Page 8 of Laughing Gas

  'Don't be silly.'

  'No! Never!'

  'You've got to have a bath.' 'Not in your presence.'

  She seemed a bit nonplussed. No doubt a situation of this tenseness had not arisen before.

  'You can have your toy duck in the water.' I waved the suggestion aside.

  'It is useless to tempt me with bribes,' I said firmly. 'I will not be tubbed by you.' 'Oh, come along.' 'No, no, a thousand times no!'

  Matters appeared to have reached a deadlock. She gazed at me imploringly. I met her gaze with undiminished determination. The door opened. Miss Brinkmeyer entered.

  'It's time you had —'

  'Now, don't you begin.'

  '- your bath,' she concluded.

  'That's what I've been telling him,' said Ann.

  'Then why isn't he having it?'

  Ann hesitated. I could see that she did not wish to make trouble for me with the big white chieftainess, and I honoured her for the kindly thought. I helped her out.

  'I don't want to,' I said.

  'Want to?' The Brinkmeyer came through with one of her well-known snorts. 'It isn't a question of what you want, it's a question —'

  'Of modesty,' I thundered, cutting her short. 'The whole matter is one of principle. One has one's code. To a bath, qua bath,' I said, borrowing some of old Horace Plimsoll's stuff, 'I have no objection whatever. In fact, I should enjoy one. But when I am asked to countenance turning the thing into a sort of Babylonian orgy —'

  The Brinkmeyer looked at Ann.

  'What is he talking about?'

  'I don't understand. He's funny to-night.'

  'He doesn't amuse me.'

  'Strange, I mean.'

  'Nothing strange about it,' snorted the Brinkmeyer. 'That's what that fool of a dentist said. Tried to make me believe it was delirium. I told him the child was just being a pest, the way he always is. And that's what he's being now.'

  I delivered my ultimatum. I was civil but adamant. 'I will take my bath, but I cross that bathroom threshold alone.'

  'Yes, and splash your hand around in the water and come out pretending you've had it.'

  I treated the slur with the silent contempt it deserved. I grabbed my pyjamas and nipped into the bathroom, locking the door behind me. Swift, decisive action while they're still gabbling - that's the only way to handle women. They are helpless in face of the fait accompli.

  I fancy that the Brinkmeyer shouted a good many things, all probably in derogatory vein, through the door, but the rush of the water mercifully drowned her voice. I drew a piping-hot tub and sank into it luxuriantly. I could now hear what the Brinkmeyer was saying - something about scrubbing behind the ears - but I ignored her. One does not discuss these things with women. I found the toy duck, and it surprised me what pleasure I derived from sporting with it. And what with that and what with the soothing effects of a good long soak, I came out some twenty minutes later with my nervous system much restored. My feeling of bien etre was completed by the discovery that the Brinkmeyer was no longer with us. Worsted by my superior generalship, she had withdrawn, no doubt in discomfiture. Only Ann remained to tuck me up.

  This she did in a motherly manner which, I confess, occasioned me some surprise. I had always been fond of Ann - indeed, as we have seen, there had been a time when I had loved her - but in my dealings with her I had been conscious right along of - I won't say a hardness exactly but a sort of bright, cocksure, stand-no-nonsense bossiness, such as so many self-supporting American girls have, and this I had always considered a defect. She had lacked that sweet, soft, tender gentleness which had so drawn me to April June. But now she might have stepped straight into that poem about 'A ministering angel, thou', and no questions asked. As I say, it surprised me.

  She assembled the blankets about my person, rallying me affably as she did so.

  'You are a nut, young Joseph. What's the matter with you to-night?'

  'I'm all right.'

  'Just one of your humorous efforts, I suppose. You're a funny old bird, aren't you? One of these days, though, if you go on joshing Miss Brinkmeyer, she'll haul off and paste you one. I'm surprised she didn't do it just now.'

  These words had rather a sobering effect. I recognized their truth. Now that I looked back on the recent scene, I recalled that I had noticed her hand quiver once or twice, as if itching for the slosh.

  'H'm,' I said.

  'Yes, I'd be careful, if I were you. Restrain that love of fun of yours. The trouble with you, my Joseph, is that your sense of comedy is too keen. Anything for a laugh is your motto. Well, good night, old cut-up.'

  'Good night.'

  'Comfy?'

  'Fine, thanks.'

  'Better get to sleep as quick as you can. You've a busy day to-morrow.' She gave me what seemed to me a significant glance - why, I didn't know. 'Very busy, eh?'

  'Oh, rather,' I said, not wishing to betray ig.

  'It's all fixed for to-morrow evening.'

  'Oh, yes?'

  'Yes. Well, good night.'

  She kissed me on top of the head and pushed off, leaving me to lie there in thoughtful mood. One of the major catches of having been changed into little Joey Cooley, I perceived, was that, until I began to get the hang of things, I wasn't going to be able to understand what people were talking about half the time. A dashed nuisance, of course, but one that had to be faced.

  I lay there, gazing pensively at the open window, which had turned into a dark-blue oblong with a couple of stars in it. And, as I gazed, these stars suddenly disappeared. Some substantial body had inserted itself between them and me, and I could hear the slither of a leg coming over the sill.

  I switched on the light. A figure was standing in the room. It was the figure of a beefy bird in a quiet grey suit,

  its lower limbs finished off with powder-blue socks matching the neat tie and melting, as it were, into tasteful suede shoes. In fact, to cut a long story short, the third Earl of Havershot in person.

  ' 'Attaboy!' said this figure in a satisfied tone of voice. 'Here we are at last.'

  Chapter 11

  THE first thing I noticed about this new and revised edition of little Joey Cooley was that he didn't appear to be at all disturbed by what had occurred. The recent switch seemed to have made little or no impression on him. He was absolutely calm and quite collected. Insouciant would about describe his demeanour. He strolled across to the bed and sat down on it as if he hadn't a care in the world.

  I suppose the fact of the matter is that in Hollywood you get to learn to take the rough with the smooth, and after you've lived there for a time nothing rattles you - not even waking up and finding yourself in someone else's body. You simply say: 'Ah, someone else's body, eh? Well, well!' and carry on. His opening remarks did not deal with the switch, but with my supper menu.

  'Prunes!' he said, eyeing the stones with a slight shudder. 'It would be prunes. I don't suppose there's a kid alive that's eaten more prunes than I have. Well, buddy, you're welcome to them.'

  And adding something in a low voice about spinach, he produced from his breast pocket a rather tired-looking icecream cone and flicked a bit of dust off it.

  The spectacle affected me profoundly. Every fibre in my being seemed to call out for that cone.

  'Hi! Give me a lick!' I cried, in a voice vibrant with emotion.

  He passed it over without hesitation. If he had been Sir Philip Sidney with the wounded soldier, he couldn't have been nippier.

  'Sure,' he said agreeably. 'You can have it all. It's a funny thing, but I don't seem to like ice-cream cones so much as I used to. I could eat my weight in them once, but now they don't kind of have any fascination for me.

  And it's the same with chocolate cake and fudge and pumpkin pie and doughnuts and —'

  I cut him short with a passionate cry.

  'Stop it!’

  'Eh?'

  'Don't mention those things to me. Do you think I am made of marble?' 'Oh, sorry.'

  There was
a silence. I finished the cone.

  'Gee! You look a scream,' he said.

  'So do you look a scream,' I retorted.

  'I guess we both look screams,' he went on amiably. 'How do you suppose all this happened? Quite a surprise to me, it was. I woke up in the wrong room with a strange dentist pushing a glass at me and telling me to rinse, and then I found that I was somebody else, and I looked in the mirror and saw that it was you. Handed me a big laugh, that did.'

  'I don't see anything funny about it.'

  'Maybe you're right. But it tickled me at the time. Hello, I says to myself, there's a mistake somewhere. Have you any idea how the thing was worked?'

  I advanced my theory that there had been a mix-up in the fourth dimension. He seemed to think well of it.

  'Yessir, that's just about what it must have been, I guess. You never know what's going to happen to you next under this Administration, do you?'

  'Well, it doesn't matter how it happened. The point is that it is all most irregular and I want to know what the dickens we're going to do about it?'

  'Don't seem to me there's anything we can do about it.'

  'We could issue statements.'

  'What, tell people you're me and I'm you. Sure we could, if you don't mind being put in the booby-hatch.' 'You think that would be the upshot?' 'Well, wouldn't it?'

  'I suppose it would,' I said, having mused. 'Yes, I see what you mean There was no question about it that he was right. A clear, shrewd thinker, this kid. The loony-bin is inevitably the portion of those who go about the place telling that kind of story. I saw now that it would not, as I had at one time supposed, be merely a matter of incredulity and let it go at that on the part of one's audience. Strait waistcoats would be called for and padded cells dusted off.

  'Besides,' he said, 'I've no kick coming. I call this a good break for me. I like it.'

  In spite of the fact that I was in his debt for that icecream cone, I found his manner jarring upon me not a little. A dashed sight too smug, was my verdict.

  'You do, do you?'

  'Sure. I've always wanted to be big, and I am big. Swell I The way I look at it, everything's jakesey-jooksey.'

  My annoyance increased. His airy nonchalance gave me the pip. The young blighter appeared to have no thought except for self.

  'Jakesey-jooksey, eh?'

  'Jakesey-jooksey is right.'

  'For you, yes.'

  'Well, it's me I'm thinking about.' 'Then think about me for a bit.' 'You?'

  'Yes, me. If you want to know my views, I'm extremely sick about the whole bally business. I have a very definite feeling that I have been handed the sticky end of the deal. There I was, buzzing along perfectly happy as a member of the British peerage, eating well, sleeping well, nice income from rents and so on, and just got my golf handicap down to single figures. And what ensues? All of a sudden, without being consulted, I'm changed into a child who has to look slippy in order not to be bathed by females and whose social position seems to be that of some malefactor doing a five-year stretch at Dartmoor or somewhere. Ordered hither, ordered thither ... lugged into cars, lugged out of them ... hauled upstairs, bunged into bedrooms '

  He gave me an enquiring look. 'I see you've met the old girl.' 'I have.'

  'Did she get hold of your wrist and pull?' 'She did.'

  'She used to get hold of my wrist and pull. Full of energy, that dame. I think she eats a lot of yeast.' 'It isn't just energy. There was animus behind it.' 'Eh?'

  'I say her actions were inspired by animus. It is patent that she hates your gizzard.'

  'Well, yes, we've never been really buddies.' 'And why not?' 'I don't know.'

  'I do. Because you didn't conciliate her. Because you never bothered to exercise tact and suavity. A little more geniality on your part, a little more of the pull-together spirit, and she might have been a second mother to you. To take a simple instance, did you ever bring her a red apple?'

  'No.'

  'You see!'

  'What would I do that for?'

  'To conciliate her. It's a well-known method. Ask any of the nibs at the nearest kindergarten. It would have been the easiest of tasks to bring her a red apple. You could have done it on your head. Instead of which,' I said bitterly, 'you go about the place putting Mexican horned toads in her bed.'

  He blushed a little.

  'Why, yes.'

  'There you are.'

  'But that's nothing. What's a Mexican horned toad or so among friends?' 'Tchah!' 'I'm sorry.'

  'Too late to be sorry now. You've soured her nature.' 'Well, she soured mine. All those prunes and spinach.'

  'Tchah!' I said again. I was pretty shirty.

  We fell into another silence. He shuffled his feet. I stared bleakly before me.

  'Well, there it is,' he said, at length. He looked at my wrist watch. 'Say, I guess I'll have to be moving along in a minute. Before I go, let's get one or two things straightened out. Havershot you said your name was, didn't you?'

  'Yes.'

  'How do you spell it?'

  'You will find a card-case in that coat.'

  He fetched out the card-case.

  'Gee!' he said. 'Are you one of those English Oils?'

  'I am. Or, rather, I was.'

  'I always thought they were string-bean sort of guys without any chins. That's the way they are in the pictures.'

  'I used to go in for games, sports, and pastimes to a goodish extent, thus developing the thews and sinews.'

  'Kind of an athlete, eh?'

  'Precisely. And that's what makes me so particularly sick about all this. Look at that arm,' I said, exhibiting it. 'What's wrong with it?'

  'What's wrong with it! What future have I got with an arm like that? As far as boxing and football are concerned, it rules me out completely. While as for cricket, can I ever become a fast bowler again? I doubt if an arm like this will be capable of even slow, leg-theory stuff. It is the arm of one of Nature's long-stops. Its limit is a place somewhere down among the dregs of a house second eleven.'

  'I don't know what you're talking about.'

  'I'm talking about what's going to happen to me in a few years, when I go to school. Do you think I like the prospect of being a frightful little weed who will probably sing alto in the choir and for the privilege of kicking whose trouser seat the better element will fight like wolves?'

  'Well, say, listen,' he rejoined hotly, 'do you think I

  9i

  like the prospect of going about for the rest of my life with a face like this?' 'We will not discuss my face.'

  'No. Better hush it up, I guess. Golly, what a map!' 'Please!'

  *Well, you started it.'

  There was a rather stiff silence. We were both piqued. He looked at the watch again.

  'I got to be going,' he said. 'I've a call to make down at Malibu. Got to see my press agent.'

  'What for?'

  'Oh, just to say hello.'

  'You can't say hello to press agents looking like that.'

  'Oh, yes, that's all right. He'll understand. Say, there's another thing I just thought of. Where do I go nights?'

  'I beg your pardon?'

  'Well, I've got to sleep somewhere, haven't I? Where were you living?'

  'I told you. I have a bungalow at the Garden of the Hesperides.'

  'That's all right, then. Well, anything you want to know?'

  I thought for a moment. There were, of course, a hundred questions I wanted to ask, but I couldn't think of them. Then something occurred to me.

  'What's all this about unveiling a statue?'

  'Oh, that's just a statue of old Brinkmeyer.'

  'I see.'

  So they were shoving up a statue to the old boy, were they? Well, I had no objection. No doubt a thoroughly well-deserved honour. Whether a man who looked like a captive balloon was wise to allow statues of himself to be exhibited was, of course, a question to be decided by himself alone.

  'Do I unveil it?'

 
'Of course you don't. Anything else?'

  'They were saying something about some Michigan Mothers.'

  'That's a deputation that's come over from Detroit. You receive them.' 'Admirers, are they?'

  'That's right. The Michigan branch of the Joey Cooley Faithful Fan Club.*

  'They come to pay their respects, as it were?'

  'That's the idea. And you receive them.'

  'Oh, well, I don't suppose I shall mind that.'

  He seized the opening. It was plainly his desire to cheer and encourage.

  'Sure you won't. You aren't going to mind anything. You mustn't believe all that stuff I was telling you in the waiting-room. I was feeling kind of down, on account that tooth of mine was giving me the devil. You'll find this a pretty soft racket you've dropped into. You've got about the biggest following of anyone in pictures. Wait till you see the fan mail. And it's sort of fun acting up in front of the camera. Yessir, I think you're going to like it. Well, I must be scramming. Pleased to have met you.'

  He moved to the window and shoved a leg over the sill.

  'Oh, say, look,' he said, pausing. 'About Ma Brinkmeyer I almost forgot to tell you. If you ever want another horned toad, you get it from the gardener with the squint and the wart on his nose. He's always around the place. Just tell him it's for putting in Miss Brinkmeyer's bed, and he won't charge you anything.'

  He disappeared, to pop up again a moment later.

  'Oh, say, look,' he said, 'there's something I ought to warn you about. I'll give you a ring to-morrow.'

  I sat up, a-quiver.'

  'Warn me about?'

  'Yay. I haven't time to tell you now, but there's something you've got to watch out for. I'll phone you in the morning.'

  He disappeared once more, and I lay back, still a-quiver.

  I hadn't liked those last words. A sinister ring they had seemed to me to have.

  However, I wasn't able to brood on them long. Nature took its toll of the tired frame. Before I knew where I was, my eyes were closing, and I was asleep.

  My first day as Joey Cooley had ended.

  Chapter 12

  I SUPPOSE everybody's had the experience at one time or another of waking up after a nightmare in which they were chased by leopards or chewed by cannibals or some such thing and drawing a deep breath and saying to themselves : 'Phew! Good egg 1 It was only a dream, after all.' A dashed agreeable sensation it is, too.