‘Come on, Ambo,’ she said. ‘Time for the weekly thrashing. I’ll see if I can get at least two games off you today.’
‘Hang on, Georgie. Tell me something. Do you know this man? Have you ever met him?’
Georgiana looked me slowly up and down. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve never seen him before in my life.’
So saying, she turned her back and strode off to the tennis court.
The Bertram who slunk back up the servants’ staircase to his quarters, there to bury his head beneath the pillow, was far from the gay boulevardier of song and story. No. This was a diminished, a deflated Wooster, whom his friends would have struggled to recognise. Where, they would have asked, was the thumping heartbeat of the Drones Amateur Dramatic Society? Where the man who, for a trifling bet, would swing himself across the swimming pool, suspended from the wooden rings above, in full evening dress? Where was the pep-filled fear-nothing who laughed at tyrants and cocked a snook at fate?
The odd thing is that I couldn’t really have told them. Furthermore, I had no idea why I was heaving up and down like a merchantman that’s been holed below the Plimsoll Line. Things could have been an awful lot worse. True, I had failed with Plan A: I had not yet been able to put two sundered hearts back together. But there was plenty in the demeanour of this Amelia to give one hope for Woody; I didn’t believe she was moping simply because the tennis pro had failed to show up. No, there was a lovesickness there for sure. True also, Georgiana Meadowes now thought I was a cad for making eyes at some other chap’s fiancée. Moreover, I had the strong impression that she enjoyed denying knowledge of me. It was not just that she was sticking to the scheme that we’d agreed on; she spoke with a relish that wasn’t in the script. But if she now thought less of me, where was the harm in that? She was another man’s intended and her feelings towards B. Wooster – supposing that she even had any – were of no consequence.
I had lost a battle, not a war. So, steady the Buffs, I thought – or may even have said out loud, as I rose from the truckle bed and changed back into clothing more fitted to my menial duties. Yet even as I donned the spongebag trousering, I suddenly remembered an afternoon at private school when I was about eleven and had been laid low by an attack of measles. The other chaps were off in a charabanc to play cricket against a nearby rival with a slap-up tea thrown in, while I was left perspiring beneath the blankets like the greater spotted toad.
At dusk the matron came in with a letter from home. As well as the usual stuff about the asparagus bed, Grandpa’s gout and the Glossops’ summer ball, it contained the news that Horace, the family hound, had, at the admittedly splendid age of fourteen, handed in his dinner pail and would bark no more in Woosterland. I had confided more in this beast than any living creature thus far in my life, and my trust had been well founded. As Matron closed the sickbay curtain, I wondered whether life could get much gloomier.
Why on earth this childish memory should have chosen that moment to ambush me, I had not the faintest idea. So straightening the dull blue tie, I checked that the hair was in place, the shoes shining and set off to find Lord Etringham.
My first port of call was the housekeeper’s sitting room, though for once Mrs Tilman was unable to help. She had not heard whether the sporting duo was back from Dorchester, but perhaps a look in the garages beyond the stable block, this excellent woman pointed out, would establish whether the two-seater was still absent.
The advantage of this plan was that it kept me in a part of the estate where I was unlikely to come across any of the increasingly large number of people I did not wish to clap eyes on me. In addition to Hackwoods, Puxleys, Venableses and other rough customers, this list, to my chagrin, now contained Amelia and Georgiana.
If there was something furtive in my manner as I skirted past the thoroughbreds in their stabling, perhaps it can be forgiven in the circs. The Wooster sports model was neatly parked alongside what I took to be Sir Henry’s somewhat battered four-door chariot, so I made another longish loop on my way back to the first-floor corner room.
I had never really considered before how little of a house like Melbury Hall is used by the family and its guests. Less than a third, I would have guessed, as I panted over a cobbled yard, through a battered side door, up a linoleum-covered stair, down a dim corridor, past maids’ rooms and half-shut store cupboards from which mysterious mops and brushes poked their heads. I had almost despaired of reaching civilisation, when I spotted a passage that led to a distant baize-upholstered door.
This opening gave on to the main house and the huge right-angled oak landing that hung above the main hall. I looked from side to side, like a dowager afraid to cross at Piccadilly Circus. I took a chance. I scooted, skidded, halted, knocked.