Jeeves and the Aerial Ace - Chapter 1
Jan. 10th, 2011 12:56 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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indeedsir_backupI really hate driving in wintry weather, especially when I'm trying to get somewhere in a hurry. Anyway, here's the first chapter proper of the thingummy! An old acquaintance of Jeeves' draws attention to an inconsistency in my last story that needed fixing. Or I could say it was terribly clever foreshadowing...
Title: Jeeves and the Aerial Ace
Chapter: 1/?
Pairing: Bertie/Jeeves
Rating for Chapter: G
Summary: Bertie meets Amelia Earhart after Jeeves wins a darts competition in Switzerland. What should be a delightful little excursion into aviation takes a whacky turn when the boys learn what a mad beazel this flying ace is and just how much trouble one snake can cause.
Disclaimer: Jeeves, Bertie, and all characters associated with their idyllic world belong to P.G. Wodehouse. All real persons belong to themselves or the grave last I checked.
Our story begins one perfectly pleasant afternoon in Bern when the Lerche was on his Flügel, the Schnecke upon his Dorn, and the Big Chappie Upstairs had seen fit to chase the clouds across the sky in a sort of peek-a-boo game with the sun.
Jeeves and I had arrived some three days ago by train, having hied ourselves forth from Nice with all due haste after a bit of tiff with a belli-something chappie in a hot air balloon – the one that means the c.’s prone to threatening the breaking another c.’s spine in two-to-six places, rather like Stilton Cheesewright, but of the sorte français. Suffice to say, he didn’t take kindly to some beazel he was madly in love with proclaiming herself m.i.l. with Bertram whilst Bertram and his man were enjoying a portentous aerial adventure.
I’m still not sure how Jeeves managed to prevent an untimely demise for this Wooster, but he held off the bellicose brute – That’s the word I wanted! Bellicose. – with a few choice words in la langue du jour until we reached solid ground. I think Jeeves convinced the b.b. that we’d have some sort of duel-to-the-death once we’d stepped out of the balloon, but I never found out for certain as we took to the rather more figurative version of flight about two seconds after touching down.
That was all in the past, though. We were in Bern and there were no frightfully-ferocious Frenchmen about to wish harm upon the Wooster corpus. A few peevishly-presumptuous pigeons had given me the gimlet eye, though, when I’d helped a few young chappies spook a flock of them in front of a rather fancy clock tower. I think Jeeves called it the SightAgog, which seems an appropriate moniker for the thingummy - it certainly had Bertram agogging with the best of them when the hour struck six and the little jester chap I thought was just a statue started moving to strike the bells by his head. Fantastic stuff! I really had to tip my cap to these Swiss chaps: chocolate, cheese, a snappy fashion-sense for their soldiers’ uniforms, and puppet clocks.
I’m rambling on, though. So, a pleasant afternoon in Bern.
Jeeves and I had been touring the highs and lows of city, enjoying a spot of tea in a rosary atop a hill which was called – in keeping with this Swiss tradition of practical naming – The Rose Garden. I say ‘we enjoyed’, but it was rather more me doing the enjoying and Jeeves playing the attentive manservant.
I was about to scold him for being such a paranoid prune when a distinctly English voice called out in d.E. phrasing, “Reg? Reginald Jeeves is that you?”
We both looked around from the table we’d commandeered to see a gorilla-ish fellow in a striking black-and-white checked suit and green tie striding toward us with a grin on his bearded face. “Hah! It is you. How are you doing, soldier? It’s been years!”
He stopped beside the table and beamed with such warmth that I couldn’t help a smile coloring my own map. “Who’s this then, Jeeves? An old chum?”
“Thomas McMillan, sir,” Jeeves replied, icing over to a temperature that sent a shiver up my spine in defiance of the September sunshine. “Mr. McMillian, this is my employer, Mr. Bertram Wooster.”
“Your employ...” McMillan grimaced. “Sorry, Reg – Jeeves. Mr. Jeeves. A pleasure, Mr. Wooster, sir. As Mr. Jeeves said, my name is Tom McMillan. Jeeves and I served together in the Great War.”
“Did you now?” I had some trouble imagining this hairy, checkered goliath in dour fatigues and combat boots, but then, I had trouble imagining Jeeves in anything but his pinstripes – out of his p.s I could imagine him a number of interesting ways, but that’s neither here nor there.
“Yes, sir! Well, I say we served together.” He snorted. “More like Jeeves dragged me back to base camp after my plane went down. Figured saving my life was as good a reason as any to strike up a friendship with a fellow.”
“Dragged you back to base? Good Lord! What... Wait a moment.” My brow furrowed as I reached back toward the day we’d stood on the porch of Twing Hall waiting for Cynthia to fix her make-up. What had he said about the war? “You served with Jeeves.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And I was 17-ish toward the end...” I pulled up my hand to count out the years on my fingers. “Jeeves, you would have been 23, at least, and 19 when you started.”
“That is correct, sir,” the chill wind that had been blowing toward McMillan rounded the dog-leg and headed straight for me. I pressed on toward the green in spite of the frosty disapproval.
“But you told me you didn’t see much battle in defense to your age back in August.”
“’Deference’, sir,” he corrected automatically.
I let a touch of coolness tinge my own voice as I continued, “Well, I’d say dragging a chap off a battle field constitutes battling, and why would being 23 afford any sort of deference... or defense?”
I glared at him, and he stared back at me with a carefully-stuffed amphibious expression. We might have gone on in the silence, two iron wills clashing and clanking as an unstoppable Bertram met an immovable Jeeves. Thankfully, though, McMillan had the presence of mind to intrude.
“I didn’t mean to cause any trouble for you chaps.”
“What?” I glanced over, and only just I realized what prats we were being, having retreated into our little private battle to the exclusion of an absolutely charming RAFer in the most spiffing togs I’d seen since I’d gotten lost at the circus as a tot.
“Oh! Terribly sorry, old fruit. Do sit down. I’m being dreadfully rude. Please.” I motioned to one of the empty chairs. “So, what brings you to Bern, anyway, my good McMillan? I trust you’re not simply hunting down Jeeveses.”
I shot a look at a certain Jeeves to let him know the discussion wasn’t over, merely halted. He raised one ebony brow by roughly one-third of an eighth of an inch and drew his lips into a slightly-thinner line; he might as well have sneered, hunched his shoulders, and crossed his arms like a petulant child for all the subtlety in expression. I was tempted to stick my tongue out at him just to see what sort of reaction that would earn me, but McMillan was talking.
“No, ‘fraid not. I was actually in town for a darts tournament being held by the Royal Aero Club.”
“Royal Aero Club?” I asked.
“The aviation authority responsible for training many of the British pilots during the Great War, sir,” Jeeves put in, his encyclopedic brain unable to resist the temptation. I grinned, and he retreated to his stolid façade. “You received your Aviator’s Certificate from them, did you not, Mr. McMillan?”
“That’s right,” he agreed. “And there’s a fellow lad from the RAF living in Bern who’s decided to do this tournament with the grand prize as a trip for two to America to meet Amelia Earhart.”
“Is that... someone very important?” I hazarded to guess.
“Important?” McMillan sputtered. “‘Lady Lindy’, ‘The Queen of the Air’, the first woman to make a transatlantic flight. You must have heard of her, Mr. Wooster!”
“Oh, that Amelia Earhart,” I exclaimed, lying through my teeth. “Well, yes, of course everyone’s heard of her. You’d have to be a bedridden buffoon not to have, what? Just the other day I was saying to Jeeves what a charming beazel she must be, wasn’t I, Jeeves?”
“I do not recall the use of those precise words, sir,” he replied, and though his face remained impassive, and I knew he was still fluffing his feathers about being caught like the cat with the cream on its lips, I did detect a faint whiff of Jeevesian amusement. As it seemed to be in short supply since the introduction of Tom McMillan, I merely rolled my eyes at his pedantic disse-whatsit.
“Anyway,” McMillan continued, “I’ve entered and so have more than a few flyers living on the continent. Oh!” He snapped his fingers. “You should enter, Reg! It’s open to veterans from all the branches along with registered members of the Club. There’s a bit of a fee that’ll go toward the winner’s trip and a fund for fellows from the War who’re down on their luck, but you’re welcome to join in.”
“While I appreciate the offer, I have my duties as Mr. Wooster’s valet to–”
“Oh, pish, Jeeves!” I rejoined. “You know I’d give you the time to go do something like this. Good cause and fun and games and such. And who knows, old thing, you might just win. You’re always going on about wanting to meet this dead chappie or that, but barring a revolution of the six foot below variety, that isn’t likely to happen. Carpe the diem, Jeeves! Wouldn’t it be grand to meet another famous beazel of the non-living-impaired variety?” I could see the feudal spirit crumbling under my enthusiastic assault and threw in the clincher. “I’d really appreciate it if you’d at least try. For me?”
I watched the fight go out of him as he sighed, and I was about to reach out to grasp his hand when I remembered McMillan sitting there. The man was eyeing me with a rather peculiar expression; I couldn’t tell if he was disgusted or intrigued, but it was leaning far enough into suspicion for me to amend, “You know how much I love darts, and getting to watch any game would be a real treat. I’ll even pay for your entrance fee.” I hated myself just a little as I added a rather condescending, “Won’t that be nice for you, Jeeves?”
Jeeves’ blue gaze jumped to my face, and I motioned with my eyes to McMillan who had taken to rolling his e.s at me with a sort of contemptuous sneer I’d grown numb to under Aunt Agatha’s repeated applications.
My man seemed to understand, though, as he agreed, “Yes, sir. You are a most magnanimous gentleman, Mr. Wooster. I will enter the tournament if you wish.”
Whatever his feelings toward me, Jeeves’ decision brightened McMillan up. “Good show, old man!”
“On one condition, sir.”
“Eh, what’s that?”
“I will require Mr. McMillan to change his... suit.”
“Oh, come on, Jeeves!” McMillan and I protested together.
“It’s a lovely suit!” I continued.
“Do you think so?”
“Rather. Where did you get it?”
“There’s a little shop in–”
“Sir.” I knew I was already pushing my luck asking for him to join the tournament. As one, McMillan and I turned to look at him with soulful e.s of longing.
“Please, Jeeves? Just a waistcoat?”
“No, sir.”
“Not even if I–”
“No, sir.”
“You’re still a spoilsport, Reg,” McMillan huffed, and I had to agree.
“That as it may be, Mr. McMillan, should you wear such attire to the tournament, I fear the competitors will be unable to discern between you and the board. I would certainly have this difficultly. A most... unfortunate circumstance for a gentleman faced with sharp projectiles.”
“I take your point, Mr. Jeeves.”
A tiny quirk of his lips. “Indeed, Mr. McMillan.”
(Backward to Prologue)
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Date: 2011-01-10 07:24 am (UTC)Well done and looking for more!
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Date: 2011-01-11 03:17 am (UTC)I hope you have been careful driving through the south - at least where I am the roads are nearly impassible. Good luck and be safe. (And write more. :-) )
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Date: 2011-01-11 05:10 am (UTC)I should be able to do a bit of background exploration with Jeeves in WWI here. That's in my plans, anyway. I've been wanting to do something like it for a while now. One of the other sources of inspiration for my characterization of Jeeves outside the short stories and television show is my own grandfather, a Marine colonel with a sharp wit and a tendency to become reticent when questioned about his service in Vietnam.
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Date: 2011-01-11 03:44 pm (UTC)On an unrelated note, ATL is where I hail from and I happen to know first hand that there are only 4 plows in the entire city. Hopefully this mess will clear up soon.
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Date: 2011-01-11 07:30 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-01-14 01:52 pm (UTC)That sounds like it came straight from Wodehouse.
Love this, too,: A most... unfortunate circumstance for a gentleman faced with sharp projectiles.”
I'm looking forward to more of your story!