Jeeves and the Kingmaker
In these long memoirs of mine, one will inevitably encounter a change of scenery. Indeed, the backdrop to my life has had a tendency to change with such frequency that Berkely Square, Market Snodsbury, Chuffnell Regis, Long Island, New York City, Washington DC, Peking, Moscow and what they now call “Zhukov-grad” (I still think ‘Berlin’ was a tad snappier) don’t even cover half the places I’ve been! But as I came closer to the tail-end of my career, said backdrop-changes diminished in number significantly. The Downing Street workload was enough to exhaust my day’s energy to the point that when it was done there was little I could do save recline in my armchair and snack on whatever Jeeves could rustle up for me. On more than one occasion I wondered if I may have been somewhat over my head on deciding to take the Regency, Prime Ministership and Commandership-in-chief of the old UK of GB for myself, if it meant my life would be solely dominated by dull and dreary paperwork for the foreseeable.
Today had been one of those days dominated by the straining of my eyes and the stroke of my pen. I lay back into the soft plush of the chair and reflected on that fateful choice of mine to burden myself with all this, and in turn was taken back down the long road that had carried me too that choice. I relaxed my eyelids and was for a moment transported back to Berkeley Square, all those years ago, before the Invasion, before the War…
I was interrupted in my rumination by the biffing in of Jeeves, bearing a heavy wad of papers.
“No more, Jeeves!” I declared, aghast, “No more!”
“Sir?” He inspected me with that look of his, somewhat like the eye of a schoolmaster who’s caught a student defacing his exercise book with words to the effect that his face resembles a squashed apricot. I could tell he was in one of those moods of his.
“Jeeves, I am sorry, but I cannot stand this gruelling lifestyle! I clear one stack of papers, having to study each and every letter on the page for a blemish in its print, sign it off with some essay or other, and then what do I find? You hovering along bearing another! I repeat, Jeeves, no more!”
“If you would pardon me for reminding you, sir, such paperwork is the bedrock of national service on which Britain depends.”
“That one of yours, Jeeves?”
“No, sir, one of yours. You gave it in your address to the National Periodical Authority in 1956.”
“Oh yes, so I did. But that does not change the fact Jeeves,” I surged from my seat to snatch the wad of files to his hand, “that today I draw the line.”
“You’re resigning your post, sir?” Jeeves asked, with sufficient monotony that it was clear he knew my answer.
“Certainly not!” I answered, “However, your master and Regent shall be...taking a holiday for a while. Haven’t had one in years. Time for a change of scene.”
Jeeves looked distinctly crumpled at his failure to persuade me, “I understand, sir. Will I be deputising for you in this interim?”
“Possibly Jeeves, possibly,” I pondered the notion, “You can’t come with me, I suppose? Sort of, deputise for me there?”
“It very much depends where you want to go, sir.”
I stepped over to that vast map of the world which dominates one wall of my office. It was dotted with little red markers to show where all the little armies and navies and so on were, which made it a dashed nuisance to find ideal holiday destinations since they had a tendency to be blotted out.
“Europe’s a no-go of course.”
“Indeed, sir.”
“No more trips to Paris for me!”
“Indeed, sir.”
“Or Cannes, for that matter.”
“Indeed, sir.”
“I went to America quite recently. On business, you know.”
“Indeed, sir.”
“Met President Goldwater.”
“Indeed, sir.”
“Strange chap.”
“Indeed, sir.”
Jeeves' interruptions were disturbing my train of thought, but I didn’t mention it for fear that I would hurt his feelings further.
“We could always go to Peking again.”
“Sir?”
“Meet my old chum Chiang Kai-Shek!” I said, “Haven’t seen him in a long old while. We could see their Forbidden City, Jeeves.”
Jeeves hesitated for a moment.
“If you’d pardon me saying, sir, China is currently engulfed in a situation of civil strife to the intensity at which foreign travel would be an election of poor circumspection.”
“Oh. Rather.”
“If I may suggest, sir, an ideal choice of holiday destination may be within the United Kingdom itself. It would indicate the perpetuity of the emotional bond between yourself and this country.”
“What, show how much I’m a sucker for this sceptred isle of ours?”
“Precisely sir.”
I studied the map again.
“No, I don’t think so, Jeeves. I mean, I’ve already liberated this country from tyrannical foreign oppression and governed it for the next 20-odd years. I think my undying love for it is pretty bally obvious.”
“If you say so, sir.”
“I do say so.” I had a thought, like a little light-bulb had gone off over my head, “I say, Jeeves!”
“Sir?”
“How about we go to South Africa? See how Claude and Eustace are doing over there?”
Long-term readers may remember that a good few decades back, my erstwhile cousins Claude and Eustace had been unceremoniously deported to the furthermost fringes of the Empire by our Aunt Agatha, that sworn enemy of all things Wooster. I had sort of forgotten about them ever since that episode, until a couple weeks back when a letter or missive had arrived at the door of Downing Street announcing that they had seized power in an umpteenth of the coup d’etats that seem to rock Cape Town almost weekly. They’d asked me over to ‘legitimise their regime’, and while I had unceremoniously dismissed the letter back then, it now seemed quite an attractive invitation.
“I would advise against it sir, without consultation with President Goldwater and General-Secretary Salazar.”
“Oh, old Slippy won’t mind.”
“And the
President, sir?” Jeeves asked, his intonation betraying that he felt it very much appropriate that I discard this train of thought and get back to the paperwork he was still bearing, dutifully. He had a point though. Goldwater and I had hardly hit it off during our little get-together in Washington. That being said, it didn’t help that Tuppy Glossop had decided to leak the minutes of the entire Defence Conference to a journalist because he took offence at having his name mispronounced (some cove by the name of Kissenger had insisted on pronouncing it "glow-sup"). Sometimes you just begged him to put the ‘secret’ into ‘Foreign Secretary’.
But no matter what the President thought, I reasoned. On occasion, one must be prepared act unilaterally.
“The President will just have to put up with it. Ready the old jetliner, Jeeves, we are going to South Africa.”
Jeeves hesitated for a moment, but his feudal instinct remained steadfast as ever, “Very good, sir.”
And so began one of the greatest ordeals of the Clan Wooster...
