P G Wodehouse – Man Upstairs

There were reasons why he wanted money. Looking at him as he cantered over the linoleum at Bredin’s, you would have said that his mind was on his work. But it was not so. He took and executed orders as automatically as the penny-in-the-slot musical-box in the corner took pennies and produced tunes. His thoughts were of Jeanne Le Brocq, his co-worker at Bredin’s, and a little cigar shop down Brixton way which he knew was in the market at a reasonable rate. To marry the former and own the latter was Paul’s idea of the earthly paradise, and it was the wealthy connoisseur, and he alone, who could open the gates.

Jeanne was a large, slow-moving Norman girl, stolidly handsome. One could picture her in a De Maupassant farmyard. In the clatter and bustle of Bredin’s Parisian Café she appeared out of place, like a cow in a boiler-factory. To Paul, who worshipped her with all the fervour of a little man for a large woman, her deliberate methods seemed all that was beautiful and dignified. To his mind she lent a tone to the vulgar whirlpool of gorging humanity, as if she had been some goddess mixing in a Homeric battle. The whirlpool had other views-and expressed them. One coarse-fibred brute, indeed, once went so far as to address to her the frightful words, ” ‘Urry up, there, Tottie! Look slippy.” It was wrong, of course, for Paul to slip and spill an order of scrambled eggs down the brute’s coat-sleeve, but who can blame him?

Among those who did not always see eye to eye with Paul in his views on deportment in waitresses was M. Bredin himself, the owner of the Parisian Café; and it was this circumstance which first gave Paul the opportunity of declaring the passion which was gnawing him with the fierce fury of a Bredin customer gnawing a tough steak against time during the rush hour. He had long worshipped her from afar, but nothing more intimate than a “Good-morning, Miss Jeanne,” had escaped him, till one day during a slack spell he came upon her in the little passage leading to the kitchen, her face hidden in her apron, her back jerking with sobs.

Business is business. Paul had a message to deliver to the cook respecting “two fried, coffee, and one stale.” He delivered it and returned. Jeanne was still sobbing.

“Ah, Miss Jeanne,” cried Paul, stricken, “what is the matter? What is it? Why do you weep?”

“The patron,” sobbed Jeanne. “He-”

“My angel,” said Paul, “he is a pig.”

This was perfectly true. No conscientious judge of character could have denied that Paul had hit the bull’s eye. Bredin was a pig. He looked like a pig; he ate like a pig; he grunted like a pig. He had the lavish embonpoint of a pig. Also a porcine soul. If you had tied a bit of blue ribbon round his neck you could have won prizes with him at a show.

Paul’s eyes flashed with fury. “I will slap him in the eye,” he roared.

“He called me a tortoise.”

“And kick him in the stomach,” added Paul.

Jeanne’s sobs were running on second speed now. The anguish was diminishing. Paul took advantage of the improved conditions to slide an arm part of the way round her waist. In two minutes he had said as much as the ordinary man could have worked off in ten. All good stuff, too. No padding.

Jeanne’s face rose from her apron like a full moon. She was too astounded to be angry.

Paul continued to babble. Jeanne looked at him with growing wrath. That she, who received daily the affectionate badinage of gentlemen in bowler hats and check suits, who had once been invited to the White City by a solicitor’s clerk, should be addressed in this way by a waiter! It was too much. She threw off his hand.

“Wretched little man!” she cried, stamping angrily.

“My angel!” protested Paul.

Jeanne uttered a scornful laugh.

“You!” she said.

There are few more withering remarks than “You!” spoken in a certain way. Jeanne spoke it in just that way.

Paul wilted.

“On eighteen shillings a week,” went on Jeanne, satirically, “you would support a wife, yes? Why-“