zero IQ, INFINITE IQ houseboat

SUMMER MOONSHINE - houseboat

'It may interest you to know that I have had another letter from Adrian. You had better read it.'

'No, please. I don't read other people's letters. Tubby, yes. Joe, no.'

'Read it.'

'Well, if you insist.'

He took the letter and glanced through it. He looked up. His face was expressionless.

'So what?'

'You see what he says. He wants me to marry him.'

'You're going to marry me.'

'You? You're just a clown.'

'Perhaps. But if you imagine that I am not sincere when I tell you I love you, you're making a mistake.'

'Adrian's sincere.'

'Adrian,' said Joe, 'is a worm and a rotter, and I shouldn't think he knows what sincerity means.'

There was a silence.

'After that,' said Jane, 'perhaps you will give me back that letter. I don't want to hear any more. And' - her voice shook - 'I don't want to speak to you again.'

Joe smiled a twisted smile.

'I thought you were going to say that,' he said. 'Well, you won't have the chance. I'm leaving.'

'Leaving?'

'In half an hour.'

Something seemed to stab at Jane's heart.

'Leaving?'

'I must, I'm afraid. I have a living to earn.'

Jane was staring.

An aching sense of desolation was gripping Jane.

'Oh, Joe!'

Their eyes met. She gave a cry as his hand came out and gripped her arm.

'Jane... You never get a second chance. It was a miracle, our meeting. If we throw it away, there won't be another. Will you come, Jane?'

'I can't, Joe.'

'You must.'

'I can't, I can't. How can I let Adrian down?'

'Do you seriously mean that you're going back to that worm?'

'He's not a worm.'

'He is, and you know it.'

'I know this. He needs me.' ***

'Oh, my God! Needs you!'

'He does. You read that letter. Can't you see how impossible it is for me to throw him over after that? I know Adrian. He's weak. Helpless. He relies on me. If I let him down, he would just go to bits. I've felt it all the time. He's like that. You're different. You're tough. You can stand on your own feet. You could get on without me. I can't break promises.'

'Oh, for God's sake!'

'It's no use blustering, Joe. That's the trouble with you. You come roaring into people's lives and wanting to snatch them up and you think that's all there is to it. I can't go through the rest of my life hating and despising myself. If I let Adrian down, I should feel as if I had deserted a puppy with a broken paw.'

'This is absolute insanity.'

'It's how I feel, now I've read his letter.'

'I believe you're still in love with him.'

'No. I don't think so. And yet I may be. There are little things about him, little things he does, the way he looks sometimes - Oh, you must know what it's like when someone has once got under your skin. It must have happened to you. There must be some woman before you met me whom you can never really get out of your thoughts.'

'There was one in San Francisco.'

'Well, there you are. However long you live, you will always remember her.'

'You bet I will. Talk about getting under the skin!'

'You make a joke of everything.'

'And you laugh at it. And if there's a better recipe than that for living happily ever after, name it.'

He gave himself a little shake.

'So you're really going back to him?'

'I must.'

He laughed.

He shook himself again, like a dog coming out of the water.

'Good-bye, Jane.'

*** ***

houseboat

Prudence Whittaker, Sir Buckstone's invaluable secretary, came out of the house, tall and slender and elegant. Directing an austere look at Tubby's receding back, she spoke in a cold crisp voice which sounded like ice tinkling in a pitcher:

'Mistah Vanringham.'

The stout young man turned. He stopped, looked and stiffened, frigidly raising his eyebrows in a manner that indicated surprise and displeasure. After what had occurred a week ago, he had supposed that it was clearly understood between this girl and himself that they were no longer on speaking terms.

'Well?' he said distantly.

'Might I ask if you are going to bathe?'

'I am.'

'From the houseboat?'

'Yup. From the 'ouseboat.'

Miss Whittaker's nose quivered for a brief instant. But her voice remained cold and level.

'I did not say " 'ouseboat".'

'Yes, you did.'

'I did nothing of the kind. I would no more dream of saying " 'ouseboat" than I would of employing a vulgarism like "Yup" when I meant "Yes," or saying "mustash" when I meant "moustarsh," or "tomayto" when I meant "tomarto," or - '

'Oh, all right, all right. What about it, anyway?'

'I merely wished to inform you - '

'I suppose,' said Tubby, 'that when you go out to lunch with that boy friend who sends you jewellery, you say, "Oh, Percy, will you pass the potartoes!" '

Miss Whittaker's delicately modelled lips tightened, but she neither affirmed nor denied the charge.

'I merely wished to inform you that you cannot bathe from the houseboat.'

'Oh, no? Why not?'

'Because it is occupied. It has been let for the remainder of the summer.'

It had been Tubby Vanringham's intention to preserve throughout this distasteful scene an aloof hauteur, but this bit of bad news shook him from his proud detachment. The houseboat which lay moored at the foot of Sir Buckstone's water meadows was the only place for miles around where you could swim in the nude.

'Oh, gee!' he said, dismayed. 'Has it?'

'Quate. And its tenant will naturally expect to enjoy privacy. He will not want to look out of his window and see strangers - fat strangers,' said Miss Whittaker, specifying more exactly - 'hurling themselves past it. So you must do your bathing elsewhere. That was all I wished to say. Good morning, Mr Vanringham.'

She withdrew into the house, gliding in that genteel way of hers, like a ladylike swan; and Tubby, after standing where he was for a moment, frowning darkly, walked on, kicking pebbles.

His soul, as he walked, was a black turmoil of conflicting emotions. This woman had treated him in a way which would have made even a man with so low an opinion of the sex as the late Schopenhauer whistle incredulously, but though he scorned and loathed her, he was annoyed to discover that he loved her still. He would have liked to bounce a brick on Prudence Whittaker's head, and yet, at the same time, he would have liked to crush her to him and cover her face with burning kisses. The whole situation was very complex.

*** ***

'This morning a totally unexpected extra bill comes in from this hound Busby for ninety-six pounds, three and eleven, for what he calls "incidental expenses connected with the office". It stunned poor old Buck. He came tottering to me with the document. He asked me if I could let him have the money as a loan out of my savings from my dress allowance, and I said, "What savings?" And then he said, well, what was he to do, and I said I was going up to London this morning, so give me the bill, I said, and I will go and see this Busby."

'What can you do?'

'The idea is to try to get him to trim the thing a little.'

'How do you expect to swing that?'

'Oh, I shall plead and weep and clasp my hands. It might work. It does in the movies.'

Tubby was concerned. He had a brotherly, protective affection for this girl.

'But, gosh, Jane, the guy's most likely a fat, double-chinned, pot-bellies son of Belial with pig's eyes and a licentious look. He'll probably try to kiss you.'

'Well, that would be good for the three and eleven.'

(From P. G. Wodehouse*: SUMMER MOONSHINE, Arrow Books.)

Kishalay Sinha কিশলয় সিনহা किशलय सिन्हा जी [G]

ZERO IQ, INFINITE IQ

Displays hyperactive imagination. I didn't have any such thoughts for the UIC girl classmate**. Spoke with her in class just for a few seconds - on the LAST DAY I attended UIC - to ask for a pen which I returned after class. (It was a subtle hint by God. Can anyone imagine going to class without a pen?)

Though I was awarded university Ph.D. scholarship by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), department of physiology and biophysics, and I was then awarded university M.S. scholarship by the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), department of mathematics, statistics, and computer science, I left UIUC and then I left UIC because I secretly realised each time I left a university that I had already solved everything in Bombay (now Mumbai) ten years before My arrival in America, but I kept My sensational discoveries a profound secret for many, many years until a few years ago when I decided to start revealing online My truly earth-shaking discoveries in My online posts, bit by bit, step by step, gradually, in easy stages, knowing the near-zero IQ of terrestrial beings compared with the infinite IQ of God.

Kishalay Sinha কিশলয় সিনহা किशलय सिन्हा जी [G]

'One of my (few) proud boasts is that I once spent a day interviewing P.G. Wodehouse at his home in America. He was exactly as I'd expected: a lovely, modest man. He could have walked out of one of his own novels. It's dangerous to use the word genius to describe a writer, but I'll risk it with him.' - John Humphrys

'I constantly find myself drooling with admiration at the sublime way Wodehouse plays with the English language.' - Simon Brett

'The perfection of the phrasing is a physical pleasure. I doubt if any writer in the English language has more perfect music.' - Simon Callow

'Quite simply, the master of comic writing at work.' - Jane Moore

'Not only the funniest English novelist who ever wrote but one of our finest stylists. His world is perfect, his stories are perfect, his writing is perfect.' - Susan Hill

'The incomparable and timeless genius - perfect for readers of all ages, shapes and sizes.' - Kate Mosse

'A genius ... Elusive, delicate but lasting. He created such a credible world that, sadly, I suppose, never really existed but what a delight it always is to enter it and the temptation to linger there is sometimes almost overwhelming.' - Alan Ayckbourn

'Wodehouse was quite simply the Bee's Knees [?]. And then some.' - Joseph Connolly

'To pick up a Wodehouse novel is to find oneself in the presence of genius - no writer has ever given me so much pure enjoyment.' - John Julius Norwich

'P.G. Wodehouse is the gold standard of English wit.' - Christopher Hitchens

'Wodehouse is so utterly, properly, simply funny.' - Adele Parks

'P.G. Wodehouse should be prescribed to treat depression. Cheaper, more effective than valium and far, far more addictive.' - Olivia Williams

[Understandable diffidence about referring directly to The Supreme Writer. - G]

* P. G. Wodehouse ... P. = Peter? G. = Gabriel ?

** over-inflated girl - actually, just one of millions or billions like her - no big deal.

*** Hitler needs Eva Braun.

Kishalay Sinha [G]