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“I say, Comrade Jackson,” Psmith said, sitting down in his customary armchair with a slightly more precipitate action than was his wont.
“Mmmm?” Mike said. He was reading the cricket scores.
Psmith hesitated. This was so unlike him that it tore Mike away from the cricket. He glanced up over the newspaper to see Psmith carefully arranged in the chair, pinstriped legs crossed delicately over one another. His customary carefree pose was absent. “Is everything alright, old man?” Mike said.
“Perfectly splendid,” Psmith said, and lapsed into silence again. Mike’s brows furrowed.
“Are you… plotting something?” he tried tentatively.
“You wound me, Comrade Jackson,” Psmith said. “I never plot. I am as innocent and straightforward as that chap in that book. You know the one. Dreadfully boring.”
This lacklustre response alarmed Mike further. “You’d tell me if you were sick, wouldn’t you?”
Psmith fumbled for his monocle, which lay against his beautifully embroidered waistcoat, and fixed it in his eye, peering at Mike through it with deep concentration. “You’re a tremendously valuable personal secretary, Comrade Jackson,” he said. “I believe you may have hit upon the thing.”
“You’re sick?” Mike frowned.
“Lovesick,” Psmith agreed solemnly, and sighed, deeply.
Mike sat up straight, a sharp jolt of jealousy to his chest. “Look here, Psmith, we’ve only just sorted ourselves out, you can’t mean to tell m-”
“Ah, Comrade Jackson,” Psmith interrupted. “Comrade Jackson, this is what I need to help me think. Your ever-perspicacious observations are music to my ears. We have indeed, as you say in such a brusque and manly fashion, ‘sorted ourselves out’. As ever, your grasp on the situation is masterful.” He steepled his fingers together and peered at Mike with the beaming pride of a father. “However, Comrade Jackson, and please allow me to preface my next observation with an apology for wounding your delicate pride in any way, I find I must quibble somewhat with your definition of ‘only just’.”
Mike blinked. “It was only last week, man,” he said.
“Indeed. A whole week ago.” Psmith said this portentously, with an expectant look at Mike. Mike felt somewhat at a loss. Psmith sighed, and said, “I am not a simpering maiden, Jackson. Neither are you.” His expectant look grew keener.
Mike wished he could look back at the cricket scores. They were much easier to understand. “I don’t get your drift.”
“I will inform the newspapers. There will be a melancholic cry in the streets. Jackson Has Failed To Get The Drift, they will say. The darling of the universities, the brain of Britain, is Losing His Touch.”
It was a little sharper than Psmith’s usual sallies. Mike raised his eyebrows. “I say, you could just tell me.”
Psmith let the monocle fall again, and sighed. “I don’t tend to go in for that sort of thing, old chap.” Mike waited. The moment stretched. Finally, Psmith said, his manner more uncomfortable than Mike had ever seen it, “I was rather hoping we’d have… progressed by now.” He coughed, and smoothed his sleeves.
“Progressed?” Mike said. A glimmer of understanding was beginning to spark, and he couldn’t keep from smiling.
“Yes, progressed,” Psmith said, a touch of irritation in his voice. “You needn’t laugh.”
“I just thought you’d…” Mike gestured helplessly. He’d expected seduction, not this, which was shockingly artless by Psmith’s standards. It rather pleased Mike, feathers still a little ruffled from last week’s conversation. It had begun by Psmith announcing that he knew what sort of clubs Mike occasionally ran off to and had continued in a similar unflappable vein on Psmith’s side. Mike had not been unflappable. The whole thing had rather distinctly flapped him, in fact, no matter how pleasant its resolution.
“I appear to have failed your standards, Comrade Jackson,” Psmith said, sounding bored. “The key to the mystery, I assume.”
“No, no,” Mike said, waving his hand again. “Sorry, sorry, old man. I’m somewhat taken aback, that’s all.” A thought occurred to him, and he sat bolt upright. “I say!” he said. “I say, is that why you haven’t’…” He trailed off, contemplating the ramifications of his idea.
“Do go on, I am simply agog,” Psmith said, managing a decent impression of agogness and playing with his cufflinks.
“I was rather waiting for you, you see,” Mike said. “You tend to take the reins somewhat. But… you’re at a loss, aren’t you?” He glanced over at Psmith, whose face was blank. “I’ll inform the newspapers,” he added, prompted by a small streak of unworthy malice which he regretted a moment later. “Sorry,” he said.
Psmith waved a regal hand. “Water, duck, back, I assure you,” he said. Mike’s explanation seemed to have steadied his nerves a little, because he left his cufflinks alone. “You appear to have grasped the nub of the thing. I am, indeed, at a loss. We must conceal the secret from the City, for fear of causing a financial crash. And from the Varsity, of course, or there will be despair in the streets. All in all, I rather feel that you are the only person who should ever see I, Rupert Psmith, scion of a great house and hope of Britain, at a loss.”
Mike nodded, a warm glowing thing settling in his chest at this admission. “It’s not so different,” he said, but caught the way that Psmith’s face went blank again. “Oh. Really?”
Psmith coughed. “We met when we were rather young, Comrade Jackson.”
Mike had no idea why that was relevant, but he resolved to let it pass. “It’s not so difficult,” he amended. “Here, shall we sit on the couch?”
“Nothing I’d like more,” Psmith agreed. “Delightful.”
Mike moved to the item of furniture in question, and waited for Psmith, who seemed somewhat lacking in alacrity. Mike resolved not to mention it. He remembered the first time he’d stepped onto a cricket pitch in a real match, bat in hand, wanting desperately to play and wanting just as desperately to retire.
Psmith joined him eventually, perching on the edge of the couch and putting his monocle back in his eye. “The view is much better from here,” he observed placidly, fingers of his right hand gripping his knee tensely. “I can see why you suggested it.”
“I’ve always thought so,” Mike agreed, laying a hand over Psmith’s white-knuckled one . “Shall we try?” He waited for Psmith’s nod before saying, “Kiss me.” A little sudden, granted, but sometimes one had to just cut through Psmith’s thoughts, or else they would be here all day.
Psmith jolted. “So forward,” he said, a slight crack in his voice. “I begin to suspect your intentions. Comrade Jackson, Casanova of the Home Counties.”
“Not exactly,” Mike said. “Turn your head. And you might remove that monocle.”
Psmith obeyed, silently. His lips landed against Mike’s with all the enthusiasm of a dead fish, still and unmoving. After a second, he moved his head away and said, “I rather fail to see the appeal.”
“Cricket would be no fun if you just stood there, either,” Mike said, with some asperity.
“A good point, well made,” Psmith said, hand twitching underneath Mike’s. “Would you – please feel free to try again, in your own time, Comrade Jackson.” His thin lips were pressed tightly together.
Mike nodded, and leaned forwards. His first kiss had been with Valerie Trumpworth, behind the magnolias at her family’s summer cottage, and he vividly remembered the moment that he’d realised the point of the whole silly exercise. Unfortunately, the realisation had come only a moment before Valerie decided that he smelt too strongly of wet dog to continue the experiment. He wouldn’t perform the same cruelty on Psmith, at least. He fitted their lips together, warm and close, and opened his own mouth slightly, breathing against Psmith’s. The hand his own was resting on top of clenched and unclenched.
“Oh,” he heard Psmith say, his voice a shade deeper than its normal tone. “Shall I -?” The words buzzed against Mike’s mouth, and their lips brushed together.
“Mmmmm,” Mike said, and pulled back a little. Flushed cheeks suited Psmith, he noted with a slightly proprietary feeling, gave him a vivid air.
“That was a little more helpful in illustrating the appeal,” Psmith said after a moment. “I can always rely on you, Comrade Jackson, to help me with life’s little details.”
Mike nodded. “You can,” he agreed.