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Jeeves isn’t quite himself these days. He hasn’t been the same since… Well. Ah. Not since The Incident. In my mind, I call it The Incident, and so have decided to describe it as such here. If one isn’t in the know, then one might very well assume it refers to a light-hearted occurrence, many of which I have previously written about. As you yourself are very much not in the know, you may now be considering plots concerning geese, or a cow creamer, or a set of very fine pearls. I have to sadly report that The Incident contains none of these, although I very much wish that it had done, and is of a much more sombre nature.
Jeeves died; you see. In rather an official way a few months back. A motorist crashed into him on the road and, though Jeeves was crossing in the proper and correct way as he always did, they had just slammed into him like he wasn’t even there. I’ll spare you the gory details, since I’d rather not think any more on it than I must, but suffice to say that the car hit him with enough force to spray my best suit with red stuff, despite my standing a fair distance away. That suit had to be thrown away afterwards because the stains were just too persistent. You can’t very well go on a jaunt about the metrop in a suit decorated in more than a little splash of blood and not expect there to be a few eyebrows raised. Jeeves says that that much red is not ‘in vogue’ at the moment and I find I have to agree with the man in this instance.
You may here be saying, “Hang on a mo’! Didn’t you just inform us that your man Jeeves is as dead as a doornail? How can he now be giving his opinion on sartorial matters if he’s six feet under? Are you off your nut?”
No, dear reader, my nut is assuredly fixed on. Jeeves did die, and he died properly, and I spent a good deal of the week following his death sobbing inconsolably into pillows and whatnot. As one does when one is grieving, you know. It was a dark, dark time, and I expect that times would be just as dark now as it seemed to me to be back then, had I not come across what I came across next.
By a stroke of the absolute finest luck, I caught a whisper on the wind about this new practise – or is it an old practise? I can never quite remember – called necrophilia. Necrophilia, is that quite right? Hmm. No – necromancy! That’s the bugger. I heard about necromancy. A shifty chap came up to me in the street, quite by chance, and explained the whole bally thing to me. Despite his confused talk about earthly consequences, and a lot of gabbled ramblings about the possible wrath of the undead and something about hellish uprisings which I didn’t really understand, I thought it a jolly good idea!
I mean to say, I wanted Jeeves back more than anything and I was prepared to pay the man however much to do it. There is only ever going to be one singular Jeeves roaming about this earth, after all, and if it was all the same to the universe, I wanted him back, thank you very much. I told this fellow as much, and he seemed so very eager to help that the next night he popped round to the flat, laid poor Jeeves down on the dining table, and did the necessary ritual. It required rather a lot of candles and chanting but at the end of it, Jeeves rose up as alive and well as you or I!
I cannot describe to you the relief and joy which overwhelmed me at Jeeves’ resurrection. I could’ve burst with it. The moment he sat up from the table, those intelligent eyes of his blinking open, I was so overwrought that I rushed forward and hugged him with all my strength. Although his arms didn’t come up to return the favour, probably due to his ever-present feudal spirit, I didn’t mind one jot. It was enough just to lay my bean on his chest and hear the reliable thumping of his stalwart heart pumping the old lifeblood around his body.
And after paying the necromancer handsomely, and cleaning up the mess of wax and blood on the kitchen table, it was once again Jeeves and I in Berkeley Mansions, just as we always were.
Well, not entirely as we always were.
As I previously mentioned, Jeeves is different now. I am not sure that anybody else has noticed the change and I don’t suppose they would, since nobody except me is in close quarters with the man every day. Jeeves doesn’t go out on his nights off any more like he used to – just stays holed up in his room or sat in the kitchen – so there’s even less chance of anybody realising the difference. I’m sure you are wondering what I mean by that, so I shall give you a rundown of the things the keen Woosterian eye has noticed since he came back from the undead.
For starters, it happens very often that I will walk into a room to see Jeeves standing in the corner with nose pressed close to the wall, inches away, just staring ahead blankly. I’ve watched him do this for hours and hours and hours. Afterwards I always see him going about his duties normally, seemingly without any recollection of this happening.
I’ve given up trying to wake him up from these peculiar stupors, since no amount of shaking his shoulders, poking, or light slapping will inspire him to move a jot. I don’t like to try anything rougher in case I accidentally hurt him. I couldn’t bear seeing him injured. Not again. I did read recently (I have been attempting a little bit of research into this, but it’s bally difficult to read these long psychological books, you know) that it may be a rare form of sleepwalking. Apparently, to wake him abruptly from his dreams would be extremely dangerous, so I’ve decided to let him be. Just in case, you see. And these little lapses don’t seem to interfere with his duties at all, apart from meals being a little late occasionally, so it’s a non-issue, really. Although, that’s not the only strange behaviour Jeeves has been exhibiting. Not by a long shot.
One night a couple weeks after Jeeves had come back, I woke with a start to see a figure standing at the foot of my bed. I don’t mind telling you that I let out a wail and flew up into a sitting position, clutching the bedclothes under my chin in the manner of a fair maiden. I was lucky I hadn’t decided to don a white chiffon nightdress, otherwise I might have resembled one of those shrieking fillies in gothic novels – although, exactly why I would ever choose to wear such a thing in the first place escapes me.
I was astounded to find that it was actually Jeeves and not, in fact, an axe murderer or ghost. It bears repeating that Jeeves is a rather tall chap, possessive of very broad shoulders, and yet this was the first time that I’d ever seen the man loom. Jeeves always carries himself with a ram-rod straight posture, as if a metal pole has replaced his spine, and he works very hard not to be intimidating despite his grand height. But he was looming over my bed like a thing that looms, and I don’t mind saying that seeing his dark silhouette sent a shiver down my spine.
“Jeeves! What is it?” I asked, trembling like an aspen.
Jeeves said nothing. Not a peep from him. He just hovered there silently for a minute longer, and then slowly turned and oiled out of my bedroom. The door shut with a loud creak behind him, and then all was silent.
I didn’t sleep at all for the rest of the night, gripped as I was by fear. One might even go as far as to say, dread. The next morning when Jeeves served me breakfast, being as un-looming as I had ever known him to be, I eyed him up nervously. I made a light comment about this new nightly habit, he didn’t seem to understand me at all. He looked at me neutrally, simply saying, “Indeed, sir?” and “Very good, sir.” I let the matter drop.
That was the first time. Now, whenever I happen to wake up and see him looming there, I just roll over and go right back to sleep. He never does anything, just stands around looking shadowy, and then trundles back to his room. It happens more often than not now: once or twice a week I find myself blinking the sleep out my eyes and sighing because Jeeves has chosen that night to hover. He’s become rather cheeky with it in recent weeks, but I can’t see the harm. He never remembers, so there isn’t a lot of point harping at the man when he hasn’t a clue what I’m talking about. I expect it’s something to do with his new habit of sleepwalking with his eyes open, and the fellow can’t help that.
But that there is another thing that’s strange, of course! Despite being the brainiest cove in the whole of Britain and possessing a brain far larger than the average human, Jeeves doesn’t recall his new habits. Not in the slightest, and, why, even other things seem to pass through his memory like a sieve!
I will be chattering mindlessly to him about golf or racing or some such (conversations which Jeeves has previously enjoyed and participated in with much vim and vigour) and will receive no answer from him. When I turn to reproach him for not responding, I find that he isn’t there to reproach. He’s gone back to the kitchen and started polishing silver as if I wasn’t presently asking him his opinion about the best time to start your downswing.
If he isn’t randomly walking off, he is escaping in his mind to pastures new. I will look up into those grey eyes, usually bright and sharp as a tack, and see a blankness. He goes somewhere else in his mind, where I cannot reach him, and I have to shout at him or shake him again. He always looks haunted after he regains awareness, like he’s seen a ghost. I often ask him about it, but he just brushes me off and offers me more tea instead.
Jeeves also leaves all the kitchen cupboards open. All of them, all at once. I have to go around closing them. And he never turns any of the lights on unless I request it specifically, so we end up sitting in the dark if I don’t ask him to switch on a lamp. After each night out, I come home to a completely pitch black flat, and am met with Jeeves waiting ominously in the doorway to take my coat. In those moments, I could swear I see his eyes reflect a luminescent green, like cat’s eyes do, but the weight of his hands is the same as always when he slips my jacket from my shoulders so I don’t mind that so much. Just a trick of the light.
Last Friday though, I heard Jeeves screaming. He was sobbing his heart out, wailing as if he were being mauled. I mean, it was the kind of howling that rattles and jars at the nervous system, striking horror into the heart. When I got to the kitchen, almost paralysed with worry, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Jeeves was sat calmly at the table, quietly darning a pair of socks. The sounds I had heard were so agonised, so disturbing, and yet here he was, calm as anything.
He stood up when I appeared in the doorway, “Do you require anything, sir?”
“N- No, Jeeves! No. I- It’s only- I heard you screaming, Jeeves! Is everything quite alright?”
His tormented shrieking was still ringing in my ears; I honestly felt as if I might start crying at any moment; my body was shaking in the wake of it. The noise had echoed in the whole of my frazzled nervous system, leaving behind an awful residue.
“I am perfectly fine, sir.” Jeeves replied, face blank.
“Ah, right.” I tried to smile, still trembling, “I must have imagined it then! Hah, all these late nights, you know. It’s probably just my mind playing tricks on me!”
“Perhaps you would feel better after a lie down, sir.” Jeeves tilted his head, “Are you dining in or out, sir?”
“Yes, yes. Yes. Ah. Yes, I’ll dine in, Jeeves.”
Jeeves nodded, “I shall wake you before 5, sir.”
“Ah, yes. Jolly good… As long as you’re sure everything is alright?” I searched Jeeves’ eyes with great desperation, but I found nothing. They were empty. Empty shallow pools of grey and black.
“Perfectly sure, sir. All is well.”
He didn’t blink once. Had he blinked at all since he got back? I couldn’t remember. I can’t remember even now.
Shifting uncomfortably in the doorway, I looked away to quell the nausea rising within me, “Good! Good… I’ll go lie down, then, shall I?”
“Very good, sir.” He went back to his socks, fingers working mechanically away.
And that was that.
For all his new little idiosyncrasies, I won’t have anything said against him. Jeeves’ duties haven’t suffered, not in the slightest, and he remains the paragon of valets he always was and always will be. It matters not that sometimes I discover him lying beneath his bed instead of on it, and sometimes I return to find all the photo frames in the flat smashed, and sometimes he turns his head a little too far to look at me.
It’s all worth it to have him here with me, like it’s always meant to be.