Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

What ho, Readers! 

I know Jeeves was good enough to point out that some of the things in our stories are not quite as they happened, but dash, it, they are stories after all.  Or maybe I explained that to him.  It gets muddled at times, these things over the years. 

My old schoolfellow and fellow Drone, Stilton Cheesewright, helped me quite a bit with this tale, as he did with the “Darkest Hour.” I took some notes as we were reading the page whatsits for the publisher bloke, frightfully nice cove and all that, but rather stern about the punctuation.

“Wooster, please assure me that you did not say that emotions flash upon my vast, pumpkin-like lemon in a fairly rude and obvious fashion.”

“I said bean, old top.”

“You are worse than Florence.”

“That’s dashed unfair, Stilton.  This was before we became friends, and you are referring to the time when you and Flossie were engaged.  I am much nicer to you now.”

“Don’t let her hear you call her ‘Flossie.’  I’ll not protect you from her wrath. What type of friend complains about the other’s ‘beefy embrace’?”

“We were certainly not friends that day, Stilton.  The willowy form was like to have never recovered.”

“True enough, Wooster. Thank-you for editing my prose.  I hate those little wiggly things.”

“Semi-colons?”

“No, the little blighters.”

“Those would be commas, I believe, Stilton.”

“Well I hate them.  Never bally where they ought to be.”

“Jeeves suggested that it was as well to corral them to our fishing line or somesuch.”

“Perhaps you should check to see what he actually did suggest.”

“Good idea.  And then shall we have a snifter or two and play darts afterward?”

“You always win at that.”

“We could throw cards into a top hat. Half points for leaners.”

“Bally good.”

The following tale starts, well, it’s deuced heartbreaking, absolutely beyond the frozen limit as Aunt Dahlia might have said back in the days when stealing cow creamers was quite the rummy adventure.  I am not sure how I lived through it, but I have, and, well, I hope you can as well.

The ending is, well, perhaps not what we would have chosen at the outset, but rather cheerful, I found in the end, er, ah, yes, the end.

Chapter Text

Jeeves

The sun rises, and my darling Bertie is lying asleep in my arms, nestled against me like a precious lamb.  I am so grateful that my mind is clear and I have these last hours to enjoy the feel of him in my arms, to pretend to myself that when he awakens, we will make love as we once did and then rise and spend the day together as friends and companions. It would be too hard to speak with the end so near, and my heart contracts to feel how thin he has grown with the anxiety of caring for me. I close my eyes and will back the tears as I allow myself to face the horrible truth.  Today I will die, far too young and far too soon. We have had more than twenty years together and I should feel grateful, but I can never forgive myself for leaving him like this, still in the prime of his life. Worse, there is business to attend to, such awful business, and Bertie, my kind, darling Bertie, will have to attend to it in my stead.  I cannot believe I have failed him so utterly and profoundly.

My only consolation is that I will be able to leave my darling in the full knowledge of how very deeply he is beloved. No man has ever been so thoroughly and tenderly adored as Bertie Wooster, but I fear that this will only increase his pain at losing me. There are so many things to tell him, but all I can say is that I love him. Were the situation reversed, I do not think I could carry on, but he is stronger than I am, braver and more honorable. I suspect he knows the truth but is hiding his grief from me much as I have endeavored to hide my fear and rage. I can only hope that his cheerful disposition will see him through this trial and allow him to have a new life without me.  I cannot bear the thought of him alone and unloved when he has been so used to tender affection. My heart has been sick with the fear of what will happen to him when I am gone, but for now I am comforted by the feel of his beloved body next to mine.

Bertie

I woke to a perfectly beautiful day, nestled in Reg’s loving arms. After our separations during the war and the fear that I would never see him again, it was always so blasted wonderful to wake to his beloved face. I pretended not to notice the blue tinge to his lips. We kissed and snuggled tenderly as we did each morning since his pains had started. I cannot bring myself to share the particulars of our last morning together, but it was perfectly spectacular. Then I got our breakfast. I took care of nearly everything because I wanted him to rest, which was what we said instead of “live.”  That was what I really wanted, but it was not possible, so we had wordlessly agreed to lie to each other and enjoy our remaining time together. There would be years enough for my anger and grief after he was gone, time to be sick over the web of deception we wove for ourselves in the face of the unfairness of the illness that would steal him from me.  I could bear that burden after he was gone—he had carried so much more of the load for me for so many years.

We ate our last meal and then went into town.  I wanted him to stay back because I was planning to sneak in a pair of really fruity purple loafers, but he insisted. We took the car because he was too ill to walk so far and we stopped several times to take passengers since petrol was in short supply and we all shared what we had. Then he bought me the loafers and I knew. It was the last day, the last gift, the last thing he would ever do for me.  But I was wrong about the final bit.  The mouth flapped and he looked at me with such sorrow that it absolutely broke my heart to know it was beyond my power to comfort him. And then he went grey and clutched his chest.  “I love you, Bertie, so very dearly.  I am so terribly, terribly sorry, love.”  That was the last thing he did for me, dying with words of love on his dear lips. I had time to catch him in my arms and kiss him before he breathed his last. 

Only years later did I understand how carefully he had schemed. He must have woken with the pains and taken an extra pill or two or three to see him through because he did not want to die in our bed. Such a thing would have broken him, and he did not want to pain me in that way. Even though I was grateful for his thoughtfulness, it took a long time to forgive him for not giving me his last moments alone and even longer to forgive all the little schemes and dishonesties I discovered after he died.  He had owned my heart for so many years, and I loved him more than my own life, but we had always labored with the remnants of our first association as master and servant.  It took Stilton Cheesewright to point out that Jeeves had died apologizing before I understood how careful the two of us had been all those years together. We had viewed our love and our time together as a forbidden thing that could be snatched away at any moment.

Jeeves and I had been staying at our dilapidated villa for the past eighteen months, and all the townspeople knew us. Some had known us for nearly twenty years. They always smiled when they saw us hand in hand, talking or quarreling, or kissing. A gasp went up as Jeeves crumpled to the ground. In an instant we were surrounded by well-meaning friends offering their help, and in another instant everyone went silent and stepped back. The hush was uncanny, they told me afterwards, but all I could see or hear was Reg. Our friends gave me the gift of his last breath before they gently pulled me away and carried us to our car and drove us home.  I sat in the back seat, holding him, hoping that there had been some mistake and he would awaken.

He didn’t wake up. The pain was so blinding that I went numb. I would not let anyone else help with the body.  The women scolded, but I insisted politely at first and then I began weeping when they tried to force me away from his dear form. I couldn’t let anyone else see the scars on his chest or touch his private bits.  He had hidden them so carefully from everyone except me. The women kindly backed off and told me what to do for him.  It was nothing compared with what he had done for me for so many years.

I wrapped him up carefully in some old sheets and we laid him out in the cellar on a bed of ice so the body would not spoil while they fetched a priest and dug the grave. No one even smirked when I had them bring blankets because he looked so cold. I sat next to him all night and all the next day and night, holding his cold, cold hand and talking to him. There were so many things left to tell him but all I could say was, “I love you.” The women hovered nearby and left glasses of water and wine and small plates of food, just a few bites on each.  I could eat a few bites, they said. I could take just a sip of something.  They were right.  I could sometimes. So I drank or ate when they reminded me, but mostly I talked to Jeeves and wept.  Everyone was so beautifully patient and gentle with me. Not a moment went by that there was not a kindly reassuring hand within arm’s reach of my shoulder when I bent my head under the crushing weight of pain and sorrow.

On the second morning, Stilton Cheesewright arrived, grave and red-eyed. My neighbors looked relieved that some better friend had come to help me, someone who understood my strange, reserved ways. They knew how much Reg and I loved each other and it distressed them that I was not howling in grief and rage as they would have been over the loss of a kind, handsome man not quite fifty years old. I had not had the heart to cable or call anyone.  My family had stopped contacting me after Uncle George had died and I became Lord Yaxley. Jeeves’s family had disowned him outright when our nature was discovered. They had to, we both knew, but it had been an agony to him, poor darling. At first, I did not know who had called Stilton, but I was grateful.  In all our years together, he had been our most constant friend and companion.  I owed him my life.  He came to me and laid a heavy, gentle hand on my shoulder.  I had never known he could be so soft, but deep sorrow can do things to a chap.

“Wooster.”

“Cheesewright.”

“You did a wonderful job for him. The whole town is talking about it.  Apparently, they thought Jeeves was the wife in your little household, and they are duly impressed that you would tend to him in this way. They showed me the place.  It’s covered with flowers.”

I closed my eyes and leaned the bean against his huge arm. “Have they done with the grave, Stilton? They’ve been so bally slow.” I looked up.

The tears started down his face.  His mouth worked for a moment before he could get the words out. “Not quite, Bertie,” he finally managed to gasp.  The neighbors nodded approvingly and put down a chair for him, patting him kindly and giving him a plate of food and a glass of wine.  No introductions were necessary.  Everyone knew that Stilton was our closest friend.  He had been with us for months, leaving just before Christmas on some business or other.  I could have collapsed with the relief that he was back.

“Did he call you away from something?  Is that why they have been dawdling?  Did they know you were coming?”

Stilton’s face took on a strange look. “He asked the shopkeeper to wire while you were looking at those bally loafers. I am dreadfully sorry it took so long to reach you, Bertie.  I missed the last train from Paris that night.”

“How long can you stay?”

“As long as you need me.”

We buried Jeeves at dusk, in his comfortable pale linen suit, wrapped in a linen shroud as he had wanted. I shooed the neighbors from the room so I could unwrap the wet things and dress him for his final rest. I arranged his ring around his neck for the final time, thinking back to the day I had given it to him. Stilton left the room while I attended to the most private things but came back and insisted on helping me dress him. He carried Reg’s poor body and laid it on a plank of wood.  Then he held me up as we walked to the burial and helped arrange him in the grave. I wore the purple loafers with my dark suit and everyone hushed the priest when he started to scold. He must have been giving last rites in the next town not to have heard the story.  A huge gabble went up and he started to weep before he prayed over the body.

At the grave, Stilton held me up while every single person in the town came to leave a gift of flowers and say something kind about Signor Jeeves. I thanked each of them by name. Stilton snorted at me when I wondered how either of us could have been so important to so many people when we hardly stirred from the villa during our frequent visits. Finally we went back to the house. They let me sit in a chair while everyone milled around eating food they had brought and weeping. Someone deposited a baby in my lap because I liked babies. When I went into town, I bought them sweets, which were expensive after the war. They had picked a jolly one, just toddling, and he hugged me and rested his head on the Wooster chest. It was so dashed comforting to have the little fellow nestled against me, and my face relaxed for the first time in days. I hadn’t realized until that moment how tightly I had been holding myself together for Reg those last weeks.  He had been so ill, so unlike himself, until that last morning. When the little fellow began to squirm, they replaced him with a quieter model and I fell asleep with that one plastered against me. Eventually, everyone oozed out and Stilton and I sat looking at each other across a mountain of flowers and mass cards and plates of food.  The sun was just beginning to rise when he spoke.

“You have a lot of thank-you’s to write, Wooster.”

I opened my mouth to say that Jeeves would surely help, and then I suddenly understood.  I had been going along, thinking that as soon as the ordeal of burying him was over, I could curl up in our bed and he would come to comfort me as he had in every other time of sorrow. I had never needed him more and for the first time in our long association, he would fail me. He would never be there again. My face crumpled, but Stilton started moving before the realization fully settled and he had me by an arm as the legs went to jelly beneath me. I sagged against his sturdy form then stiffened the upper lip and righted myself. “How can I live without him, Stilton?  Whatever will I do?” I whispered in an agony of grief. Jeeves had been a friend and support for my entire adult life, my closest advisor, my lover and consolation in times of sorrow.  Our love had cost us other friendships and our profession had isolated us, but he had always been there and now he was gone.

Stilton looked drawn and haggard and I could only imagine how I appeared.  It had been weeks since I had slept through the night. “The doctor gave me some pills for you, Wooster.  Do you want them?”

“No, thank-you, old bean.”

“Come with me for a swim. It will soothe you.”

“I don’t want to be soothed, Stilton.”

He deflated a bit and seemed to settle something within himself. “Please, Wooster. It will soothe me, and I am bally well in need of it.  This was the hardest day’s work I have ever done, and by the looks of you it will be rough going for some time yet.  Have a heart.”

I looked up in surprise, the thorax relaxing as it had when the baby fell asleep on me. I felt my face ease.  Stilton needed me to be a friend in his time of sorrow as well. One of his two closest friends had died and he had not been able to say good-bye. And the other friend had not called him. It felt oddly comforting to know I still had a job to do. It had been a long time since Reg and I had been able to support each other evenly, and I had missed the companionableness of it. “Ah.  Of course, then, old bean.”

We swam. Stilton was right—it did soothe me, the more so because he was there paddling about like an oversized and very muscular duck, fretting about drowning without an oar in his hand—then we went inside and wrote thank-you notes all night. Or I did. Stilton fell asleep on the large chaise, the one where Reg and I used to read and snuggle, before he had stopped reading. In the morning Stilton yawned and I made more coffee. “You have been up for days, Wooster.  You need some rest.”

The eyes spilled over. “I can’t. If I go to sleep, I’ll forget, Stilton.  I’ll forget and when I wake up, it will be just like losing him again.”

He nodded and gripped my shoulder.  “It will get better, Wooster.” I remembered, then, the weeks he had spent with us when his partner had married.  Wally was such a brave fellow, always shielding D’Arcy from the worst, or so we thought.  He turned out to be a craven scooter of the first, last, dash it, the cravenest water. At first we thought the marriage had been forced, but when we saw them after the wedding, it was obviously a love match and no one had been brave or kind enough to tell Stilton. For days, Cheesewright had staggered about like a half-dead thing impaled by sorrow and then he had suddenly recovered. It had been nearly fifteen years ago. Wally had died in the war.  I didn’t know if they had ever had a chance to mend a friendship from the ruins of their union.

“Will it?”

Stilton’s eyes filled and then spilled over. “I apologize. They always tell you to lie in these circumstances, but I have never really lied to you and cannot begin now. I really do not know, Bertie. I have never experienced anything like what you are enduring just now. Do you want me to stay with you?  Is there anything I can do for you?”

I shook the golden head.  “You need your rest, Stilton.  I’ll stay on the chaise.”  He gasped.

“I’ll change the linens for you, then.”

“No!”  I felt nearly mad, but my voice dropped to a bleak whisper. “They still smell of him. It’s the only thing I have left.  Oh, Stilton, whatever will I do?”

“Will you take a pill as a favor to me and sleep on the couch in my room? I hate to ask you, Wooster, but I am flagging and so sore at heart.” I woke up hazy and confused, and wandered into my room, looking for Reg.  He was not in the bed, and I opened the door to the bath before I remembered, then collapsed on the floor sobbing in utter anguish to think of him there in the cold, hard earth with nothing to comfort him in the awful loneliness of death.

When Stilton found me, I was gasping silently, curled up in a ball of agony on the floor. “I apologize, Wooster. I should have thought but I was so knackered.”  He bent to pick me up and I started sobbing again, hanging over his arm.  “Hush, Bertie, hush.”  Stilton is a huge beefy cove and he easily peeled me from the floor and tucked me into my bed.  It smelled like Reg and I smiled reflexively, then an almost crushing weight of sorrow overtook me.  “You should stay here.  It will comfort you.” Stilton tucked me in well with the pillows and gave me some pills and then sat with a hand on my shoulder until I drifted to sleep, the tears coursing down his cheeks.

I spent most of the next week sleeping or swimming in the lake with Stilton, but I was awake all night every night. It was full moonlight and the gratitude I felt for having so many thank-you’s to write was immense. Every afternoon, some kind woman or other from the village brought a baby or two and tucked them in with me, then sat by the bedside knitting or mending or darning something, so I could sleep more easily. I will never forget the somber eyes of the little tykes as they insisted on feeding me their sweets. They gave me a bite or two of whatever I would take and the women brushed my hair and told me that I was “bello.” I can never repay that very great kindness in my time of sorrow. Then one morning, Reg’s scent had gone and I got up and took a bath and stiffened the upper lip and started to act like a man again. A look of utter relief flashed on the Cheesewright lemon when I walked into the kitchen and started making coffee.  He quietly left the room and came back red-eyed and shaking.  Wordlessly, we squeezed each other’s arms and then went on with the day.

Jeeves had made a will, but there was very little to bequeath.  He’d signed all of his assets over to me, except a legacy to Stilton, and he had arranged his affairs as soon as he’d learned how ill he was. I was phenomenally wealthy and my money matters were in a state that even I could manage easily. There were pages of written instructions at the house and copies in a safe deposit box.  I had realized rather late that he had written them as much for himself as for me. He had become forgetful and hazy in the past year and we had both had recourse to these notes many times. 

It took some days before I was able to face his family. My own were bally awful enough. Aunt Dahlia, who had been deeply wounded when she discovered my secret, told me bitterly that it served me right for going off with Jeeves and breaking her own and Angela’s hearts.  Claude and Eustace asked for the manor house, which I had been renting out to Bingo Little.  Angela said she was sorry but refused to come and offer aid and succor.  It had cost a great deal to ask, and the heart bled profusely. Only Aunt Agatha of, all people, was kind. “Thank-you for phoning me during this difficult time, Bertie. I have missed your antics, and I am proud of you for standing up and acting like a man, even if I can never admit it to anyone else.” I gabbled some thanks and she continued, “You always were a gentle soul, and I do still wish you would find a nice girl to settle down with before I die. You have plenty of time to breed children. It would be such a comfort to know you are not adrift and alone.”  Aunt Dahlia must have felt guilty, because I received a phone call from Anatole assuring me that we were still great friends and inviting me to his place in Paris.

Jeeves’s uncle Charlie had died years before, and there was no other member of the Jeeves family on friendly terms with us except my old pal Biffy Biffen, who married Jeeves’s niece. Finally, I phoned Biffy’s wife, Mabel and she was kind, much kinder than she had been while he was alive.  The heart warmed briefly, but then the solicitors sent her a copy of the will and she was like a bally implacable iceberg. “He left nothing for the children.”  I could hear her gritting the teeth over the line.

“Once the news broke, you never let him see them, Mabel.” I explained patiently.  “He loved you and you broke his very heart. He would have done anything for you and you cut him off before even giving him a chance to explain. What choice did he have but to stay with me?”

Her voice caught, but she remained chilly.  “If he had loved us enough he would never have gone off with you like that, Mr. Wooster.  He loved you so much that none of the rest of us mattered to him any more.  How were we to cope with that?”

“The same way he coped when you went off with Biffy.  He reunited you.  Have you forgotten all he did for you?”

The phone went silent and I thought she had hung up.  “I am terribly sorry for your loss,” she said.  “I will tell the others if it makes it easier for you.” I thanked her, but I sent the letters and read the replies, each more unpleasant than the last. I burned them all before anyone else could see the bitter, hateful words. Then I got word of something odd. Letters and parcels had started pouring in to the flat in Paris from the Drones, and other friends, and Jeeves’s old cronies from the Junior Ganymede club. This puzzled me until Biffy sent a long, long letter of apology and explanation. He had told everyone what had happened and they were able to be kind and generous in the face of my terrible loss.  So many of them had been indebted to Jeeves for some advice or favor, and somehow his heroism during the war and his service to the crown eclipsed any suspicions about his abode in Italy and his attachment to a foppish and silly employer.  About a week later, Mabel phoned me back.  “Charles scolded me so frightfully. He has always been against this separation. We would like you to come to us when you are in New York.”

“Thank-you, Mabel, that would be delightful.”  She sounded happy but I knew I could never go anywhere he had not been welcomed.  Biffy came to visit us in Paris eventually, but I did not see Mabel again for many long years.

I rested the forehead on the knees, and Stilton floated into the room from wherever he had been hovering.  “Come for a swim Wooster.”

I lifted the bean and attempted a cheerful smile. “I am all right, Stilton.”

He snorted bleakly. “You are jolly well not all right. Your face is the color of damp newspaper.” Then he looked sheepish. “But as it happens, I am afraid to swim by myself and I need you. Please come with me.”

“All right then, Stilton.” It was deuced soothing to be in the water, and I had gone so many times with other friends that the associations with Reg were not so strong as long as I kept away from our special place by the dock. But we had stopped using that some time before and I found that with Stilton nearby flapping about like a bally huge water animal, I could float there remembering the past without losing control of myself.  I still broke down whenever I entered the study.  Stilton seemed subdued and I had marked it down to his friendship with Jeeves, for they had been chummy, but as the weeks passed, I began to wonder if something else was troubling him. 

Jeeves and I had a flat in Paris and, of course, the one in London, where we had met and begun our life together. He had never let me sell it for some reason, and I assumed it was sentiment.  Thankfully, I was not welcome in England and would not have to face those well-beloved rooms without his ministering presence. Stilton would help me in Paris, he said. Anatole could take a week to supervise the packing with Stilton, and they would have everything shipped. The little chef phoned to say he would come to Paris as well, but I was not to leave the villa until Stilton came back for me. I was grateful, but surely Stilton had other things to do.  He had been with us a great deal, and then at Christmas some pressing business had called him away.  I hated to think I was keeping him from something, or someone, important.

“Stilton, old bean, it’s been nearly two months. Don’t you have to get back?  I hate to keep you from your life this way.”

Cheesewright got a rummy look on the bean, rather as he did in the old days when he was about to tell me that I was a coddled pipsqueak. “Wooster, I am here for as long as you need me.”

“But my dear chap, haven’t you things to attend to?”

The rummy look deepened, and he pulled a crumpled letter from the breast pocket.  “You’d better read this, Wooster.”

It was from Jeeves.  He had written it nearly two years earlier.  I skimmed, fighting the urge to break down.  His handwriting had grown so wobbly in the last months.

Dear D’Arcy;

…I am gravely ill…. Bertie’s kind, affectionate heart will require a companion in his grief.  You have been our dearest friend for so many years.  Please, D’Arcy, look after him until he can look after himself again.

…Under the floorboard in my old room is a box.  I can trust you not to open it, but deliver it to him untouched.

“So there was something between the two of you during the war, then?”  I felt myself growing very angry, but Stilton laughed and my heart released itself.

“Wooster, you fool,” he said.  He wanted to say “ass,” but he had not called me that since the time we had been imprisoned together.  “There was something between me and that American friend of yours, Todd, the poet, and Jeeves covered for us.  He never told you?” I shook the head. “Rum, I thought he would.”

“He promised not to, perhaps?”

“He did, but I never expected him not to include you in the secret.  He’d leave some paper lying about, that sort of thing.”

I flushed. Likely he had and I had not read it. I did not start to read his things until after he became ill. “Rocky was always a sore topic between the two of us, Stilton.”

“Rocky! That’s the name. Yes, decent chap, Wooster.  It was a splendid furlough. Did the two of you have a go back before you and Jeeves?”

I hung the head. “Not exactly, Stilton, but Jeeves thought we did.”

A light went off in the Cheesewright cranium.  “Is that why he… in New York?  That importuning that you pipped me off for in that blasted purple hat all those years ago?”

“Yes.  And we never mentioned it again.”

“I see. I never understood why you were so pipped.  He was well able to take care of himself.”

I could never share with him the pain Reg had been in thinking I had taken another lover.  It was too personal. “What happened to Rocky, anyway?”

“Went back to New York.  Got married. Then divorced, I think.  Americans do that.”

“Ah. But Stilton, please do not feel obligated to see to me.  You can see how they come and bring the babies for me to play with. Dashed comforting to have the little fellows nestled against you for an hour or so.”

“The last one was a girl, you twit.  They likely want you to take one of the orphans, Bertie.”

I shook my head sadly.  “No, Stilton, they like us well enough but they refused when we offered. The little fellows need to be raised as Italians, you see. They just need a bit of money from time to time to take care of them properly.”  Besides which, they knew very well what Reg and I were—spies, that is—and didn’t want the poor things losing another family to violence.

Stilton’s look became rather rummy. “I have nothing else pressing to do, Wooster.”

The idea of him leaving cast a pall over Wooster, but it would not do to get dependent on him. He was just being a chum. “They don’t want you to run that bally MI20?”

He bowed the beefy head. “No, Wooster, they want me to help you run that bally MI20.  We need to find the Wolf and bring him in this time.  He’s needed, apparently, and you’re the only living person he has been willing to speak to. Much like Dumas.  I’ve delayed them for the past year because Jeeves was so sick.”

I shuddered and went to expel the small contents of the Wooster stomach. Stilton came and held my forehead up and placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “They bally well have to change the number.” I said through gritted teeth while I held Stilton’s forehead and rubbed the back of his neck as he spewed out a great deal more than I had. 

“Agreed.” 

And so we became partners for the last mission.  Stilton left for London and I would have three weeks alone in the villa.  Or so I thought.

Chapter Text

Stilton

D’Arcy Cheesewright was sore at heart as he left Italy and returned to London.  Leaving Bertie behind him felt terribly, utterly wrong. They had mixed poorly as boys and Jeeves had served as a sort of intermediary between them in their early days as spies. Then they had been imprisoned together and Bertie had become D’Arcy’s confidante in matters of the heart. Eventually, after the war when housing and funds were tight, D’Arcy had begun to make his primary home with them. Of course, Jeeves had been up to something just before he fell ill and D’Arcy could have used the company to distract him from wondering what exactly he had been doing.  He had no idea whether Bertie knew or understood what Jeeves had found, or even if some discovery had precipitated Jeeves’s final illness. And since Bertie had mentioned nothing, whatever it was had to be unpleasant. Perhaps matters would sort themselves out quickly, but of course they did not.  D’Arcy was glad Jeeves had written such detailed instructions.  Even in death, the man was a bally genius.

The flat in Berkeley Mansions had been ransacked.  Every glass and plate had been broken, every cabinet ripped from the walls in the kitchen. D’Arcy hired a fellow to cart the trash away and began cleaning bit by careful bit.  He started by sweeping up the broken dishes and glassware, having the fellow cart out the shards, then the broken cabinets, the shredded remains of Jeeves’s books, mattress and bedding.  It took a day before he moved to the front room.  The fellow carted out the broken bits of furniture, the bent golf clubs, the shredded and motheaten coats from the closet. A whangee looked still serviceable and a silk evening scarf. The piano wires had been cut, but the music was still in the bench.  Stilton smiled when he saw “Forty-seven Ginger-Headed Sailors,” which had been a favorite, and “Minnie the Moocher.”  By the end of the week, the wreckage was cleared, the fellow paid up and Anatole had arrived.

The chef was old and seemed a bit frail, but he looked stern as billy-o. “You are the man who tries to break the spine of nice Mr. Wooster,” he said.

D’Arcy felt this was lacking as a greeting.  “Not for twenty years, M. Anatole.”

The chef remained stern and steely eyed. “Now you are friends?  You are liking Mr. Wooster now? You are being kind to him?”

A blush stained D’Arcy’s cheeks.  “Yes, I am liking Mr. Wooster now.”

Anatole smiled warmly and patted D’Arcy on the arm almost fondly.  “Good.  He needs a strong friend by him now.”

Jeeves had always had a strong familiarity with the Machiavellian.  His hidey holes about the flat were clever and not a single one had been discovered.  D’Arcy pulled a small wooden box from under a floorboard in Jeeves’s old bedroom, a book from behind two loose tiles in the bathroom, and a jewel case from under the molding in the back of the hall closet.  Anatole came up with a collection of timbale  pans out of the boarded-up dumb waiter and a large stash of purple berets from the very back of the linen cupboard.  In the master bedroom, D’Arcy found a pink tie rumpled up behind the smashed remains of the wardrobe and pile of shriveled things that on inspection were deemed by Anatole to be very old strawberries.

They packed up the contents of the linen closet to be sold and then D’Arcy sorted out the pieces of silver very carefully, choosing a few items and then asking Anatole to bring the rest to Lady Worplesdon.  Mrs. Travers had an aversion to anything made of silver since her second husband had died. Bertie had said that he never wanted to see the things again. Anatole surveyed the remains of the furniture. “Are you having some place to stay?”

D’Arcy had been sleeping on the slashed mattress in the guest room.  “No, M. Anatole.  I was staying here, but it is not so good with no furniture and broken bits everywhere.”

Anatole laughed and slapped D’Arcy on the arm jocularly. “I am liking you, spine-breaking man. You are very funny at this sad time, and it is good for my heart.  Let us stay in my flat.  We will have some nice filet mignon au poivre and we will speak kind words of our friend, who now is gone from us.”

“Can we get such a thing, M. Anatole?  The rationing?”

Anatole smiled.  “I have a lovely flambé pan at my small flat and a friend in the country gave me some beefs. For such a good man, it is important to do this. You will come with me and we will share his favorite meal and speak of our friend Reginald.” D’Arcy started, and Anatole winked.  “You are not so silly, I think, that you do not know the name of Mr. Jeeves? Or perhaps you do not understand that I am ‘bally flambé blighter’?”

“Thank-you, M. Anatole.  I brought you some wine and brandy from France.  Wooster insisted.”

“Mr. Wooster is a very nice man.”

“He is a very nice man, indeed.”

They left, locking the door behind them.  Two days later, a man with a scarred face was arrested for breaking in the back door.

Bertie

The day Stilton left, I was up most of the night.  One of our friends, Carlo, came by with some food for me.  I imagined at the time that his mother saw the light shining and sent him.  He had been a boy when we first started coming to the villa, and had grown up into a truly, heart-scaldingly beautiful man.  He had never married and he spent a great deal of time with us before Reg became so ill.

“I miss you, Bertie,” he said simply, putting some pasta into a bowl. That was rummy, because Stilton and I had taken back up with most of my pursuits, playing soccer with the lads and bocce with the old gents, visiting the orphans to play with the babies, and tending a garden. Carlo saw us frequently.  I set the food aside and he pulled a stool to my side and offered to feed me.

“No, thank-you, young top.”  He smiled. This had been a joke from long ago. When he was a boy, I’d called him “old top” and he had insisted that he was not old, but young.  I wished he would go away.

“You are getting too thin and too sad,” he said.  “I will stay with you and love you until your friend returns.” His meaning was not Platonic, if that is the word I want. The skin absolutely crawled, which was rummy because he was a friend and beautiful.

I blenched at the thought of ‘loving’ anyone but Reg. It had been more than a year since we had done anything even remotely strenuous and my body ached for the contact, but my heart sickened at the thought. “Ah, Carlo, you are so kind, but I simply…”

He took my hand and stroked it.  “I have wanted you for many years, S. Bertie.  No love will be like your love for S. Jeeves.  This will be the most special love for you, but my love could comfort you these weeks until your friend comes back.  Then I can find another, but it has been hard with this wanting for you.” He was so beautiful but I could never accept his offer.  I tried to speak, but the pipes closed up and I found myself sobbing.  He took me in his arms and I struggled, but it was too much work to shrug him off.  “I will stay with you now,” he said, when I quieted.  The insides curled up in dread.  He tidied the food away, and then helped me up to one of the guest bedrooms. I followed like a lamb, and then something else twisted inside me. I patted him on the shoulder, gently but firmly, and stepped away.

“You are a very good friend, Carlo.” I patted the side of his beautiful face, and then I went to my room and closed the door gently and locked it behind me, shuddering in revulsion. 

Reg and I had long since moved to the big bed in the middle of the large bedroom, but we had left a bed in the smaller dressing room where we had slept for a year or so after I had been imprisoned and tortured.  I curled up in that old refuge and lay awake looking at our empty bed.  I felt cleansed of grief suddenly.  Carlo was right.  There could be a different type of love than what Reg and I had shared, but I was bally well not going to be led around and mindlessly coddled again.  My time with Reg had made a man of me in so many ways, and I wanted to be that man now.  If I found another lover, it would be someone willing to treat me like a man, not some sort of broken reed or weakened baby.

Carlo took the rejection reasonably well when I explained how I felt.  It was my duty, I told him, to protect him because he was still a boy to me.  He laughed at my English ways and stayed on anyway, cheerfully helping me about the place.  It was like magic. I found myself able to eat and sleep, even though I had started the awful task of going through Reg’s things.

He had been very careful, shielding me until the very end, and most everything was in order.  We had both had plenty of time to prepare. I found his diaries and set them aside to read or burn later.  Then I found an envelope addressed to me.  He had written it when he first became ill, before his mind started to weaken and left it so that I would find it when he died. I never shared it with anyone else, but something inside me turned to ice as I read it. For the very first time I could see him maneuvering behind each carefully written word, scheming to protect us as long as possible, trying to manipulate reality. He meant it to comfort, I know, but it did not. The terror he must have experienced in those early days struck me to the quick. I had never realized how shamed he often felt in the face of my Code of the Woosters, more shamed than I was to always be so much slower to understand.  I had never recognized his continued feeling of indebtedness, his sense that he could never give me enough for having saved him from another type of life.

Then I looked at the pages from the Junior Ganymede book and my insides seethed in long-delayed anger.  I had never read them, never seen the mean littleness in some of his earliest entries, the cold calculation behind some of his actions while he struggled against his feelings for me.  He had apologized, and I had forgiven him, but I had never really seen or understood what I was forgiving because the constancy of his affection from the time we reached our understanding had clouded my judgment. I had never really recognized why he had been so fearful that I would reject him. As I read, I realized that his fear had been warranted and I forgave myself for every petty and imperious word I had spoken to him in those early days.  I burned the pages and the letter and tried to put them out of my mind, reminding myself that these were long-ago events and I had long since forgiven him.

Then I sorted through his clothes, making piles for various people around the town.  Carlo brought me a cedar chest for the things I wanted to keep—my tattered pink soft-bosomed shirt, his tight-fitting black trousers, his paisley pajama bottoms and the twisted and mangled watch chain and locket he had given me when we were young lovers.  That was all.  I gave everything else—his clothes, pajamas, shoes—away.  Then I locked all the doors and burned all the clothes from our special lovemaking bag, all the scented oils.  I would not have been able to bear to see those on anyone else. I cut his collection of my old clothes, the ones that meant something dear to him, into rags. Everything. Then I started on the books.  I kept the first book I had given him, but I boxed up the Rosie M. Banks and the other improving things, flipping carefully through each one and removing the photographs and mementos.  I would ship them to Mabel.  I gave away his pillow and somehow bought new sheets for our bed and new towels, discarding the ones we had shared.

The papers were easier.  I bundled up the things that should go to the solicitors and read through all of his old letters from me, remembering what I had felt for him, and burning each one as I finished it. I burned his letters to me without reading them again. I wept for all the love he had written during the war, but I could not stomach his lies—the lies we had agreed to tell each other, I reminded myself—again.  I found a cache of letters from the days when he had been my manservant.  I sorted out the ones from his family and bundled them to go back to Mabel with a few other family items and all his jewelry, the card case and the cigarette cases I had given him over the years.  I burned the rest of the letters, including a number from me, without reading them. It would not do to see the foolish nonsense I had written to him, the selfish words of mine from the days I had not understood that he was a man with feelings like mine. I found the Christmas present he had bought for me—a miniature of the two of us as young men together. By the end of the second week, the study was empty of his things, as were the wardrobes, the drawers in the library and the kitchen, all the closets. His books were all packed away, their flyleaves and all traces of his handwriting burned, and I had buried the ashes of all his papers in the garden. I checked the house again one last time, and strewed his grave with fresh flowers, and then I set up and started practicing with my knives and darts.

Mercifully, I had forgotten to check the drawers in the nightstands.

Chapter Text

Bertie

A warm, firm, reassuring hand rested on the corpus, rousing me from a fitful doze. I was wearing nothing but a pair of pink silk shorts, which I had slipped onto the Wooster private regions in a fit of optimism and yearning. Jeeves and I had been apart for months and the sleep was always fitful away from his loving embrace. I sighed as a thumb found the place between my two eyebrows and rubbed gently. The eyes fluttered open and a look of utter delight spread across the Wooster dial. “Reg?”

The fondness in his tone warmed the Wooster heart, but his eyes looked bleak and tired. “I dearly hope, love, that this is not what you say whenever you are roused.”  I curled up and tucked the pate beneath his chin, nestling as closely against him as possible. He smelled terrible, but I did not care. We had grown thin, I realized behind my great joy at seeing him.

“Only when someone rubs my forehead, Reg. Welcome back. I love you. I love you. I love you.”

He chuckled and rubbed the willowy back, pausing where the ribs stuck out a bit more than they should have. “And I love you, my dearest darling. Are you hungry?”

I pulled my head up, planting the lips on his.  “Oh yes, Reg.  I am burning with hunger for you.”

“I wanted to wash, love,” he protested, wincing.

I hopped up from the bed, tripped over the nightstand and then clambered back up.  “Good.  The bathtub is just lovely.”

“Love,” something behind his tone send the tears starting in my eyes.  “I was wounded, so you will have to be careful of my shoulder in the bath.”

“Is it painful?” I asked. I had gotten some aspirin on the black market, but he would scold.

“Not when you are kissing me like that, love.”  He let me lead him into the bath.  It was the first time I had chosen something like this for the two of us without his guidance, and I hoped he would like it.  At the sight of the huge bathtub, his face broke into a delighted grin.  “Bertie, you are a marvel.  I cannot begin to tell you how welcome this is.” For a wonder, there was plenty of hot water, and the room filled with steam as I peeled off his uniform. The wound on his shoulder had been tended carefully, but it looked painful, as if it had been infected and then was treated again.  I looked up at him, and he stroked the side of my face.  “I love you darling, please do not worry on my account.”

Afterwards, I often wondered if I could have done anything to prevent his illness by insisting that he see a doctor right then, but in my heart I knew that it was already too late by the time he came back to me. All the doctors confirmed this later. He was so used to denying his own needs. “Let me wash you and then show you some affection, Reg.”

He closed his arms around me.  “Ah, love, I will be much happier if we wash each other and then make love together.  How I have missed you.”

“I missed you, too.”  We undressed each other and took a lingering bath and then spent the day in bed rediscovering each other with our eyes and lips and fingers and tongues. The months that followed were a golden time for us, even though supplies were short.  We stayed together and read and wrote reports, and helped the war office when needful, but what I remember most clearly from that time were the hours upon hours we spent snarled naked in the sheets, lavishing each other with tender affection. Even had we known his last illness was brewing behind that infected wound we could not have been more caring and unstinting in our expressions of love for one another.  As it was, we had a time of bally wonderful joy and hope, thinking that long lives stretched out before us.

Jeeves

Mr. Wooster and I enjoyed our reunion immensely.  He had been revealed as a homosexual some months earlier and my refusal to sever ties had cast suspicions on me as well.  The MI6 had responded by suspending our service indefinitely, although I was retained as the head of the MI20 office, a group comprised at that time only of Mr. Cheesewright, Mr. Wooster and myself.  Wally Fortescue had been a member until his untimely death in Normandy.  Despite his poor treatment of Mr. Cheesewright on the subject of his marriage, Wally was a good man and a loyal comrade-in-arms.

Although Mr. Wooster initially felt somewhat guilty at the necessity for leaving the service, he was reassured when I indicated that we had more than done our bit both before and during the war.  The only reservation I had about the necessity for our flight and the suspension of our service resided in a small box hidden under the floorboards of my bedroom in Mr. Wooster’s London flat.  I had made a series of unwelcome discoveries over the course of several years and had come to develop a highly disturbing suspicion about the spy known as “the Wolf.”  My customary habits of caution and stealth had prevented me from sharing my thoughts before I had all the information I needed to be certain of my facts.  I would only learn the truth once it was too late for me to undertake the needed actions.

One pleasant surprise on returning to Paris was the beautiful large flat Mr. Wooster had purchased for us. It had ample room for all the things we needed and adequate space to offer a city home to Mr. Cheesewright when he was between assignments. He always had a place with us in our villa. I suspected that one of his assignments for the MI6 was either to guard us or track our movements, but that did not matter.  The first few months, we were alone, and Mr. Cheesewright was much occupied with various matters that kept him away once he had made his home with us.

Mr. Cheesewright had enjoyed a number of discreet liaisons over the years, but had never settled on a partner. Our mutual friendship had deepened over the years and I found, with great amusement, that Mr. Wooster had become his trusted confidante in matters amorous.  I, sadly, felt the need to stipulate that Mr. Wooster not share any intimate details of our sexual life together.  “I apologize for saying this, love, but I would be mortified to know that you had discussed my private bits or underthings with D’Arcy Cheesewright.”

Mr. Wooster gave me his best impression of a ‘soupy’ look and my heart nearly melted with affection. “As I recall, Reg, he is one of the few people other than me who have seen your private bits.”

In all my life, no one had the power to anger me the way that Mr. Wooster does. He is the only person who has ever induced me to lose control of my temper. I spoke coldly and without thinking. “It was dark, and he only touched me once.” I was so angry, I nearly added, “sir.”

Mr. Wooster lifted an eyebrow. “That was terribly not preux, Reg,” he said coming to me and running his hand over the buttons of my flies. “I think I would like to unbutton these buttons and be rather ungentlemanly with you.”

My anger cooled as I stiffened under his touch. “I doubt you could ever be ungentlemanly in these matters, love.” He continued to stroke me, looking deeply into my eyes. “Ah, I want you right now, darling.”

I bent to kiss Mr. Wooster as his lips parted.  “I’d like to play a bit first, Reg. Would that be all right?  Will you let me look at you and play with you first?”

The heart melted within me.  I lifted him up in my arms, ignoring the twinge in my shoulder, and carried him to our bedroom.  “That would be very welcome, indeed.”

“Shall I tell you what I’d like first?”

I quivered in anticipation.  “Oh, yes, love.”  I lay on the bed while he stroked my clothed body, telling me in his charmingly erotic way of the things he planned to do with my “private bits” and “the little chappies.”  The innocent enjoyment that had characterized the earliest exchanges of affection between us never left Mr. Wooster.  It was as though each of our encounters was a wondrous new thing, and his excitement and pleasure made them such for me as well.  He undressed me slowly and lingeringly, his eyes lighting up in happy anticipation as he bared my scarred body.  I nearly purred under his kind attentions.

“You are so beautifully made, Reg,” he said, running his hands down my sides and over my hips.  Never in all our time together did he stop telling me that he found me beautiful.  I never understood how I had had the great good fortune to attach him or how he found it in his heart to forgive me for my very great selfishness.

Chapter Text

Stilton

Bertie was deceptively cheerful when D’Arcy entered the villa, dusty and footsore, carrying two heavy bags in blistered hands.  The smell of burning silk filled the air.  “Wooster, are you all right?”  Bertie looked up and the cheerful expression faltered. 

“Just burning some things I’ll never need again, Stilton.  I can’t bear to give them away. All dust and ashes, as they say.”  D’Arcy saw a small pile of pink and purple fabric.  Bertie was sitting on the wide chaise and feeding the clothes into the fire one by one.  “I wouldn’t have the heart to wear them, but it has done me good to remember the times we had.”  He lifted a pair of faded ragged pink undershorts and his face crumpled.  “Oh, Reg.”  He buried his face in the silk and then looked up. D’Arcy had crossed the room and set a hand on his shoulder. “Thank-you old top.  It’s good of you.  I’ve just gotten that dratted Carlo out of the house.”

Stilton collapsed onto a chair.  “That young spy?”

“The very one.  I haven’t been able to break down and weep properly.  He keeps popping up and offering to share his love with me.  Bally revolting.”

“Share his love?”  Stilton shuddered.  “That sounds terribly unhygienic, Wooster.  Have you washed thoroughly with strong soap and hot water?”

Bertie laughed gently and then looked at the tattered silk in his hands.  “I was wearing these the first time we… you know, after we were kidnapped that time.” D’Arcy felt his mouth drop open.  Bertie had never before shared the tiniest bit of information about his sexual life with Jeeves. “He’s dead, D’Arcy. I promised him not to speak of it to you until he died, and that part of it was over months and months ago. He was so ill. No one knows the special moments we shared now except me. By the end, even he had trouble remembering things, and not just little things, bally important ones. I always counted on him to be the brains and ...” he sighed damply.

D’Arcy took refuge in casual humor.  “You gave Wally a great number of bottles of scented oil back in those days, Wooster.”

Bertie blushed.  “I could hardly give them directly to you, old bean. We had never really been on the friendliest of terms.” 

D’Arcy eyed the chaise, remembering. “Did you and Jeeves snuggle in front of us purposely, Wooster? When I had asked you about how to lavish affections?”

The ruddy color in Bertie’s cheeks deepened.  “You seemed so bally confused, Stilton, and I owed you so much for caring for me in that terrible place.  I simply wanted you to feel better and less uncomfortable.  Jeeves thought it would be easier to see than to explain.”

“It was very good of you, Wooster,” said Stilton.

“I can run you a bath if you like, Stilton.  I bought some flavoured bath soaps and salts and things.  They sent for them for me.” His voice wobbled.

“Wooster? Are you all right?”

Bertie continued in a tiny, distressed voice. “I threw out and burned all our things, Stilton. All our lovely, lovely things. They meant so much to us, and I had to hide them when he got so ill, it made him that upset to know he could never be that way with me again…. The sight of them almost sickens me now, and I want to remember things as they were. It was so beautiful.”

“Yes, Wooster, it was most beautiful from the outside as well.  The two of you cast a glow that warmed me.” D’Arcy sat on the chaise and took Bertie’s hand.  “Save those shorts, Wooster.  Is there anything else particularly important here?”

“Not like these.” He turned D’Arcy’s hand over in his, thoughtfully and regarded the blisters.

“Then save those. You may be glad of them one day.  Will I help you?  Can I do anything for you?”

“You are good to ask, D’Arcy, but it’s a bit personal.”

D’Arcy’s voice became droll. “I have never owned silk underthings, Wooster, so I will have to trust you on this matter.”  It was an old joke between them. Bertie smiled and pulled his hand away, then loaded up the fire with the rest of his pile and put the pair of battered shorts in his pocket.

“Faugh, the smell,” said D’Arcy.

“It is foul, isn’t it?  Are you hungry? Shall I run you that bath?”

“You needn’t bother over me, Wooster.”

Bertie lifted an eyebrow and D’Arcy was strongly reminded of Jeeves.  “I believe I do need to bother, Stilton.  And then tomorrow I can call you a coddled git, which will do me no end of good.”

Stilton snorted. “I believe it will take more than one scented bath for me to become a coddled git, Wooster.”

A real, amused smile played on Bertie’s lips.  “Thank-you for coming back to me in my hour of need, old top. Now for your coddling. No, no, I insist. You coddled me—well, attempted to coddle me, at the very least—much against your inclination I am sure, and now you must have a return. Will you have rose petals, violets or honeysuckle with your bath salts?”

For a moment, D’Arcy thought Bertie was joking. “Gods, Wooster, haven’t you anything more manly about the place?” he burst out.

“Rosemary-infused olive oil?”

“Bally good.”

They let the fire burn down and then Bertie ran D’Arcy a bath. He found a very handsome silk dressing gown, deeply colored paisley shot through with snatches of bright blue and fushia, laid out. D’Arcy balked at the thought of adopting Jeeves’s loungewear. “Whose is this?”

“Yours,” said Bertie. “I bought it for you the last time we were in Cannes. You had said something about never having silk underthings, and I was going to give it to you at Christmas, but…well, you remember what happened.” D’Arcy did remember. Jeeves had collapsed and they had spent two days frantically looking for a specialist to help him. When he had finally regained his senses, the first thing his eyes lighted on was Bertie, curled up asleep in D’Arcy’s lap. Bertie had always reached out to Jeeves before all others, but on that afternoon, he had settled next to Stilton and rested against him. In need of comfort himself, Stilton had rested a hand on Bertie’s shoulder and let his friend fall asleep against him.

D’Arcy never forgot the look of bleak understanding on Jeeves’s face, the recognition that he would, could, no longer be Bertie’s source of comfort and support, that yet another vitally important thing had been stripped away from him by his illness. No one had said anything, but D’Arcy had pretended he had urgent business and left his friends to share their last precious months together. “Call me once you’re in the bath and I’ll put salve on those blisters, D’Arcy.”

Stilton choked and blushed. “Wooster!  A man needs some privacy from time to time.”

“Then call me when you’re finished, but don’t complain when the salt stings you.”

“Perhaps I could just put in the oil, Wooster.”

“Good idea, Stilton.  I’d do that.”  Bertie left the room and Stilton eased himself back into the tub with a sigh. He started up, blushing deeply and covering himself, first with a washcloth and then with a small towel, when Bertie returned a few minutes later with a tray.

“Faugh! What bally type of hospitality is this, Wooster?!  Can’t a man have a bit of a wash without being mercilessly ogled and salved?”

Bertie chuckled and patted D’Arcy on the head fondly. “Yes, Stilton, of course, old top. But you just trekked all the way from the train and I made you some coffee and a bite to eat. I’ll leave it here on this low table where you can reach.” He turned to go.

“Wooster?”

“Yes, Stilton?”

“Was I wrong to leave you two here alone at Christmas?”

The look of befuddlement on Bertie’s face made something twist in Stilton’s chest. “Jeeves told me that you had business to attend to. I thought it was important.”

“I lied to you…well, to Jeeves, actually.  I would not have been able to face…”

Bertie stopped and a look of bleak sorrow appeared on his face. “I missed your help and friendship so sorely those last months.  What happened? Did he ask you to go?”

“No, Wooster, of course not. But…he needed...  I, Bertie, you had so little time left, the two of you. I was intruding, interfering.  I did not mean to, but it happened.”

“Intruding? Interfering?  But, Stilton, I don’t understand.”

“You were asleep in my lap when he woke up that day, Wooster.  You’d never gone to anyone else when he was there, ever. The look of him broke the heart in me.  I couldn’t stick it. I know you were frightened and sore at heart, but he’d already lost so much. I couldn’t ask him to watch you coming to me for the comfort he wanted to be giving you. I am terribly sorry, Wooster.”

The golden head bowed and for the first time D’Arcy noticed the faint traces of grey there. “I have to go collect myself, Stilton. Come find me when you’re done and I’ll help you with the salve.”  He left and D’Arcy bowed his head and wept for the love and friendship they had lost the day Jeeves died.

Bertie

I went outside and laid down on the grass to look at the stars. It was another full moon and I could see the place where Jeeves had assured me that he would never strike me if he could help it, the places where we had wrestled and played together on the grass, all the places where we had lain outside and made love when there was no moon. He had been heartbroken when we could no longer do those things. I never considered how hard it was for him to lose each of those things one by one, because I had kept focused only on loving him, whatever he was and accepting what he could give. All I had cared about was keeping him. His mind and heart were more than enough for me, but as his body failed him, so did those things.  I had never before understood that the brain needed care, too, but no amount of fish helped him. When D’Arcy had left, it never occurred to me that Jeeves might have wanted me to himself. I wished he were here so I could ask him how he had felt and assure him that I did love him.  But, at that, he had known, and I could begin to read his diaries again.  He didn’t seem to have lied very much in the ones I had read, when he forgot and left them on my desk instead of his.

It had been a relatively short time, less than an hour, when D’Arcy came to find me.  He laid down a blanket and settled down beside me on the ground. “Come here, Wooster, you’ll catch a chill.” His voice was sad.  I rolled over on the grass and looked at him.

“Do your hands hurt?”

“Come onto the blanket with me.”

The ground was damp and I did as he asked.  He covered me with another blanket and rested a hand on my shoulder. The feelings in my corpus began to confuse me. “Do you want me to help you, D’Arcy?  I have a jar of salve in my jacket pocket.”

The look on Stilton’s bean was a puzzler.  Normally emotions flashed on his face in a fairly obvious way, but I had been having trouble reading him.  Likely I was becoming selfish in my grief. “Thank-you, Wooster, that would be kind of you.”

I sat up and he held out his hands. I opened the salve and rubbed it on the blisters in the moonlight, then I covered them with gauze.  Jeeves had done this for me when I was injured, and until he was ill, I had never understood how caring for someone’s wounded body makes you feel both powerful and utterly helpless. I wished there had been enough petrol to pick Stilton up at the train.  “Is that better?”  I asked.

“Yes, thank-you, Wooster,” he said, looking at the hands in the moonlight.

“He’s been gone for months,” I said.

“I know.”

The corpus started to shake. “I missed you, D’Arcy.  I was so angry with you at first, for leaving us.”

“I am sorry, Wooster.  Do you…can you try to forgive me?”

“Of course I forgive you. I didn’t understand, and you could not have known how it would be. It was very bad toward the end. I, by the end I was so grateful to you for leaving us.  He would have been so ashamed for you to see him like that.”  He had been mortified with me, I know, but I could soothe him and hold him and remind him of all the humiliating things he had helped me with over the years.  It had been rough going once or twice, but we were so used to putting each other first that he always let me help him, even with the most private things. 

“You’re shaking, Wooster.”

“I know, old bean.”  Stilton picked up the blanket from where it had fallen when I sat up and wrapped it around me.  Without thinking, I leaned against him, the way I had that awful day before Christmas, and he put his arm around me, the way he had that same awful day. The comfort was enormous and I melted into the side of him, closing the eyes at the blessed sensation that I was safe in the arms of a kind friend.  And suddenly I understood what Reg had seen that day when he woke up, the unthinking natural affection that I had shared with no one else.  I sat up and Stilton let his arm drop.  “Oh, my” I said.

“You had no idea, did you?”

“About what?”

The Cheesewright tone became very gentle “How it would have looked to him, Wooster, how easily you leaned against me. You are not like this with anyone else.  I imagine that the two of you were much more affectionate than this in private, but you never reached out to anyone else, even in this friendly way.”

The bean reeled as this information percolated through it. “I had never told him what it was like… how you held me the whole time we were in that horrible place, when we were kidnapped.  I…he felt guilty enough.”

“I believe I would have gone stark staring mad otherwise. You were such a comfort during that time. I have never been so bally terrified before or since.”  I had been.  I had been just as terrified that day before Christmas, and so many of the days after that. And I was terrified tonight. I knew, somehow, that what D’Arcy had brought back from London would frighten and upset me, and we were utterly on our own.  I had never in my adult life had to rely on my own powers before, and I knew how limited they were.

“D’Arcy,” I said, and his lips parted slightly in surprise because I almost never called him by his name. “I’d like…can I sleep, just sleep, in the bed with you tonight?” His dial resolved itself into a smile of relief and fondness.

“Yes, Bertie.  You may just sleep in the bed with me tonight.”

Chapter Text

Stilton

D’Arcy prepared himself for bed, surprised at his nervousness.  They had been very clear, after all, that there would just be sleeping, but he suspected that the Wooster style of ‘just sleeping’ was likely to incorporate types of cuddling that far outstripped his limited and long-ago experience making spoons as a young spy.  That Rocky Todd had been a bit of a snuggler, but he had tucked himself against D’Arcy’s bicep for an hour or so before donning his clothes and slipping back to his own bed.  D’Arcy had not been intimate or affectionate with another man in more than two years, and the thought of disappointing Bertie Wooster in this hour of need made him quail.

Bertie had no such anxieties, and almost cheerfully pulled on a set of dove-grey linen pajamas he found in a bag printed with the name of a vendor that had been destroyed during the war.  From the look of them, he had never worn them.  It was odd, he thought to himself, the number of things he kept finding in his own cupboards and wardrobe, things he seemed never to have worn before.  He had found a large bag full of really fruity silk pajamas and underthings as well, tucked under some motheaten sweaters. Jeeves would never have bought them, and Bertie realized that he himself must have snuck them into the house and forgotten about them.  How lucky, he felt, that Stilton would let him settle in his bed when he was feeling so anxious and frightened.  How fortunate he was to have such a kind friend and such caring neighbors.  It had never been like this in London or New York, where everyone asked him for things.

He padded into D’Arcy’s spacious apartment and found his friend, wearing navy blue plaid pajama bottoms and battered brown slippers, reading a book. The volume looked familiar, and when he placed it, Bertie gasped and started to topple over. D’Arcy somehow inserted a hand under his arm before he hurt himself.

“Wooster?  Are you unwell?”

“The poet Burns, Stilton. It’s Jeeves’s copy of the poet Burns. You found it in the flat.”

Stilton settled Bertie on the bed and pulled the chair over beside him.  “It’s also a book code, Wooster.  Jeeves hid it in your flat before that blighter kidnapped us.” Stilton pulled out the jewel case and took out an engraved wedding ring, and Bertie wrapped his arms around himself, shaking. He suddenly understood why he was feeling so anxious and frightened.  Jeeves must have started to explain something to him, and he had forgotten. “Lord, Wooster, what is the matter?”

“Oh, Stilton, not this. Oh Stilton.” He raised wide, haunted eyes at his friend.

D’Arcy stilled himself and thought over everything he knew about Bertie Wooster.  In all the years of their knowing each other, from early boyhood, he had never seen Bertie upset like this. He had seemed less rattled after being assaulted by an upper former, while being tortured, or while burying his lover of nearly twenty years. “Wooster?”

“Gods, no, Stilton.”  D’Arcy set the book and jewel case aside carefully. Then he slowly and gently eased himself down next to Bertie on the bed. “Ah. Not this. No, please, not this. Oh, how could he have lied to me like this?” Stilton put his arms around Bertie as the torrent of incoherent rage and grief spilled out of him.  Bertie had always been slender, and he had grown thinner during these last months.  Stilton pressed his friend closely against him, holding him silently as he cried and wailed in his anguish.  He had never seen another person this upset, and he felt certain that even Jeeves had never seen Bertie like this.

Bertie finally stilled and Stilton released him.  Bertie jumped up, falling down and righting himself, and ran from the room, Stilton following in some dismay. Bertie ran to his bedroom and jammed the purple loafers on his feet, then pounded to the door, jamming a hat on his head and grabbing the whangee and silk scarf that Stilton had brought back from the London flat.  Stilton called after him, but Bertie did not slow.  D’Arcy sighed and then dressed himself carefully.  He equally carefully locked up the book and jewel case in the wardrobe. Then he picked up a dressing gown and one of the blankets and slowly followed Bertie to Jeeves’s grave. Wooster and Jeeves had made a lifetime’s project of withholding information to protect each other.  Given the tenderness of their attachment, it had been necessary and forgivable, but D’Arcy understood that his work tonight would make burying Reginald Jeeves look like stealing a cow creamer from under the nose of a third-rate local policeman.

Bertie covered the ground quickly in the moonlight, rage coursing through his veins.  He had never been so angry.  All the pent-up emotions he had felt through the months of Jeeves’s illness, his frustrations at their separations during the war, the injustice of the secrecy that had characterized their lives together crashed down upon him in the face of this one crystallizing fact.  Jeeves had lied to him about his grandmother’s wedding ring and the spy known as the Wolf.

He reached the grave and threw the whangee at it and then the hat.  He tried to throw the scarf, but only succeeded in tangling himself up in it. He ripped off the loafers and threw them, too. He screamed and railled as he had never done while Jeeves was alive, even during their bitterest arguments. “I hate you, Reg!  I hate you!  You lied to me. How could you leave me here like this? You left me! I hate you! I hate you! My god, Reg. Why didn’t you tell me?  Why? How could you have kept this from me? Oh, I miss you so.” By the time Stilton reached him, Bertie was collapsed among the flowers, sobbing helplessly. “Oh, Stilton, the heart is broken. How could he have done this to me? I trusted him.”

D’Arcy gathered Bertie into his arms and wrapped him in the dressing gown and the blanket.  He considered what was best to say without lying.  Bertie had heard enough lies, and D’Arcy knew that neither of them could be happy if Jeeves had done something terribly selfish instead of overly cautious. Then something pricked at his memory. “Oh gods, Wooster, you didn’t read the whole letter did you?  Just the page I showed you.” He pressed the golden head firmly against his shoulder and started rocking. “Of course you didn’t, you were half out of your mind with grief. He thought he had more time, Bertie. He just needed a little more time, but he got too sick. He didn’t mean it, Wooster. He meant to tell you once he was certain. It was a misunderstanding. Just a misunderstanding.”

Bertie’s small, tremulous voice bisected Stilton’s heart. “Then why am I so angry with him?”

“Because he did lie to you and he did leave you to clean up this mess.  And he didn’t tell you because he was too sick to bear it.  And he lied to you for months about how sick he was. Don’t be too hard on him, Wooster.  You both constantly tried to protect each other. And you agreed to lie to each other about certain things. You know you did.  Think how you would have acted if it was you who were sick.”

They sat while Bertie tried to compose himself. Stilton gave Bertie a handkerchief to wipe his face, and Bertie sat up and then rested against his friend again.  He instinctively nestled as closely as possible and Stilton felt a strange sensation in his breast and tucked Bertie in closer to his side. “Do you have any idea what I have been screaming about, Stilton?”

“Aside from the fact that he lied to you and died leaving some mess for you to clean up, Wooster, no.  I have no idea what any of this is about.”

“I apologize for the poor form, Stilton.”

“You should be apologizing for keeping that all bottled up, Wooster.  It’s about bally well time.”

“I threw away my shoes.”

“They look absolutely idiotic, Wooster. You do know that?”

“I like purple. It’s cheerful.”

“Is that why you had so many purple pajamas?”

“Yes. I like purple socks better.”

Stilton snorted, and, tentatively, rubbed Bertie’s back. “I am sure you do.” Bertie made a small, involuntary noise and Stilton snatched his hand away.  “Did I hurt you?”

“No, Stilton.  Quite the contrary.”

“Will I help you back to the house now?”

“I threw my shoes away.”

“I’ll help you find them.”

The loafers had bounced against the handsome sandstone marker.

Reginald Jeeves  

Beloved Friend and Companion of

Bertram Wilberforce Wooster, Lord Yaxley

All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon

the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.

I was the happiest man alive.

Bertie sat on the ground, still trembling, and Stilton handed him the loafers. “You put up the stone.”

“He ordered it and chose the words when he first became ill.  It seemed so important to him that I didn’t argue. I don’t really understand the first part of the quote.”

Stilton helped him up and slipped an arm around his waist. “It means that he was so happy because of you, because you were the best quality.”

“Whatsit? But, how?”

“He was happy, Bertie.  I know how happy he was.  And he was happy because of you, because of the quality of you.  He wanted you to know, and everyone to know that he was happy and that you made him happy. That no one could be as happy because no one else had you.  That you are the best quality and he loved you.”

Bertie leaned against his friend and considered this information. “Does it really mean all that?”

Stilton felt the strange sensation in his breast again.  For the first time, he understood exactly why disciplined, intelligent Reginald Jeeves had fallen in love with his foppish, silly master all those years ago. “Yes, Bertie, he wrote it here for everyone to see. Everyone knows that he was happy and he was happy because of you. It was the last thing he wanted to say, not just to you, to everyone. He loved you and you made him happy, the quality of you.”

“I feel a bit wobbly, D’Arcy.”

Something melted inside D’Arcy Cheesewright. “You can lean against me as we walk.  Or would you rather take my arm?”

Bertie considered this offer, wiping his face again with the handkerchief.  In their early days together, Jeeves would have wiped his face for him and picked him up and carried him. Something about Stilton’s respectful question eased him. “I’d like to lean against you.”

They walked slowly back toward the villa. “Does it really mean that he was happy? That he was happy because of me?”

“Yes, Wooster, it really does.”

Bertie

I never thought that Stilton Cheesewright, of all people, would be the one to see me through the most difficult night of my life.  He was a dashed wonderful, comforting friend.  I felt so embarrassed at losing my temper, but he cheered me in his own gruff way. We ankled back toward the house, the willowy form leaning heavily on the more beefy one, and I felt a strange sensation running through the corpus.  My nerves had taken a bad beating what with all the unwelcome Jeevesian information and I knew the next day would put the Wooster emotions through another wringer.  But there was something else, and I could not understand what it was.  As we crossed the lawn, I paused.  It had grown dark and I was suddenly nervous of stepping in a hole. Stilton drew me closer against his side.

“What’s wrong?”

“Can you see the house?”

“I left a light burning.  We should see it soon. I just hope that bally spy didn’t break in.”

“But do you see it?”

I felt Stilton pause, considering something. “I don’t like this much, either. Let’s just tread carefully.”

“All right.”  We ankled along, and Stilton relaxed as the light resolved itself from behind a tree.

“We must have made a wide arc.”

“How are your hands?”

“What?”

“Your hands.  The blisters.”

He shook himself. “They’re fine, Wooster.  You were very kind.”

Carlo did not appear to have invaded the environs.  He had made himself quite scarce since Cheesewright had lumbered back onto the scene.  We entered the house and ankled up the stairs, and he kept his hand at the small of my back. I was grateful because the slender frame was shaking like a bally aspen.

“Wooster, you’re covered with dirt and crushed flowers.”

I looked down to find that the willowy form was not in the best trim.  “I’ll get some other pajamas.”  I moved to step away from him and clutched at the wall for balance. 

Cheesewright considered me for a moment with that rummy look plastered across his bean.  “No, Wooster.  You’re shaken. Sit down and I’ll fetch something for you.”  I ankled into the bath to begin washing up and Cheesewright came in with a set of really fruity silk pajamas.  “These were on your bed.”  He left me to it, but came back in when I got my legs tangled in the grey trousers and tipped over. I covered myself hastily with a towel. “Do you want some help?”

“No, no, old fruit. I will be fine in a moment.”  I stood up,  shifted into the pajama trousers and shrugged on the shirt, but the digits would not cooperate.  I struggled for a while and he knocked. “Yes?”

“Are you all right?”

“I can’t seem to button.” I had no idea why I felt so shy. I had never been shy about such things and Stilton had seen me naked before this.

“I promise not to look at you if you don’t like it.”

“Then how can you help me do up the buttons?”

He snorted. “I promise not to look in your trousers.”

“Ah, well, that would hardly be preux, Stilton.”

“I’m coming in now, just cover yourself up.”

I made a last, desperate attempt. “Maybe a brandy and soda?”

“Must you, Wooster? It will just disturb your sleep.”

“It’s just so bally embarrassing.”

“Wooster, since I have returned, you have walked in on me in the bath, patted my head and given me silk loungewear. How do you think I felt?” I opened the door and let him fasten the buttons.

“Thank-you, Stilton,” I said humbly.  We paused.

“Do you still want to stay here or would you like some privacy?”

“Would you prefer some privacy?”

Stilton considered this for a moment. “I would feel better if you stayed here, Wooster. I am feeling horribly worried about you.”

“All right.”  I clambered into the bed and then moved over when he chose a side.  He turned out the lights.

“Are you all right, Wooster?”

“Yes?”

“I can feel you shaking.” He reached out and eased the willowy form closer to the center of the bed, but there was a nervous quality to him, as if he was terrified of doing something wrong. “Are…is this hurting you?”

I closed the eyes to will back sudden tears and then settled against him, with the bean on one of his shoulders and a leg bunged up over one of his.  He was bally huge. “No, Stilton, you are not hurting me. Is this all right?”  His arm settled closely around me.  I was still trembling like a leaf.

“Will you be able to sleep?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Then it is all right.”

“Good-night, Cheesewright.”

“Good-night, Wooster.” 

I slept soundly, really soundly, for the first time since I understood that Reg was not simply sick, he was dying. When I woke up, I realized that Stilton had been lying awake watching me sleep, that strange, confusing look plastered across his lemon. “Good-morning, Stilton.”

“Wooster.”

“Are you all right, old top? You have a strange look about the dial.”

“It was a long night and I am nervous about the day ahead, Wooster.” He had cause to be.

Chapter Text

TEN MONTHS EARLIER

Jeeves

My health is failing and I have made a most highly unwelcome discovery about the Wolf.  I had so sincerely hoped that my suspicions were untrue, and I delayed informing Mr. Wooster of my thoughts.  Now it is too late to think or act. My mind is no longer what it was.  I wish I had not been such an overly optimistic fool when the doctors offered a possible treatment for my illness just over a year ago. I ought to have known better than to believe them.  I should have acted, but instead I delayed.

I was selfish.  In my heart, I feared that my health would fail and instead of doing my duty, I dallied with my lover, enjoying my last months of good health as his friend and playmate and making plans to host our dearest friend in our home.  I chose to playact and to lie to my dearest darling, letting him think that we had the all the days stretching out before us. It seemed so little to ask, to allow him to have those precious months of happiness. Of course, there were excuses.  Travel was expensive and difficult, and often impossible, but the truth of the matter is that I allowed my feelings for Bertie, my dearest darling, to rule my better judgment.

Good-natured and kind-hearted as always, he sees my distress and does his best to comfort me.  He never asks why I now prefer to make love tenderly and languidly, bringing him his pleasure first and allowing him to fall asleep in my arms often without taking any release.  He never questions me, only loves me, trusting that I will speak to him when it is needful.  I am so grateful that D’Arcy will soon come to visit us.  With his supportive presence, perhaps I will be strong enough to finally be honest with the dearest, kindest man to ever walk this earth.

Bertie

The heart is breaking. Something is terribly wrong.  Reg is ill. The treatments last year didn’t work. His smell is changed. I can’t get him to eat, and he is so very weak.  I pretend that I don’t notice it.  He thinks I don’t understand what happened.

 The doctors confused me with their fast talk and their technical terms, but my memory has always been good.  I wrote everything down and one afternoon, I got the mayor and the priest in to visit Reg and snuck out to the town to phone Sir Roderick Glossop.  He is an old man now, but his mind is as sharp as ever and he looks kindly on us. We rendered him and Honoria an important service during the war, saving Oswald from a truly terrible soup, literally.  He had been assigned to kitchen duty and nearly died falling into a vat of what we kindly called “broth.” Someone had left a cleaver in the wrong place and it would have taken him in the throat.  I still have a scar, but Oswald was saved.

As Sir Roderick patiently listened, I read out everything, the pipes closing from time to time, because in my heart I already knew the awful truth. He was so bally kind to me in my hour of need.

“Oh, my very dear boy,” he began, and I knew. He was so gentle, stopping the flow of terrifying language at my strangled cry of distress. “Son, what can I do to help you?”

“Please. How long does he have?” He asked me to describe Reg’s condition.  I tried to be as honest as possible without sharing too much about our private life together, but he asked and I had to admit that he seemed afraid to be too intimate.

“He does not have very long, son. Maybe a few months. Maybe only a few weeks.  If you have a friend to send for, you should send for one now to help you. If you do not have anyone, I will send Honoria.  She was always fond of you, and she will be kind to you.”

I think of the awful medicines they gave him before, the days he spent vomiting until he was so weak he could not get to the bathroom to relieve himself without my help. I could not bear for him to endure that again with no hope of recovering. I could not possibly let a relative stranger see him experience such shame. “Will it hurt him? What can I do for him?  I don’t want him to suffer. Is there anything that will ease him?”

“He’s still the head of MI20 and you are the second in command, son.  I will have them ship you some morphine and some other medicines.  They won’t make him well, but they will make him more comfortable for the time he has left.  The pain medicines may make him not like himself.  He might forget things.  I will send you directions in a letter. I’ll use a courier.  Where can I send this?”

I had him send everything to Stilton at the flat in Paris. “Sir Roderick, I can’t thank you enough.”

“You saved my Oswald, Lord Yaxley, my only son. I can never do enough for you. Please phone any hour of the day or night should you need me.”

Then I did the hardest thing.  I phoned Stilton and told him that he had to wait until Sir Roderick sent the medicine. I nearly broke down when I explained why he had to ignore Reg and listen to me. Then I went home and saw Reg looking at some papers and the eyes closed in horror.  Some bally thing had gone wrong in the MI6. It was beyond the frozen limit. I would not leave him to go haring after keys and safe deposit boxes and books. I blasted well would not leave him to die alone after all he had done for them, the ungrateful bally blighters.

“Reg,” he looked up and saw the knowledge in my face.  He opened his arms and I went to him.  We curled up together on the chaise and wept like little children.

“I am so sorry, love. I wanted to…I was too frightened to tell you.”  He wept so piteously.  I had never seen him like that.  “I cannot say the words.”

“Hush now, heart’s delight.”  He nestled against me like a precious lamb.  “It’s all right, now. I understand.  Can we try to be happy? I know it is asking a great deal, Reg, but can we try?”

“Bertie, I am happy. You are here with me in our beautiful home, and there is nothing that could make me unhappy right now.”  Wordlessly, we agreed to accept this ‘right now,’ to stiffen the upper lip and do our best to muscle through.

“Will I play something nice for you?”

“I would like that very much, darling.”

“And then will you try to eat something for me?”

“Whatever you like.”

“And we won’t talk about any spy business ever again?”

His face went white, but he agreed. “We won’t talk about spy business ever again.”  He folded the papers and I locked them away in the night table.

I let him make love to me, and waited until he fell asleep before I let the tears slide down my cheeks. He would never have agreed to that last if there had been any small hope.  I fell asleep nestled beside him, deeply grateful that we were still together, that we might have a few pleasant weeks together before the end.

Jeeves

Bertie’s loving care has wrought a change in me. I do not know how he did this, but he has made me feel almost well again. We have had such a pleasant two weeks together.  His gentle presence cheers me and I feel myself smile whenever he enters the room.  How terribly lucky I am to have attached him

D’Arcy Cheesewright arrived yesterday and he brought me to town. While he did some errands, I met with Enzo and ordered my headstone. I know Bertie will be stung, but it must be this way, and he will be kind to me now.  He was so happy to see us when we returned.  We had a lovely meal together and Bertie helped me bathe and then nestled with me in the bed while D’Arcy had the housekeeper clean up.  I feel so beloved and cherished.  I do not deserve this rich feeling of happiness.  I do so hope he understands why I chose the grave marker without him.  He would never have agreed to let me say such a thing had he known.

Chapter Text

PRESENT DAY

Stilton

D’Arcy Cheesewright sat amid the breakfast dishes and listened in disbelief as Bertie explained all the things he had withheld for the past eighteen years. “Let me see if I understand you, Wooster.  Jeeves was indoctrinated into the MI6, as we know, by a spy.  But that spy pretended to be dead and has been circulating for years as “The Wolf”?  And Jeeves is the only person who has spoken with him since?”

“No, his friend, Georges.  Did you meet him?  He helped them save us?  Anatole tries to skewer him with knives whenever they meet? Oh, and Anatole may have spoken to him as well.  He’s a spy, too.”

Cheesewright shook his head. “No, Wooster. I don’t recall your friend. I believe I had other concerns that night. And now the MI6 needs this Wolf?”  Stilton paused and thought for several moments.  “He must be 65 years old, Wooster.”

“Jeeves is dead.  He must be the only one they can ask to head the MI20-somethingth”

“You are the head of the …whatsit.”  D’Arcy stood up and walked to the window, suppressing a wild urge to vomit.

“Please, Stilton, I am upset and easily confused.” Bertie taped the table with his hands.  “But, Stilton, that is the ring my Uncle George gave us all those years ago.  My uncle had it made for my mother.  How could it be part of the book code?”

Stilton turned and looked at the pinched, worried face of his dearest friend. “Wooster, you would not have gotten so upset if there was not some truth to this.  You may have trouble sifting out long documents full of fancy terms, but you are never really wrong in these matters.”  He patted his pockets and came up with a key. “Jeeves gave me this when I left at Christmas.”

“It opens the night table.”

“Shall we investigate?”

“When is Anatole coming?”

“Tomorrow.”

Bertie looked about uneasily.  Jeeves would have remembered the gesture from the evening Sir Roderick asked to examine his burned ‘private bits.’  Stilton remembered it from their time at Malvern House and Eton. “We locked it up that day.”

“What day, Wooster?”

“The day I knew.  Sir Roderick told me, and we agreed, Reg and I, never to speak of spy matters again.”  His face went grey.  “He wanted to tell me and I didn’t let him.  Oh, Stilton.”

“What happened, exactly, Wooster?” Bertie rested his head on the table and explained carefully, in a low, sad voice. Stilton stood up and asked him to come to the chaise. Bertie lay down and kept talking and Stilton sat on the easy chair and listened.  “So you determined that MI6 would not separate you, and he never explained?”

“But I said no spy matters, Stilton. Oh, what did I do?”

Cheesewright considered this.  Jeeves would never have agreed to such a thing unless he had wanted to, or he knew that Bertie would have ample time afterward to attend to these matters.  Otherwise, he would have sought some help. “You did quite right, Wooster. He was dying and you gave him a few more enjoyable months.  He treasured every moment he had to spend with you.”  Bertie closed his eyes and drew a shuddering breath.  “Come for a swim, Wooster.”

Bertie opened his eyes and looked up at his friend. “Do you need to be soothed?”

D’Arcy looked bleak as he struggled not to lie.  It would have been the easiest thing to do.  “I need you to let me help you. Once we finish this, we will be free, I think.”

“Reg used to think that he could be shut of it.  It wasn’t until he knew he was sick that he gave it up. And he didn’t, not really. Our whole lives were full of such things.”

“He started so young, you said, Wooster.” D’Arcy found himself struggling to be fair. The truth of the matter was that Reginald Jeeves had fallen in love with Bertie and he had then done everything in his power to keep Bertie safe.  If Bertie had ever expressed any wish to avoid that life, Jeeves would have done whatever he could to remove them. “And he thought he had more time. I needed a livelihood and my uncle asked me to do this.  I want to be shut of it.”

“I am so weary, Stilton.”

Stilton considered this.  He could offer to hold his friend and let him sleep, but he decided on another truth. ‘The water helps me think. I need to think.”

Bertie’s face relaxed. “I thought rowing helped you think.”

“The water is a good substitute. I haven’t a boat.”

“Yes, you do.  I had them fix one for you while you were away.  Your mouth is open.”

“I am surprised. Thank-you.”

“Will we go now?”

“You are weary.  Don’t you want to rest?”

“Stilton, I can’t sleep on my own unless I’ve been drinking. That’s why they kept bringing the babies that first week. Jeeves must have asked them to look after me for a while, and they noticed that it eased me.  The same way he asked you and you tried to help find a way to soothe me.”

D’Arcy started.  “I would have helped you anyway, Wooster.  I hope you know that. But you refused to stay with that Carlo.  How did you manage?”

“There was some drinking involved, but I didn’t realize how weary I was until this morning.  I hadn’t slept soundly in so long.  You get used to it after a while.  You must remember from the war. Would you stay with me until I fall asleep and then think?”

Bertie’s face had gone pinched again, and D’Arcy understood that the answer to this question would shape their future friendship. He also understood that Bertie asked for very little outright, but he had asked for this help twice in the space of a day.  “Do you want to stay here or go upstairs, Wooster?”

“It depends on where you’d be most comfortable.”

D’Arcy stood and helped his friend up from the chaise. “I could probably do with a nap anyway, Wooster.  It was a long night.”

“I am sorry about that.”

“It was not your fault, Wooster.  I’ll think more clearly if I am rested.”  They walked up the stairs.  Bertie looked as if he wanted to ask something more, but he remained quiet. Stilton took his hand.

“What is it?”  Bertie’s face grew pink and he looked down.  “If you expect me to share my love, Wooster, we’d both better wash with strong soap and hot water.”

Bertie chuckled. “No, nothing like that, old bean. But, do you know how to make spoons?”

Something swelled in D’Arcy’s chest. “Indeed I do, Wooster.”

Bertie

Reg had been dead and buried for a little more than four months when Anatole finally came. He had visited us before, starting just after Aunt Dahlia had to let him go, and he was popular in the town.  Jeeves had let out that he was a great chef, and he had utterly charmed everyone by praising the food he was served in the small trattorias.  It was merely his way in humble places, but the owners offered to show him how they cooked, and he gracefully watched.  I will never forget the look of happiness on his face as we ankled home one day.

“Mr. Wooster, I have today learned something new about cooking for the first time in so many years.”  He had explained in some detail, but I did not understand him. It was pleasant to share his excitement, and I would learn to cook whatever he chose to teach me, but Reg had been the one to really understand such things deeply.

The mayor phoned and said he would drive Anatole to see us, and I knew that the little chef was getting old and frail. I told him not to be silly, that Stilton and I would bring the car.  We argued back and forth and eventually he agreed to sell me enough petrol for the trip, and enough gas coupons to get us to Cannes and back if we wanted.  He didn’t ask why we needed them, which was a mercy.

Stilton sat watching me on the phone with that rummy look plastered across the dial. “You speak as well as Jeeves did, Wooster. Better, in fact.  You haven’t any accent.  Is your French this good as well?”

I bowed the head.  “It’s a bit better.  I just, I forget what to say and I don’t think there is a word for ‘whatsit’ in French or Italian.”

A smile flashed across the Cheesewright bean. “There isn’t a word for ‘whatsit’ in English, either.  Is he waiting for us?”

I smiled back.  “He is probably at a trattoria.”  We ankled to the car and set off. “Stilton?”

“Yes, Wooster?”

“Do you think Reg asked Carlo to look after me?”

Stilton shuddered, which is not a small thing in a cove of his type. “I hadn’t considered that.”

“You sound upset.”

“If he asked for help from that pipsqueak, Wooster, things must have been very grim indeed.”

“They are, Stilton.”  We drove a little way further, and I steeled myself to ask for something important.  I so hated to ask for help and favors. People so rarely helped me when I asked. Only Jeeves had been the sort of bird I could go to with things, but Stilton had been so bally kind. “I need you to do something for me.”

He started.  “Yes?”

Something curled up in the Wooster bosom.  I was deeply ashamed to have to admit this to anyone. “I need you to find his room.  He kept a room in town for …things. I don’t know what he was doing there. They think I don’t know, but you need to find it for me.”

Cheesewright was a perfect gentleman. “Anything else?”

“Yes.  Speak to the mayor.  Reg was having the shopkeepers buy and make all those purple things.  I want them to stop, but I haven’t the heart to say so. They think I don’t know, but you could pretend someone else told you, or that you saw how upset I was.”

“Are you asking me to lie, Wooster?”

“I’m asking you to tell them that Reg asked you to look after me and you think this is hurting me.  It’s hurting me.”  The voice broke and I stopped the car.  “It’s hurting me, Stilton.  He did all these things so I would have them after he’d gone.  It meant so much to him, but it only reminds me how much we lied to each other.  Please, Stilton.”  I bowed the head and rested it on the steering wheel. His large hand was surprisingly gentle as he rubbed my back. He handed me a clean handkerchief.

“Of course, Wooster.  Will I drive for a bit?”

“Thank-you, Stilton, but I’ll drive. I don’t want them thinking I know anything.  I don’t want them seeing how upset I am.  They have been working so hard to comfort me.”

“The best quality,” said Stilton, but I didn’t know what to say.

We ankled into the town and made our way to the trattoria where they told us Anatole was eating.  One of the shopkeepers saw me and put some purple pajamas in the window.  My heart leapt at the sight of them and I grasped Stilton by the arm. “Look, Stilton, violet pajamas!”  The shopkeeper beamed as we ankled in and bought them.  I was turning to Stilton to wonder what Reg would say when I remembered he wasn’t home waiting for me. I nearly collapsed in mortification at being so happy with pajamas when Reg was dead. The jaw flapped helplessly a moment and Stilton took my arm and pulled me against him. 

His voice was gentle and low. “Oh, Wooster.  It’s all right.”  I gasped and willed back the tears, resting the bean against his sturdy form. “You are allowed to have purple pajamas and any other thing you like. That’s why he did all this for you. To show you that you can still have what you like, that he wanted you to be happy without him.”

The shopkeeper, Nicco, looked a bit crestfallen and tried to take the pajamas back, but that would not have done at all.  I clutched the pajamas to my chest.  Nicco beamed, pleased to have given me something I liked.  Stilton looked at him and suggested that fushia was a nice color as well or paisley.  Nicco purposely misunderstood him and proffered pajamas in Stilton’s size.  Apparently, he bought the large ones because they were the same price and then cut them down to use the fabric in other things, which I found greatly interesting. He showed me the cunning way they fit the bits together. Stilton stalked out of the shop, muttering to himself, when I exclaimed happily over pajama trousers printed with hearts that read ‘baci,’ and I bought him a very fruity pair in a cheerful paisley, sneaking them into my parcel.

I found him outside looking droll and smoking a gasper. “Should I still say something to the mayor, Wooster?”

“Yes, Stilton.  Reg is gone now, and I…” the throat closed up in guilt, then I thought back to the night I had closed Carlo out of my bedroom.

His hand closed on my elbow. “Wooster?”

I looked up at Stilton’s pumpkin-like bean and saw fond concern there, and a type of friendship that encouraged me to be on my own two feet, not leaning against him waiting to be cared for. “I just… I want to be a man now, not a coddled lamb.”

A very rummy look plastered itself across the Cheesewright bean.  “Understood. But a man can still like purple paisley, Wooster.”  We ankled off, and Stilton took the parcel. “Thank-you for the pajama trousers, Bertie.”

“But how…?”

“The parcel is now twice as large.”

“Oh.” I thought how Stilton had been a police officer or a spy since we had left Oxford.  Then my insides curled up in shame as I realized that, very likely, I had never fooled Reg, not even once, when we were in a shop like that.  It was some consolation, however, that he had still been genuinely annoyed or moved by many of the items I had purchased by stealth.

He snorted. “I hope you managed not to buy the ones with the hearts. Will you go entertain Anatole while I do what you asked me to do?”

“All right.  Thank-you, Stilton, for helping me today.”

 “I’m not finished yet, Wooster.”  The heart swelled.

Stilton

D’Arcy found another hard day’s work ahead of him.  The mayor came to him as he left Bertie at the door of the trattoria, being enthusiastically embraced by the little chef and chattering away in fluent French.

“Signor Steelten.” “D’Arcy cringed. Until Jeeves had died, he had been ‘Signor D’Arcy.’  This sounded like a promotion of some sort, and he was uncertain what it meant.

“You can call me D’Arcy,” he suggested.  The mayor latched onto this eagerly as being more pronounceable.  They passed the usual sorts of pleasantries.  “These names of yours are very strange.”

“Yes, they are.”

“You should come with me.”  D’Arcy suppressed a sigh as he followed the mayor to Jeeves’s not-so-secret lair. His heart sank at the thought that Jeeves may have taken a lover, but the room did not appear designed for trysts. It was a small room with a sink and coffee maker.  There was a narrow bed and a bookshelf with a few volumes of Rosie M. Banks and Rex Stout.  A punching bag slumped in the corner, marked with the bloody prints of Jeeves’s knuckles where he had pounded out his rage and frustration.  D’Arcy felt the tears well up as he thought of Jeeves desperately hiding his illness from Bertie, with no friend to aid him in his struggles.

“He came to me for help,” said the Mayor, and D’Arcy felt his chest unclench.  “I helped him as much as I could.  We found him medicine before Signor Bertie called the Doctor Glossop.”

“Glossop?” The Mayor nodded.

“He was very upset.  He walked past several purple things without seeing them.  This never happens.” The man seemed close to tears at the thought that Bertie would not want purple socks or loafers, and D’Arcy inclined his head and tried to keep his lips from twitching. “And we gave Signor Jeeves this place, this bag, to help him.  They do so much for this town, for the children. I cannot tell Signor Bertie.”  D’Arcy listened as the mayor, S. Savino, explained that Bertie and Jeeves had set up a black market fund to feed the orphans in the town, how Jeeves had spent two mornings a week teaching the children to read when all the teachers were called up to fight, how, during the war, Bertie had personally found a way to open the cellars in the old villa to offer refuge to the girls and women when he heard of the harm to them in other towns from bands of passing soldiers.

Stilton did not have the heart within him to ask the mayor to tell the grateful people of the town to stop stocking in purple items to please kind, generous Bertie Wooster. “I have to bring him here, so he can see what this was.  He has such fear about what he might discover and this is so innocent.”  The mayor looked deeply uncomfortable.  “I can do it alone. Will someone see Signor Anatole to the villa?”

“No, no, no,” said the Mayor.  “He can stay with me until you come for him.”  Stilton declined and the mayor insisted, taking his arm and walking him back to the trattoria.  Bertie, looking much like himself before the war, was happily eating tagliata di manzo while Anatole and the trattoria owner beamed at him. It always pleased Anatole to see someone enjoying good food.

“Stilton!” Bertie was happy to see him, and D’Arcy smiled.  “Will you take some tagliata di manzo?”  Stilton paused and sat down.

“I have something to show you.”

Bertie pushed his plate across the table. “Have some of mine.  It’s wonderful and I know you haven’t eaten.” The trattoria owner, Luca, Anatole and the mayor looked at each other and seemed to hold their breaths.

“Thank-you Wooster, that is kind of you,” said D’Arcy, and they shared the rest of the meal. Luca slipped another plate of pasta on the table and they finished that as well.  Thanking the cook, D’Arcy took Bertie’s arm and they left the parcel of pajamas with Anatole.

Anatole turned to the mayor. “This is good? You are liking this D’Arcy?”

The mayor wiped his eyes and the trattoria owner blew his nose.  “It is good. Signor D’Arcy is a good friend to them. We have been so concerned for Signor Bertie.  We sent young Carlo, who likes both types of love, but Signor Bertie does not like him so much.  He stopped eating. He is so thin, but once his friend comes, he is eating again.” Anatole kept his peace, and decided to speak with Bertie privately.

Out in the street, Bertie let his face relax.  “How bad is it?”

“Bad enough, but it’s not what you might have thought.”

Stilton closed the door as Bertie leaned down to touch the bloody marks on the punching bag.  He watched his friend touch each of the books and lean down toward the bed to catch a whiff of a beloved scent they both knew would not be there.  Then they meticulously searched every bit of the room.  There was nothing except the books, and they meticulously tidied the room.

“Do we cut open the punching bag?”

“It has a zipper, here, Stilton.”

“Good show, Wooster.”  They unzipped the zipper and found a roll of blankets.  They unrolled the blankets and found nothing. “Rummy.”

Bertie flashed Stilton a smile.  Then he picked up the books and shook them out one by one.  There was a letter.  “It’s for you, Stilton.” No trace of disappointment entered his tone. They sat side by side on the bed and opened the envelope.  Bertie leaned his head on Stilton’s shoulder as they read.

My dear D’Arcy;

I must apologize for laying the trouble of this at your feet, my very dear friend.  As you can see, I needed a refuge to expel my grief and rage at the thought that I would die so soon. My heart is broken to think of what this will do to Bertie, the terrible burden I will be to him before, and after, I go. I could not possibly let Bertie see this part of me when there is no possibility, no hope, of anything more. Please see that he gets these volumes back and tell him that they are a token of my love.  Some were his, but the others were important to me. I will never be able to repay this kindness, my friend, or to express the depth of my affection and friendship for you.  Please forgive me.

Reginald

Bertie sighed.  “His handwriting was so shaky.”

“Let’s take these with us.”

“Thankfully, he promised never to leave me a token of affection that was really a clue to something else.”

“Wooster?  What do you mean?”  Bertie explained that Jeeves’s first mentor had lied to him, giving him gifts that were really clues to something else.  Jeeves had promised never to do the same to Bertie.  “Then why did he have these here?”

“To comfort himself, Stilton. These are books we each read before we declared ourselves to each other, when we had all the time in the world before us.  He had a blanket like this on his bed in London. He could stay here for a day and center himself, and then he could come home to me and we could enjoy the next little bit of time together. I used to chop wood and throw knives at things, but he had this.”  Bertie did not speak of Jeeves’s way of looking at his clothes and pajamas, laying each one out and holding it, reminding himself of their former times together.  He closed his eyes and drew a shuddering breath.

Stilton considered the depth of despair that must have clenched Jeeves’s heart when he realized that he was dying, leaving his beloved partner to fend for himself in a strange and alien world. He, too, would be angry, and he marveled at the love that caused them to protect each other so well.

“How did you do it, Bertie?”

“What, Stilton?”

“How did you remember to be so tender with each other all the time?”

“It’s not as lovely as it might seem, Stilton. We had to be so careful for so long, before we said anything to each other. We had been so attached and so afraid that the slightest thing could rip us apart. And if it did, there would be nothing.  We couldn’t even be friends or talk together.”  He pressed himself against Stilton’s side and Stilton put an arm around him. “Thank-you, Stilton. You have been such a comfort to me, such a good friend.”

“I’ve not done, yet, Wooster.”

Chapter Text

Bertie

I am so grateful that we waited for Anatole to arrive before opening that bally nightstand. The papers were there, just as I had left them, and some letters Reg had written to me and to Stilton.  I opened the folded papers that Reg had been looking at the day I had phoned Sir Roderick and learned the worst.  It was worse than anything I had ever feared, than anything I could have possibly imagined. No wonder Reg became so much better when I locked those things away and started giving him drugs so he would forget. No wonder he lived for so many more months than they expected. I was absolutely shaking with rage as I left the room and chopped wood, imagining that every bit of it was the Wolf, the MI20, Mycroft, the Director of the MI6, even poor Wally Fortescue, all the people who had involved Reg, and Stilton and I in this horrible web of lies and deceit. 

Then I went upstairs.  Stilton followed me and ran a bath, laying out some comfortable clothes. He put dried rose petals and violets in the water. No one had done anything like that for me for a long time. Reg had been too ill even to tend to himself for so many months before he died and before that he had grown so languid. I had had Reg around me for my whole adult life and I had not understood how entitled I felt to such things until he stopped doing them. I had continued on my own until I began to feel sore and wounded. I’ll never forget the look of shame on his dial when I asked him if I had upset him and he apologized and explained that he had been tired.  That was the day I realized he had been ill again and had not told me, the day I started writing notes so I could phone Roderick Glossop for advice.

I looked up at Stilton as I unbuttoned my shirt. I could see by the nervous way he kept looking at me and touching things again and again that he had never done anything like this before, for anyone, and he was afraid that he had been clumsy about it. “Nothing manly, then?”

He snorted and then rested a hand at my elbow and squeezed. I told myself that he could not have known what that gesture had meant to Reg and me, how special it was. He just thought of it as a nice sort of thing to do, the sort of thing we did in public, the sort of thing that was acceptable between fond friends. “A few rose petals more or less won’t hurt anything.” His voice was gruff with nervousness.

“Thank-you, D’Arcy. It’s a lovely bath, simply topping. This was extremely kind of you.” He relaxed and gave me a sheepish sort of grin then turned to lumber off.

“Anatole is making some food.  He wants me to learn something.”

“Better hop to, D’Arcy.  Before he starts bunging knives around.”

I sat in the bathtub, enjoying the scent of the flowers and my new bath soaps. It had been many years since I had sat alone in a warm, scented bath with only my rubber duck for company. Reg and I had always shared such things. I had missed having something special like this to myself.  I washed my hair and rinsed off as the water became cool and dressed in the clothes that Stilton had so thoughtfully laid out for me. Then I thought about the few entries in Reg’s diary that I had read before I realized he had left it out on my desk by mistake.  He had written about how cherished he felt, and how loved, when I helped him with his bath and dressed him for bed.  He had written that he didn’t deserve to feel such happiness, but he did.  He did deserve it and my eyes filled as I vowed to attend to this horrible affair on his behalf.  

I carried all the papers and boxes and code books to the dining room and laid them out on the table.  Reg would have been able to read everything and hold it in his head, pulling it out as he needed it, but I lacked his brains. Stilton and Anatole watched me gravely, but they were patient as I opened the box that Reg had hidden in London and laid out everything on the large table in the dining room.  All the papers, all the keys, all the maps and directions, and the log book he had been keeping.

Then I took up the pile of timbale pans and carefully pulled each one apart, looking for a forgotten scrap of paper.  There was one.

Anatole. Je suis tres, tres désolé. J'ai cru comprendre. Georges

I brought it into the kitchen and gave it to Anatole. He looked at me uncomprehendingly.  “When was this?”

I could have died of mortification.  “I do not know.” I think back. “Maybe when we were kidnapped.”  That had been more than fifteen years before.  “Maybe when the war broke out.”  That had been long ago as well.

The little chef seemed totally unsurprised. “That was a strange time, Mr. Wooster.  You were not very much in England and some things were very bad.” I remember the bally unsettling fondue, the first real argument Reg and I had had, how blissful it had been to make up with him.  And I remembered how we had had to run from the MI20, the fear that had sat behind our lives for those two years. “This explains some things over the past years, some friendliness. He is still alive?”

The corpus sagged in relief. “Yes, Anatole.”

“You will bring me there with you?”

“Yes, of course.”  I stopped a moment.  “You won’t kill him or throw knives at him, especially in his own house?”

The little chef shrugged and gave a sheepish grin, a cleaver in one hand and a chef’s knife in the other.  “I can only trying my best.” 

Stilton snorted.  “You can’t say fairer than that.”  He looked at the methodical piles.  “Wooster, please explain this material to me.”

I looked down humbly. “I am not certain I can explain it to myself.”

The little chef came and patted me kindly. “You can only trying your best.” Stilton raised an eyebrow and I was strongly reminded of Jeeves. Anatole gave a sort of screech and this point and chivvied Stilton back into the kitchen.  They finished preparing our meal while I gathered my thoughts.

Stilton

D’Arcy Cheesewright glanced up from time to time to see how Bertie was doing alone in the dining room.  “He is thinking.” Anatole shoved something into D’Arcy’s hands.  They appeared to be salad greens.  D’Arcy started tearing as directed. “He works very hard.  You see him practicing for darts?”

“I didn’t know he practiced darts.” He thought of the Drones tournament when Bertie had refused to train and insisted on swilling cocktails.

“He only do when no one sees him.  He does not like so much to be watched when he works.”

D’Arcy looked at the little man, deeply impressed.  “I wonder if Jeeves knew that.”

Anatole shrugged. “I think he is always watching of Mr. Wooster, but maybe he is seeing what he wants to see sometimes.  Mr. Wooster is being more smart than people sometimes are thinking. But that is the past.  We loved our good friend, Reginald.”

“Very much,” said D’Arcy.

“And now we are helping Mr. Wooster, spine-breaking friend.” Anatole showed D’Arcy how to lay the table. D’Arcy carefully washed and dried the table and then began methodically folding napkins and lining up silverware, carefully double-checking his work, as he had while preparing the meal.  He moved on to trim some flowers and arrange them in a low vase to decorate the center of the table, lining the stems up carefully and then arranging the colors evenly. The little chef eyed him approvingly, then glanced at Bertie, who was moving items into a pattern and then writing some notes on a sheet of paper.  They were good young men, he thought.  Not clever like Reginald, but good in a quite different way and each one regulated by a code of honor.

Dinner was pleasant. The little chef quietly motioned to D’Arcy and between them they kept Bertie’s plate full. Bertie asked Anatole questions about the food, and the little chef became very expansive under the attention.  D’Arcy understood from this that Bertie wanted some time to eat or think and, at the cheese, he engaged Anatole by asking about flambé.

Bertie went grey. Part of him knew it was foolish, but he and Jeeves had had a beautiful flambé meal with Anatole because the little chef refused to speak with Stilton. He looked into D’Arcy’s stricken eyes, and Anatole broke the silence. “It was to helping you, Mr. Wooster.  Reginald had no secrets from Anatole.  He wanted to stay by you, even before that.” Bertie thought this over.  Likely, had Jeeves not been with him, he would have married.  Or he would have found another valet.  He might have lost a great deal of money and been in the war. He might be dead.

“Did you know how I…?” he was still looking at D’Arcy.

“I didn’t know about the two of you until just before we were kidnapped, Wooster.”  They looked at Anatole.  The little chef shrugged, a glass of red wine in one hand and a grape in the other.

“I am seeing only what I see.  But I was seeing that you both want to stay by each other.”

The color started to come back to Bertie’s face.  “Who do you want to stay by, Anatole?”

“Mr. Seppings,” said Anatole sadly.  “But he is gone now.”

“When this is over, I want you to come and live with us, Anatole.  There is more than enough room for you here and in our flat in Paris.”  He looked up again.  “If that’s all right with you, D’Arcy. I’m sorry, old top, I should have spoken with you first.”

“Nonsense, Wooster, they are your houses.”

“No, no, D’Arcy. These are your homes, too.”

Anatole took a sip of wine, amusement dancing in his eyes as D’Arcy stuttered and blushed. “I…”

Bertie looked upset again. “You did stay in your room in the Paris flat after you left us?”  D’Arcy nodded, and Bertie smiled.  “Very well then.”

“You are a very good man, Mr. Wooster.”

Bertie had laid out all the papers and keys and maps on the table.   “The MI20 tortured and then trained spies and sent them off to do…such horrible, horrible things. The Director was supposed to have found all of them and brought them back, but he missed one, the Wolf.  Reg knew him, and… well, the Wolf had hold of him as a young man, and Reg…” Bertie bowed his head and choked back a sob.  “We tried very hard to find him, and eventually Reg did.  He found the Wolf while I was off with Stilton in Denmark.  And he spoke to him and let him go.  He let him go because he had been conditioned by him and drugged. Reg didn’t remember what he had done until he was wounded.  And when he got sick, the drugs did something to him and he remembered something more, enough to investigate his suspicion. The Wolf was covered in scars, and Reg never recognized him, but his friend had known him before, and you may have known him, too.”  He looked at Anatole, and the little chef went white.

“Oh, no, this is not possible.” Bertie’s heart thrummed wildly in his chest.  Anatole would not have understood so quickly if he had not suspected, if he had not been helping Reg.

“It is possible, Anatole. You know it is. It’s possible that the Wolf is my father, who was never killed and is still floating about doing evil things.”  He did not add that the Wolf, who had been a married man, had also forced Reg into a sexual relationship. “It’s also possible that the Wolf is someone else, but Reg suspected that it was my own father. I don’t know which, but there is no other reason that he would have used my mother’s old wedding ring as the key to his book code.”

“Maybe he stole the key and the code, Wooster.”

“But the ring was back with my Uncle Willoughby, D’Arcy.  How is it possible?”

Anatole steepled his fingers and looked at all the materials and the maps.  “Your friend Georges, he knew this Wolf very well, yes?”  Bertie nodded.  “And I knew very well your father.  We can go to see Georges and then we can talk to him.”

Bertie looked at D’Arcy. “Yes. I agree.  Will you let me look at these things and help you?”  Bertie opened his mouth to speak.

Anatole looked at the two younger men.  “You will go and have a swim and then you will speak with each other alone. Tonight I will stay downstairs, so you may speak together.” Bertie and D’Arcy started.  The chef pointed the cheese knife at Bertie menacingly. “No arguing with Anatole or I do not make for you any more timbale du ris de veau toulousiane.”

“Yes, Anatole,” said Bertie meekly.  He picked up all the papers and put them back in the box, then he brought the box upstairs to lock it in Reg’s old wardrobe.  D’Arcy followed him.

“I thought you said you burned all his letters.”

“I did.  Apparently many of them were copies.  There’s a letter here for you and one for me.”  Bertie handed D’Arcy the two envelopes.  Each said ‘after one year.’

“Will I hold it or do you want to lock them up with the rest?”

“Will you hold onto both of them?  I am afraid I will weaken and read something I cannot bear to see just yet.”

“Wooster?”

“I miss his guidance.” Something seemed to twist in his chest. He looked up at his friend and tears filled his blue eyes. “This would have been the end of us anyway, Stilton, if the Wolf was my father.”

“Wooster, I do not understand.”

“The Wolf was paired with him, D’Arcy.  They ‘bonded’ or whatever bally nonsense MI20 called it.  How could he bear to look at me once he remembered all that?”

D’Arcy looked at his friend thoughtfully, took a deep breath and spoke.  “That is just your fear talking, Bertie.  You’re disappointed with him and angry, but he loved you and you loved him.  What you had was real. You would have managed.  Will we have that swim now?”

Bertie considered his friend.  They lived together as schoolboys and trained and worked together.  It was silly to be so shy around him, as if it meant something.   They had always only been friends.  “All right.  There’s no moon.  Is it all right with you if I don’t bother with shorts and things?”

“I’ll get towels for us, then?”

“Thank-you, Stilton.”

Bertie

As I slipped, naked into the water I felt something release in my soul. It soothed me to be there, with Stilton paddling around, grabbing the dock and complaining about the possibility of drowning without an oar.

“Is it so bally bad, Stilton?”

“What’s that, Wooster?”

“Drowning without an oar?  I dare say drowning is unpleasant either way.”

Stilton snorted and I found myself smiling. “Will I teach you to row, then?  Perhaps you’ll understand.”

“But I’m so stringy.”

“Did Wally tell you that?”

“He said that you refused to admit that I was stringy.”

I smiled as he snorted again. “I miss him, Wooster.  Even though we have been apart for fifteen years and he betrayed me in the most craven way, I do miss him. What we had then was a real thing, Wooster, and I have never had anything like that again. It was nothing to what you had, but it was real nevertheless.”

“I am very sorry, Stilton.”  He made a gruff sort of a noise. “I have to tell you some very personal things.”

“No, Wooster, you do not have to tell me any personal things you do not want to tell me.  I will follow you and do my best to help you.”

I thought of the time he put himself between me an armed spy, the way he stayed on his feet to protect me even when he was shot. I thought of the time he came after me when someone had a bag over my head in a train station and let himself be captured. I thought of him taking a beating and knocking three guards unconscious to protect me from torture. I thought of the time he saved me when I got tangled up in my own ropes and Reg was too far away to help me. I thought of him running toward a boat in Denmark, carrying a small Jewish child in either arm, howling at them to wait. I thought of the way Reg insisted that he always be welcome in our home, that he always have a place with us. I thought of him wordlessly putting his arm around me on that awful day when we were both so certain that Reg would never wake up again. I thought of the look on his face when he closed the door so I could cover Reg’s personal bits before we dressed him to be buried. I thought that Reg would understand why I would have to share his shame, and I realized that I would have to read his journals to find out all the things he glossed over.

“I know, Stilton.  That is why I must tell you. I am afraid I am not thinking well enough and I need your help.”

“Anatole seems to know a great deal more than I do about this.”

“But I need your help.”

“And you will have it.”  We paddled a while longer and I found myself in the special place Reg and I used to stay to watch the moon rise and make love in the water.  It had been a very long time since we had done that, maybe two years, but probably a bit more. The water flowed over me and I felt my private bits begin to stir. I hadn’t pleasured myself since well before Reg died.  The guilt had absolutely choked me the first time I tried. I jerked away from the spot, suddenly, banging against Stilton.  He grabbed me in one hand and the dock in the other, and I was suddenly very upset. Reg had only been gone for four months and I could not be there without him in my bare skin. Stilton dragged himself from the water and I let him help me up. I picked up a towel and wrapped it around myself.  “I’m sorry.  You don’t seem to like to be there any more.”

“I, er, whatsit?”

“These past months, you have tended to float into that spot. I didn’t mean to crowd you. Are you all right?”

“Ah… it was special for us.”

Stilton was kerflummoxed. “But it was special before.”

“You made it feel safe.  I don’t know what happened tonight.” I did not understand why the corpus would be doing this to me. He draped the other towel over my shoulders and tied his shirt around his waist. As we climbed the stairs he took my arm and I realized my teeth were chattering.

“Perhaps I can read the papers and just ask you questions.  Would that be easier?”  I nearly burst into tears in my relief and I thanked him.  “Do you want some privacy tonight?” I was in desperate need of comfort and reassurance, but my body was acting so oddly. I bowed the head to gather my thoughts. “Tell me what you want, Bertie, and I will try my best to help you.” I looked up at him, damp and bare-chested and beefy, and I could see the concern on his big, round face and his anxiety that he was doing something wrong. I thought about the new purple pajamas and I realized I could not possibly put them on and get into one of my beds all alone, that it would ruin the happy feeling they gave me.

“I want to wear my new pajamas,” I said, feeling very foolish. He grinned and tousled my hair, and I smiled, but then the tears started to well up out of me. I was so confused. Reg hadn’t tousled my hair in more than a year and he was dead and I could not even remember the last time he had been strong enough to touch me with amused affection. He had been almost like a little child toward the end, before he got very bad, always so mildly happy to be near me. I had been so frightened and tired for so long that I was beginning to come apart slightly at the edges, and my body was aching in this strange way. I wiped at my face with the towel.  “I’m so sorry, Stilton. I don’t understand what is wrong with me.”

He didn’t say anything, but he looked as if he understood something that I could not see. “If I stay with you until you fall asleep, will you be able to sleep by yourself for the rest of the night?” I thanked him, and this time I closed the eyes and stiffened the upper lip. I couldn’t face the thought of another night in my bed all alone, but  when he nudged me toward his room, I paused.  “I made up a bed in the dressing room.”  I looked up at him. “You seemed so afraid to be alone.”  My new pajamas were laid out in the bathroom with a clean towel.  Stilton must have had the maids in and I said so, relieved to have something normal to speak about. “No, I cleaned it myself. I thought you had a housekeeper?”

I apologized and he snorted. “She had to go and help her daughter who had a baby.”

“Will you take care of some normal things tomorrow, then?” I smiled. 

“Yes, that would be very nice.”

“Good.  Stop hogging my bath and come out now.”  He had dried himself off and put on the paisley trousers.  I was immensely pleased.  They were very fruity, but he looked bally embarrassed. “I look like a bohemian clown, Wooster.  I hope you are satisfied with yourself. I didn’t come here to be dressed in pastel paisley and grinned at.”

“You look very fruity, Stilton.”  He snorted through the bathroom door.  I climbed into the bed in the dressing room.  He had taken all the pillows from my own bed, and I nestled quite happily among them, pleased with my new pajamas.  One of my books was on the nightstand, but I shut it in the drawer because I had been reading it to Reg the day before he died. Stilton came in and registered the absence of the book, but he didn’t say anything.

“How would I do this?” He perched awkwardly on the edge of the bed, and I suddenly felt very sorry for him. How different his life had been from mine.  I had experienced such love and tenderness for so long and he had had so little. 

“Stilton, what was it like between you and Wally?”

He shifted and looked at the floor. “You know what it was like, Wooster.  I have always told you about these things. It was a bit awkward.  He wanted me to be more affectionate, and I did not know how.  Sometimes we tried, but it seemed very forced.”

I turned this over in the bean. “Then why was it so easy for you those times with me, Stilton?”

His mouth flapped a bit. “It is a bit different. But you made it easy Wooster.  It was so clear what I could do for you.”

“Ah,” I sat up.  “Maybe I can fall asleep on my own.” He lifted an eyebrow. “You should get comfortable first,” I decided, tugging at the covers so he could come underneath.  He settled down and then I nestled against him.  He made a noise and apologized, but I was out like a light as soon as my head touched him, and I dreamed of swimming alone in the moonlight.

“Ho!” I woke up trembling in every limb and sticky in a very highly embarrassing way, my private bits erect and throbbing in a manner in which they had not throbbed for quite some time, possibly since Eton. I scrambled to get out of the bed, but my way was blocked by the groggy and beefy form of Stilton.

“Frightfully sorry, old top,” I gabbled, blushing to the roots of the hair and trying not to wriggle like a sticky, embarrassed newt in new pajamas.

“Are you all right, Wooster?  Have I hurt you?”  I registered that the Cheesewright corpus was a mass of tremours.

“Er, I am very sorry, Stilton, but I seem to be indisposed.” I could have died of mortification.

“I didn’t mean….” he said, shifting uncomfortably, and I realized the awful truth. Something similar had happened to each of us in our sleep. Apparently, Stilton had been sadly neglecting his private bits, too.  How bally mortifying.

There was nothing for it but to stiffen the upper lip and adopt an appearance of sangfroid. “I say, Stilton. This is most unhygienic. Most unhygienic indeed. According to your earlier recommendation, I think we will need to wash thoroughly with strong soap and hot water.”

Stilton snorted. “I am ready to perish of shame, Wooster.”

“And yet you snort amusedly.” He snorted again and shifted around, pulling off the paisley pajamas and wiping the affected areas. I was amused at our predicament, but the notion of baring the private bits while in bed with a nude Cheesewright was not entirely comfortable.   

“I er, perhaps you will be good enough to avert the eyes, Wooster, while I, er….”

“Certainly, old top.” I bunged a pillow over the bean while he made good his escape and then shuffled off the new purple pajamas, wiping self and drifting back to sleep amid the pillows.  I dreamed of Reg.  He told me to go to Paris, to check the flat in Paris. It was so real, and when a noise awoke me—when Reg was ill, the slightest thing roused me—I forgot.  Rising up, I wandered back into our bedroom, looking for him, but the bed was empty.  I was so confused.  He wasn’t in either of the beds, and when I opened the door to the bath, I remembered and fell to the floor, sobbing.

“Bertie?”  Stilton sounded weary and sad.  I tried to pull myself together, but I was so tired, and I just wanted to rest.  I did not understand why I could not just sleep. He bent to peel me from the floor and pulled back. “You’re nothing but bones.” He was right, but I had been wearing my loose clothes so no one would see. I felt a soft, warm something settle over my skin, and Stilton peeled me up from the floor, wrapping me closely in the soft fabric and rubbing my back. “I’m so sorry, Bertie.”  I thought back to the last time I woke up sobbing like this after a dream—I had dreamt that Reg was well—and the deep anguish in Reg’s voice because he was too weak to pick me up or get out of the bed and hold me. Stilton had been in the house that day, and I had longed to crawl into the bed with him and just be held by a strong friend who did not need anything from me. The guilt had nearly killed me.  “I don’t know what to do for you, and normally I would ask you for advice about such things, but I don’t like to trouble you when you are so upset.”

That stilled me.  “But you are upset, too.  He was your friend, too, and he died before you could say good-bye to him.” I remembered something.  “And I could not bring myself to phone you.  I was so afraid that you would say you could not come to me that I didn’t even call you.”  His arms tightened around me and I melted against him, grateful for his friendship.

“I did say good-bye to him, Bertie.  At Christmas, just in case.  Just in case, we said good-bye. You don’t need to worry about that.”

“If I had known, I would have phoned you to come back to us.” He pressed me closer against him and I began to relax, really relax, and I realized that it was the first time since I saw that bally wound three years before. “Stilton, please let me stay with you.  I hate to ask, especially after what just happened.”

“Are you certain, Bertie?  I would hate for you to wake up and think…” He stopped before he said Reg’s name. No wonder he was nervous. And then I thought about why he might leave after I went to him for comfort like this, when Reg was there, how confused and guilty he must have felt.  I felt him rub my back again, worrying that he was hurting me. “I don’t know what to do.”

“I don’t know what to do, either.” I said, and found myself repeating his words, “Perhaps we could just tread carefully?” He snorted at that, then stood and helped me up, and I put my arms through the sleeves of a flannel dressing gown and tied it around me, liking the feeling of him there, but liking also the feeling of tending to this myself.

I staggered. He steered me back to the bed, and gathered me against him gently, as if I was a precious, darling lamb. I took a deep breath, all the way to the bottom of the lungs, if they have a bottom. “Bertie?”

“Yes, Stilton?”

“I need some advice.”

“About what?”

“I find myself getting very attached to someone, a friend, and I am afraid to hurt him.  I’m so confused.  I do not know how I feel.”

I wondered who Stilton’s friend was, and I felt a little uncomfortable twinge until I remembered that there was plenty of room in our flat and that they could both stay with me. “Then tread carefully as you say. If he is your friend, then he will understand.” I expected him to snort and instead I felt the huge muscular body next to me relax, really relax, in a way I had never felt him relax before, and we drifted to sleep. This time, I dreamt that I was asleep in my old flat in Berkeley Mansions. In the dream, I am still young and I know that Jeeves, who is my paragon of a valet, will bring me tea and then I will go to the Drones Club and have lunch and play darts, that the most difficult problem I face is wanting to wear a pink tie with my heather mixture lounge. I slept soundly and deeply and well.

Chapter Text

****

Stilton

D’Arcy’s eyes snapped open just before dawn.  He had been dreaming of the war, and the heart thrummed in his chest.  Beside him, Bertie slumbered peacefully, a gentle smile on his face.  He looked very much as he had when they were very young men, back when they used to bicker and argue like cats.  Bertie had gotten on well with everyone, but things had always been different between the two of them.  D’Arcy remembered the evening that Florence Craye had praised Bertie’s moustache and he had vowed to break his spine in three places.  How childish they had been.

A noise downstairs roused Bertie.  He pulled himself up, bleary-eyed, and D’Arcy gently eased him back down and tucked him in well with the pillows around him.  “I’ll see to it, Wooster,” he said, rising from the bed and looking for his dressing gown, then realizing that Bertie was wearing it.  He shrugged on the paisley gown Bertie had given him, thinking of the deep, faint paisleys that Jeeves had worn and the stark flannels that Wally had liked.

Downstairs in the kitchen, D’Arcy found Anatole and Francesca, Bertie’s housekeeper, in pitched battle over the correct way to make toast. They each maintained that Bertie preferred their own method and appealed to D’Arcy as an expert eater. He tried not to be insulted. D’Arcy sat down and ate the toast, which seemed identical to him.  He said that it was all delicious and that Bertie would love the toast.  The combatants both frowned.  Then he explained that Bertie had a great liking for eggs and bacon and Francesca began to fuss with something she called pancetta.  Anatole became interested in the rind and Francesca grudgingly explained how it had been prepared.  In a short time, they were happily gabbling together in a mixture of French and Italian.  They fed D’Arcy handsomely.

Thinking of the old days in London reminded D’Arcy of something.  Bertie had always extolled the virtues of morning tea.  “Anatole.  Is there any tea?  Did we bring any?”

Tea was found and made and D’Arcy brought Bertie a tray.  He found Bertie sitting up, holding a picture frame, touching the glass.  The frame had two openings.  In one was a picture of Bertie and Jeeves as young men, dressed in their closely-fitting black trousers and sweaters.  Bertie was wearing a beret.  It was one of the very few photos of them being affectionate with each other.  Jeeves’s arm was slung protectively around Bertie’s narrower shoulders and Bertie’s arms were around Jeeves’s waist.  Their faces were alight with joy.  In the other opening was a picture of Bertie.  Jeeves’s arm was around the front of his chest, and Bertie was holding onto his elbow with both hands and smiling into the camera. A few faint bruises showed, but his expression was one of utter delight. D’Arcy considered, suddenly, that there were no other pictures of Jeeves and Bertie in the house, only these that he kept in his room. 

Bertie looked up, and his face was calm and thoughtful.  “I didn’t know you kept these out, Stilton. I remember the day you took these pictures.  I was just beginning to look human again after…  It was bloody terrifying, and look at us. We were so happy.”  D’Arcy noticed that Bertie had another photo beside him on the bed, one of D’Arcy and Bertie and Wally and Jeeves all wearing tweed suits, lined up on a bench at that bistro in Paris, several years afterward. It had been after Wally married. Bertie was dwarfed by the larger men. D’Arcy set down the tray. “Oh!  Thank-you so much Stilton!”  Bertie looked beside himself with pleasure. “This is so welcome. Thank-you.”  D’Arcy stood awkwardly, not knowing what to do.  “Would you sit with me while I eat?”

D’Arcy sat and picked up the pictures. “I always loved that picture of you.  The pair of you were so beautiful, it scalded the heart.”

“Who took this one of all of us together? I don’t remember.”

“Some American blighter.  Kept calling you and Jeeves ‘PB and J.’ The look on his face.”  Stilton snorted and Bertie smiled gently, nibbling his toast and sipping his tea.  He looked in the saucer.

“You brought that all the way upstairs without spilling any.”

“Was that wrong?”

Bertie grinned.  “Not wrong at all.  I take it that Francesca has returned to char my toast on both sides of the bread?  Did Anatole cut up very much of a fuss?”

“He became interested when she broke out the pancetta. I believe he is telling her how to make potatoes dauphinoise.  Anatole said you liked that.”

“Reg made that for me the first night we, er, ah, whatnot.  Would you like some toast?”

Stilton took a slice of toast.  He felt deeply curious about what had gone on between Bertie and Jeeves behind closed doors.  Not their lovemaking, since he imagined that the mechanics were much the same, but their relationship. “Wooster, have you ever spoken about this with anyone else?”

Bertie mopped up some egg yolk with his toast. D’Arcy waited for him to swallow. “No, Stilton.  We kept everything so private, and we shared so little, even with you and Wally. It feels almost mean, especially when I think about the way we have always been here.  We have so many friends and we could just be ourselves here.”

“I’d like to know what it was like, Wooster, but I do not want to pry.”  He watched Bertie finish his eggs and pancetta and drain his cup of tea.

“Stilton?”

“Yes Wooster?”

“Did you and Wally ever become friends again? After he married?”

D’Arcy flushed a deep, ruddy color and then he took a deep breath.  “Bertie, Wally and I were lovers until he died. I told you it was a real thing. He married to protect me, Bertie.  The MI6 were threatening us, and he married to protect me.  No one else knew, not even Jeeves, although Wally may have told him during the war.  They were always close.”

Bertie remembered the weeks Stilton had staggered about their villa, half blind with grief. “But, he…you, his wife… You said he betrayed you. You were apart for fifteen years, and you took those other lovers.”

D’Arcy closed his eyes and covered them with a hand.  “He did, and we were apart.  We only saw each other from time to time, and I so desperately wanted to find something else. I never thought he would love someone else like that, Wooster. It was so difficult to see him and know that they were the way he’d wanted us to be, to know I had failed him.” His voice broke and his shoulders shook.  Bertie set aside the nearly empty tray and wrapped his arms around his friend.

“Stilton, I am so sorry. But you can let go of him now, and there will be a space for someone else. Perhaps your new friend will…”

D’Arcy paused. “My new friend?”

“Yes,” said Bertie. “The one you told me about last night.  Perhaps your friend will help and understand you.”

Bertie found the look on his friend’s face confusing.  “Perhaps so, Wooster.  But I think you can see why I will happily follow you even if you choose not to tell me private things about yourself and Jeeves. I am very sorry that I did not tell you.”

“It would not have been preux, Stilton, and one does not like to pry.”

D’Arcy spent the rest of the morning reading through the materials Bertie had lined up on the table.  Something confused him and he had just decided to go back and read everything again, when Bertie came to him struggling to carry a large sack.

“Will you come with me? I can’t carry all of this” He indicated a smaller sack.  The Mayor had put them in the car the day before.

D’Arcy packed up the papers and locked them away. He picked up the larger sack. “Where are we going?”

“I, er, ah, whatsit.” D’Arcy thought about Wally, dead in Normandy, and how he had always been so kind to Bertie even when he gabbled.

“All right, then.”

They went along a side track that came out at a gate house that had once been part of the villa.  Another cottage stood nearby.  A group of children were playing outside.  When they saw Bertie and Stilton they let up a cry.  The sacks, it turned out, were full of toys and candy.  “They came on the train,” Bertie explained to Carolina, the woman who ran out to meet them.  She clasped Bertie’s face in her hands and kissed him on the lips.  Bertie tried not to squirm and Stilton’s lips quirked until she did the same to him.

“Thank-you for the rice and the flour.” Bertie pretended not to understand her, and fretted that he did not have enough toys for everyone.  Stilton looked in the bag and came up with a ball and rounded up the older children to play football.  Someone brought a chair out for Bertie to sit in and watch.  The little children found him a very attractive object, as his pockets were full of candy and he was always happy to let them snuggle against him and touch his shiny watch with their sticky fingers. Stilton looked up just as Carolina put a little one, just toddling, into Bertie’s lap.  His face lit up the way it had been in the pictures of him and Jeeves as young men.

Eventually, Stilton left the older children to their game.  Bertie had fallen asleep with two children in his lap.  Carolina came to Stilton and offered him some water.

“He is happy again now that you are back here,” she said.

“He is sad,” said Stilton.

“We are all sad that Signor Jeeves is gone. We all loved him. But Signor Bertie is happy that you are here.”

“I did not know that he did this.”

“Signor Jeeves would come with him sometimes.  He does not like children so much. Signor Bertie would be a very good father.”

D’Arcy glanced over and saw that Bertie was just opening his eyes.  He went to his friend and touched his shoulder gently.  “Bertie?”  Bertie looked up and smiled, pleased to see him.

“Aren’t they cunning, Stilton?” D’Arcy thought of Bertie saying that they would not let him have an orphan, and realized that Carolina had just offered to give them, Bertie and D’Arcy, a child of their own.

“Very cunning, Wooster.”  Carolina came and took one of the children, but Bertie insisted on carrying the other.  He stumbled and Stilton steadied him, and took the sleeping child from him.  Later, as the two friends walked home, Stilton was thoughtful.  Bertie was tired and took his friend’s arm.

“You found something in the papers?”

“Perhaps, Bertie.”

“Could I have been wrong? Could Reg?”

“Perhaps.”

“We have to go back to the flat in Paris.  I think he left something there.”

Bertie

We went back to Paris, stopping very little along the way.  Anatole wanted to go to the resort by the spring, and we agreed to meet three days later. He was several years dead before I realized that he wanted to give me some time to adjust to being in my own flat without Reg.  As the cab neared our block, I felt the surge of excitement I had always felt returning home after being away.  My face lit up and when I turned to Stilton, the sad, worried look on his dial reminded me that Reg would not be there.  Stilton took our bags and let me open the door.

It smelled like home, just like it always had and for an instant I nearly collapsed in a puddle of grief and longing, but it was only an instant.  All our things were there, our pictures and the little tokens of love and affection we had acquired over the years.  I’d put those things away at the villa—as Reg got sicker, they seemed to upset him—and I realized that I had lost him and our beautiful happy life together years before this, that we had gone off to war and lost everything to that terrible wound.  Oddly, I felt a sort of peaceful gratitude that we had had those last golden months together and I would have them to remember him by.  Stilton went to put our bags in our rooms, leaving me to wander around, touching things and getting reacquainted with my own flat.  Everything was subtly different and I realized it was because this was Stilton’s home now and that he had been living here on his own since I had left.

I was afraid to go into our bedroom, so I settled on the divan and picked up a book, one of my old copies of Rex Stout.  I touched the cover and set it back down.  Stilton came back out, concern on his lemon.

“Bertie?  Don’t you want to wash up and change?”

I did, but I could not go into that room by myself. “I, er, ah, whatsit.”  I felt my eyes dart to the door.

Stilton came and sat down.  He smelled like strong soap and cologne. “I am so sorry, Bertie.  Will I come with you?”

I stiffened the upper lip.  “No, thank-you, Stilton.  I can…” the voice broke. He lumbered up and pulled me after him, taking me by the hand and bringing me to the door.  I opened it and saw what he had done for me.

A cheerful new bedspread, purple paisley, covered the bed, and new pillows.  Everything else was the same, and none of Reg’s things were gone, but I felt almost equal to going through them. “I hope I didn’t overstep, Bertie.  I just couldn’t bear the thought of you having to face this room again after what happened, after what you said.”  I remembered, then, the last night in the flat.  Something had happened, a small thing to me, but Reg had utterly, completely broken down, sobbing helplessly like a little child. The only other time I’d seen him sob, really sob, was the night we came to our understanding, but this was much different.  He was inconsolable. I held him until he finally fell asleep and then staggered out, and found Stilton in his room.  He took one look at me and his face went the color of ashes.  I do not know how he did it, but he had found a way to get Reg to the villa. That was the day I understood that he had been sick for weeks, so very sick, and he had not been telling me.

“I don’t remember what I said.”

“You said that it was worse than being beaten.”

It had been easier to be beaten than to see Reg suffering such anguish. “Thank-you for the spread.  It’s very cheerful.” Reg would never have allowed it, I thought.  Stilton would have known that. “Did you choose it yourself?”

“It seemed like something you might like.”

My throat closed, but I cleared it. “I can’t stay here.” I heard myself whispering.

“I know.  You can stay with me. Or if you don’t like to, I made up a bed in the second guest room.”

“Won’t your friend mind if I stay with you?”

A rummy look planted itself on his dial. “I think he will understand, but I do hope you won’t hog my bath.”

I smiled and wandered into my room, touching my own things as though they belonged to someone else.  I opened the wardrobe and saw our city clothes, and my eyes lighted on one of our special lovemaking bags, the one we had locked away during the war, the very last one. I knew I would have to burn it, burn the contents, but I pulled the bag out and opened it.  I lifted out a pink, soft-bosomed evening shirt and Stilton made a surprised noise.  His presence had become so familiar to me that I had forgotten that he was there. 

“You wrote about those.” I turned, the mouth flapping. “Years ago.  I recall quite clearly. You looked very well in those pink shirts, Wooster. I never understood why you stopped wearing them.”

“Thank-you, Stilton.  Jeeves did not care for them.” Stilton snorted, and I felt a surge of annoyance, as I had often felt when the fellows said that I was a slave to my valet. I looked in the bag and saw a poncho and some bottles of scented oils and unguents and… a diary, the one he had been keeping right after he returned from the war.  I pulled out the diary and looked at the front page.  It was a record, a record of all the endearing things I had done from the time he came home. I flipped to the last page and saw that he had written something, something to me, on the very last day we had spent in the flat.

Dearest darling,

If you are reading this, you have returned to Paris and I am gone. I usually kept a journal of my thoughts and feelings, but these last months, my only thoughts have been these. No one could possibly deserve the bliss I have felt with you. I love you, Bertie, so deeply that words are inadequate to express it.  Please know, in your heart every day, that no one could have been more deeply beloved than you are. I so wish that we could have more time, but I am deeply grateful for what we had, for you, for your kind heart and generous nature.  You have made the most unbearable things bearable.  You bring me such joy, even at this terrible time. My dearest hope, darling love, is that you can continue to be happy, knowing that I am at peace. 

Your own Reg.

I looked up, tears streaming down my face. Stilton had wandered out of the room and I felt pang at his absence, which was rummy.  I opened the drawer of Reg’s bedside table and emptied his pills and handkerchiefs into the bag and left his diary there. Then I opened the wardrobe and took out his clothes, laying them in piles on the bed. I opened my drawers and piled up my old pajamas and silk underthings there also.  I went into my bath and washed myself, collecting Reg’s things from around the room and cramming them into the bag.  Then I piled up the towels we had shared. I put on some clean clothes and went out to look for some string to bundle up the things that covered my bed.

Stilton was at the door, accepting a large box from the doorman.  It was full of letters and parcels.  I foresaw a great number of thank-you’s to write. There was one largish parcel containing a great number of purple socks and a beautiful letter from the members of the Junior Ganymede Club.  A number of letters and things had come from friends at the Drones—Tuppy and Bingo and Chuffy and others—and several other packages from shops I liked.  I began opening things and realized what Reg had done. When he had grown so ill, he had ordered little gifts and mementos to be delivered for all the days he liked to mark. He had chosen enough for two years, I discovered when I went round to the shops to find out.  These were the very last of them.  It simply broke the heart that he had thought to do this.

Stilton had fallen out of his chair laughing when I opened the parcel of purple socks.  Some of them looked very old.  But he was not in the room when I suddenly understood why Reg had ordered pink pajamas in my size and deep green paisley pajamas in his, a card case, a watch chain, a silver picture frame.  He had ordered some things for Stilton, too. I made a strangled noise of distress when I realized what Reg had done and Stilton oozed back into the room.  A bleak look settled on his dial as he took in the items. He must have known.

“Are you all right, Wooster?”

The words were out of my mouth before I knew I’d even thought them. “How can I let him go, D’Arcy?”

“Wooster?”

“I have to let him go or I will die of this grief.  Every time it gets better, there is some other thing and I lose him all over again.” I looked up at Stilton’s big, round face and marveled at how close we had grown.  Three years ago, I would never have spoken this way to anyone except Reg.  I hoped Stilton’s new friend would be as kind to me as Wally had always been.

“He was only doing his best, Bertie.”

I sighed and rested my head against the back of my chair.  He was right, of course, but it felt like it used to when he was just my valet and I wanted to wear purple socks.  What I wanted was to remember our last good months and the times when we had been together and happy. I realized in that moment that I would have to contact the offices, that I would need the resources of MI20-somethingth that we were entitled to have, the files.  We would have a difficult few weeks ahead of us.

Chapter Text

Anatole

The resort was battered, but Anatole saw it as it once had been.  He wandered the well-known paths, fingering an envelope that Jeeves had left him fifteen years earlier, when the younger man hoped that his life was stretching out before him with the one he loved.

….I cannot express my gratitude properly, Anatole, for your undertaking to fulfill this last obligation of mine towards my former officer.  Thank-you for returning the funds that we borrowed from him and please leave this message.

Anatole was a good man in his way, but at heart he was a spy and he knew that secrets were the most valuable form of currency. He had opened the envelope and copied the message onto his own letter.

We have ended the MI20.  You may go. 

Anatole well knew that this was not the correct thing for Reginald Jeeves, the new head of the MI20 to have left for the man suspected of being the notorious spy, the Wolf. He also knew why Reginald had done such a thing. The little chef wandered into the lobby of his hotel, which had been arranged with Mr. Wooster’s customary generosity. Anatole himself could never have afforded to stay in such a place, except as a cook, and he had lingered there for nearly a month. A tall, shabbily elegant man lounged in one of the large wicker chairs reading a book of poetry.  He saw Anatole and rose, his eyes twinkling as the shorter man fingered the knife in his pocket.

“Now, now, Anatole, it would not do to mess up the lobby of your favorite hotel.”

“What are you doing here?  Have you not already done enough?”

“No, Anatole, I have not. I told that blot that I would finish him and his precious boy and finish him I will. How bothersome it has been, especially when I could not enter the country.  That stupid valet should have skewered him with that knife, but Reggie did have to interfere.  I will confess that my own first attempt to kill Mr. Wooster fifteen years ago was ill-considered. But who would have thought that that large, beefy fellow could take a bullet like that and remain standing?  And Reggie.  Who would have thought that he would have failed to recognize me?  He simply knocked me unconscious and removed all my papers.”

“You will not kill nice Mr. Wooster.”

“Your new timbale, Anatole?”  The chef glowered.  “We all knew you had an attachment of sorts to his father.  Quite a nice looking fellow.  Nothing to compare with the son of course, who took his mother’s complexion. One wonders what the two of them got up to.”

“Why are you here?”

“I have a message from Georges.  He’s so tiresome ever since those timbale pans started going astray.”

“Yes?”

“He is dying.  He wants to apologize in person.”

“I will consider.”

“You’re probably wondering why little Reggie told me I was safe all those years ago, Anatole.”

“No, in fact.”

“I will tell you anyway.  Like Georges, he could never kill me because he loved me.” The tall man raised an eyebrow. “He always found killing so distasteful, Reggie.  But he was warning me off, giving me a chance to mend my ways.  Why do you think he did that?”

Anatole’s face was white with rage.  Perhaps Jeeves had hoped to chase after his old officer as a way of keeping Mr. Wooster safe, but there was another reason.  “He do this because I ask him, deWolfe.  He do this because I want to kill you.  Because I ask him for this favor.”

 The look of amused superiority froze on the elegant man’s face. “You?”

“Me.”

The man known as deWolfe, who had once loved Reginald Jeeves in his own limited way, strolled from the hotel, neglecting to pay his bill and leaving everything except his book behind him.

Stilton

It had been a difficult few weeks, but Anatole had come to stay and the level of cooking about the flat exceeded that of the finest restaurants. D’Arcy had read through all of the papers again and again and felt dissatisfied with Bertie and Jeeves’s theories.  Something felt wrong and strange to him, as though some vital piece of information was missing, and he decided that Jeeves had been justified in waiting to explain himself.  Why, for example, would Jeeves remember something so suddenly? And how could he trust that memory when he was so ill? D’Arcy finally asked Bertie where Jeeves might have kept the paperwork from when he had been first made a spy as a young man. “I burned much of it, Stilton.”  D’Arcy did not bother to ask why, but waited silently as Bertie found the rest of the sheets in a file in Jeeves’s lair behind the wall in the kitchen.  The young Jeeves had been drugged for about a week, it seemed.  No mention was made of why. D’Arcy took down the names of the drugs and consulted a physician.  He returned home to find Bertie wandering around the flat holding a book and looking almost tearful. He had been reading through Jeeves’s diaries. On seeing D’Arcy, Bertie smiled and greeted him cheerfully. “Wooster, did he suddenly remember something after he’d lost weight?”

Bertie lost his cheerful look as he considered this.  “Yes, old bean.  He had wasted a bit.”

“Have you finished reading those?”

“Not quite.” The nearly tearful look reappeared. At the villa, they would have gone for a swim or a row at such a time.

“Have you taken a run today?”

“No, old bean.”

“Will you come with me, then?  I don’t like to go alone.”

Bertie grew puzzled.  “You often do.”

“Please, Wooster. I don’t like to go alone today.”

“All right.”  They put on their running clothes and set off for a jog.  Bertie had gained some weight and easily kept pace with his taller, larger friend.  D’Arcy stopped to stretch, and Bertie stretched also to keep him company.  Impulsively, D’Arcy grabbed Bertie and tumbled him to the ground.

“I say, old chap!”  Bertie kept hold and pulled, knocking D’Arcy off balance.  He caught himself on one arm before he smashed onto his smaller friend, but Bertie was quick, and used a knee to nudge D’Arcy’s hip, toppling him over.  “There!” he said, climbing up on top of D’Arcy and straddling his broad chest with his legs.  “It doesn’t do to pick on the smaller chaps, what?”

D’Arcy looked up at Bertie’s flushed and triumphant face and felt a sudden stir.  He took Bertie at the waist and a thigh and lifted him up, rolling over and pinning the slender man to the ground. “Ho!”

Bertie struggled on the grass. “This is terribly unsportsmanlike, Stilton.”  He adopted a lofty tone. “I would be let up.”

D’Arcy laughed.  “Would you?”

“I would.”  Bertie’s mouth twitched as he tried to maintain his tone.  He tried to wag a finger.  “I am trying to wag my finger, Stilton, and you are ruining the effect. Do move up a bit.” D’Arcy pushed himself up from the ground and pulled Bertie up. “Much better, thank-you.”  Bertie wagged his finger.  “Now, Stilton, I must express…”

“Bertie.” D’Arcy was struck by a sudden thought.

“Dash it, Stilton, I am being stern with you, old crumpet. Please have the tact to appear chastened and humbled in the face of my stern displeasure.”

“I am humbled as the dust, Wooster.  Now will you listen to me?”

“Very well.”

“We need to practice scaling walls.”

Bertie boggled.  “Now, Stilton, I do not want to be uncivil, but you are a much more, er, robust specimen, than the Wooster model.  Whatever will happen if you slip?”

“Good point Wooster.  We’ll need to start building you up a bit.  How long has it been since you did Swedish exercises?”

The twinkle snapped out of Bertie’s blue eyes.  “Reg and I used to do them every morning before the war. We only tried a few times after he came home the last time.”

D’Arcy cleared his throat.  “Will you try again?”

Bertie made a prim face. “You will wear your shorts, Stilton?  And refrain from shouting and saying ‘ho!’”

A mischievous glint appeared in the Cheesewright eye.  D’Arcy scooped Bertie up and slung him over a shoulder.  “I might perhaps be persuaded, Wooster.”

“Stilton, I am highly displeased with you.  Highly displeased, indeed, old bean.  This is most ungentlemanly.  I must insist that you return to being humbled and chastened, this instant.”

“Why if it isn’t Bertie Wooster!”

Bertie started, but Stilton kept hold of him.  He set Bertie down on the ground to face Honoria Glossop.  Bertie stood gaping while Stilton straightened his shorts.

“What ho, Honoria.  Quite a nice surprise and all that.  You know D’Arcy Cheesewright?  Schoolfellow from Eton and Oxford.”

D’Arcy and Honoria were charmed and exchanged the appropriate greetings.

“Might I have a word, Bertie?”

“Of course.”  They went off a little way and D’Arcy stretched.

Honoria Glossop had aged well.  She looked fit and robust.  “Bertie, Harold and I wanted to express our sorrow at your loss.  He was an excellent man.”

Bertie managed to stay upright through sheer force of will.  “Thank-you Honoria.”

“Daddy is waiting for you at your flat.  Don’t let him bully you, Bertie.  You are quite right.”

Honoria clasped Bertie in a bone-crushing embrace and rushed off, dabbing her eyes with a large lace-edged hankie.  She paused to say good-bye to D’Arcy and rushed off.

Bertie stood, pale-faced and trembling, and D’Arcy went to him and took his arm. “Will we go home now?” The slender man seemed to struggle within himself and D’Arcy suppressed the urge to put an arm around him.  He felt confused about his feelings and Bertie was no longer in the desperate throes of grief. Perhaps it was as well that they avoided too much contact until their feelings sorted themselves out.

“Thank-you, Stilton.”

“Will I return to being humble and chastened?”  Bertie smiled.

“That would be highly encouraged, old bean.”  D’Arcy snorted.

“I’ll race you back.”  They set off running at an even pace and ran, side by side, back toward the flat.  A block away, Bertie surged forward, but D’Arcy kept pace and they ended by shoving and wrestling with each other in the hallway to the flat.

Bertie

Stilton and I were locked in combat over the keys to the flat when the door flew open under the steam of Anatole. We tumbled down in a heap of tangled limbs and sneakers under the watchful eye of eminent loony doctor Sir Roderick Glossop. “I say,” I said from within the heap, “What ho, Sir Roderick.”  I attempted to lever up the corpus, but became highly entangled in the Cheesewright pins and tipped over.  A beefy arm shot up and righted the willowy form, then Stilton drew self upright through some mysterious agency and with a rather robust grunt.

“Sir Roderick, it is a pleasure,” said Stilton.

Sir Roderick was an old man now, and kept his seat, smiling benignly at us while Anatole plied him with good things to eat and drink.  It was difficult to eat well in England at the mo. “Ah, my dear young man,” he said, a mild chuckle emitting from his dial as Wooster started and gabbled.  “And Mr. Cheesewright.  I see you have finally had an opportunity to lay hands on Mr. Wooster, Lord Yaxley, I mean to say, and found yourself uninterested in breaking his spine.”

Stilton looked a bit uncomfortable but maintained an appearance of calm. “I try not to break anyone’s spine, Sir Roderick, even in the line of duty.”

“So, I see.  Shall I speak with you while Mr. Wooster changes?”

Stilton and I exchanged a highly rummy look, but he agreed and I ankled off to the bath to rinse the slender limbs and don clean raiment.  When I returned, the Cheesewright lemon was a study in rumminess, like unto the face of a cove who had accidentally sat on a porpentine or some other spiky object and was forced to pretend that all was well while suffering slings and whatnots to the nether regions. As I trickled out from the bedroom, Stilton shot up like a, er shot, and excused himself.

Sir Roderick gave self a piercing look as I disposed the willowy form into an armchair and commenced to partake of the choice viands set forth by Anatole’s skillful fingers. The eminent loony doctor proffered a leather satchel. “Lord Yaxley, I have been entrusted to give you the paperwork you requested.  And I wanted to reassure myself that you are recovering adequately from the trauma of losing Colonel Jeeves.  You seem to be coping well, but I am concerned about any and all effects, given your level of attachment to him.”

The choice viands became as dust and whatnots on the Wooster tongue. “I, ah, er.  Naturally, Sir Roderick, I am dashed torn up still.”  The eyes filled.  “It has been only six months.”

He nodded. “That is normal, Lord Yaxley.  But are you sleeping?”

“Yes, Sir Roderick.”

“Alone?”

This was a pit of a poser.  I’d been sleeping on the chaise in Stilton’s dressing room or in the guest bedroom or sometimes on the divan in the front room.  I’d not been in my bedroom in weeks, having moved much of the raiment and whatnots.  “Yes, generally.”

“Mr. Cheesewright indicated that you had been sleeping in his room.”

“Er, on the chaise in his room, er, on occasion, but not every night.”  In fact, I had not slept in the bed with Stilton since we came to Paris as I was afraid to cause any trouble between him and his new friend.

“I see. And have you been able to pleasure yourself?”

Wooster started, spluttering crumbs about the willowy corpus, the armchair and the carpets. “Sir Roderick!  I say, this is hardly preux.”

“It is a common problem when one loses a sexual partner.”

The dial grew red and ruddy. “Sir Roderick, I must insist that you not refer to Jeeves in that improper manner.”  The voice shook, but some things must be said.

“I apologize.  I must insist, however, that you at least attempt to begin pleasuring yourself.  I will be hoping to receive regular progress reports.”

I took refuge in my duties as a host. “I say, Sir Roderick, this is highly rummy.  Perhaps you would care to speak with Anatole about the menu for dinner? It is his turn to do the cooking.”

Sir Roderick started.  “His turn? I had assumed you were employing him.”

“Oh, no, Sir Roderick.  Anatole is on a social visit for some weeks. Old associations and whatnot.  Stilton made the jam you’re eating.”

A cab sounded its horn outside. “I find that I must go, Mr. Wooster.  I will expect regular progress reports.”

“Shall I help you to the curb, Sir Roderick?”

“Thank-you, young man.”  As we ankled out, Sir Roderick squeezed my arm.  “I am very glad Honoria married Harold, Lord Yaxley, but I find that I was very wrong about your qualities. I would have been proud to have had you as a son-in-law.”

I breathed a sigh of relief that Jeeves had gotten me out of that soup, thanked Sir Roderick solemnly and toppled back into the flat.  Stilton was collapsed in a chair and Anatole, blast him, was rolling about the divan laughing like a mirthful chef. “What ho, Stilton.”

“Bertie.  You’re sounding much more like your self of a sudden.”

I started.  “I am feeling much more like myself of a sudden, Stilton.”

“That’s a mercy, Wooster.  We have those papers to look at, and of course our regular progress reports.”

The willowy form collapsed in a chair. “Progress reports?”

“Did he ask if you were, erm, attending to yourself?”

“Ah, well, er, whatsit.”

“Me as well.”

Anatole fell off the divan laughing and I bunged a piece of brioche at him.  He caught it nimbly in one hand.  “Well done, Anatole.”

“Yes, well caught.”

Anatole winked at me. “You are being well caught, too.” I stood to help Anatole up, and he thanked me.  “We can go to Cannes tomorrow.  The spy Georges called to speak with you.”

Chapter Text

NEARLY FIVE YEARS EARLIER

Jeeves

After more than decade, I finally met the spy known as the Wolf.  I lied to Bertie, sending him to Denmark with D’Arcy, where I felt that they would be safer.  The Wolf was not as I remembered him, nothing like my own officer, a broken man.  His face had been terribly scarred and his voice was rough and gravelly, but he remembered enough particulars of our time together that I felt convinced it was the same man. We spoke and he confessed, tearfully and abjectly, to a number of horrific crimes.  It was my duty to bring him in or kill him.  Instead I looked compassionately on his distress and allowed him to leave, doubtless to continue his evil doing. 

I could not understand what caused me to do this.  Of course, I have preferred not to kill, and in fact I have not killed except in defending myself or Bertie since the last war.  Georges, my dear friend from the earlier war, was not surprised. 

“Reginald, you loved him once.  He was unworthy of you, but you loved him.  How can you be the right man for your current lover if you kill this one that you also loved?”

“My current lover?”

“You cannot fool me with this look, Reginald.  Your Mr. Wooster.  Denying him to me will only cause you pain, Reginald.  Do not deny him to me.”

“I cannot discuss this, Georges.”

“He is known already, Reginald.  You should bring him to a safe place before things become bad for him.” The heart nearly stopped in my chest. “Yes, the Americans have learned that he is the purple beret.  It will not be safe for him.”

“I will do as you say, of course.”

“I wish you would trust me, Reginald.  There is so much to tell you.”

“I trust you with my life, Georges, but not with Lord Yaxley.”

“You must trust someone with him, Reginald. Some day you will not be there to protect him.”

“Perhaps.”

PRESENT DAY

Stilton

D’Arcy reviewed the information he had been able to glean from the files in Jeeves’s office. He had spent his entire adult life in investigation and he felt a strange sense of satisfaction in the task. Jeeves had kept meticulous notes, generally in triplicate, but some of his materials about the Wolf were oddly fragmentary and incomplete.  It was clear that Jeeves had spoken with the man in France about two years before the end of the war, but that was all. After ten years of looking at bizarre pieces of evidence ranging from cookware to mystery novels, Bertie and Jeeves had managed to find a way to communicate with this elusive figure, but Jeeves have never felt convinced of the identity of their contact. Something very strange had clearly occurred.

Over the years, Jeeves had cast about trying to verify the man’s identity and also the details of Bertie’s father’s death because photos of the two men showed that they were of a strongly similar type. It seemed that the body identified as Bertie’s father had been badly damaged by fire.  D’Arcy struggled on through the paperwork Sir Roderick had delivered, hoping that Bertie would find something in Jeeves’s journals that could help explain his thoughts and fears.

Bertie was having a more difficult time of it.  He sorely missed his friend and lover, but as he read Jeeves’s journals, he bumped up against repeated reminders of his valet's belief in his mental inferiority.  Bertie found many of the entries from the early days of their association to be somewhat humiliating, and wondered why and how Jeeves had finally fallen in love with him. That Jeeves had loved him, deeply and utterly, was an immovable fact in Bertie’s mind, but their path together was seeming more and more unlikely the more he learned about Jeeves’s previous personal thoughts.  Then he read Jeeves’s account of his drunken return home one evening about three months into their time together.

I am beginning to find Mr. Wooster to be increasingly charming and engaging, despite some of his unfortunate tastes. His sweetness of heart and kind generosity warm my heart.  He has proven himself to be quite considerate, not expecting my attendance late at night unless I have been out at my own club and am also returning home.  He frequently gives me leave to take time in the evenings.

…sadly, my efforts to expunge purple socks from his drawers have seemed ineffectual…

…last evening, I found myself deeply stirred by my employer.  He had staggered home in an advanced state of inebriation, collapsing on the doormat. …my heart seemed to melt as he pressed against me.  I do not know how our lips brushed together… almost unaccountably, I find myself wanting to know more of his mind and heart.

Bertie remembered that night, and, like Jeeves, he had been confused about the event and its meaning. He had never meant to kiss his valet and if he was truly honest with himself, the action had been a simple expression of his loneliness and craving for affection. He supposed that if he had been more intelligent he would have realized that Jeeves could not have merely been a valet, that his powers far outreached his station in life. He saw the account of the banjolele and wished his replacement valet had not tried to kill him.

I cannot identify the exact moment that this change occurred, but my feelings for Mr. Wooster have become unmanageable.  I must try to leave him.

Jeeves’s account of their understanding filled his heart with pain and grief.  Seeing Jeeves’s fears and hopes written down reminded him of the strange inevitability of their union and showed that they, and he in particular, had had no choice in the matter of their involvement, that by the time they had come to an understanding their feelings were simply not to be denied.  And Jeeves had been consumed by guilt for embroiling Bertie in these matters of espionage. He wished that Stilton had read the books they wrote together, the works Reg had already discussed with him. It would feel less dishonorable. Bertie started, dropping the diary to the ground and rushing to Stilton’s side, tears still pouring down his face.  “Stilton!”

D’Arcy looked up and registered his friend’s tears.  It was a terrible business, poking around in the past like this. Reflexively he held one arm open to his friend, and Bertie went to him and let that arm settle about his waist. “What is the matter?” 

“The books, Stilton, the ones we wrote.”

D’Arcy handed Bertie a handkerchief. “Which ones?”

Bertie moved away as he scanned Jeeves’s shelves and found the editor’s proofs.  “Here. They came out in the States.  That’s how the American spies realized I was the purple beret.  Jeeves recorded his story, the story of how he met the Wolf.  Look. Georges says that the officer looks like me.  And Jeeves never ever let me alone with him.  Ever.  Look.  He says, again and again that he will not trust him with me.”

D’Arcy scanned the pages and registered surprise, then dismay, then anger.  “Wooster, did you really say that emotions generally register on my pumpkin-like visage in a fairly rude and obvious way? Is this why the Americans call me Punkin’head?!”

“Blighters.”  The men said in unison.  Their eyes met and Stilton's mouth quirked as he tried not to smile.

“Dash it, Stilton, I understand why you might be pipped.  I apologize, but consider that you did threaten to break my spine in six places.”

“Five.”

“Florence said six.”

“Florence exaggerates.”

“Even so, Stilton. I was hardly a rival for her affections.”

A snort marked D'Arcy's continued reading. “I’d forgotten your ability to jump backwards behind furniture.” D’Arcy scanned the manuscript.  “Bertie, Jeeves has written some very explicit information about himself here.”

“He has?”

“And you, old chap.  Did you not read it?”

“He said it was personal and it didn’t seem preux.”

Something twisted in D’Arcy’s middle at the notion that Bertie so reflexively treated Jeeves with that type of deference.  Yet, D’Arcy found himself feeling terribly sorry for Jeeves as he realized that Bertie’s sense of honor would have prevented him from being very much help in these matters. “Bertie, he published this.  Complete strangers have read it. All those American blighters who called you PB and J. Do you realize we all now know exactly what you did with those soft-bosomed evening shirts?”

I flushed a deep and ruddy color. “I hadn’t considered that aspect of the case.”

“This is bally helpful, but I am still pipped, Wooster.”

“Five places.”

“Wooster, I have been addressed as ‘Punkin’head’ for ten years. Ten years.”

“I am frightfully sorry, Stilton.”

“Are you meek and chastened?”

“As humbled as dust, Punkin’head.”  D’Arcy snorted, grabbing Bertie around the waist and mussing his hair. They scuffled playfully for some moments, and then D’Arcy held Bertie firmly with one arm while he scanned the book and Bertie tried to break free.

“Hie off with you.”  Bertie was turning to go, when D’Arcy tightened his hold. “Bertie?”

“Yes Stilton?”

“I hate to ask this of you.”

Bertie felt his insides clench. “Yes?”

“Why did he never tie the knot?  Can you read those parts of his journal?  Why was he leaving you free?”

Bertie’s face worked for a moment with some difficult emotion. “Stilton, please.  I can’t do this any more.  I feel like I am violating his privacy.”

“We need to understand what he was thinking.”

“About what?”

“Bertie, why did he wait so long?”

“He didn’t. He gave me his grandfather’s watch chain.  It meant something to him, and he wanted…” Bertie paused to gather himself as the tears began to pour down his face.  “He wanted me to have the freedom to leave.  He wanted me to have the freedom to go if I did not want to be a spy.  He thought he could do that, but it was already too late.  It was too late by the time he left over that stupid banjolele.”

“Bertie, both of you have been terribly wrong about these things in the past.”

Bertie stiffened his upper lip and wiped his face. “Would you read them?”

“I would be violating your privacy.”

“That’s quite all right Punkin’head.”

“Hie, thee,” said Stilton.  “Can you make the arrangements?”

“Of course, old bean.”

While Bertie investigated trains and the possibility of hiring cars, D’Arcy scanned the entries from three years of Jeeves’s diaries.  He was brought to tears by the tenderness in the entries about Bertie.  No reason for Jeeves’s reserve and misunderstanding was evident, and then he found something.

… at times, I am reminded of the night that Mr. Wooster bowed his head onto my shoulder as if I were the only source of comfort he knew and I curse myself for the weakness that allowed me to accept his affection without helping him to think about my unworthiness and all the trouble I was bringing down upon his innocent head. I know, in my heart, that he never considered a possibility that he would have to abandon his life, his comic songs and his pursuits, shallow though they might have been, to follow me into this dark world.  I am extremely proud of him and almost shamed by the grace with which he refrains from commenting on this circumstance, the fact that he sacrificed everything about his life—all the privilege to which he was born—in order to share my terrible burdens. All I can think to do is to leave him free to find another life at any time he chooses, any time he realizes, what my fate has marked for me.

D’Arcy only understood that these diaries were the words of a man fleeing in very terror of his soul when he scanned the unfinished sections of Jeeves’s public account of their terrible time fleeing the MI20.  He suddenly understood the joy that had characterized Jeeves and Bertie’s union from that time until the war drew them into its web, costing Jeeves his life. It was the joy of two people who never thought they would have been given so much time together. He quietly reshelved the volumes that reflected on the deep tenderness and affection the two had enjoyed for a decade, punctuated at intervals by a search for a notorious spy.  Those were too private to read without specific permission. D’Arcy gasped as he realized that Bertie, but not Jeeves, would have felt the same way.

Bertie made some noise in the next room, and D’Arcy went out to find him.  “Bertie?”

Anatole was lounging on the divan reading a cookbook.  The little chef winked. And D’Arcy grinned, poking his head into the guest room where Bertie had been sleeping and then his own room. Finally, D’Arcy realized where he had gone.  The door to the master bedroom was slightly ajar. Bertie had curled up atop the new paisley bedspread, tears streaming down his face.  He was holding something in his arms, and as D’Arcy neared, he saw that it was a white mess jacket with brass buttons and a large scorch mark on the back.

“Should I go?”

Bertie looked up.  “I just found this in the back of a cupboard.  I didn’t know he still had it.”

“He still took care of your clothes?”

“We fought too much when I did.” Stilton thought of the purple loafers and pink ties.

“I need to ask you something.”

“Yes?”

“Did he ever tell you that he wanted you to feel free to leave at any time?”

Bertie went white and the tears flowed more freely.  “Why would he send me away from him?  Did he want to send me away?”

D’Arcy closed the door and sat on the bed. He rested a hand on Bertie’s shoulder. “No.  He wanted you with him.  He was terrified, Bertie.  He was terrified by what could happen to you, and he was guilty because he let protecting you get in the way of his other work.”   

“I need to throw some knives at things.”

“Well, we should stop in at that bistro before we go and you can play with the other spies there.  It is the right thing to do.”

“Did Sir Roderick ask you to ‘see to’ me?”

D’Arcy blushed.  “Did he ask you to see to me?”

“Why would he have … oh, I am sorry.  No, he did not.”

“It’s no matter. We haven’t spoken of that night again.”

“No.” Bertie was redder than a boiled lobster. “Erm, whatsit.”

“Whatsit, indeed,” said D’Arcy. “Will we throw out the mess jacket?  It seems to be upsetting you.”

“He wrote such mean things, Stilton, and then he saved this jacket.”

D’Arcy considered this carefully. “Who would have seen those journals?  I sense the ones he wrote after you came together were meant for you, so you would understand.”

“You think it was a trick?”

“Bertie, what is the book code for?”

“It didn’t say?”

“No—I know there were messages and he says he used that ring to decode them.”

“He did not tell you?”

“He said it was safer for him if I did not know.”

“May I see the journals?”

“Of course.”  Bertie braced his shoulders.

“Bertie?”

“The heart is breaking, Stilton.”  Bertie went into the bedroom and took a slender volume out of the bedside table.  He ran his fingers over the message on the last page, and then he flipped through the book.  There was nothing there.  Bertie sat down and thought and then he went to the kitchen and opened the cupboard.  He pulled a lever and a door, cleverly disguised as a wall, opened up.  Inside was a simple room, very much like the one Jeeves had had in Bertie’s London flat.  He took up the last diary, the one Jeeves had been writing when he became so ill.

Chapter Text

Bertie

Stilton and I put on the splendid raiment, or what passed for splendid raiment among spies, and set out to ankle forth toward the modest bistro where gathered the espionage community of Paris.  We had been in the city for nearly two months, and it was my first visit thither.  Anatole took one look at the pair of us and insisted on accompanying us.  I hired a cab so he would not have to walk.

“You are having your knives, Mr. Wooster?” Anatole seemed very anxious to ensure that we had a full complement of weapons, pressing a set of knives on Stilton as well.  “It is very necessary to always have enough knives.” Anatole continued on in this vein throughout the drive and Wooster and Cheesewright avoided eye contact, lest we begin giggling. 

We ankled in, Wooster foremost. A huge cry went up from a group of American spies. “PB and J!”  Blighters. I willed back the tears as a cry of “Punkin’head!” went up. As our comrades surged up to greet us, they seemed to register the absence of Jeeves.

“Where is J? Is he out giving stern looks to the cabbie?”

Stilton had situated himself at the Wooster elbow and I gave him a stricken look.  The room went silent.

“Jeeves is, ah, erm, ah.”  I couldn’t say the words and the pins would have given way if Stilton had not been there to lean against.

“Shame!” A wide space cleared around Anatole as he had a tendency to toss knives about when riled. “You bad Americans stop teasing my friend. He is very sad.  You will stop to bother him now.”

The Americans turned out to be rather decent about the whole thing, as it happens. They all raised their glasses and made a toast to Jeeves, and then every single one lined up to shake my hand, and Stilton’s and wish me well and tell me something about him. It seems that many people owed him their lives because of his work during the war. I’d had no bally idea how much he had done for so many people. Stilton was like a rock, holding me up whenever the pins began to wobble and answering when I grew tongue-tied and began to say “whatsit.”  As the line cleared, a tall, lanky man of about seventy years, dressed in a well-aged but impeccable suit stepped forward and took the Wooster paw in both of his own. He bore a strong personal resemblance to my father.

“Mr. Wooster, I am honored to finally meet you.  My name is Werner, Werner deWolfe.  I knew Jeeves as a very young man.”

The mouth flapped.

“I think we should sit down,” said Stilton, and Werner deWolfe, Jeeves’s first officer, the man who importuned him and left him a box full of money, sat down and began to apologize most fulsomely.

“Mr. Wooster, it has just come to my attention that you and Jeeves were led somewhat astray by a counteragent during the war years. I know that you had been asked by the MI20 and the MI6 to find me, and it was very difficult, very difficult indeed to refrain from speaking with Jeeves.” The bally blighter’s voice broke and he wiped his eyes with a hankie. “I so longed to see him again, but I had seen him with you, and I felt it would be unfair to push myself forward after all that had passed.”

“Er, rather, I, ah, whatsit.”

“Please, Mr. Wooster, please tell me that he was happy at the end and that they did not get to him.”

“They?”

“I am not sure who they are. Georges will know. He maintains ties, after all.  He sent me to fetch you to see him.  He is too unwell to travel and he was afraid that M. Anatole was not willing to do so.”

“You!” Anatole drove a knife into the table, indicating, perhaps, that he was not best pleased at the meeting.  The peple at the nearest tables quietly sidled away.

“Anatole.  Georges invites you to visit.”

“I am coming.”

The lanky spy turned to me again. “Was he happy?”

Stilton squeezed my elbow and I took a deep breath.  “He was very happy, Mr. deWolfe and he spoke of you with fond affection and respect.”

The old man’s eyes filled with tears and he dabbed them again.  “He did?  He was such a sweet lad.  He forgave me for being so foul to him.”  Food was bunged down on the table.  Apparently Anatole had taken the liberty of ordering.  I could not face the canard, which has been Reg’s favorite. “Word has come to me that the Wolf, that horrid French spy with the scarred face, contacted Jeeves, pretending to be me.  They’ve arrested him in England, breaking into your old flat.  We wanted to have your permission to leave him in the care of the MI5 and end all of this.”

I drew self up.  “I must consult with Mr. Cheesewright.”  Anatole drew Werner deWolfe to another table. “I am terribly upset that I read so many of Reg’s diaries now, what?”

“Can you give permission?”

“It seems the only alternative. I don’t like to kill a cove we know nothing about on the word of another cove we know nothing about.”

“The MI5 will likely not kill him.”

“Will they keep him locked away?”

“Most likely.”

We told Werner deWolfe that the MI5 were welcome to the spy known as the Wolf.  And then we listened to him as he recounted the better parts of his relationship with Jeeves, the sweet endearing things he had done as a young man, and deWolf’s terrible feelings of guilt and sorrow when Reg became an object of interest to the sick, twisted mind known only as the MI20. It was a bit rummy, because it was really not at all like what we thought, and we stayed in a hotel that night because Stilton thought we should. 

Stilton

Later that evening, D’Arcy woke with a gasp and a start and lay, clutching at the mattress.  “Stilton?” D’Arcy opened his mouth, but could not speak. “My dear fellow, you’re shaking.”  Bertie crawled into the bed and draped himself over as much of D’Arcy as he could. “What is it?  Are you all right?  D’Arcy, are you all right?”  He made a sort of crooning noise in the back of his throat and pressed D’Arcy’s face against his chest.  “D’Arcy?  It’s all right.  You’re all right.” D’Arcy did not entirely agree, but he was trying not to cry and could not speak. 

“Bertie, I apologize.”

“D’Arcy, what is wrong?  How can I help you?”

“It’s the old dream, Bertie, the one about what happened at school.”

Bertie paused. “When was the last time you had this dream?”

“The day you and Jeeves contacted us in Cannes.  Fifteen years ago, before that bloke tried to kidnap you.”

“Is it that bad, then?  What we found today?”

“It’s that bad.  It’s one of those blighters from that MI20, Bertie.” Bertie pulled away and fumbled with something.  Then he wiped D’Arcy’s face with a handkerchief. “You don’t need to coddle me.”

“One little snuggle will not make you into a coddled git.”  

“It may.” They snickered.

“Can I stay with you?”

“Of course, Bertie. You could have these last weeks instead of curling up on my chaise.”

“I thought it would be wrong while you were deciding how you felt about your friend.”

“I’ve decided.”

“Oh.  What did you decide?”

“I believe he is very special, Bertie.”

Bertie seemed to struggle for a moment.  He was happy for his friend, of course, but a certain sadness gripped him.  He’d grown used to having D’Arcy about the place, to his friendship and companionship. “Will I like him?”  His voice shook rather more than he would have liked.

“Bertie?”

“When I meet him?  Will I like him?”

D’Arcy gently closed his arms around Bertie. “I apologize, Bertie. I did not want to bother you with this, but it’s you.  The friend is you.”

“I, D’Arcy?”

“Don’t pull away, Bertie.  I’m not expecting anything of you.  I know it's much too soon for you to be thinking of anything in that line. But you needn’t worry that I’ll be running off and leaving you behind.”

Bertie rested his head against his friend.  “That is most welcome news, indeed, Stilton.”  They fell asleep.

Chapter Text

Bertie

The next day, Stilton sat with me while I phoned up the blasted MI5.  It was deuced rummy. They would not communicate by the phone, but they sent over some dashed blighters who said that they thought the scarred man was the Wolf, and that he had been arrested and bunged in chokey for the foreseeable future. It would have been more reassuring if they knew anything, but this international wheeze was not their, er, wheeze. So, this would have been jolly well encouraging, if we knew it was true. We asked about this deWolfe character and they had never heard of him.

“I am so weary of this business,” Stilton said.

“I agree, Stilton, but what shall we do?”  

The ensuing Wooster-Cheesewright debate was lively and heated, but we ended by phoning the offices of the MI6 and, as a last resort, the MI20-somethingth.  Then we lingered in Paris while they sent additional blighters who gave us additional bad information.  They had heard of deWolfe but listed him as dead in battle during the Great War. Further debate followed, and Stilton was outmaneuvered by the Wooster eloquence or iron will, or donkey-like determination like unto that of swilling cocktails instead of doing Swedish exercises when a darts competition was on the line.  We never determined which of those was the case, but we ended by deciding to visit the French spy, Georges.

We travelled, together with Anatole and to Cannes to see Georges, who had saved Reg from some very bad treatment.  Georges was very old, and it was clear as we entered the house that he was dying. He lay on a chaise, looking out at his gardens.

“Mr. Wooster.”  George gave the warm, open smile he had always given me.  His nurse looked bally surprised.

“Georges.”

“I was very sorry to hear about Reginald.  It was too young for him to end.”

“I was sorry as well, Georges.”

“I see you have brought the large friend with you.  Is this the person that Reginald trusts with your life?”

The willowy form stayed planted in the seat, but I started inside.  It had not occurred to me, but I supposed that Reg had trusted Stilton with my life.  Stilton and our friends near the villa, who pretended not to know as much about us as they knew. “Yes, perhaps.  We never discussed it, really. I am sorry George that I have not seen you in so many years.”

“Reginald did not like me to be close to you.  He wanted to keep you away from the things that tied us together.”

“Did he?”

“He kept the biggest secret, Mr. Wooster, the one that dies with me.”  Georges opened his shirt to show me his chest, which was covered with interesting scars.  The same interesting scars that had been on Reg’s chest until his wound erased most of them. “Did he ever tell you about these scars?”

“No, Georges.”

Georges smiled a wide, happy smile.  “Not even with the drugs?”

“Not even with the drugs.”

Tears rolled down the old man’s cheeks. “You let him die free, Mr. Wooster.  This was a wonderful thing.  I have been so happy that such a good man as you was Reginald’s friend.” I felt a little bit bad for lying just then, but only a little. Reg and I had been all-in-all to each other.  Of course he had told me about the scars, but Georges had tried very hard to be good to Reg, and it would not do to let him die unhappy.  Besides, Reg and Georges had been friends for a very long time.  There must have been some reason for my lover to insist that we act like colleagues or master and man in front of Georges, even though he was open about his suspicions about us.

We stayed for a day, but then I had to leave.  Anatole decided to prolong his visit.  Apparently, he and Georges had been friends as boys and had mended their differences.  Anatole even made him some lovely timbale de something.

“You promise not to throw any knives?” I could not help but asking. 

Anatole shrugged.  “I can only trying my best.”  Stilton snorted.

Werner deWolfe brought us to the station.  “Thank-you for putting my heart at rest, Mr. Wooster.”  Something twisted in the Wooster breast, especially when I thought about those scars, but I stiffened the upper lip and assured him that it was nothing, that it was what Jeeves had wanted. 

Stilton paused.  “Mr. deWolfe… I wonder why you used that wedding ring as part of your book code?”

The deWolfe jaw flapped indecor-somethingly. “My very dear chap, I have no idea what you are talking about.  I gave that book to Jeeves as a token of may affection.  It was the only way.”

He saw us to our train and ankled off.  I sat next to Stilton in our compartment.  “Stilton?”

“Yes, Wooster?”

“Do you think we are shut of this?  Jeeves seemed to think that there was some awful business afoot.”

“It seems, Wooster, that these old spies are coddling you.  You always were a coddled creature.”

“Ah.  Thank-you for helping me.”

“You are most welcome, Wooster.”  I wanted to rest against him, but I was too tired to move.  It was fortunate for both of us.

Anatole

Werner deWolfe went to a nearby hotel and used the telephone.  “It is done,” he said. “You may…” he collapsed, weltering in a pool of his own blood, a chef’s knife protruding from his back.

“Reginald may forgive you, deWolfe, but I do not.”  Anatole boarded the very next train, hoping that he could find and warn his young friends of the danger that was following them.

Stilton

As they neared Paris, D’Arcy found himself distracted.  Everything had been a bit too easy.  How fortunate that deWolfe was not the Wolf. It could not possibly be so easy, even for Bertie. He leaned back against the seat and closed his eyes to think, just missing the door as it slowly slid open. A strangled cry roused him.  He started up.  Bertie lay slumped and unconscious against the side of the compartment and a tall slender man, his face crisscrossed with scars, lay weltering on the floor in a pool of his own blood, a pistol still clutched in his hand.

“Bertie?” D’Arcy, fearing the worst, gathered his friend up in his arms and carried him away from the spy known as the Wolf.

Bertie

I floated around like a cloud or somesuch, and then Reg was there.  I had dreamed about him any number of times and woken up gasping and crying when I could not touch him, but this time he was real.  I could touch him and feel him.  We kissed and held each other and then I heard Stilton calling me. It occurred to me that Reg was dead and I did not want to stay with him in this empty place.  I loved him, but I wanted so many other things.  I thought of the children living near our villa, of that jolly little fellow snuggled against me, sleeping, and something inside me ached to be back there, playing with the little children.  Stilton’s voice faded, and I clasped Reg in my arms.

We made love, and it was like it had been when we were young, back in the days when we almost felt as if we shared a single body. I could not speak. Reg looked up, and I realized, suddenly, that he could not speak, either. He had been trapped in this awful place alone and dreaming of me, and he did not want to be here, either.  But we were together and we rubbed our naked skins on each other and touched and licked each other desperately before we joined together again and took our release together. We twined together in a mass of limbs, not knowing where one of us began and the other ended.  I had missed this feeling, this perfect feeling, but like every other time we had been together like this, something eventually interrupted. Stilton called my name again.

Suddenly I found my voice. “Reg? Is it really you?”

“I apologize, love.  I could not contain myself. It had been so long since I could love you that way.”

“No apologizing, Reg, it was topping as always.” And, even though things had been so bally awful toward the end, suddenly everything was topping as though this perfect time had bled back through those awful months. “I am so sorry, Reg. I don’t hate you at all.”

He lavished me with affection and the heart and soul felt suddenly well and whole as they had not felt since he became ill. “Oh, love, I know, I know. I knew you would come, Bertie. I knew you would come to me one last time.”

He snuggled me against him, and I opened the mouth to say the hardest thing I had ever said, the hardest thing I would ever say.  “Oh darling, I can’t stay here with you.” And at the same time, he said the same thing.

“What, my Love?” we asked.

“I can’t stay.  I am so sorry.” I cupped his precious face in my hands and he cupped mine in his.  “I love you, so very much.  No one could have been more tenderly beloved than you were by me. I don’t want to leave you, but I must.” Neither of us could tell who was talking because in that moment, our souls were perfectly fused.  Then we were each ourselves, Bertie and Reg, two men who had shared a deep and tender love for so many years and now had been parted by forces beyond their knowledge and power.  I understood how very, very lucky I had been to have had even a moment of something so precious, something so few people ever experienced.

Reg’s darling face registered sadness and loss mingled with love, but he smiled at me. “I am so proud of you, Bertie, so very, very proud.” He kissed me and stroked my hair, and the heart broke, absolutely broke, because I knew it was the last time I would ever feel his touch, the last time I would ever give him my loving affections in return. “I so want you to be happy and loved. Thank-you for coming to say good-bye, love.”

There were so many things left to say but all we said was, “I love you.” We said that, but what we really meant was “good-bye.”

Anatole

Anatole reached Paris just in time to run across the platforms and see D’Arcy Cheesewright carry the unconscious form of Bertie Wooster from the train.  He shook his head, then rushed to catch the train back to Cannes.

Georges looked up from his couch as Anatole wandered into the house late that night.  “Is he dead?”

Anatole sighed heavily. “But not by my knife.”  Georges gasped.

“Did Mr. Wooster?”

“Yes,” said Anatole.  “He was defending his friend, this D’Arcy.”

“Do we like this D’Arcy?”

Anatole smiled.  “Yes, we are liking this D’Arcy very much.” The two men, friends since Anatole was a boy, sat quietly side by side. “Now that they are both dead, you can tell me what these scars are?”

Georges shook his head. “I apologize, but I think we were the last, Anatole.  I hope this terrible secret dies with me.”  Anatole nodded.  "You put back the paper?  You made sure they do not know we have always been friends?"

"I put back the paper.  No one knows we stay by each other whenever we can."

Bertie

I opened the eyes and closed them against a blinding pain. “Bertie?”  Stilton sounded rather undone, and I opened the eyes again. “Bertie?”

“What ho,” I said, feeling like a limp and battered noodle. “Where am I?”

“Mr. Cheesewright carried you back to your flat in Paris,” Sir Roderick Glossop bent over the bed.  I was too tired to start and the bean pounded and throbbed. “You gave us a bit of a scare.” He patted my hand kindly and then turned to Stilton. “I believe you will be able to see to him, Mr. Cheesewright?”

“I believe I will.” I managed to hold myself together until Stilton had him out the door, but then the tears started.  When Stilton came back to my side, I was simply oozing tears. He took my hand. “Bertie?  Are you in pain?”

“Oh, Stilton,” I gasped. “It’s done.  He’s gone.”  It was years before I realized he thought I’d meant the spy known as the Wolf and not Reg.

“Bertie?  Do you want some morphine?”

I closed the eyes and pressed his hand against my face and shook my head.  Stilton made a noise and climbed into the bed with me. He lay still, and I could feel his anxiety that he was doing something wrong and hurting me.  I realized, suddenly that he was my closest friend and I was his. And then I understood something else, all those strange feelings I had been having in the corpus since the night I threw my purple loafers at Reg’s grave. Maybe I could begin to pleasure myself again. I took a shuddering breath and opened the eyes.  “D’Arcy?”

“Do you want anything?”

“Is there any aspirin?” He rose and fetched them and then lifted me up so I could swallow the pills and drink down a glass of water.  “Thank-you, D’Arcy.”  He sat down nearby and I lay back and closed my eyes. 

When I opened my eyes, the bean ached, but not so badly.  I looked up and saw that Stilton was on the chaise in his room, reading a romance novel of Jeeves’s. And suddenly, I knew that I could sleep and I no longer needed him there simply to keep me safe from my dreams.  Something had happened and we were both free. 

“D’Arcy?”

“Yes, Bertie?”

“Thank-you.  Thank-you for taking care of me for so many months.  Thank-you for looking after me and helping me.  Thank-you for protecting me from the terrors of the night.”

His eyes filled.  “I didn’t bally well protect you on that train.” 

“It was, I think, my turn to protect you from something, Stilton.”

Stilton snorted, but the tears fell. “Next time, try not to get concussed.  I had to carry you across Gare du Nord.”  He tried to sound light and casual but the voice wobbled.

It was too bally embarrassing to explain that I had tripped over my own when the train rounded a corner and flew across the compartment under the momentum. Or that I had been aiming for the shoulder and the knife flew off target as the train shifted. “I tried this time.”  The lemon ached a bit, and I levered myself up to look for the aspirin.

“What do you want?”

“Aspirin.” D’Arcy shook two out of the bottle and then filled the water glass. I thought how lovely it was to have someone help like this and not to feel the ache of loss and longing. If Jeeves had been there, he would have peeled off the raiment and pressed our skins together to ease me.  I felt a pang, but for the first time since Jeeves had become ill more than two years before, I could recall that fondly as a dearly cherished memory without breaking down.

“Are you hungry, Bertie?”

“Not really. Is it my turn to cook?”

“I’ll take your turn for you just this one time.”

“Thank-you. That is very kind of you to make your own dinner.”  Stilton snorted and I felt my lips bend into a smile.  I closed the e.s and dreamed of Reg and smiled again to see that beloved and cherished face.

Stilton

In the weeks that followed, D’Arcy found himself feeling somewhat torn. He had no work to do, and Bertie seemed almost entirely himself again. Nothing more had been said on the topics of attachment and friendship. Perhaps it was getting to be time for them to part ways, but he lingered on, enjoying Bertie’s company and the day-to-day life they shared together as friends.  They passed Christmas together, and Stilton received a set of silk pajamas.  He gave Bertie a framed enlargement of the picture of himself and Jeeves, smiling and happy in their black sweaters and trousers.  Bertie was to treasure that gift for the rest of his life.

Jeeves had been dead for just over ten months when they returned to the villa.  Bertie had insisted on going first to see the little children, even before going to his own house. The little ones who had been just toddling when they left for Paris were now walking and running on sturdy, chubby legs. They squealed with pleasure to see Signor Bertie and his watch and to eat the candy he had in his pockets. Bertie lit up as the children came to him, grasping his fingers in their chubby fists and showing him the grounds. D’Arcy watched his friend carefully, and he saw Carolina watching the two of them. He moved away from Bertie and she joined D’Arcy.

“Signor Bertie is looking like himself again.  He has not looked like this since Signor Jeeves became sick.”

“He does look well,” agreed D’Arcy, glancing about.  There seemed to be fewer children.  “Are the other children inside the house?”

Carolina smiled.  “No, some of them have gone to school.  Signor Bertie has paid for that.  And some of the others have gone to their families.  We have only a few now.”

“Ah,” said D’Arcy. A little child tugged at him, and he looked down in some surprise. “Likely you want Wooster,” he said, and the child lifted its arms to him.  D’Arcy bent and picked it up and realized it was the same child he had taken from Bertie that evening a few months before.

“You like children also,” said Carolina.  “When you and Signor Bertie want a child, we will find one for you.”

D’Arcy stammered and blushed.  “I, er, that is, we, ah whatsit.”

“Stilton, I am shocked at you, gabbling and saying whatsit.”  Bertie had stolen up on them.  His previously natty trousers were sticky and a bit dirty at the knees where he had been crawling on the ground. 

“Carolina was just offering us a child, Bertie.” Stilton snorted as Bertie blushed and said ‘whatsit.’  Carolina kissed each of them on the lips and then laughed at them when they blushed and squirmed.

They returned to the house, where Francesca greeted them fulsomely, then returned to the kitchen with a shriek to rescue something before it burned.  They ate dinner, and Bertie stood.

“I have to go visit Reg, Stilton.”

D’Arcy cleared his throat.  “Of course.”  Bertie would stay here now, where he could visit the grave of his dead lover, the love of his life, every day.

Bertie turned back.  “Will you follow me?”

Stilton started. “Of course.”

The way to Jeeves’s grave had been paved with light gravel and edged with stones, just as Bertie had asked.  And when he reached the place, it was abloom with a profusion of early flowers.  Kind friends had helped them once again in that lovely place. Tears filled his eyes as he realized how much he missed his lover’s familiar presence.  “Ah, Reg,” he said, touching the headstone, and reading the words.  It struck him as odd that Stilton had had to explain the quotation, that he himself had failed to understand what Reg had meant by this last grand gesture.  “I miss you, Reg.  I wish you hadn’t gone, so that you could know that all of this is over now.  It’s all over.  They’re gone.  I am the last one who knows what those scars meant.”

Bertie stood and turned to see the views that Reg had in his final resting place.  It was beautiful, and the villa, Reg’s home, was just visible below.  D’Arcy was just leaving to join them. “Reg, I have to speak with D’Arcy about some things, private matters.”  Suddenly, the thought of Reg having private matters with someone else closed his throat. “No, I’m sorry, Reg. I’m sorry. I won’t. I’m sorry.”

D’Arcy reached Bertie’s side, and, squeezing his arm, paid his respects to Jeeves.  Then he turned back to Bertie.  There were two envelopes in his hand.  Bertie’s insides clenched.

“It hasn’t been a year, Stilton.”

“He wrote them more than a year ago, Bertie, and I think you’re well enough to read it now.”

Bertie looked at the envelope and saw the date in Jeeves’s shaky handwriting. He had dated the letters at Christmas, more than a year before. Bertie was reminded briefly of how his dear friend and lover had slowly dwindled because of his illness, and his hands shook as he opened the envelope and he saw the clear, firm handwriting that indicated that Reg had been in good health when he wrote.

My dearest darling Bertie,

This, I hope, will find you as well as you are right now.  I have stolen out, leaving you deliciously rumpled between the sheets of our bed because my heart is full and I must tell you some things while I am still able. 

I have just learned that I am dying, and my mind is starting to fail me.  I know that I will retain my feelings of love for you until the very end, but I want to leave you with some sense of me as I was and some assurance that I do understand what my death will entail for you.

As long as I have known you, you have craved a simple, quiet existence with a few friends around you. Since we became lovers and then spouses, I know that you are used to something more than that. The very worst pain I am suffering now, in these days when you do not yet understand that I am ill again, is the knowledge that I am forced to leave you to fend for yourself when you have been so used to my help. I do not want you to be at the mercy of the unscrupulous.  I have done my best to settle your money matters in order to protect you.  I have also asked some of our kind friends to look after you until you are comfortable on your own, but there is more.

I do not want you to be lonely, Bertie, and I must implore you to allow yourself to become attached to someone else if you like, even if that means doing and feeling things that no longer leave room for me.  If you are reading this, love, I am no longer there and I cannot give you everything that you need. Please, darling, please attend to yourself without any thought of how it would affect me if I were there.  I am not with you any longer except in this insubstantial way, and it cannot be enough for you.

Bertie, I can never find the words to tell you how very much you mean to me, how precious you are to me from the crown of your head to the soles of your feet. I cannot find any sufficient way to tell you how much I value you, your sense of honor, and the forbearance of all of my limitations and foibles. You are the finest man I have ever known, and I have been so fortunate in attaching you. I am grateful every day for your love and your high opinion of me.

I have chosen the quotation for my headstone today. I apologize for not explaining it or consulting you, but I feared that you would not allow it if you knew what I wanted to say to the world.  You must know, in your heart, Bertie, that you would have prevented this if you could, and I could not have refused you. Please forgive one last indiscretion from a man about to lose everything he holds most dear.

I love you, dearest darling,

Your own Reg

Chapter Text

Bertie

Tears were streaming down my face, and when I looked up, Stilton was in a similar situation.

“Shall we go for a swim?” It was freezing, but we were healthy enough to stand it for a few minutes.

“Please, Wooster.”

We ankled back toward the house, folding up our letters and putting them in our jacket pockets for safe keeping.  As we ankled out to the dock and stripped down to our shorts, I looked up at my friend, the one who had told me that he thought I was quite special, who had stood by me for the past year, and more than that.  Something in my gaze must have been questioning, because he explained. “He forgave me for becoming attached to you.” I started. “He said it was understandable, given our long association and your attractive qualities.  He also said that you seemed to have a strong desire to have children and that I would be better fitted to be a partner in that endeavor than he was himself.”

“My dear Stilton,” I began, blushing to the roots of my hair.  How oddly humiliating.  I felt much as I had in the earliest days of my association with Jeeves, when he organized my life for me from outside.  And then I considered that he had never failed me in those matters, even when he was being profoundly selfish in some other regard.  He had always unerringly chosen something good for me as well as himself.

“Am I? Am I your very dear Stilton?”  He looked earnest and worried.  It was a bit endearing, I had to admit.

The heart beat oddly in the Wooster breast. “I am not sure, Stilton.  I apologize, old bean, but I do not know.  And I did not know. It’s all a bit soon, I think.”

“You were distracted by grief, Bertie.”

“Yes, I was.”

“You seem somewhat better now.”

“I am much better.”

He paused for a moment, and touched me gently on the side of the dial.  Then he grabbed me and jumped into the cold, cold water.  We played and splashed like children until Francesca came out and scolded us for ruining our dinner.  Then, we lifted ourselves out of the water and ran, dripping and shivering, into the house to change our clothes.  It would never be the same as it had been with Reg, my deepest soul’s companion, but perhaps our friendship could grow into something deeper over time.

Thirty years later

D’Arcy Cheesewright sighed as he sat by Bertie’s bedside, marveling that they had known each other for more than sixty years.  The slender man had been ill, and his breath heaved and rattled in his chest.  Two young men, and their wives and children, sat anxiously in the front room.  The younger man came and wrapped his arms around D’Arcy’s neck.  “Father, we will take care of you.”

Bertie opened his eyes and smiled mildly. “Reggie?  Would you go out by Wally while I speak with D’Arcy?” 

The young man kissed Bertie and drifted over to his wife’s side. “Of course, papa.”

Bertie turned. “Punkin’head, I’m failing.  I’m sorry.”

D’Arcy snorted. “You’re not allowed to call me that unless we’re alone.  I got the stone today, Bertie.  I had them put it up so you could see it, as you asked.”

“You did?  That was very kind, very kind indeed.  Did you peek?”

“No.”

Bertie coughed and wheezed as he sat up, patting D’Arcy’s hand to reassure him. “You are kindness itself, Punkin’head.” Bertie was rewarded with another snort.

“You will be made to pay for that last remark, Wooster. And for that you had better last some years yet.  I am only doing this to humor you.” 

“I can only trying my best, old bean.”

D’Arcy snorted, and gently bundled Bertie into his warm clothes and a pair of extremely battered purple loafers and helped him into a little golf cart. They went up the well-worn path to the spot where Reginald Jeeves had been buried thirty years before to see what final statement Bertie Wooster had decided to make to the world.