Ukridge Stories, P. G. Wodehouse [books suggested by bill gates txt] 📗

She’s up for the day by excursion from the North, and it is absolutely vital that she be lushed up and seen off at Euston at six-forty-five. I can’t look after her myself, as unfortunately I’m laid up with a sprained ankle. Otherwise I wouldn’t trouble you.

“This is a life and death matter, old man, and I’m relying on you. I can’t possibly tell you how important it is that this old bird should be suitably entertained. The gravest issues hang on it. So shove on your hat and go to it, laddie, and blessings will reward you. Tell you all the details when we meet.

“Yours ever,

“S. F. Ukridge.

“P.S.⁠—I will defray all expenses later.”

Those last words did wring a faint, melancholy smile from me, but apart from them this hideous document seemed to me to be entirely free from comic relief. I looked at my watch and found that it was barely two-thirty. This female, therefore, was on my hands for a solid four hours and a quarter. I breathed maledictions⁠—futile, of course, for it was a peculiar characteristic of the demon Ukridge on these occasions that, unless one were strong-minded enough to disregard his frenzied pleadings altogether (a thing which was nearly always beyond me), he gave one no chance of escape. He sprang his foul schemes on one at the very last moment, leaving no opportunity for a graceful refusal.

I proceeded slowly up the stairs to my sitting room. It would have been a distinct advantage, I felt, if I had known who on earth this Flossie was of whom he wrote with such airy familiarity. The name, though Ukridge plainly expected it to touch a chord in me, left me entirely unresponsive. As far as I was aware, there was no Flossie of any description in my life. I thought back through the years. Long-forgotten Janes and Kates and Muriels and Elizabeths rose from the murky depths of my memory as I stirred it, but no Flossie. It occurred to me as I opened the door that, if Ukridge was expecting pleasant reminiscences of Flossie to form a tender bond between me and her mother, he was building on sandy soil.

The first impression I got on entering the room was that Mrs. Bowles possessed the true reporter’s gift for picking out the detail that really mattered. One could have said many things about Flossie’s mother, as, for instance, that she was stout, cheerful, and far more tightly laced than a doctor would have considered judicious; but what stood out above all the others was the fact that she was wearing a pink hat. It was the largest, gayest, most exuberantly ornate specimen of headwear that I had ever seen, and the prospect of spending four hours and a quarter in its society added the last touch to my already poignant gloom. The only gleam of sunshine that lightened my darkness was the reflection that, if we went to a picture-palace, she would have to remove it.

“Er⁠—how do you do?” I said, pausing in the doorway.

“ ’Ow do you do?” said a voice from under the hat. “Say ‘ ’Ow-do-you-do?’ to the gentleman, Cecil.”

I perceived a small, shiny boy by the window. Ukridge, realising with the true artist’s instinct that the secret of all successful prose is the knowledge of what to omit, had not mentioned him in his letter; and, as he turned reluctantly to go through the necessary civilities, it seemed to me that the burden was more than I could bear. He was a rat-faced, sinister-looking boy, and he gazed at me with a frigid distaste which reminded me of the barman at the Prince of Wales public house in Ratcliff Highway.

“I brought Cecil along,” said Flossie’s (and presumably Cecil’s) mother, after the stripling, having growled a cautious greeting, obviously with the mental reservation that it committed him to nothing, had returned to the window, “because I thought it would be nice for ’im to say he had seen London.”

“Quite, quite,” I replied, while Cecil, at the window, gazed darkly out at London as if he did not think much of it.

“Mr. Ukridge said you would trot us round.”

“Delighted, delighted,” I quavered, looking at the hat and looking swiftly away again. “I think we had better go to a picture-palace, don’t you?”

“Naw!” said Cecil. And there was that in his manner which suggested that when he said “Naw!” it was final.

“Cecil wants to see the sights,” explained his mother. “We can see all the pictures back at home. ’E’s been lookin’ forward to seein’ the sights of London. It’ll be an education for ’im, like, to see all the sights.”

“Westminster Abbey?” I suggested. After all, what could be better for the lad’s growing mind than to inspect the memorials of the great past and, if disposed, pick out a suitable site for his own burial at some later date? Also, I had a fleeting notion, which a moment’s reflection exploded before it could bring me much comfort, that women removed their hats in Westminster Abbey.

“Naw!” said Cecil.

“ ’E wants to see the murders,” explained Flossie’s mother.

She spoke as if it were the most reasonable of boyish desires, but it sounded to me impracticable. Homicides do not publish formal programmes of their intended activities. I had no notion what murders were scheduled for today.

“ ’E always reads up all the murders in the Sunday paper,” went on the parent, throwing light on the matter.

“Oh, I understand,” I said. “Then Madame Tussaud’s is the spot he wants. They’ve got all the murderers.”

“Naw!” said Cecil.

“It’s the places ’e wants to see,” said Flossie’s mother, amiably tolerant of my density. “The places where all them murders was committed. ’E’s clipped out the addresses and ’e wants to be able to tell ’is friends when he gets back that ’e’s seen ’em.”

A profound relief surged over me.

“Why, we can do the whole thing in a cab,” I cried. “We can stay in a cab from start to finish. No need