A Very Good Jeeves

This is a parody of the Jeeves stories by P G Wodehouse in which the major characters of Jeeves, the 'Gentleman's Gentleman', and Bertie Wooster, the gentleman, are used. The situations in which the hapless Wooster finds himself are based rather loosely on those encountered in the original stories, as are those of the secondary characters. The principal differences between this and the originals are that while this narrative is by Bertie, Jeeves' thoughts are vocalised, albeit 'sotto voce', that is at a volume so as not to be heard, (these thoughts will be in brackets), and Jeeves is exhibiting a sexual life unheard of in the original stories. This story also has been in some small way influenced by the works of Caryl Brahms and S.J.Simon, authors of 'Don't Mr Disraeli', 'No Bed for Bacon' and 'A bullet in the ballet'.

*****

"Good morning Sir, It is time for you to get out of your bed (you pathetic little toad), Sir." The words were softly spoken (sotto voce) and carried the due deference of the man's station as a 'Gentleman's Gentleman', or Butler/Valet, for this was Jeeves' lot in life, to serve the whims of his master, Mr Bertram (Bertie) Wooster.

"Did you say something Jeeves?" I mumbled from the confines of the feather pillow.

"I did indeed Sir, the sun is over the yardarm and the day is awaiting, as indeed is your breakfast. Your kipper sits even now in anticipation of your knife and fork. (And I hope you choke on it)."

"Given the hour Jeeves, did I enjoy myself last evening?"

"Indeed you did Sir, the young lady was dispatched home safe and happy. (Especially after I'd finished with her). Your clothes are laid out for you, and I remind you that your Aunt Lobelia is expecting you to dine with her at twelve."

"What time is it?"

"Eleven, sir." Jeeves smiled as he headed for the door.

"Dash it all Jeeves, you should have woken me earlier." I shouted after the retreating Jeeves.

Moments later I stumbled into the dining room where the table was set to greet me, my kipper stared brownly from my plate, my golden brown toasted bread, liberally spread with butter, and my tea freshly poured and steaming in my cup. "I say Jeeves, could you . . ."

"I have taken the liberty of telephoning your Aunt, apologising on your behalf and telling her that you are not feeling well and are unable to dine today."

". . . Send a message to my Aunt. What was that you just said?"

"That I have already spoken to your Aunt etcetera, Sir."

"Very good Jeeves, good man. Now let me think, what am I to do today?"

"You have arranged a game of whist at the Drones with Brommers (Wilfred Bromley) and Chauncey (Featherstonehaugh) this afternoon Sir, and you are to dine with that show lady that you were with last night, after her show."

"I don't seem to remember much of last night, tell me, what is her name and is she pretty?"

"Indeed she is sir, Miss Poppy Shaw is a comely young lady if I might say so." (With a great set of knockers and very accommodating in bed if I might also say so. Why the hell do you think that I arranged this?)

"Very good Jeeves." I uttered as I wiped my mouth on my napkin before sipping my tea. "I can't understand why I can't remember her if she was so pretty. (Because you were dead to the world and I was giving her a right good going over in my bed.) Oh well, I must be off, toodle pip old Bean, now where did I put my hat?"

"On your head, Sir."

"Yes, here it is. Well then, I must away."

I don't normally scurry, except when I am about to be descended on by the wretched Aunt Lobelia, but this am, I scurried from my flat only moments before a cab pulled to the kerb disgorging two ladies, an irate Aunt Lobelia and Cousin Honoria onto the pavement.

Bertie's Aunt Lobelia Glossop had decided to take over his affairs following the death of her brother Claude Wooster in the Great War. Claude was the brother of Emmaline who was married to Sir Roger Podger, Squire of Blandings Hall. Sir Roger had been recently widowed and was attempting to raise, with the help of Beltrane the Housekeeper, three children, his eldest son Roger, known as Roger the Two by his chums at Oxford, Stephanie, known to her friends at school as Stiffy, a name she has retained, and Timothy, 'Timbo' who has shown little interest in anything other than fast motor cars since childhood, a phase in his life that he has only recently abandoned. The final member of the Podger ménage is Aunt Agatha, widowed sister of Sir Roger who had retired to her room in mourning and spent her day adding black stitches to a large black tapestry hanging. She could have achieved the desired result with a large brush and pot of black paint. She appears, wraithlike, at meal times where she will silently chew her food before retiring to her room and needle and black thread.

Jeeves opened the door in response to her vigorous application of the knocker, to admit an irate Aunt and timid Cousin. "I say Jeeves, was that Bertie I observed disappearing into the mid-distance?"

"Indeed it was madam, he had an urgent appointment to attend." (And my plan to get him out of the flat so that I can give the two of you my uninterrupted attention is working nicely.)

"But the message said that he was officially on death's door, and that is the reason that we rushed over here, to minister to his demise." She had removed her hat and loosened the button at the throat of her dress. Meanwhile Cousin Honoria had also removed her bonnet and was further advanced in disrobing than her mother, for she was desperate to feel Jeeves' enormous shaft between her legs before her mother, and he was worn out. Her skirts were on the floor and she was spread on the sofa, her bare legs well parted and her lips gleaming wetly from her bush. Jeeves was in her in a trice, his loins bouncing up and down as he thrust into her.

"I want to ride the cock horse Jeeves." Honoria cried after her first come. Jeeves withdrew from her and stretched on the sofa with her straddling him. She began with a trot before moving at a canter, her breasts jiggling nicely in time with her rise and fall. Her pace increased until she had entered into a full blooded gallop. "Aha a fence, up and over Jeeves! Tallyho!!" Jeeves' hips rose and carried her over the fence and into a field of softly flowing grain. "I say Jeeves, that was jolly good." She panted as her exhaustion took over and she fell on him and purred into his neck.

"Jeeves, what about me, here I've stood frigging myself like the devil while you have had the pleasure of Honoria. It's my turn."

"Very well Madam, climb aboard and sit on my face and tell me that you love me." Honoria sat up while her mother climbed on board and presented her well-worn vagina to Jeeves' waiting tongue. "Ah this is the life. How long do you think young Bertie will stay out?"

"He will return for an early dinner before venturing forth to the theatre."

"And I suppose that he will be seeing some little floozy that he's so potty over, will he?"

"By the time he gets to the theatre he will not be capable of seeing anything, I'll deposit him in her dressing room for the duration of the show, before pouring him into a cab and bring him dribbling home. He will have no recollection of the previous evening's festivities when he wakes in the morning."

"Then why does she do this?"

"I have taken it on myself to give her lessons on how to behave like a lady, so that she will be able to find some old gentleman who will fall in love with her, and offer to take her away from her sordid life to a pleasant existence in his ancestral pile in the country. And who will obligingly expire, leaving her with a great deal of money and angry relatives." (And because she is enraptured by my abilities with my ancestral pile driver.)

"You will make someone a very happy woman some day Jeeves, you are so thoughtful. (And very good as a swordsman.)" Sighed Honoria.

"Indeed miss." (But not you.)

"Jeeves."

"Yes Madam?"

"Do you remember Bertie's Cousin Stephanie Podger, Jeeves?"

"Indeed I do Madam." (I remember her very well.)

"It would seem that she still carries a torch for this Godfrey Henshaw chap that she met while on hols last summer. It took a considerable amount of the old moolah to see him gone, but it seems as if her torch, instead of sputtering and dying from lack of fuel, is still very much alight."

"Indeed Madam."

"It just won't do Jeeves. I have plans for her and Rodney Thorne-Henry. What am I to do, she's potty over this Godfrey person and has completely cut off Rodney. She won't even talk to him, and every time he comes calling she finds some excuse to absent herself from the house."

"Has she seen this Godfrey person of late?"

"No. Once we had loaded his pockets with the readies, he toddled off as a private secretary to his uncle on a grand tour of the Amazon. We had high hopes when word filtered back that said uncle had been devoured by the savages, that he would have suffered a similar fate. As luck would have it he has re-emerged from the jungle and is back on our shores and writing soppy letters to Stephanie. What are we to do?"

"I suppose that Sir Roger has laid down the law and has shackled her firmly to the ancestral seat?"

"Yes indeed. He has posted the grounds staff at all corners of the park with explicit orders to drag her back if she should attempt to escape. He has instructed Roger the Two to follow her around like a lap dog, and not let her out of his sight."

"That I fear madam will not succeed. A young lady, similarly confined, will find a way to evade capture."

"What would you do Jeeves?"

"Distract her." (I would be only too willing to be that distraction.)

"Distract her?"

"Indeed madam, find an outlet for the energies that she is using for her escape bid, and channel them into something else."

"I'm afraid that this will never do, she has no interests other than pining over this Godfrey person. I have arranged for you and Bertie to go down and stay at Blandings Hall, maybe Bertie can keep her amused, he's vapid enough."

At Blandings Hall, plotters were plotting. Roger the Two had just wiped his plate clean with a thick slab of bread, and pushed his chair back from the table. "Are you sure that you've had enough?" Beltrane, the Podger's Housekeeper said. She had never ceased to be amazed at the quantity of fodder Roger, the elder Podger child, could shovel into his mouth at a sitting. Six hours without sustenance had imbued him with the appetite of three.

The younger Roger Podger was a corpulent fellow whose circumference was rapidly approaching in inches double his height. He was shortly to attain his twenty first birthday, preparations for which were taking up much of Beltrane's time. Along with Blackford the Butler, she was marshalling the troops of servants, polishing the ballroom and making sure that the floor was well prepared for the dancing that would take place following the banquet. Cook had engaged additional staff for the kitchen and Blackford was preparing the waiters and waitresses in their duties. Gallons of ales and wines had arrived and were stored in the cellars along with cases of whisky and brandy.

The invitations had been sent and acceptances received, the number of which equalled the invitations, after all a celebration of this moment was something not to be missed.

The last thing that was needed was having to continually watch Stephanie in case she should make a dash for freedom and her young man.

"Is there more?" Roger looked hungrily at her. "Oh you are being sarcastic again. Beltrane, I just simply cannot satisfy my appetite."

"You do remember that you are supposed to be keeping a weather eye on your sister, don't you?"

"Where can she get to, there are twenty people scattered thither and yon, watching her with a hawklike gaze."

"If anyone can find a way it will be she. Now, to the watchtower with you."

He rose heavily to his feet and shambled off to find his sister, who even now was engaged in an earnest conversation with Timothy (Timbo), the younger Podger.

Roger stopped at the door. "I must go to town this afternoon, I will stay over at the Carrington and come back on the train in the morning."

"If you must." Beltrane had long given up trying to keep the children at home.

Meanwhile at the rear of the house. "I say, Timbo?"

Timbo had just finished applying a generous layer of polish to the gleaming occupant of the engine compartment of his new motor. "Isn't she a beauty? I had her up to sixty last evening, and that was along the drive." His brand new two seater Alvis gleamed greenly in the morning sunlight.

"The gardeners are complaining to Pater about the gravel that you scatter over the lawns as you come round the bend leading up to the house. They have to get down on their hands and knees and pick the stones out before it is safe to mow."

"That gives them something to do."

"Timbo?"

"I don't like the sound of this. You are not going to get me to smuggle another love letter to your gentleman, are you?"

"No, I want you to smuggle me down to London when you go tomorrow morning."

"What? You'll have me sent to the Colonies or worse if the Pater should find out."

"But he won't find out. All I want you to do is to smuggle me in your motor when you drive into London tomorrow a.m. I will catch a train home and walk back from the station. I'll be home almost before I'm missed."

"Almost, how will you explain your absence if you are missed?"

"I've taken up rambling. I'll have been on a twenty mile stroll through the countryside."

"I don't see how I can smuggle you in this car, there's little enough room as it is."

"If you wheel it back into the barn I can sneak into it and scrunch down on the floor. Then you put the cover thing over me and off we go."

In her room Aunt Agatha applied another black stitch to her tapestry.

"What did Lobelia want Jeeves?" I had just sauntered in from a pleasant afternoon at the Drones. Unfortunately I was collared by Bingo Little, who loaded me down with news of his latest love, and was plying all and sundry with a most magnificent Madeira by way of celebration. I wouldn't venture the opinion that I was in my cups, but there was a certain wooliness in my head.

"Your Aunt has arranged an invitation for you to meet her at Blandings Hall on the morrow. It would appear that Sir Roger has a problem that involves your cousin Stephanie and a young chap that she met some time ago, and for whom she still carries a torch."

"Dash it all Jeeves, what am I supposed to do about it. If you remember, Stiffy and I don't seemed to be bosom pals at all. She simply takes it into her brain to treat me like an imbecile." (I knew there was something else that I liked about the girl)

"Indeed Sir?"

"The last time our paths crossed I ended up in deep water with Sir Roger and it wasn't my fault. She contrived with her friend Maud to get that person's little brother Tuppy to creep into his room in the dead of night and puncture his hot water bottle with a darning needle on a long stick that he inserted from the foot of the bed. When the old boy woke feeling a tad soaked, he stormed down to my room, in some way thinking my good self to blame for this outrage, and woke me from my innocent slumbers He then threw me out of my own bed. Then she had young Tuppy do the same to my bed on the mistaken impression that it was I that snored in the night. The despicable Stiffy then had the hide to secrete the offending harpoon under the bed I was asleep in. If you remember we had to bolt for home in the small hours before the rest of the house stirred."

"Indeed Sir." He continued packing the necessaries into my case in preparation for the journey on the following p.m.

"I say Jeeves, Aunt Lobelia didn't mention a name for this person did she?"

"I don't believe she did Sir."

"Oh, you see I bumped into Bingo Little this p.m. and he mentioned that he was, at one time, in love with Stiffy, I was wondering if it was he that she was intent on preventing from getting a toehold with her."

"I don't believe that it was Mr Little that she had in mind." He sauntered and packed.

It sprang into my mind that Maud Basset had blighted my existence for some time now, taking great delight in inserting me into some wretched scheme or other. She had an older brother, Lancelot (Lanky Lance) who, it had been said, would never marry because his love interest revolved around a certain person who was presently starring in a production of 'Swan Lake' as the male lead. Polite society chose to ignore this indiscretion.

At Blandings Hall the alarm was raised at ten when Stephanie had not come down to breakfast. Her room was searched but no sign of her existed. The grounds were scoured but again no sign. "I'm sorry Sir Roger, but there's no trace to be found of Stephanie. The servants have scoured the countryside and a thorough search has been made of the house. She has slipped away unseen. The only person to leave the house this morning has been Timothy and he was on his own."

"I'm sure that she will turn up eventually." Roger had other things on his mind. The dreadful Winifred had collared him as he munched his way through his breakfast of B & E (bacon and eggs) and sausage. "Sir Roger, we really must make an effort to record your family history, I feel that I'm not earning the salary that you are paying me."

"Harrumph. I will see to it as soon as I have taken my morning constitutional around the grounds."

"But sir, that's what you said yesterday, and the day before. You can't keep putting it off like this. I'm sorry, that just slipped out."

"My dear girl, I don't give a fig for the family history and if it weren't for my family, in particular my sister, I'd gladly forget about the whole jolly thing."

"But I feel that I'm not doing anything, and if it wasn't for Timothy showing me around the grounds I don't know what I'd do, and he's shot off to London this morning."

Winifred found herself with much to do a short time later when the search for Stephanie was instigated. When all avenues had been exhausted, and Beltrane's panic had subsided somewhat, Winifred had a thought. "I wonder."

"You wonder what?" Beltrane asked.

"I was just thinking that if I had wanted to slip out unseen, I would have asked Timothy to smuggle me out in his motor car."

"But he was on his own."

"He may not have been. Did he have the cover over the passenger's side of the car?"

"Yes."

"That must be it! She climbed in under the cover and he drove out with her in his car."

"I hope you're right." Beltrane was somewhat mollified.

In her room Aunt Agatha threaded some more black into her needle.

"Thank you so much Timbo. I'll see you at home this evening, and mum's the word." She waved as his car sped off.

Godfrey had said that he'd meet her in the tea rooms next to the Carrington and she was just about to cross the road when she saw Roger the Two decamping from a cab in front of the hotel. He swayed on his feet and looked around him as he willed his feet to carry him to the safety of the interior. His eyes lit on Stephanie as she was about to step from the pavement. "I say, Stephanie, what are you doing here?" He waved his brolly at her.

"Blast it!" She was just about to turn tail and run from him when a cab slowed in the traffic, blocking his view. Seizing the opportunity, she opened the door and jumped in, almost landing in the lap of the passenger. "Sorry." She mumbled to his shirtfront.

"While I must admit to being alarmed by your arrival, I must say that I am not unhappy by it." He spoke with a trans-Atlantic accent.

Stephanie scrambled into the seat beside him. "I don't mean to disturb you but I just had to get away from someone that I saw just now."