9

There was a time when this worthy housewife, tackling the Observer crossword puzzle, would snort and tear her hair and fill the air with strange oaths picked up from cronies on the hunting field, but consistent inability to solve more than about an eighth of the clues has brought a sort of dull resignation and today she merely sits and stares at it, knowing that however much she licks the end of her pencil little or no business will result.

As I came in, I heard her mutter, soliloquizing like someone in Shakespeare, 'Measured tread of saint round St Paul's, for God's sake', seeming to indicate that she had come up against a hot one, and I think it was a relief to her to become aware that her favourite nephew was at her side and that she could conscientiously abandon her distasteful task, for she looked up and greeted me cheerily. She wears tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles for reading which make her look like a fish in an aquarium. She peered at me through these.

'Hullo, my bounding Bertie.'

'Good morning, old ancestor.'

'Up already?'

'I have been up some time.'

'Then why aren't you out canvassing? And why are you looking like something the cat brought in?'

I winced. I had not intended to disclose the recent past, but with an aunt's perception she had somehow spotted that in some manner I had passed through the furnace and she would go on probing and questioning till I came clean. Any capable aunt can give Scotland Yard inspectors strokes and bisques in the matter of interrogating a suspect, and I knew that all attempts at concealment would be fruitless. Or is it bootless? I would have to check with Jeeves.

'I am looking like something the cat brought in because I am feeling like something the c.b. in,' I said. 'Aged relative, I have a strange story to relate. Do you know a local blister of the name of Mrs McCorkadale?'

'Who lives in River Row?'

'That's the one.'

'She's a barrister.'

'She looks it.'

'You've met her?'

'I've met her.'

'She's Ginger's opponent in this election.'

'I know. Is Mr McCorkadale still alive?'

'Died years ago. He got run over by a municipal tram.'

'I don't blame him. I'd have done the same myself in his place. It's the only course to pursue when you're married to a woman like that.'

'How did you meet her?'

'I called on her to urge her to vote for Ginger,' I said, and in a few broken words I related my strange story.

It went well. In fact, it went like a breeze. Myself, I was unable to see anything humorous in it, but there was no doubt about it entertaining the blood relation. She guffawed more liberally than I had ever heard a woman guffaw. If there had been an aisle, she would have rolled in it. I couldn't help feeling how ironical it was that, having failed so often to be well received when telling a funny story, I should have aroused such gales of mirth with one that was so essentially tragic.

While she was still giving her impersonation of a hyena which has just heard a good one from another hyena, Spode came in, choosing the wrong moment as usual. One never wants to see Spode, but least of all when someone is having a hearty laugh at your expense.

'I'm looking for the notes for my speech tomorrow,' he said. 'Hullo, what's the joke?'

Convulsed as she was, it was not easy for the ancestor to articulate, but she managed a couple of words.

'It's Bertie.'

'Oh?' said Spode, looking at me as if he found it difficult to believe that any word or act of mine could excite mirth and not horror and disgust.

'He's just been calling on Mrs McCorkadale.'

'Oh?'

'And asking her to vote for Ginger Winship.'

'Oh?' said Spode again. I have already indicated that he was a compulsive Oh-sayer. 'Well, it is what I would have expected of him,' and with another look in which scorn and animosity were nicely blended and a word to the effect that he might have left those notes in the summerhouse by the lake he removed his distasteful presence.

That he and I were not on Damon and Pythias terms seemed to have impressed itself on the aged relative. She switched off the hyena sound effects.

'Not a bonhomous type, Spode.'

'No.'

'He doesn't like you.'

'No.'

'And I don't think he likes me.'

'No,' I said, and it occurred to me, for the Woosters are essentially fairminded, that it was hardly for me to criticize Spode's Oh's when my No's were equally frequent. Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye, Wooster? I found myself asking myself, it having been one of the many good things I had picked up in my researches when I won that Scripture Knowledge prize.

'Does he like anyone?' said the relative. 'Except, presumably, Madeline Bassett.'

'He seems fond of L. P. Runkle.'

'What makes you think that?'

'I overheard them exchanging confidences.'

'Oh?' said the relative, for these things are catching. 'Well, I suppose one ought not to be surprised. Birds of a feather –'

'Flock together?'

'Exactly. And even the dregs of pond life fraternize with other dregs of pond life. By the way, remind me to tell you something about L. P. Runkle.'

'Right ho.'

'We will come to L. P. Runkle later. This animosity of Spode's, is it just the memory of old Totleigh days, or have you done anything lately to incur his displeasure?'

This time I had no hesitation in telling her all. I felt she would be sympathetic. I laid the facts before her with every confidence that an aunt's condolences would result.

'There was this gnat.'

'I don't follow you.'

'I had to rally round.'

'You've still lost me.'

'Spode didn't like it.'

'So he doesn't like gnats either. Which gnat? What gnat? Will you get on with your story, curse you, starting at the beginning and carrying on to the end.'

'Certainly, if you wish. Here is the scenario.'

I told her about the gnat in Madeline's eye, the part I had played in restoring her vision to mid-season form and the exception Spode had taken to my well-meant efforts. She whistled. Everyone seemed to be whistling at me today. Even the recent maid on recognizing me had puckered up her lips as if about to.

'I wouldn't do that sort of thing again,' she said.

'If the necessity arose I would have no option.'

'Then you'd better get one as soon as possible.

Because if you keep on taking things out of Madeline's eye, you may have to marry the girl.'

'But surely the peril has passed now that she's engaged to Spode.'

'I don't know so much. I think there's some trouble between Spode and Madeline.'

I would be surprised to learn that in the whole W.1 postal section of London there is a man more capable than Bertram Wooster of bearing up with a stiff upper lip under what I have heard Jeeves call the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune; but at these frightful words I confess that I went into my old aspen routine even more wholeheartedly than I had done during my get-together with the relict of the late McCorkadale.

And not without reason. My whole foreign policy was based on the supposition that the solidarity of these two consenting adults was something that couldn't be broken or even cracked. He, on his own statement, had worshipped her since she was so high, while she, as I have already recorded, would not lightly throw a man of his eligibility into the discard. If ever there was a union which you could have betted with perfect confidence would culminate in a golden wedding with all the trimmings, this was the one.

'Trouble?' I whispered hoarsely. 'You mean there's a what-d'you– call-it?'

'What would that be?'

'A rift within the lute which widens soon and makes the music mute. Not my own, Jeeves's.'