P G Wodehouse – Man Upstairs

“But those songs you’ve been playing,” said Beverley, “they’ve been published?”

“Yes, those three. But they are the only ones.”

“And didn’t they sell?”

“Hardly at all. You see, a song doesn’t sell unless somebody well known sings it. And people promise to sing them, and then don’t keep their word. You can’t depend on what they say.”

“Give me their names,” said Beverley, “and I’ll go round to-morrow and shoot the whole lot. But can’t you do anything?”

“Only keep on keeping on.”

“I wish,” he said, “that any time you’re feeling blue about things you would come up and pour out the poison on me. It’s no good bottling it up. Come up and tell me about it, and you’ll feel ever so much better. Or let me come down. Any time things aren’t going right just knock on the ceiling.”

She laughed.

“Don’t rub it in,” pleaded Beverley. “It isn’t fair. There’s nobody so sensitive as a reformed floor-knocker. You will come up or let me come down, won’t you? Whenever I have that sad, depressed feeling, I go out and kill a policeman. But you wouldn’t care for that. So the only thing for you to do is to knock on the ceiling. Then I’ll come charging down and see if there’s anything I can do to help.”

“You’ll be sorry you ever said this.”

“I won’t,” he said stoutly.

“If you really mean it, it would be a relief,” she admitted. “Sometimes I’d give all the money I’m ever likely to make for someone to shriek my grievances at. I always think it must have been so nice for the people in the old novels, when they used to say: ‘Sit down and I will tell you the story of my life.’ Mustn’t it have been heavenly?”

“Well,” said Beverley, rising, “you know where I am if I’m wanted. Right up there where the knocking came from.”

“Knocking?” said Annette. “I remember no knocking.”

“Would you mind shaking hands?” said Beverley.

A particularly maddening hour with one of her pupils drove her up the very next day. Her pupils were at once her salvation and her despair. They gave her the means of supporting life, but they made life hardly worth supporting. Some of them were learning the piano. Others thought they sang. All had solid ivory skulls. There was about a teaspoonful of grey matter distributed among the entire squad, and the pupil Annette had been teaching that afternoon had come in at the tail-end of the division.

In the studio with Beverley she found Reginald Sellers, standing in a critical attitude before the easel. She was not very fond of him. He was a long, offensive, patronising person, with a moustache that looked like a smear of char coal, and a habit of addressing her as “Ah, little one!”

Beverley looked up.

“Have you brought your hatchet, Miss Brougham? If you have, you’re just in time to join in the massacre of the innocents. Sellers has been smiting my child and cat hip and thigh. Look at his eye. There! Did you see it flash then? He’s on the warpath again.”

“My dear Beverley,” said Sellers, rather stiffly, “I am merely endeavouring to give you my idea of the picture’s defects. I am sorry if my criticism has to be a little harsh.”

“Go right on,” said Beverley, cordially. “Don’t mind me; it’s all for my good.”

“Well, in a word, then, it is lifeless. Neither the child nor the cat lives.”

He stepped back a pace and made a frame of his hands.

“The cat now,” he said. “It is-how shall I put it? It has no-no-er-”

“That kind of cat wouldn’t,” said Beverley. “It isn’t that breed.”

“I think it’s a dear cat,” said Annette. She felt her temper, always quick, getting the better of her. She knew just how incompetent Sellers was, and it irritated her beyond endurance to see Beverley’s good- humoured acceptance of his patronage.

“At any rate,” said Beverley, with a grin, “you both seem to recognise that it is a cat. You’re solid on that point, and that’s something, seeing I’m only a beginner.”

“I know, my dear fellow; I know,” said Sellers, graciously. “You mustn’t let my criticism discourage you. Don’t think that your work lacks promise. Far from it. I am sure that in time you will do very well indeed. Quite well.”