mercyrobot | [Jeeves & Wooster] Fic: Sorting Out the Dance Card (8/8) (Reply)

Sorting Out the Dance Card

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8. Book Marks

The vacating of the flat by any and all under-the-weather curates happened sooner than expected. Stinker was deemed well enough to return home the very next day, and did so the one following. Scarcely had he toodle-pipped than Jeeves was off like a shot to my bedchamber, airing and scrubbing and dusting like a thing possessed. This having-out of histories itched at me to have itself done, but I reasoned he was best left to it, as he'd be more inclined to sit still for such talks if there was no stone left unturned in the housekeeping realm.

Therefore I left him to turn the stones as he would, and ventured out in mind of getting him a present. Why a present? Well, why not a present? He'd certainly jogged the extra yard or eighty putting in all this time looking after sickly Stinkers, and since despite all professed adoration my consent to travel Japanward was still but a figment, I felt some material token was at least in order.

Jeeves being Jeeves, material tokens meant books, but my ramble toward the bookseller was interrupted when my eye was waylaid by a display in a jeweller's window. I gazed wistfully on the rings there. I couldn't get him one; he wouldn't be able to wear it even if I could come up with an explanation for buying a romantically engraved man's ring that was too big for me. But it didn't stop me looking and wishing.

The chosen bookshop was one I'd been in before on Jeeves's recommendation, so it had seemed the sensible place to go to find something he'd want. The one or two previous visits had been simple cases of 'I'd like this thing, please,' and 'here you are,' and 'good day.' While the elderly cove who greeted me seemed vaguely familiar, I didn't think I'd seen him here. I'd remember a moustache that singularly walrus-like, but it was not the soup-strainer that was familiar. It was something else I couldn't place; perhaps he simply had one of those faces.

"And what can I do for you, sir?" he asked.

"Well, I need a book, but I suppose you guessed that or I wouldn't be here."

"Indeed, indeed. You look like a mystery man to me—that is, a mystery-reading man, hah!—have you read the new C. P. Whitland?" Eyebrows, bushy or not, have no right to move in that fashion.

"As it happens, you'd be spot-on, but the book's not for me. It's for a...friend. One who it rather seems has got everything already."

"Always a difficulty, always a difficulty. I've got the same problem with a nephew of mine. Anything you know he likes, then? Bit of a something to go on?"

"Oh, the usual. Shakespeare, Spinoza—" A stroke of brilliance hit me. "I say, who's the chappie with the bit about pilgrim souls? He likes his stuff."

"Yeats, my good man. W. B. Yeats."

The brilliance did not feel quite so brilliant. I deflated somewhat. "Oh. Even I've got a Yeats lying about someplace, so he must have at least five."

"Is 'When You Are Old' a particular favourite, then?"

"When I'm old? What's that got to do with anything?"

"The verse, my boy, the verse. 'When You Are Old,' it's called."

"Oh. Yes, I suppose it must be."

"Well, then. Well, then, I may have something." He unlocked the case behind him where booksellers tend to keep the stuff they don't want everybody's paws all over and fished out an attractive leatherbound volume. "I say I may, but I mean I do. If he's a good friend, that is, and takes care of his books."

I think that must've been walrusy bookseller-speak for 'this one's a bit pricey.' I frowned at it. It bore the name of a French fellow I had vague memories of having heard mentioned in the course of my education. "What's this to do with Yeats?" I asked.

"Ah, patience, patience. I'm getting to that." He thumbed a few pages and then presented me with one.

"I'm no great scholar of French, but it looks misspelt to me."

The bookseller gave a hearty guffaw. "My dear boy! Do you look at Shakespeare and think it misspelt?"

"Well, I suppose I might, if I didn't know any better, but it's generally known that the Bard knew he was about."

"As did Ronsard, my boy, as did Ronsard. One could call him the Swan of Blois, if one liked."

"You mean he's like a French Shakespeare."

"He did as much with language, surely. This misspelt thing you're looking on is what Yeats took and made his own. The thing in its nascent form. And you won't find many who have this edition."

Well, it seemed just about perfect to me. I'd thought to find a book containing the poem, but I'd gone one better and dug up the thing at the source. It was just a nice touch of cream on top that the source happened to be French. I laid out a galling sum (galling for a book, anyway) and had it wrapped up.

I went away feeling very pleased with myself indeed. I took a look back at the shop front on my way out, wondering if the name might give some clue to what had been so familiar, but D. Branstone, Bookseller rang not the smallest bell. I shrugged the shrug of the unknowing and ankled toward home.

I wanted to get right to presenting my treasure, but it was not to be. As I passed through Dover Street I was spotted by Bingo Little and fairly dragged into the Drones.

He expressed relief that I'd not dropped from the face of the earthen orb, as I'd been rather neglecting my club-going, so I was obliged to share the much-redacted version of Stinker's harrowing illness and miraculous recovery.

"Oh, then nobody wins," Bingo said sadly. "Oofy bet you had the 'flu, Pongo bet you'd eloped with a French chorus girl, and I bet that Jeeves had finally strangled you with some tie he didn't like."

"And nobody thought to ring up and find out the truth?" Really! Lord love them, but at times they could make me look like some sort of Socrates, and that was saying a bit.

"Well, part of the bet was how long till you turned up."

I let the eyes stray heavenward. "You really bet Jeeves had murdered me?"

"I was joking, but Oofy made me stick to it. So old Stinker's all right now, is he?"

"As rain, or soon to be. He hied home with Stiffy this very a.m. Speaking of which, I'd best be doing the same— to my own home myself, I mean."

"Oh, but Bertie, I had a favour to ask you."

I sighed and sank back into my chair. "Ask away, then."

"Well, you see, Rosie's contract is nearly up and she's trying to get an offer from a rival publisher so her current people will counter with an even better one."

"So have Oofy make her one. Isn't that what he does, when he can be bothered to do it?"

"He won't. Prosser-Glenn don't do that sort of book and Rosie's publishers would know that. I was rather hoping to have them at a dinner party peppered with intellgentsia. To impress them, you know."

I understood. Bingo and Rosie's little house was nice and cosy, but not likely to impress anybody except to offer to lend their decorator or cook. I found myself rather understanding how King Solomon must have felt. In mere moments Bingo would sidle his way into hosting this binge chez Wooster. While the preux chevalier in me wanted to ride to the rescue and simply announce that my abode was at his disposal, the thought of one more moment not locked away in perfect solitude with Jeeves gave me a sinking feeling of the first order.

"Well, I wish I could help you, old egg, but I'm back off to the Continent toute de suite," I said before the old conscience could get a word in edgewise. "Hasty departure left a few unfinished whatsits and all that. You know the way of these things."

"I do, Bertie, I do," Bingo sighed glumly into his glass. Then he straightened up, looking a fair bit brighter. "I say! As you'll be gone, I don't suppose we could just sort of borrow your flat for an evening?"

"Er," I said, finding the flaw in the plan.

"It'll be left just as we found it, I promise. Oofy was sorry he couldn't help us so he offered to lend out a couple of his staff."

"Strangers mucking about in Jeeves's kitchen? He will kick, Bingo, mark my words." He might or might not have kicked, but there was a good scheme brewing in the back of the Wooster onion and I needed the time to get the kettle to boil.

"You've been round Oofy's place enough times that they won't be strangers. It's only Gates and Mrs Crawford. Look, if you don't mind, can I ask him? They're coming day after tomorrow and I can't wait any longer to tell them where to turn up."

"Bingo!"

"Well, if you weren't nursing clerics you'd have heard about it sooner."

"If you weren't making ridiculous bets— never mind." The kettle boiling in the aft—or is it port?—of the bean gave off a loud whistle. "Wait for me here. I've an errand that can't wait, and then you can put your proposition to Jeeves."

"Oh, thank you, Bertie! Have I ever told you you're a real pal?"

"A time or two," I said distractedly, gathering up the hat and stick, eager to get off on my errand and get Bingo in so that he could bally well get out and leave us to it. "I'll be back in half an hour." I biffed with all due haste. The scheme boiling away required me to pause on the way out to make a request to Rogers that I'm sure he thought rather curious, but he rifled through all the bits and bobs left over from the last Annual Fancy Dress Ball and Bachelor Raffle and came up with the goods.

Jeeves didn't betray any disappointment when I made my entrée with Bingo, or not to the untrained eye. A slight downturn at one corner of his mouth clearly said to me, 'Blast you, Wooster.' I made Bingo stay put in the sitting room while Jeeves went off to fetch drinks, giving him to understand I needed to pop into the kitchen for a quick word to soften Jeeves up.

"I'm sorry," I whispered without preamble. "Bingo rather waylaid me and sprung this mad scheme. That parcel you took off me is a present for you, so don't open it yet."

That caused an inkling of a smile and he kissed me quickly, just sort of 'yes, lips still here.' "What is this scheme?"

"You may not like it, but believe me when I say it's better than the alternative. I give you full leave both as your supposed employer and as your...er, is there a word for it?"

"There are several possibilities. We can agree on one at a later time if you like."

"Right ho. Anyway, I'm one hundred percent behind you on both fronts if you want to tell Mr Little to go and boil his head. And, er—" I screwed up the nose in consternation, not wanting to tip my hand just yet— "We'll have to take ourselves off for a bit. Brinkley or similar. I didn't quite think it through when I said we wouldn't be in the Metrop. at the crucial moment."

Jeeves did rather frown at the prop., but agreed to leave the place to Bingo's disposal on the condition that it be Gates who was given the key. He even threw in a bit of sage advice for the smooth operation of the proceedings, and Bingo floated out on a Nº. 9 cloud.

"Sorry about all this," I said once the Little had gone. "All I could think of was how to get you to myself post-haste and I didn't quite consider every angle."

For that he planted a good one on me. I planted back in kind, and it all got rather heated, resulting in self pinned against the back of the kitchen door with legs wrapped round Jeeves's waist. "I wish," I said when we broke for breath, as well as a happy gasp on my part at what his hand was doing inside my shirt, "we didn't have to pretend. I wish—oh yes, just there—everyone could know."

"I know," he said against my neck. "I know."

The proceedings moved to the nearest bed (being Jeeves's), and I have to say it turned a bit frantic. Several buttons sacrificed themselves for the cause, clothes barely removed before the drawer in the night table crashed to the floor as I grasped blindly about for the familiar blue jar. I don't know if it was finally being alone or just something in the air, but I couldn't bear to wait one second more than I had to. I just slathered a handful of the stuff on him and said, "Now."

"You must let me prepare you," he said, taking up his own measure from the jar and starting in on the usual slow and careful application.

In normal circs this c. a. is half the fun, but on this occasion I swatted his hand away. "Enough, enough."

"Bertie—"

"Now, damn it," I demanded, and it speaks to my sudden desperation that I followed it with a more colourful bit of phrasing without even bothering to blush.

That did it. Something went, I think, a bit wild in his eyes, and in he plunged, none too slowly. It burned, more than usual, but I gritted the teeth and pressed back so as to remove any notion of his waiting it out. It passed—or was overcome—in short order and I was able to thoroughly enjoy a vigorous romp of the first order that tore all sorts of creative phrases from him and had me clawing at the sheets, his back, anything I could reach.

It ended as quickly and explosively as it had begun. I'd not even found breath enough to pronounce it marvellous or some simliar term before Jeeves was moving away. I thought at first he was going for some sort of cloth to clean us up, but when I looked up at him, he was backing up with something like horror etched across his map. "I'm sorry," he said, looking at me as though I was a murder scene and not a beloved bedmate. "I swore to myself I would never— I can only beg your forgiveness."

He made to flee the scene, I think. I made a bewildered grab for his arm and managed to pull him back. "What? What's all this? Sorry? What for?"

"I've hurt you." He indicated ten little spots on my hips that were beginning to look a bit purple.

"I'm afraid I didn't notice it through all the opposite-of-hurting you were doing." I ran my finger over a set of scratches on his upper arm. "You didn't emerge precisely unscathed." I had an inkling this was not going to be one of those quickly smoothed-over misunderstandings, and though reluctant to leave him, neither did I want to squirm my way through some long talk feeling drippy and sticky. "Stay where you are, love. I'll be right back." I had to hide a wince as I got up, but he missed it as his eyes were more or less screwed shut.

The sacking of Rome had nothing on what I did to the bath in searching for something appropriately cloth-like. I gave my relevant bits a hasty swipe and probably looked a right ass running back out with a second towel soaked in warm water before Jeeves could make a break for it, but needs must and there was no one to see. I applied it to him gently enough that it couldn't have been any sort of pain that caused him to flinch when I touched him. "What is it?" I asked in what I hoped was a soothing sort of way. "What do you think you've done that you swore you'd never?"

Head bowed and eyelids squeezing even tighter, he said after a tense moment, very softly, "I swore I would never hurt you as I had been."

The Wooster heart is as hearty a specimen as you'll ever meet, but I felt it break a little bit at hearing what I'd feared was true. "Oh, Jeeves," I sighed. I laid a hand on his cheek and didn't let him flinch away this time. "Look at me, dash it."

He looked, half-cracking the lids to reveal a misty and anguished gaze. "I had hoped to keep it from you," he said, and he sounded more than a bit rough. "Now that you know—" he was trying to move away again— "I am sure you will no longer wish to—"

"Don't talk rot!" I exclaimed, scrambling after him to place both hands on his burdened shoulders. "Whatever blackguard, snake, devil, what-have-you was so stupid and careless with you, it's nothing to do with us, barring your tendency to treat me as some sort of breakable. And if that's what you must do to keep yourself feeling altogether sanguine, then so be it, but I have to tell you— up until the moment you came over all horrified, we'd been doing exactly what I wanted, just the way I wanted it. But if you don't want it to go like that ever again, then neither do I. It's no good if we aren't both all for it."

"I was," Jeeves said. "It is precisely that which frightens me. I could not control myself."

"Yes, and it was a wondrous thing. I know you'd never hurt me on purpose. If I'd said, 'stop, no—'"

"I can only hope it would have reached some small scrap of rationality I still possessed."

"Of course it would."

"How far you trust me only adds to my worry."

"It doesn't worry me. Isn't that sort of the point of trusting?"

"It can be misplaced."

"Not when it's placed in you. Doesn't this blighter rather win if you let him keep you from being happy?"

"You are not the first to tell me so." He seemed, at least, no longer on the verge of locking himself in the bathroom or something equally ridiculous.

"Will you tell me about it?"

"I—"

"Please, Jeeves. If nothing else I want to know what I shouldn't do. If you can't unburden yourself to me, than to whom can you, I ask? There is no one in the world whose good opinion stands less chance of looking on tempests and being shaken."

He finally nodded, slowly and slightly. I dragged both Jeeves and bedcovers over to the settee, as I thought we might have need of the whiskey and the cigarette box that sat next to it. When we'd had a bit of both, he began.

"I think you know the beginning of the story, as alluded to by Inspector Bloom."

"The jewel thievery?" I asked.

"Indeed. The footman I mentioned was a man some years my senior named Pritchard."

"He wasn't just your friend, was he?"

"He was no friend at all, though for some time I refused to believe it. I chanced to see the stolen necklaces in his room, which ultimately led to his arrest, and I must admit that reporting it was partly an act of revenge. But before that—" he took a long breath and gave the noble head a shake. "I too, trusted. I never said no, or stop. He told me that pain was the way of it, and blinded by my adoration, I believed."

"But I know that isn't true," I said. "I know it's not supposed to be awful, or why would anyone bother?"

"Pritchard was not simply a brute. He was charming, convincing. I lived for the rare moments when he would show what I thought to be real affection and care. He consumed me, as you now do."

"And now you're afraid I'll turn out to be the same sort of cad."

"No," he said sharply, catching my hands in his. "I am not. After my experience with Pritchard, it was years before I let anyone touch me. But at last I met someone kind and decent who showed me how far I had been misled."

"I'm jealous at the thought," I said, now thinking I rather understood how he could say he hated Stinker. "But at the same time I think I'd like to shake his hand."

"Impossible, I'm afraid. He was killed at Albert the first day on the Somme."

The chap he'd batmanned for, I wondered, or some other more-than-brother in arms? It wasn't all that important for the moment. "But you would have been, what? Seventeen, eighteen then? You must've been frightfully young when that Pritchard rat...did what he did, if it was years."

"It began the summer of my fifteenth birthday and ended the following winter. I volunteered a month after his arrest."

"Good lord." The things he'd been through! What had I been doing at those ages? Fopping about with nary a care in the world, that's what. As near as I came was the time Catsmeat and I had thought it would be a lark to join the army, but there's only so far the other way a recruiting sergeant can look on one's age, and boys of twelve in Eton collars are past it.

"Please, to have you pity me would be—"

"Pity you? Never. I was more how thinking little I'd amounted to by the same age you already knew so much of the world."

"It was your innocence that endeared you to me. First I wanted to protect it at all costs, and then I thought that if someone with such a heart could think well of me, perhaps I had not been so badly damaged. Captain Barrington loved me, I think, or would have come to, but I denied myself the emotion until I met you and found I could not."

I'd known the love of Jeeves was a precious thing to have bestowed upon me, but now I saw how truly rare and magnificent. This jealousy of his was not lack of faith in me, but himself, the ghosts of all these old wounds. I lugged him over tightly against me. "You see? I know all, and I'm still here. I think no less of you. I think more, if anything, given what you've overcome. Still positively soppy with love. Still eager as ever to commit very risqué unclothed acts. It's all just the same, only I understand you a bit better."

He passed his fingers across his eyes. "I do not deserve you."

"No, I'm sure you deserve much better, but I'm the lucky blighter you happened to fall for, however I've managed it." I gave him a little kiss, like 'yes, lips still here,' but also 'lips still yours.' "Only tell me one last thing, and then this book can be closed for good if you don't want it dragged back out." He gave the nod and I soldiered on. "This history, is it why there seem to be a few...variations of said risqué acts you're not altogether keen on? Not that I mind, you understand, but—"

Happily, he staunched the babble before it got too awfully gibbery. "You refer, I think, to my insistence upon facing you, and my lack of invitation for you to assume the dominant role."

Despite the fact that I myself had said it far more plainly not half an hour before, I blushed. "Yes."

"I must admit it is true. In the first case, I fear inflicting what was inflicted upon me, and in the second, while I know you would never be so cruel and callous, I fear awakening unpleasant memories."

"As I said, if we're not both all for it—"

"But now that you know that an unfavourable reaction on my part would be due to my past and no fault of yours, I hope that with time and patience the obstacle may be overcome. I would like nothing better than to be cured of it."

I was touched, moved, and also a bit stirred elsewhere. "I'll do my best, then. I'd never want to drag you into something you're less than thrilled about, but there is this daydream of mine involving the piano that you simply couldn't act out facing me."

He nuzzled rather suggestively at my neck, which I took to mean both that he found the idea not without its merits, and also that the darkish clouds were beginning to pass.

"What would you say to a bath and a bit of dinner?" I asked. "And then possibly some of this time and patience?"

Jeeves's only response was a 'hmm' as he continued to mouth at my neck.

"Or...this," I said a trifle weakly, letting myself be shifted into a better posish for Jeeves getting his hands (or other parts) wherever he liked. This equated to a fairly wanton sort of sprawl with the blanket cast aside.

For a moment Jeeves just sat back and looked at me. "You are exquisitely beautiful, Bertram," he said with as much feeling as I've ever heard from him.

I felt a tad squirmish under all this praise; I will charitably describe the Wooster corpus as willowy, but it's really more in the line of skinny and knobbly. Still, eye of the beholder and all that. We did eventually make it to the bath, but we needed it even more by the time we got there.

The eventual dinner, by mutual agreement, was a simple affair of sandwiches and soup over which we discussed whether there was anything about that ought to be kept away from prying eyes whilst the flat was hosting Bingo and co.

"Unless anything remains of Mr Pinker's mementos—"

I stopped Jeeves in his tracks. "All that's left is entirely innocent, and he took it all with him," I declared, unwilling to trot back into the jealous realm of past whatsits just at the mo. There was still a good bit of talking-over and working-out to be done, but if my scheme succeeded, we'd have world enough and time to tie every little thread into a neat bow. For now, though, a change of subj. might be in order. "Oofy's staff will think this all horribly strange, won't they?"

"Mr Gates and Mrs Crawford are more than accustomed to events out of the ordinary."

"I suppose they'd have to be, working for Oofy. He once had some Oriental nib staying with him, and nobody was allowed to wear shoes in the house for the duration. Barefoot butlers, I tell you. You would have been scandalised, Jeeves. Come to the door and it's 'may I take your shoes, sir?'"

"Yes, Mr Gates provided a most amusing account of the gentleman's visit."

"Ah, that book of yours. You haven't had any trouble, have you, about the removal of the pages pertaining to Wooster, B.?"

"Regrettably, I thought it best to restore them upon our return from France."

"Oh. Well, I suppose the incriminating whatsits therein do rather pale versus what could get out."

"That was precisely my thought. I shall be obliged, from time to time, to recount some bit of innocent folly."

"I'll bally well write something up myself if it does its bit towards keeping us safe."

Jeeves chuckled lightly, a thing I got to witness more and more these days. "That would be a most singular occurrence."

"What, no gentleman's ever contributed to his own record?"

"I know of only one case. On the death of his valet who had served him some fifty years, Sir Geoffrey Smythe contrived to access to the book to write 'goodbye, old friend' at the end of the final entry."

I couldn't help it. The throat tightened and the eyes stung a bit. "I say. That's rather— do you think they were...?"

"Speculation of that sort is harshly frowned upon, but Sir Geoffrey never married and died himself six months later, apparently of old age."

Or of a broken heart, I thought, which was surely how I'd go if the Spodes and Cheesewrights of the world didn't get me first.

I think Jeeves saw the notion pass over and settle, because he took my hand across the table. "That half century or more is yet ahead of us, Bertie, and every minute I have is yours."

"And all mine are yours, of course." I gave a rueful shake of the bean. "I'm turning into a frightful sop. If I start spouting off about daisy-chains and angel rabbits, do fetch me a stern one to the onion." Love's soppiness put me in mind of poetry, which put me back in mind of the book I'd yet to hand over and the pièce de résistance that went along with it. "Do you want your present now?"

"That would be agreeable."

I ran and fetched the parcel from the hall table. Having handled it, I'm sure he knew it was a book, but he still looked sufficiently moved when he saw the b. in specific and what page was marked in it.

"I hope I didn't get it wrong," I said, shoving my hands into my pockets as I watched him look over it. "Only the bookseller chappie said this was where Yeats got the pilgrim soul bit. You know, from the letter."

Jeeves nodded and looked up from the page. "No, your information was correct. Although I now dare hope that our fate may be happier than that of Monsieur Ronsard and his Hélène."

"Oh? Does it end badly? He didn't tell me it ends badly." I frowned and made a grab at the book, but Jeeves was already on the chesterfield and flipping pages.

"It ends with regret," he said, waving me down next to him.

"Well, we won't be having any of that if I have anything to say about it."

"This passage, I hope, is more apt." Jeeves balanced the book across our knees and read out a bit that had to do with flying and warmth and perfection. I confess that between my shortcomings with the finer points of the language and the sound of his voice reading it, I didn't quite catch everything, but it sounded like just the stuff from where I was sitting.

"Well. That's more like it, what?" I said, and if I sighed, what of it?

"Thank you. It is an exquisite gift." He kissed me with a goodly bit of enthusiasm, though not the sort that leads to anything more than sitting hand in hand and smiling fondly.

"There's one more," I said when my lips were once again available for comment. "That wasn't just an empty envelope marking the page."

Jeeves raised both eyebrows and quirked a mirthful smirk at the card within, which contained no other sentiment than his own name written over the whole thing. It wasn't just an ordinary card, you see; it was one of those thingummies girls wear round their wrists to remind them who they're dancing with, and incidentally the subj. of my curious request to Rogers on my way out of the club.

I produced the last bit of the present from my inner pocket. It still wasn't Japan, but I had the feeling it would be well-received nonetheless. "The Brinkley bit was rather a red herring," I admitted. "Come back to Paris and dance with me?" I hopefully forked out the tickets.

Jeeves smiled, one of those rare just-for-Bertram jaw-crackers. "Always," he said, and gave me the sort of kiss that definitely leads to more than hand-holding.

END

Amour rendit ma nature parfaite,
Pure par luy mon essence s'est faite,
Il me donna la vie et le pouvoir,

Il eschaufa tout mon sang de sa flame,
Et m'agitant de son vol feit mouvoir
Avecques luy mes pensers et mon ame.

[Love brought perfection to my nature;
It was he that made my whole being pure.
He gave me strength and he gave me life,

With his flame he heated my blood all through.
And as he caught me up into his flight,
All my thoughts and soul moved with him too.]

—Pierre de Ronsard