What happens when a banking professional like Suvarna Sanyal, who has spent a life time poring over bulky ledgers and checking debit and credit figures, turns his attention to one of the popular stories dished out by P G Wodehouse? Well, he simply whips up a series of illustrations which figure some of the better known characters from the canon in some selected scenes from the story!
Residents of Plumsville would recall that this is the only story in the canon which is narrated by Jeeves.
Savour below the results of his labour of love. Yours truly takes the rap for having taken a few liberties with the original text (in italics, please).
“My sister will be back from India next week with her three little girls. I’ll give up this flat and take a house and have them all to live with me. By Jove, Jeeves, I think that’s rather a scheme, what? Prattle of childish voices, eh? Little feet pattering hither and thither, yes!”
“If you will pardon my saying so, sir,” I suggested, tactfully, “I think you are not quite yourself after your influenza. If I might express the opinion, what you require is a few days by the sea. Brighton is very handy, sir.”
“Well, I’m not sure you’re not right. I am feeling more or less of an onion. You might shove a few things in a suit-case and drive me down in the car to-morrow.”
“Very good, sir.”
While returning from Brighton, we noticed a red-haired young person with a snub nose and an extremely large grin seeking a lift. Her age might have been around twelve.
We stopped and fulfilled her wish.
“I’m going to get into a frightful row,” she began. “Miss Tomlinson will be perfectly furious. I thought I could get back in time so that nobody would notice I’d gone, but I got this nail in my shoe.”
“Oh, I say, this is rather rotten,” he observed. “Isn’t there anything to be done? I say, Jeeves, don’t you think something could be done?”
“I think it would be a legitimate subterfuge were you to inform the young lady’s school-mistress that you are an old friend of the young lady’s father; that you had been passing the school and had seen the young lady at the gate and taken her for a drive. Miss Tomlinson’s chagrin would no doubt in these circumstances be sensibly diminished if not altogether dispersed.”
The young one was delighted at this generous offer.
I turned in at the gates of a house of imposing dimensions, bringing the car to a halt at the front door.
I took the initiative of meeting Miss Tomlinson who turned out to be a handsome but strong-minded person, reminding me of Aunt Agatha. ‘She had the same penetrating gaze and that indefinable air of being reluctant to stand any nonsense.’
“He did not inform you, then, that he was the Mr. Wooster?”
“The Mr. Wooster?”
“Bertram Wooster, madam.”
“Oh, Bertram Wooster!” she said.
“He is an extremely retiring gentleman, madam, and would be the last to suggest it himself, but, knowing him as I do, I am sure that he would take it as a graceful compliment if you were to ask him to address the young ladies. He is an excellent extempore speaker.”
“A very good idea!” said Miss Tomlinson, decidedly.
“At the school where I was employed, sir, the young ladies had a regular game which they used to play when a male visitor arrived. They would stare fixedly at him and giggle, and there was a small prize for the one who made him blush first.”
“I’d no idea small girls were such demons.”
“More deadly than the male, sir.”
The guv’nor passed a handkerchief over his brow.
Peggy came back to look me up.
Guv’nor returned to persuade me to leave the school premises immediately. Meanwhile, I had already foreseen the car to have suddenly developed a technical snag of some kind.
Miss Tomlinson caught up with guv’nor.
The large schoolroom was situated on the ground floor, with commodious French windows, which, as the weather was clement, remained open throughout the proceedings. By stationing myself behind a pillar on the porch or veranda which adjoined the room, I was enabled to see and hear all. It was an experience which I should be sorry to have missed. The guv’nor indubitably excelled himself.
Mr. Wooster is a young gentleman with practically every desirable quality except one. I do not mean brains, for in an employer brains are not desirable. The quality to which I allude is hard to define, but perhaps I might call it the gift of dealing with the Unusual Situation.
“Well, you know——” said the guv’nor.
Then it seemed to strike him that this opening lacked the proper formal dignity.
“Ladies——”
A silvery peal of laughter from the front row stopped him again.
“Girls!” said Miss Tomlinson. She spoke in a low, soft voice, but the effect was immediate. Perfect stillness instantly descended upon all present. I am bound to say that, brief as my acquaintance with Miss Tomlinson had been, I could recall few women I had admired more. She had grip.
I fancy that Miss Tomlinson had gauged the guv’nor’s oratorical capabilities pretty correctly by this time, and had come to the conclusion that nothing much in the way of a stirring address was to be expected from him.
“Perhaps,” she said, “as it is getting late, and he has not very much time to spare, Mr. Wooster will just give you some little word of advice which may be helpful to you in after-life, and then we will sing the school song and disperse to our evening lessons.”
She looked at the guv’nor. The guv’nor passed a finger round the inside of his collar.
“Advice? After-life? What? Well, I don’t know——”
“Just some brief word of counsel, Mr. Wooster,” said Miss Tomlinson, firmly.
“Oh, well—— Well, yes—— Well——” It was painful to see the guv’nor’s brain endeavouring to work.
“Oh, ah, yes,” said the guv’nor. “Story? Story?” He appeared completely distraught, poor young gentleman. “I wonder if you’ve heard the one about the stock-broker and the chorus-girl?”
“We will now sing the school song,” said Miss Tomlinson, rising like an iceberg.
In a very few moments the guv’nor came tottering up. The guv’nor’s is not one of those inscrutable faces which it is impossible to read.
I had climbed into my seat and was about to start the engine, when voices made themselves heard; and at the first sound of them the guv’nor sprang with almost incredible nimbleness …..when I glanced round he was on the floor covering himself with a rug. The last I saw of him was a pleading eye.
When Miss Tomlinson asked about the whereabouts of guv’nor, I had no other option but to express my helplessness in the matter.
“Get a move on! Start her up! Get going and keep going!”
I trod on the self-starter.
“It would perhaps be safest to drive carefully until we are out of the school-grounds, sir,” I said. “I might run over one of the young ladies, sir.”
“Well, what’s the objection to that?” demanded the guv’nor, with extraordinary bitterness.
“Or even Miss Tomlinson, sir.”
“Don’t!” said the guv’nor, wistfully. “You make my mouth water!”
“Have you succeeded in finding a suitable house yet, sir?”
“House? What do you mean, house?”
“I understood, sir, that it was your intention to give up the flat and take a house of sufficient size to enable you to have your sister, Mrs. Scholfield, and her three young ladies to live with you.”
The guv’nor shuddered strongly.
“You do get the damnedest silliest ideas sometimes, Jeeves,” he said.
So, how does one manage bosses and ensure they never go round the bend when they get too enthusiastic about an idea of theirs? Jeeves would heartily recommend ‘tact’ and ‘resource’!
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https://ashokbhatia.wordpress.com/2019/06/08/lord-emsworth-and-the-girl-friend-a-visual-version)
