Chapter Text
When I woke, I was ravenously hungry and half certain that what I had experienced had been a dream.
Jeeves shimmered in moments after my consciousness asserted itself with my cup of tea, exactly as he did every morning. His visage was as smooth as ever. I was in my pyjamas, as I should have been; my sheets were no more rumpled than usual. No river stones were visible.
I peered at him doubtfully. “What ho, Jeeves.”
“Good morning, sir.”
He presented me with the cup of tea. I accepted. I sipped. He tottered out.
Left along with my thoughts, I became aware of a certain warmth that suffused the Wooster corpus. This was not merely the glow of satisfaction after a good night’s sleep, nor was it attributable to my cup of tea: it had been there the moment I opened my eyes. No, this was the lingering sensation of being touched intimately by the obj. of one’s affections, such as when a touch laid was on the elbow by said o. of one’s a., or the accidental brushing of hands upon exchange of some item or another. My heart was telling me last night had really happened, and there was a certain jelly quality to my muscles that suggested it was right.
I was now presented with a conundrum. Did I take the bull by the horns and speak plainly to Jeeves of what had happened the night before? Or did I go along as though nothing had happened?
I was taking an uncommonly long time to stew over this, and Jeeves popped his head in. “Would you like one egg or two this morning, sir?”
“Two, thank you. Actually, make that three. And extra kippers.”
Jeeves nodded and oiled away.
I sighed and put down my cup. It appeared I had answered my question for myself. The “Daredevil Bertie” of my youth was not among us. I was going to play this one in what Jeeves might describe as a prudent manner.
The rest of the day passed without either of us speaking of it. What had transpired, I mean. The massage, that is.
I had come to conclude it had not been a dream. I ached all over the next day, for one thing—not in an unpleasant manner at all, but the sort of aching that one gets when all of one’s muscles have been liquefied and are then asked to exert themselves. I was the picture of relaxation, not leaving the flat all day and barely changing out of my dressing gown. I found Jeeves puttering around in the background to be a comforting kind of silence, and I cheered up at the prospect that things could go back to how they had been without me having to say a word.
But by the second day, Bertram Wooster was decidedly restless. I found myself with an odd tendency to jump whenever Jeeves materialised in a room, which he had a tendency to do even more than usual, it seemed to me. Years of having him in my employ had cured me of that habit, I’d thought; I couldn’t remember the last time I had been that jumpy around Jeeves. So I took myself off to the Drones.
“What ho, Bertie!” said one of my chums. It was Gussie.
“What ho!” I returned.
“You look different, Bertie. You’re practically glowing.”
I paused. I had not done anything different than I normally would. Jeeves and I hadn’t even squabbled over my dress; I had thought it prudent to accept the conservative togs he’d laid out for me, not being in the state of mind to get the blood up in his presence more than was necessary.
“Am I?” I patted the Wooster bean, wondering if Jeeves had slipped something radiant into my shampoo.
“Not literally. You look like I felt the morning after my wedding night.”
I blushed. Not the shy blush of the roses of May; I turned red right down to my roots. Gussie, seeing this, chortled. “Ah-ho, Bertie!”
Not in favour of laughter at my expense, I ordered a strong drink before I seated myself at his side. He did not waste time in getting down to the particulars.
“Who is she?”
“There is no ‘she.’”
“The girl who has you looking like that, I mean.”
“There is no girl.”
Gussie gave me a steady sort of look. “Is it Jeeves?”
I’m not proud to say I knocked over my drink and dumped its contents in my lap.
Once I was dabbing away at the worst of the damage with a collection of towels, Gussie resumed his one-sided dialog.
“I can’t say I’m surprised,” he said reasonably, as if this were a reasonable thing to say. “We’ve all been expecting it. I always thought his attempts to get you on round-the-world cruises were his way of proposing a honeymoon. It wounded him terribly whenever you said no.”
“I don’t think anything has ever wounded him terribly.” Even my most avant-garde sartorial choices never elevated him above a sort of peevishness.
“Well, if anything did, that would be it.”
The worst of the damage mopped up, I tossed the soggy towels on the table and rounded on him. “And what do you mean, you’ve been expecting it? Nothing happened. You’ve got completely the wrong idea.”
“Do I?”
“You don’t just have the wrong end of the stick. You have the wrong end of the animal.”
“Put me straight, then.”
I heaved the Wooster shoulders upward in a great breath. “He gave me a massage.”
Gussie’s eyebrows made an appearance above the rims of his spectacles. “Oh, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Do your valets usually do that?”
“No,” I said slowly. I was beginning to see his point and I didn’t like it. “This was special circs. My shoulders have been terribly tight lately, and a massage was the only thing for it.”
“The Turkish baths?”
“Didn’t work. What you see before you is a Bertie Wooster who has finally been freed from the yoke of knotted muscles after much trial and error. That’s why I’m glowing.”
“What caused the knotted muscles?”
“Writing.”
He gave me a shrewd look. “About Jeeves?”
“Of course no—what!” I said, because I realised that I had been writing about Jeeves.
“I thought so. If you’re wondering how I knew, it’s because you’re always writing about Jeeves.”
I had been wondering. I didn’t like his answer.
“And why not? Everyone enjoys hearing about Jeeves,” I replied. “His exploits always liven up a dull night at the Drones. You all clamour for it.”
“I know that. But I also know your heart, Bertie. We all have our own way of showing love. Newts wave their tails. You write.”
Having Gussie Fink-Nottle, of all people, explain the psychology of the individual to me was really beyond the pale.
“This is beyond the pale, Gussie,” I said, and I threw in the towel—or rather, I picked up the soggy towels and threw them down a second time. “I have to be going now. Good day.” And I meant it to sting.
Unfortunately, what Gussie had said burrowed into my thoughts much like one of his newts might upon finding the right type of mud. (One doesn’t try to learn newt facts when one is friends with Gussie Fink-Nottle: it just happens.) I intended for the walk home from the Drones to clear my head. Yet by the time Berkeley Square came into sight, the bean was as clouded as ever, so I perambulated around the block a few times. All that succeeded in doing was giving me more time to stew. Yes, stew: I was really in the soup now.
The problem was, there was a kernel of truth to what Gussie had said. I did write about Jeeves constantly. What had begun as my memoirs had transformed into a medi-whatsit on the extraordinary good luck I’d stumbled into by having him in my life. I didn’t see the point in writing about anything else.
But to claim that what I felt for Jeeves, paragon of valets, was the tender pash? Well...in truth, Gussie wasn’t far off there, either. My feelings about Jeeves were, as I have said, not completely those of a friendly pal. That Gussie (who you will recall, is not the most adept at romance) had deduced this did wound the Wooster pride a smidge. I was also a bit hurt that he hadn’t thought to tell me.
But to claim that Jeeves returned such feelings? Now that just wasn’t on! The idea that Gussie, who did not see Jeeves day in and day out as I did, could know his feelings better than I did was ludicrous.
I concluded my walk without much to show for it other than a frown upon the Wooster features.
“Sir?” Jeeves inquired when I made my entrance. No doubt he was wondering why I had returned from the Drones so soon. But his gaze arrested somewhere around the vicinity of my knees, and I recalled the other occurrence that had sent me running from my club.
I put up a hand. “No need to say the words, Jeeves. The trousers cannot be saved, and I do not expect you to try.” Thankfully, the whisky had mostly dried during my promenade, but I still stank to the high heavens of spirits.
“I do not think all is lost, sir,” he said. There was mild disapproval in his tone. No doubt he was offended that I had done such damage to an article of clothing that he had approved for public wear. “In the meantime, I shall set out another garment so you can return to the Drones straightaway.”
“No need. I will not be returning.”
“No, sir?”
“No.” I could see he wanted badly to ask why not, but I kept my upper lip very stiff to forestall the question.
A very slight twitch of the Jeevesian eyebrow. “Very good, sir.” When I did not immediately make a move in any direction, he added, “Anything else, sir?”
I opened my mouth to say, not at all. But as sometimes happens to us Woosters, the wheels within wheels had been turning without my awareness. They suddenly spat out the solution to a problem I had not known I had. If my way of showing what beat within the Wooster heart was writing, could Jeeves’ be the art of massage?
“Yes, Jeeves,” I announced. “I want another massage.”
He looked at me. “Already, sir?”
I now saw my error. The massage was necessitated by knotted muscles. When Jeeves was thorough in his massaging, all knots were unknotted. Thus, if I had knots so soon again after his last achievement, he had not been thorough. In other words, a knot in the Wooster back was a direct insult to Jeeves’ talents.
“Not today,” I hurried to add. “My back remains as jellied as ever thanks to you. But perhaps we should make a regular thing of it.” I found myself leaning against the doorjamb in my best imitation of nonchalance. Also because I feared my knees might give out. My heart was racing as if it were at Ascot, and not in the stands. “Once a week, as a palliative measure.”
“I believe the word you want is preventative, sir.”
“Is it?” I was sure I’d heard him bandy around the other word a time or two.
“‘Palliative’ would imply you were on death’s door, sir.”
At the rate we were going, I’d need some palliative measures for the Wooster ticker. It was thundering its hooves as it neared the finish line.
He was now looking at me expectantly. I looked back rather like a deer on the business end of a rifle, for I’d thought the ball was in his court. I decided that pursuing this line of inquiry would have to wait. I sagged slightly against the doorjamb. “For now, a bath will do.”
“I agree, sir,” he said with a dark look at my whisky-soaked lower half.
Now that my heart had slowed to a walking pace, I had the terrible feeling I’d just thrown myself headfirst from one bowl of soup into the next. Having brought up the dreaded subject of the massage, I might have to actually finish it. The bath necessitated a convenient delay, but Jeeves would no doubt be hot on my trail after it was done. I had learned over the years, at great personal cost, that Jeeves was a perfectionist: the slightest hint of dissatisfaction provoked in him a kind of unstoppable urge to correct it. Now that I’d given him the opening, he’d want to know what I had and hadn’t liked about his handiwork, which day he should start boiling his stones for the next go-round, and so forth. All this, while I was supposed to be writing—for now that my writing arm was in good condition, I had to make use of it before it cranked itself up again. I couldn’t bear it.
So I said, without much time elapsed between the words forming in the bean and exiting my mouth, “Yes, that will be all. In fact, take the rest of the day off.”
He looked at me. He drew himself up. His countenance took on a decidedly stony aspect. “Off, sir?”
I had erred again. Jeeves guards his time off closely, as would I, and he does not shy away from reminding me if I accidentally expect his attendance at an hour when he is meant to be at his leisure. But I have still not, after all these years, gotten the knack of telling him when I am dismissing him because I do not wish to see him, and when I simply wish to be alone. The two are very different things, and this situation was—well. In truth it was both. But he did not need to know that.
“I’m going to spend the rest of the day at my writing desk, so there won’t be anything for you to do,” I said as firmly as I was able when I felt as limp as a tulip in July. “Consider it a gift.”
“As you wish, sir,” he said stiffly, and he made himself scarce.
A bath never fails to clear the mind, I find. It is simply impossible to hold a negative thought while immersed in the warm and soapy. I would not say it made me cheerful, but it did cheer me up. Gussie’s thoughtless statements: gone. Worries about what Jeeves might say to me: vanquished. It was an altogether different Bertram Wooster who emerged from the suds.
And I emerged into an altogether different flat.
I have always had a sort of special sense for when Jeeves is in. Even if he makes no noise audible to the human ear, the flat feels complete when he is near. It does not matter if he is tucked away in his quarters or in the kitchen polishing the silver: I know instantly when he is there.
He was decidedly not there.
After I dressed (alone, somewhat morosely), I wandered through the flat just to be sure. But all was empty and quiet. It dawned on me now what it meant to dismiss him for the evening.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder, but in my case, I was already terribly fond of him, so his absence was akin to being shot through the left ventricle with an arrow. I’m afraid I wandered about the flat for a bit throwing myself onto furniture and sighing like a wounded lamb.
When I’d had enough of that, I got out the pen and paper. It was more out of habit and a sense of duty that I readied the ink blotter, for I already knew it was no use. I couldn’t focus on my story when my head was full of Jeeves. And Jeeves, it was full of to the brim: my memories of every touch were swirled together with every look and word into a great swirling mass of Jeeves. The urge to pour it all out onto the page was nearly overwhelming.
And, why not?, I thought. I was alone; he wouldn’t see what I wrote. I certainly wasn’t going to publish the bally thing. I could bung whatever I liked onto the page and he’d be none the wiser.
Practically the moment I set pen to paper, it flowed out of me. The touch of his hands upon my bare skin; the heat of the river stones, now turned to tongue and lips in my imagination; those fingers, going wherever they wished (or rather, wherever I wished). I’m afraid my imagination rather ran away with me once it got started, and I wrote all manner of body parts going all manner of places.
By the time I threw down my pen, I was exhausted but satisfied as though I’d run a marathon. After a cold supper from the larder, I took myself to bed that night without a care in the world. The moment the onion hit the pillowcase, I was out like a light.
The next morning, I was woken by the very sudden opening of my bedroom door.
I sat up with a groggy, “Whatsit?”
“Tea, sir,” said Jeeves, and he practically tossed it in my lap.
Well, he presented it to me on a tray as usual, but there was a noted jerkiness in his movements that was quite unlike him.
I took the cup of tea, in the manner you might take a snake that was suddenly thrust upon you. Either you take it by the back of the head, or it bites you.
He had already bustled out before I got the grey matter working. I hadn’t the foggiest idea of whether I had just witnessed a Jeeves on the rampage or one who was, as Gussie had put it, gravely wounded. I wracked my brain: Had I acquired any recent items of clothing that he might find particularly offensive? Had I rejected his advice about some matter? But the effort was like squeezing water from a stone. I already knew I wasn’t good for anything until I’d consumed the necessary ounces of the hot stuff. I started gulping it down accordingly. Clearly I had to get to the bottom of something, and fast.
Jeeves has an uncanny way of anticipating my every need—him popping in the other morning to inquire if I wanted one egg or two was doubtless a polite fiction he’d fashioned to check that the young master hadn’t fallen back asleep—so I hardly ever bother giving instructions about breakfast anymore. But on this morning, I was astonished to find that he’d neglected the bacon. I pushed my eggs around on my plate for a good few minutes in the empty space where it was supposed to be before I registered what was the matter.
“Jeeves,” I said, and then stopped.
It returned to me, quite suddenly, why criticising Jeeves might be a critical error under the circs. First, he might still be feeling a bit hot about my dismissing him early last night. I’m not opposed to Jeeves feeling a bit hot when it serves him right, such as when he poo-poos a pink tie, but this wasn’t something I wanted him to feel hot about. Second, he might take it as an opportunity to dive into the subject of the massage, which I wanted to avoid at all costs.
But of course now that I’d said it, Jeeves was hovering at my elbow, waiting for me to continue.
I put down my fork. “I don’t think I’ll dine at the Drones today.”
“Very good, sir.” Not the slightest touch of emotion in his tone.
“So I’ll need you to make lunch.”
“I gathered as much, sir.”
“And I won’t be going out this evening.” I fidgeted with my napkin. I suddenly wished I had some bread to make bread pills out of. “So I’ll need you to make dinner, too.”
“Very good, sir.”
“Unless you have plans,” I added hurriedly.
There followed a silence with the frozen quality of a small pond in the dead of winter. “No, sir. It is not my day off, sir.”
I couldn’t take it anymore. I turned in my chair and looked up at him. His visage was as grim as they come. “Is this because I gave you the rest of the day off yesterday?”
This was accompanied by a slight relaxation of the facial muscles that might have been a look of faint astonishment. “No, sir.”
I believed him.
“I believe you,” I said. I girded my courage, or however the saying goes. “Is this about the massage?”
The silence that followed was a trifle soupier. “No, sir.”
A thought occurred to me that set all the hair on the Wooster neck scurrying for my spine. “Have you been talking to Gussie?”
At this, a faint look of puzzlement crossed the Jeevsian dial. “Sir?”
“Never mind.” I had by this time succeeded in tying the corner of my napkin into a nice little knot. “That will be all, Jeeves.”
“Very good, sir.” And he left me to the remainder of my breakfast—or what of it I could stomach.
As it turned out, it wasn’t long before my expected reconnoitre with the Jeevsian massage was upon us. All this worrying tied the Wooster back into knots again in no time, and I didn’t even have to bring up the matter again: Jeeves did it for me the moment he saw me wincing, barely before I’d noticed myself.
I was a little surprised to come into my bedroom at the appointed time and see no sign of rocks anywhere.
“Are we doing the stone treatment again, Jeeves?” I asked as I nervously picked at my buttons. I wasn’t precisely delaying my undressing, but a snail would have been proud of my pace. “That was nice, what.”
“I thought we could return to a more basic method, sir.”
“Oh?” I couldn’t say whether I was relieved or disappointed. Whatever emotion it was, it caused me to fling one of the studs from my shirt halfway across the room.
Jeeves picked this up without comment. “I am referring to manual stimulation, sir.”
“A—what?” I squeaked. The second stud followed the path of its mate.
Jeeves stooped again to collect the bit of metal from its resting place. “My hands, sir. I fear we attempted an advanced method prematurely, before we had exhausted the benefits of the more basic method.”
“I didn’t think the advanced method was all that bad.” Unfortunately, I had by this time exhausted the buttons on my shirt. I pointlessly worried at the final button.
Jeeves shimmered behind me and took my shirt in hand. “Of course not, sir,” he murmured. As he spoke, his breath brushed my neck. I fancied I could feel the vibration of his chest travel through the air to my very skin. “But I overlooked that this method can be as effective.”
The fabric whispered over my skin as he pulled it from my shoulders. Though he must have done much the same thing many times before, I had never felt such heat suffuse me at the merest suggestion of his touch. My knees went weak, and it was a good thing he didn’t linger, because if he had I might have swooned into his arms.
But then he whisked the shirt away and went to set it over something or another so it wouldn’t wrinkle.
Spurred on by the thought of him noticing the state all of this was putting me in, I removed the undergarments in record time. In another moment, I was face-down just as before.
He did not immediately rejoin me at the bed. Though there were no stones to boil this time, I could still hear him oiling around for a bit. When he pressed his palms to my shoulder blades, they were accompanied by some warm substance.
“Lotion, Jeeves?” I asked curiously. I did not immediately recognize the scent, though memories of Cannes or Barcelona whispered in my memory.
His hands spread it across my shoulder blades without pause. “Oil, sir.”
I went rigid. That is to say, all parts of me stiffened like the dickens. Oil! And here I had nearly banished the salacious images floating around the old bean of nude bodies oiled up like the Greeks of old!
“I say,” I mumbled feebly into the pillow. I squeezed my thighs together. The little Wooster was throbbing—positively throbbing at this development.
“Is it not comfortable, sir?” He spread the oil lower, over the small of my back now.
“No, it is, Jeeves. It is. I say, how do you get it so warm?” This was mostly the babbling of an overheated brain. Had I been in possession of all my faculties, no doubt a dozen ways of warming something would have occurred to me.
“I did not wish to risk scalding you, sir, so I only warmed it between my palms.”
Blast it. Of all the answers he could have given, this did the least to help with my predicament. He had been lovingly stroking that oil moments before, and now he was lovingly stroking it all over my body. It was enough to make a fellow mad with lust.
His movements seemed even more sensual than last time. Whereas a stroking and kneading might have felt innocent enough through the fabric of my shirt, the same in this current situation took on a suggestive nature of Biblical proportions. I wiggled against the sheets and bit my lip against the sounds trying to escape.
But no matter how overheated I was, the soothing movements of his hands gradually cooled me. His ministrations, as before, produced the desired effect: the knots slipped free, the muscles relaxed, and I did my best imitation of a flan.
“What gave you the idea for this wheeze, then?” I mumbled. “Giving up on the river stones, I mean.”
His hands smoothed down my arms. “I must credit you with the idea, sir. I admit I read some of the pages you tossed in the wastebasket.”
I went from jellied to rigid in a moment.
I knew with utter certainty that he was not speaking of those first sad, gasping drafts we spoke of on the first morning that set this whole business in motion. No; he was speaking of what I had written the night before. Had I done the sensible thing, you ask, and thrown those pages into the grate to be burned into cinders? No. In the flush of victory, I had tossed them in the same place I toss everything I want Jeeves to make disappear: the wastebasket.
Now, dear reader, you must admit that Bertie Wooster had well and truly souped himself up to the gills.
“D-did you?” I stuttered, sounding like Gussie Fink-Nottle might if you told him his newts had taken a dip in the nearest pond and weren’t coming back.
“Admirable pacing as always, sir.” He kneaded my buttocks. “I particularly enjoyed the passage where the one gentleman massaged the other with his tongue. I thought the turn of phrase particularly evocative.” His hands slid over the curve of my rear end and down to my thighs. He began a thoughtful sort of soothing motion into those muscles, which were tight as iron bands. “How are your...internal muscles, sir?”
I gulped. “Pretty tense, I think.”
“Shall I endeavour to combine the advanced method with our current one? I think I have the knack of it now, sir.”
I was feeling a little lightheaded. “Oh, yes. That seems the best approach.”
By a gentle pressure on my joints in just the right way, Jeeves convinced me to pull my knees under my body. My rear end stuck up in the air. I shivered; the oil wasn’t as warm as it had been a moment ago. But my face was as hot as an iron griddle, and I dare say that spot below my navel could have fried an egg.
That familiar slicked-up finger made an appearance just where you’d expect it to. I’m ashamed to say I squeaked.
“Sir. I must ask you to relax.”
I coughed. “Right.”
He stroked his finger across that spot without pressing in, massaging it gently. I closed my eyes tightly. This, I thought to myself, must really be the frozen limit; surely now was when the little Wooster would come to his senses, and if he did, I supposed I might follow not too soon after. But it wasn’t. Not at all. In fact, it felt rather topping.
I relaxed. The Jeevesian finger slipped in.
By now, I must say that I was rather worked up. The little Wooster, which had been attending to all these proceedings with interest, was getting impatient. If Jeeves did just as he did last time, I was sure I would finish things off in only a moment. But he did not.
His finger was doing a sort of sawing motion, which wasn’t bad at all, but it didn’t reach that spot that had felt so nice last time in the least. I pushed back against him, hoping to communicate as such, but he showed a clear reticence to change anything about what he was doing no matter how I rocked or raised my hips. In fact, I rather think he was avoiding that spot on purpose.
“Jeeves,” I managed to say. Speaking was proving more of a challenge than usual, but I finally managed to get a sentence out alright: “I think the internal muscles need a bit more, well, muscle.”
“Very good, sir,” he said in a voice like melted chocolate. I had never heard such a voice on him before, and it made everything in me tingle all over. “Do you suppose something wider would assist the situation?”
“Dashed good idea,” I babbled. I had no idea what he was bally well talking about, but as I stated before: bridges, jumping. If he’d spoken to you in that voice, you would have jumped, too.
“Very good, sir.” He withdrew the finger. What was unmistakably a second finger pressed in alongside the first.
Bertie, you might say, that seems like a very narrow place to put two fingers, especially ones such as belong to Jeeves. Well, you’d be wrong. It was the perfect place for them. He pressed them all the way to the second knuckle at least, if not farther, and then began to thrust them in and out. The feeling of being stretched in such a way, combined with the rubbing, was better than any gasper on a summer evening I’d ever had.
I articulated something to this effect—not in words, you understand. I don’t think I could have formed a word if I’d tried.
The only dastardly thing about it was that the fingers rubbed against that particularly pleasurable place in a sort of casual way, as though they were dance partners who knew it was time to flirt and the engagement hadn’t yet been set, as it were. My articulations took on an urgent nature. But Jeeves did not seem to get the message.
It took a heroic effort, the sort that was no doubt required of my ancestor at Agincourt, but I mustered enough of the Wooster bean to string together a few words and produce them from the Wooster mouth:
“Wider, Jeeves.”
The fingers withdrew. This time, I detected a marked approval in his tone. “Very good, sir.”
A small silence then followed—from Jeeves’ end, anyway. I was panting rather industriously at this stage, and had drooled somewhat on my pillowcase. I couldn’t find it in myself to mind.
Then I heard a sound that I will remember until my dying days: the rustle of fabric against flesh.
I suppose it was silly that I’d never thought about Jeeves undressing. He must have undressed once a day at least. But he seemed like the sort of cove who could simply snap his fingers and find himself dressed in a freshly pressed shirt without another thought. In fact, when I was writing my little imaginative exercise, I’m fairly certain I forgot to fuss with the human whatnot of buttons and clasps: he simply became naked. But now I could hear, and in fact feel, Jeeves unfastening his trousers.
There followed the sound of slicking up something. Then something very like a sigh. A movement behind me; and a warmth pressed against me, which, well—to call it “little Jeeves” would be unjust.
I suppose I do not need to detail to you what happened here. He eased in; I groaned. He thrust; I moaned. I spent; he followed in short order. Our actions accomplished the merest sliver of the things I had dreamed up on those pages of mine, but in results, they were beyond my wildest imaginings. To have anyone inside me at all was bally incredible; for it to be Jeeves was indescribable.
So I shan’t attempt to describe it. Nor shall I attempt to describe all the other wild and wonderful things we got up to, with such frequency that in no time at all we had worked through everything I had written down, and then some.
And there you have it. In the end, I didn’t have to write about the near-miss engagement at all. Once Jeeves and I lay curled together on the (unforgivably rumpled) bedsheets, his arm around my shoulders, my head in the crook of a neck shining with the most delightful sheen of sweat, my path forward was clear to me. I wrote down the facts in no time at all, polished it off, and sent it to the printers. Jeeves had, as usual, pulled me from the soup and towelled me off. That soup might be a trifle piping at times, but I must say I will never again disparage it.
And neither, I expect, will you.