introductions more or less right at no more than the second or third attempt. The firedrake beat her great leathery wings in fury and turned to Augusta.

'Engaged?' she growled 'Are you telling me that you have agreed to marry this lamentable specimen?'

I think Augusta was considering how best to frame her reply when Shreeves glided back in as smoothly as if he were mounted on a set of castors. The ancient relative rounded on him like an infuriated fossil.

'Tell me' she demanded 'how can you bear to be in the service of such a drivelling incompetent?'

'I regret the necessity, madam, but I judge it right to make some allowance for Mr Schuster's present travails.'

'Travails?'

'Yes, madam. You see, Mr Schuster has recently been convicted in court on rather serious charges involving the theft of police property. I am afraid the experience has had a most unsettling effect.'

I looked at him in complete horror.

'Shreeves!' I began 'You simply cannot.......'

'Is this true, young man?'

Dumbstruck, I nodded. She turned to Augusta.

'And you are prepared to take the hand of a common criminal in marriage?'

Augusta didn't answer. She turned to me and spoke in what I must admit was a jolly quiet and dignified tone of voice, all things considered.

'Why did you propose to me, knowing that by then you had already committed the offence which would lead to this shameful outcome?'

If I'd thought before opening my mouth, I probably wouldn't have said it.

'Because the previous five all turned me down, I suppose' I blurted.

There was a piercing shriek from Augusta, and in a less than pleasing contrast a kind of baritone squawk from Great Aunt Matilda.

'Bertram!' she commanded 'You will leave us alone.'

I retreated to my room where I waited for an age before I heard Shreeves showing them out. I returned to the drawing room.

'Both ladies were somewhat distressed, sir, but before leaving each wrote you a note.'

'A note?'

'Yes sir. Would you care to open them now?'

I ripped the first envelope open with trembling hands. My ferocious relation, it transpired, was disgusted with me, could not bear to stay in my house one moment longer and would never see me again. Joy, however, was yet to be unconfined. I turned to the second envelope. I opened it. I fell to my knees. Without my asking for it Shreeves poured me a dashed stiff whisky.

My mouth opened and closed soundlessly. Never before had I been struck all of a such a quivering heap. 'Shreeves,' I whispered eventually 'she has called off the engagement. Shreeves......Shreeves.......you planned all this, didn't you?'

He inclined his head wisely.

'I rather fancied that Miss Blenkinsop could not decline an invitation to meet a member of her new family, sir. I regret the slight deception, but I judged that if the scene was to play out convincingly you needed to be genuinely aghast when I admitted her, and again when I mentioned the court case. If I might say so, sir, it was clear to me shortly thereafter that you had detected my little ruse, and I thought your subsequent reference to the five previous marriage proposals was masterly.'

I shrugged in what I hoped was a modest and knowing sort of way.

'Shreeves,' I said simply 'how can I possibly thank you?'

'In pecuniary terms, sir, there is no need since both ladies have already been most generous; Miss Blenkinsop for saving her from what she now regards as an ill advised marriage, and your great aunt for my loyalty in remaining with you during difficult times.'

'But is there nothing..........?'

He raised a questioning eyebrow.

'I appreciate that it would be somewhat irregular, sir, but I wonder if I might request that you consider allowing me to withdraw my resignation?'

I mulled the matter over just long enough to let him know which of us was the boss.

'I suppose that would be alright' I said. 

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 ANAGRAM CORNER

                                              BORIS JOHNSON, MAYOR

                                                AY, MR JONNO'S BOORISH!