Title: Recollections of a Long Whatsit
Fandom: Jeeves and Wooster
Author: godsdaisiechain
Characters: Jeeves and Wooster
Challenges: Memory, Family, Relative
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~1200
Summary: Post canon.  Bertie reflects on the time that he became Lord Yaxley.
Prompt at small fandoms:  Bertie becomes Lord Yaxley.


Excerpt from Recollections of a Long Whatsit
--Bertram Wilberforce Wooster, Lord Yaxley

In the heydey of the last of the Woosters, young Bertram would never have thought that time would see him as a respectable MP hewing the manuscript and hefting the quill to pour out his memoirs like hot tar on an unwitting public lurking outside the walls of Troy.  And yet, as the quiet years fold in on one another, it seems to be the only way to sort out the frightful mass of mulligatawny weltering about the place.

Back in the old days, Bertram dawdled about the metrop. oozing about as the single man-about-town long after most of the set had set off two-by-two for the domestic rannygazoo of the countryside and environs.  Skirmishes came and went the way of a dodo fleeing the cries of primeval aunts across the plains of cow creamers, swans, and boy scouts.

And so did my man, Jeeves.

I knew not the day or the whatnot, but one d. Bertram awoke and the cooling zephyr that was my trusted valet cooled no more.

One kept up a brave front, as one does, ankling about and making comments to other respected members of the House and then wafting off to the club for a refreshing snifter and then showing the younger set what for in the matter of darts.  The suits had somehow metamorphosed into as scaly a grouping of staid dark colors as would have haunted the younger Bertram, and the most sprightly bit of upholstery was what Jeeves might have termed a twill quieter than a whited sepulcher.   Of course, the carapace had molted off and left the young master as the young Lord Yaxley by that time.

Jeeves had been the one to break the news, with rather the bedside manner of a respectful undertaker.  Bertram reclined on the chaise, ice across the fevered brow because the dark hangover drink was no longer sufficient to cure all traces of a sprightly little after-hours supper, the quality of alcohol having never quite scaled its way back to the top of the Matterhorn of quality after the great skirmish.

“Sir,” he whispered, more softly than a dove on a distant hillside trying not to wake a sleeping wolf in sheep’s lambs.

“What is it, Jeeves?” said Bertram, starting and rolling off the chaise onto the carpet, for it had been many, many years since he had called me “sir” or I had called him “Jeeves” under that roof.

He shimmered and we were settled on the chaise, hands clasped as if our lives depended on it.  “Your uncle has died, sir.”

Old Uncle George was a right-thinking old bird, especially for a relative, and Bertram felt a deep sorrow at his passing.  Then the willowy frame went stiller than a swan about to attack a valet not knowing that a raincoat was about to impede its territorial activities.   If Uncle George was dead, then Bertram was Lord Yaxley.  The grey tinge across the Jeevesian visage showed that he, too, was not merely suffering from a morning head.

It would mean an end to our cozy bachelor establishment, an e. that was all the cozier since Jeeves had taken to keeping the master warm nights.

Had a jelly-covered infant been lurking about the place, it could have called Bertram “fish face” with a startling degree of accuracy, if that is the word I want.  “But, Jeeves,”  I said, “I don’t want to be Lord Yaxley. We’d have to move into that frightful large house. We’d never have a moment to ourselves. Isn’t there anything you can do?”

Tears welled up in his eyes. “I think this is beyond me, sir,” he murmured, handing me the Times. 

“What care I for papers?” I said, but he tapped a story.  That computer chappie, Turing, had been found dead.

Jeeves bowed the noble brow. “He was convicted for being an invert. You can hardly shirk your family responsibilities without raising suspicion.”

We had always known that some day something could part us, but we huddled together like bedraggled cats covered in soup. It would do no good to say that he was my family. “How long do we have?” I finally murmured.

“Let us not worry until after the will is read,” Jeeves said.  The weather about the place became rather damp.

A few short weeks later, the household had broken up.  Bertram and Jeeves let the beloved flat and Bertram took up residence in Uncle George’s spacious house. Jeeves oozed off and opened a used book shop.  The heart bled.

A few months later, Auntie Maude summoned the young Yaxley to her cheerful  pink sitting room.  “Bertie,” she said, weeping like a puce crocodile. “I am terribly sorry, but I can’t stay any longer.  I tried to make a family for you finally, but everything reminds me too much of Piggy.”  Piggy being the pet name she had for Uncle George.

“Not at all, Auntie Maude.  Can I do anything for you?”

“No, dear, I kept my old house, you know.  But I have to have the servants.”  She wrung the hands and her pink hankie.  “It was all my doing that your nice valet left.  I thought he was getting in the way of you marrying. Can you forgive me?”

“Ah, no, frightfully kind of you to worry, Auntie,” said Bertram.  “But the agency must know his whereabouts.”

Unfortunately, the agency did not. I ankled over to the bookshop to find it was closed.  A sign read “On holidays. Closed indefinitely.” He hadn’t even sent a note. So Bertram was left, in isolated, grassless splendor, whiling away the boring hours with some clumping young blighter who could be heard rattling saucers at all hours of the morning.

One day, it all crashed in upon the bean and instead of oozing off for a refreshing snifter after the House, somehow the pins propelled me to the old flat.  It was empty.  I hadn’t known the tenants left.  Nothing remained but ghosts and dust.  Wooster shut the door and stood in the living room, staring at the cracked tiles around the fireplace.

The tears had begun to flow like a manly Niagara when a sound like a lamb on a distant hillside sent the hat, gloves and whangee flying. In a trice, self was muffled in a manly embrace.

“Oh Bertram,” Jeeves said again and again, then went still.  “How did you know I was here?”

A few sobs were choked back before the pipes would operate.  “I had no idea, my wooly baa-newt.”

He went a bit stuffed frog, never having liked newts. And Bertram chuckled through the tears. Jeeves steered the keeper of his heart into the old lair and deposited the slender corpus in an old, battered leather chair.  The bed was made and a suitcase sat on the floor, but otherwise the place had the air of a warehouse.  “Some tea and buttered toast?” he asked, much in the old way before we had become lovers.

The time had come for decisive action. “I’d rather prefer some pashing, old thing.”

“Very good,” he said.