Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves

'Eh?'

'If you recall, sir, owing to the temporary indisposition of the vicar, Mr. Pinker will be in sole charge of the school treat tomorrow, and he views the prospect with not unnatural qualms. There is a somewhat lawless element among the school children of Totleigh-in-the-Wold, and he fears the worst.'

'Well, tell Stiffy to take a couple of minutes off from the pep talk and listen to your communique.'

'Very good, sir.'

He was absent quite a time - so long, in fact, that I was dressed when he returned.

'I saw Miss Byng, sir.'

'And - ?'

'She is still insistent that you restore the statuette to Mr. Plank.'

'She's cuckoo. I can't get into the collection room.'

'No, sir, but Miss Byng can. She informs me that not long ago Sir Watkyn chanced to drop his key, and she picked it up and omitted to apprise him. Sir Watkyn had another key made, but the original remains in Miss Byng's possession.'

I clutched the brow.

'You mean she can get into the room any time she feels like it?'

'Precisely, sir. Indeed, she has just done so.'

And so saying he fished the eyesore from an inner pocket and handed it to me.

'Miss Byng suggests that you take the object to Mr. Plank after luncheon. In her droll way she said the meal - I quote her words -would put the necessary stuffing into you and nerve you for the . . . It is somewhat early, sir, but shall I get you a little brandy?'

'Not a little, Jeeves,' I said. 'Fetch the cask.'

I don't know how Emerald Stoker was with brush and palette, never having seen any of her output, but she unquestionably had what it takes where cooking was concerned, and any householder would have been glad to sign her up for the duration. The lunch she provided was excellent, everything most toothsome.

But with this ghastly commission of Stiffy's on the agenda paper, I had little appetite for her offerings. The brow was furrowed, the manner distrait, the stomach full of butterflies.

'Jeeves,' I said as he accompanied me to my car at the conclusion of the meal, speaking rather peevishly, perhaps, for I was not my usual sunny self, 'doesn't it strike you as odd that, with infant mortality so rife, a girl like Stiffy should have been permitted to survive into the early twenties? Some mismanagement there. What's the tree I read about somewhere that does you in if you sit under it?'

'The Upas tree, sir.'

'She's a female Upas tree. It's not safe to come near her. Disaster on every side is what she strews. And another thing. It's all very well for her to say . . . glibly?'

'Or airily, sir. The words are synonymous.'

'It's all very well for her to say glibly or airily "Take this blasted eyesore to Plank," but how do I find him? I can't go rapping on every door in Hockley-cum-Meston, saying "Excuse me, are you Plank?" It'd be like looking for a needle in a haystack.'

'A very colourful image, sir. I appreciate your difficulty. I would suggest tnat you proceed to the local post office and institute inquiries there. Post office officials invariably have information at their disposal as to the whereabouts of dwellers in the vicinity.'

He had not erred. Braking the car in the Hockley-cum-Meston High Street, I found that the post office was one of those shops you get in villages, where in addition to enjoying the postal facilities you can purchase cigarettes, pipe tobacco, wool, lollipops, string, socks, boots, overalls, picture postcards and bottles containing yellow non-alcoholic drinks, probably fizzy. In answer to my query the old lady behind the counter told me I would find Plank up at the big house with the red shutters about half a mile further back along the road. She seemed a bit disappointed that information was all I was after and that I had no intention of buying a pair of socks or a ball of string, but she bore up philosophically, and I toddled back to the car.

I remembered the house she had spoken of, having passed it on my way. Imposing mansion with a lot of land. This Plank, I took it, would be some sort of labourer on the estate. I pictured him as a sturdy, gnarled old fellow whose sailor son had brought home the eyesore from one of his voyages, and neither of them had had the foggiest that it was valuable. Til put it on the mantelpiece, Dad,' no doubt the son had said. 'It'll look well up there,' to which the old gaffer had replied 'Aye, lad, gormed if 'twon't look gradely on the mantelpiece.' Or words to that effect. I can't do the dialect, of course. So they had shoved it on the mantelpiece, and then along had come Sir Watkyn Bassett with his smooth city ways and made suckers out of parent and offspring. Happening all the time, that sort of thing.

I reached the house and was about to knock on the door, when there came bustling up an elderly gentleman with a square face, much tanned as if he had been sitting out in the sun quite a lot without his parasol.

'Oh, there you are,' he said. 'Hope I haven't kept you waiting. We were having football practice, and I lost track of the time. Come in, my dear fellow, come in.'

I need scarcely say that this exuberant welcome to one who, whatever his merits, was a total stranger warmed my heart quite a good deal.

It was with the feeling that his attitude did credit to Gloucestershire hospitality that I followed him through a hall liberally besprinkled with the heads of lions, leopards, gnus and other fauna into a room with french windows opening on the front garden. Here he left me while he went off to fetch drinks, his first question having been Would I care for one for the tonsils, to which I had replied with considerable enthusiasm that I would. When he returned, he found me examining the photographs on the wall. The one on which my eye was resting at the moment was a school football group, and it was not difficult to spot the identity of the juvenile delinquent holding the ball and sitting in the middle.

'You?' I said.

'That's me,1 he replied. 'My last year at school. I skippered the side that season. That's old Scrubby Willoughby sitting next to me. Fast wing threequarter, but never would learn to give the reverse pass.'

'He wouldn't?' I said, shocked. I hadn't the remotest what he was talking about, but he had said enough to show me that this Willoughby must have been a pretty dubious character, and when he went on to tell me that poor old Scrubby had died of cirrhosis of the liver in the Federal Malay States, I wasn't really surprised. I imagine these fellows who won't learn to give the reverse pass generally come to a fairly sticky end.

'Chap on my other side is Smiler Todd, prop forward.'

'Prop forward, eh?'

'And a very good one. Played for Cambridge later on. You fond of Rugger?'

'I don't think I know him.'

'Rugby football.'

'Oh, ah. No, I've never gone in for it.'

'You haven't?'

'No.'

'Good God!'

I could see that I had sunk pretty low in his estimation, but he was a host and managed to fight down the feeling of nausea with which my confession had afflicted him.

'I've always been mad keen on Rugger. Didn't get much of it after leaving school, as they stationed me in West Africa. Tried to teach the natives there the game, but had to give it up. Too many deaths, with the inevitable subsequent blood feuds. Retired now and settled down here. I'm trying to make Hockley-cum-Meston the best football village in these parts, and I will say for the lads that they're coming on nicely. What we need is a good prop forward, and I can't find one. But you don't want to hear all this. You want to know about my Brazilian expedition.'

'Oh, have you been to Brazil?'

I seemed to have said the wrong thing, as one so often does. He stared.

'Didn't you know I'd been to Brazil?'

'Nobody tells me anything.'

'I should have thought they'd have briefed you at the office. Seems silly to send a reporter all the way down here without telling him what they're sending him for.'

I'm pretty astute, and I saw there had been a mix-up somewhere.

'Were you expecting a reporter?'