Chapter Text
The B.W. Wooster soul could simply not be rushed to settle. Whether Calliope were feline, fish, or elephant I found her the same lovely company, but the whole status quo, as it were, was starting to get a bit of fuzz over it, from allies and ancient A.s alike.
Naturally I was aware that Cal and I were unusual. It doesn’t take a particularly bright bulb to notice that starting somewhere around fourteen the average schoolboy might settle, and that a chap decided at twenty might be called a late bloomer but not inspire any unusual comments. Here I was at twenty-nine, with Calliope as eager to flit from shape to shape as ever. There was nothing for it but to carry on, and except for certain aunts most of my acquaintances were polite enough not to mention it.
My main trouble—before recent events, see below—had been finding some decent help. Call it the superstitions of the lower classes, but the average valet was distinctly put off by Calliope, and by extension Bertram Wooster. I had one gent call me unnatural right to my face, which didn’t exactly fit the attitude one looks for in a quality gentleman’s gentleman. That was the stuff of the ancient past now, of course. I had Jeeves, who aside from being the absolute paragon of valets, was chock full of grey matter and didn’t hold stock with superstition unless it was in the service of a good wheeze. No, Jeeves brought a certain settlement to my unsettled self, and Calliope and I had spent the two years since he joined our merry band “quite content with our situation.”
But as they say in a good spine-tingler, peaceful times were not to last.
The first bell of real concern tolled one night at the flat, where I’d dragged Bingo Little after a jolly good dinner at the Drones. Bingo was in the flush of new love as he was every week, but I was in good spirits that night and offered some witty piano accompaniment to his poetic ejaculations about Daphne or Eulalia or whoever she was this time. It was a riot and a half, and I even saw Jeeves crack one of his secret half smiles as he wove silently about, hanging up discarded jackets and distributing brandy and sodas. Bingo’s Chez spent most of the night perched contentedly on the mantlepiece grooming his feathers, but as was her wont Calliope wandered here and there. She flicked her ocelot’s tail, playfully stalking Jeeves as he tidied up our glasses, then flickered into a fluffy squirrel to get a view from above as he changed a lightbulb that had suddenly burnt out. That little episode even caught Bingo’s attention, though we quickly returned to the romantic revue hits of the day and I didn’t think a thing of it.
It was all tops until Bingo took an odd grimace upon the dial as I saw him to the door.
“All’s well, Bingo?” I asked, ever the host even with the guest one heel past the threshold.
“Topping, as always. Or, hm, rather.” Bingo set a hand on my arm, in an older brotherly way, which was a strange turn in our usual air. “Well, it’s blasted awkward, Bertie, but you might want to have a bit of a word with Calliope.”
“Calliope? Steady on.” It’s not really the done thing to discuss the keeping of another chap’s daemon. It’s creeping up to the chills of the frozen limit, in fact, but Bingo looked properly chagrined about the whole thing so the generous Wooster ticker gave him the benefit of the doubt.
“Quite right. It’s not that I give a fig, Berts, really, but she’s rather giving away the game, following good old J. around.”
I hardly saw why my dearest Cal shouldn’t use our humble pile as she saw fit, whether that wandering happened to follow after Jeeves’ silent glide or not. Calliope is rather the primary inhabitance—if that’s the word I’m after—of the Wooster spirit, and that comes with no small dollop of fluttering about in form and geography.
“I’m sure it’s all done in the unconscious, as it were,” Bingo was saying when I caught up after the intermission for the prev. thought. “Lord knows how often Chezzie has fluttered off after some goddess without my so much as say so, but you wouldn’t want to give the right idea to the wrong sort, even if your Jeeves is a good sport. She’s practically on his heels, you know.”
“Forgive the empty lemon, B. but I’m sure I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Right-o, and all that, say no more.” Bingo said, though he did, in fact, say more. “I just would hate to see you come to any sort of trouble, old man. I know how it is for you chaps, and it’s a rough go, but, well, there you have it.”
“Quite. Well, Breezy C. and I will be sure to roll that advice around the noggin. Don’t trouble yourself over it another second.”
“Good. Right. ‘Night then, Bertie.” Bingo seemed quite eased of his burdens, given that his point was still entirely off the edge of Bertram’s map. Still, I saw no reason to beleaguer a chum’s good intentions with demands for further eluc. etc. I sent him off with a toodle pip and shut the door. It was all quiet in the flat, with only the faucet running in the kitchen as Jeeves did the washing up.
“Bingo’s a decent bird, eh?” I ruminated as Calliope alighted on my shoulder. She was looking like a cheerful little robin, but for the fact that her feathers were a bit on the puffed side. “Come now, darling. You aren’t pipped at Bingo for looking out for us, are you?”
If robins could huff this one just well might have. “I bally well am. He thinks he can tell us how to manage ourselves because we aren’t settled.”
“What ho, that’s jolly unfair. He didn’t even bring it up.” I’d gotten the gimlet eye from plenty of chaps over Calliope, but Bingo had never pulled my leg about it.
“He called you an invert, Bee! Just because he thinks he’s being nice doesn’t mean he didn’t, and all because I’d rather see what Jeeves is up to than hear about the hundredth blasted waitress he’s fallen in love with.”
“Ah. Well.” That did rather paint a clearer picture of the conversation, one that the Wooster mind didn’t care for anymore than the Wooster spirit. Not that the label was strictly inaccurate, mind you, but it wasn’t the thing at all to have it discussed in terms of noticeable habits, particularly when one employed a singular paragon among observant valets. “Is there something to it, C.?” I lowered the voicebox to a private murmur. “Are we developing a bit of a tender pash?”
“It’s not anyone’s business if we are.” A flutter and a thump later dear Cal the hound dog took up a quality sulk on the rug under the piano. I knelt to give her a commiserating scratch behind the ears.
“I know how you feel, but there’s nothing for it, old thing. It wouldn’t be at all the preux to put our Jeeves into that kind of trouble.”
Calliope gave a rather spiffing full-bellied sigh that only suited a proper hound and looked at me with a pair of peepers that would shatter the stoniest ticker. “I just like him.”
It was a rummy state of affairs, to be carrying a torch for one’s valet, but there you have it. One didn’t go around dropping pins for a fellow whose job it was to tidy them up. I sighed, but gave it up for now, and feeling a bit peckish, went for the fruit bowl that Jeeves kept stocked on the buffet.
It was the stuff of some surprise to reach for an apple from the bowl and very nearly meet the scales of a coiled black snake. I pulled my hand away with a yelp as one would from a hot stove, though not for the reason most coves might.
“Good lord, Ash.” I tucked the Wooster digits safely into a trouser pocket. “I beg your pardon.”
Jeeves’ daemon was nothing but elegance slithering out of the bowl and down the table leg to the floor. She rather shimmered about it, not unlike her taller half.
“Not at all, sir. I was underfoot.”
Ash usually kept a comfortable post looped around Jeeves’ sleeve, and only a recent dispute over dishwashing procedure had led her to avail herself more freely of the apartment in the evening.
“Jeeves is still insisting on his new vinegar rinse for the glassware, I take it?” It was a bit awks to chat up a daemon without their mortal version in the room, but Ash and I (and our respective counterparts) were long used to such things in the close quarters of a city flat. Besides, I found the old girl to be something of a riot. My last valet had the most severe sort of raptor, and I had not at all enjoyed our rare exchanges.
Ash’s tongue flickered out in distaste at the mention of the vinegar. “Regrettably, sir. If it isn’t an inconvenience, I may wriggle my way into the cedar armoire until the splashing of noxious scents is over with.”
“Wriggle away, madam.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Ash made her appropriately serpentine tracks into the bedroom, and I watched her go with some rather soppy thoughts about dark, brilliantined hair.
“That Ash is a regular sheba, don’t you think, Cal?” I mused once Ash was safely armoired. “All those glossy scales.”
I dipped below the piano again to find my hound dog had been replaced by a rather twitchy squirrel doing her best to hide in the fluff of her own tail.
“Now what’s got you so fluttery?”
“Bertram, you light-headed poof, she was there when you talked to Bingo at the door. She probably heard everything, and what came after!”
“Ah.” These were the troubles when contemplating matters of the heart required a certain amount of back and forth that could fall on any set of observant ears. “Well, that would put the cat amongst the pigeons.”
“She didn’t say anything, but then she wouldn’t, would she? Oh Bertie, I wish I were dead.”
“Oh pish, none of that now,” I declared, summoning some of the steel that once braced the Woosters at Agincourt. “Stiff upper lip and all that. She might not have heard and making such a fuss will only yank the bushel barrel off the lamp.”
I gathered her up, and it was a relatively sanguine picture that Jeeves found when he emerged from the kitchen.
“Ah, Jeeves, there you are,” I declared, not at all yearning. Jeeves had removed his jacket to deal with the sink, and given the late hour hadn’t replaced it. He made a fine picture in his fitted shirtsleeves. Calliope chose that moment to become a mouse and hide herself in my pocket with a morose squeak.
“Indeed sir. I trust you enjoyed your evening with Mr. Little.” It was always a jolly pleasant reminder given how tall I was, that Jeeves was just a little bit taller.
“Yes, yes. I am knackered, though. I’ll probably head to bed soon.”
“Very good sir. I’ll lay out the carmine pyjamas, unless you prefer otherwise?”
“That’ll do fine, Jeeves, thank you.”
There are some corking novels out there that make a big to do over a chap undressing in front of his valet, but I would have to sadly report that it is a rote affair for those imbued with the feudal spirit. As I worked my bowtie loose in the old boudoir, I nonetheless felt the sudden urge to test certain troubled waters.
“Say, Jeeves.”
“Sir?” Jeeves turned from laying out my sleepwear in a neat stack.
“You don’t put any stock in this nonsense about being unsettled, do you?” I peeled off my shoes, kept always to an exquisite shine by one R. Jeeves.
“In what regard, sir?” Jeeves took the loose tie and shoes and set them in some unknown dimension where I wouldn’t see them again until they were next needed.
“Well, that it means I’m spiritually underdeveloped, as it were. That I’m in need of moulding.” I kept my focus on my shirt studs, which Jeeves patiently received one at a time.
It was with a distinct air of soup that Jeeves replied. “None at all, sir. Given my own circumstances it would be hypocritical, to say the least.”
I paused fiddling with my cufflinks. “How do you mean?”
“There are certain presumptions made about serpentine daemons, sir.” With an entirely professional touch, Jeeves turned my wrist and removed the troublesome jewelry, leaving my sleeves loose. “Lesser gentlemen than yourself have considered it a barrier to my employment.”
“What, that you can’t be trusted because Ash is a snake?”
“Precisely.”
It boggled that anyone wouldn’t want to hire Jeeves, the finest valet in Britain. I found myself irritated on the old man’s behalf. “That’s a lot of rot, Jeeves.”
“As you say. One can never be certain about such things, but I have been led to believe that Ash’s form may have contributed to Mrs. Gregson’s marked dislike of me.”
“Ah. I, the hapless sultan, and you the plotting vizier, I imagine.” I wish I could have denied such denigrations of my Aunt Agatha’s character, but it entirely fit the bill.
Jeeves received my suspenders with a nod. “One can only speculate, sir.”
“Let her speculate and rot in it, Jeeves. Your influence has only been for the betterment of this Wooster.”
Jeeves met my eyes briefly, and I was reminded that his were so very blue. “I am deeply gratified to hear it. Will that be all, sir?”
“Yes, thank you.” I said, not at all breathless. “Goodnight, Jeeves.”
“Goodnight, sir.”
With his usual grace, Jeeves retrieved Ash from the armoire and exited with my laundry, and Calliope and I were left to cuddle up alone for a visit with Morpheus. Cal was a rather plush mink, and it did go a ways to soothe the ragged heart.
“Bertie.”
“Yes, my dear?”
“What if Ash did hear, and does tell Jeeves, and it all goes alright anyway?”
“I don’t see how it could.”
“Well, maybe he likes us, too.”
I sighed. “Hope flies with swallow’s wings, as they say.”
Calliope gave a rather glum little huff. “I guess.”
We spoke no more, and we didn’t have to. Tomorrow would creep forth its petty pace, and we’d see how it all shook out.