Wimsey ficlet: The triumph song

[nineveh_uk]

With thanks to sonetka for raising the question as to what might occur "if an 80 mph triumph song happens to go off course for a moment". Otherwise, this is almost entirely plotless.

The triumph song

The nurse departed with a final admonishment not to tire the patient, leaving Peter to stare appalled at the collection of bandages, sling, and plaster of Paris enveloping the figure in the hospital bed.

‘My dear,’ he began, ‘I am most unutterably sorry, and there is nothing I can possibly say to excuse myself. How are you feeling? They told me everything will mend, but you do look – well, as if someone turned a car over on top of you.’

The black eyes blinked. ‘It’s not too bad,’ said Harriet. ‘It’s rather uncomfortable at the moment, and a frightful nuisance, but I’m not permanently maimed or anything.’

‘Thank God for that,’ he said seriously. ‘No thanks to me. I was showing off – ’

‘I realised that.’

‘And to think you defended my driving to Jerry!’

‘There is a certain irony to it,’ agreed Harriet, ‘and to the fact that having taught me to defend myself you immediately proceeded to come close to breaking my neck. You don’t think it was some sort of subconscious male protective instinct at work to prevent my going back to Shrewsbury?’

‘On the whole, I think not. My subconscious may have its unruly side, but it is vain about its driving. But I’m afraid that without you on the spot it may be difficult to prove the identity of our culprit. I must see the Warden this afternoon.’

At which nurse appeared to warn the visitor he had another ten minutes, and he lead the conversation determinedly onto lighter subjects.

It was as Peter was gathering his things to depart that Harriet remarked suddenly,

‘You know, I ought to be a great deal angrier with you.’

‘I do know, and I’m very grateful.’

‘But that’s just it: I almost feel it might wipe out gratitude for good.’ She smiled wryly. ‘Next time I try to berate you for saving my life, you’ll only have to point out that you’ve tried to kill me since.’

‘If that is to be my only punishment I shall count myself the child of good fortune. Oh! I almost forgot.’ He drew a small tissue-wrapped package from his coat pocket and set it by the water jug. ‘You can open it after I’ve gone. I’ll call again tomorrow, if I may. Good bye.’

As Peter made his way towards the gates that gave out onto Woodstock Road, it struck him rather belatedly that perhaps it would not be easy to open the cunningly-wrapped parcel containing the red queen with only one hand. It was discretion as the lesser part of valour, but her extraordinary request for the chessmen being the proximate cause of his folly, expecting the purchase to be met with unalloyed delight had seemed rather impertinent, and he had elected to funk it. As it was, Harriet had been extraordinarily generous for someone with a dislocated shoulder and a bust ankle. One might almost think – at any rate, he seemed to have done his cause no harm. Perhaps there was something to this subconscious business after all.

Comments

[lilliburlero]

This is lovely: funny and touching. That ridiculous car! (& its driver...)

[tree_and_leaf]

Peter's subconscious is resorting to drastic tactics!

[legionseagle]

Much appreciated!

[antisoppist]

Dunno about plotless. It has the precisely perfect amount of plot it needs!

[nineveh_uk]

The driver is certainly equally ridiculous.

(I like the subtle Wimsey referencing icon.)

[nineveh_uk]

Perhaps it feels that the conscious has been failing to get anywhere in five years, and it's time it had a go to see if it could do better.

[nineveh_uk]

My pleasure!

[nineveh_uk]

Keeping the plot down (No! I do not need to go into details of what will now happen at Shrewsbury!) was a bit of a challenge. I do not need more plotty crackfic that will take over my life.

[tree_and_leaf]

Well, I can see its point of view!

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Oh, very nice.

[a-t-rain.livejournal.com]

Aww, adorable! (And, obviously, also insane.)

[elmey.livejournal.com]

My subconscious may have its unruly side, but it is vain about its driving.

I adore this :) And the ficlet too! It's an awful burden living up to your car.

[mrs-redboots.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm always surprised he didn't have a serious road accident, given the state of the roads at that era and his love of speed. No wonder Harriet was frightened. I drive fairly fast myself, given the chance, but only on motorways!

Thanks.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I have realised that all my Wimsey WIPS are insane. Clearly I am not in a canon-comliant frame of mind at present.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

It is a burden I feel I could enjoy trying to endure.

[white_hart]

I love this, and love it even more because of the setting. I shall be imagining Peter and Harriet in my office come Monday morning ;-)

[lopezuna-writes.livejournal.com]

Wonderful!!!

Next time I try to berate you for saving my life, you’ll only have to point out that you’ve tried to kill me since.

If only he had realized earlier that this was a potential resolution of the problem! He could have upended them in a ditch the very first time he asked her out.

[sonetka.livejournal.com]

I love it! I am very pleased to have accidentally inspired it :). This might really erase the Burden of Gratitude pretty efficiently, since unlike in the original it isn't a situation where Harriet could potentially have avoided the danger by thinking out the problem differently. No, Peter drove too fast and flipped the car into a ditch. Unarguably, 100% his fault. Like Lopezuna said, he's probably kicking himself for not plowing the car into an embankment the first time he took her to one of those out-of-the-way restaurants after her acquittal. Jerry will never let him this one down, though!

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

The need to save petrol in the war must have considerably cramped his style.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I keep meaning to look up what buildings were on the site in 1935, and where, so as to work out where Harriet actually visits Saint-George. I sort of assume that by that point the main building can't have been big enough and there must have been extra buildings - private rooms use up a lot of space - but I don't actually know.

My office, rather less romantically, is the former men's ward.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Ah, but if he'd done it too soon she might have refused to go out with him in future on account of not wanting to end up dead. He needs her to have some sort of investment in the relationship first.

[white_hart]

The Gibson building and most of the stuff that's been knocked down is post-war, isn't it? I guess in the main building you'd have had the long wards in the wings on each floor, so maybe the rooms along the main corridor would have been private rooms - if you count the kitchens and stationery rooms there must be a couple of dozen across the building.

It had somehow never occurred to me when I came to work in the building that of course it was where Harriet visits Saint-George, in its previous life.

[mrs-redboots.livejournal.com]

Assuming that he could even get any - I gather that it was very limited indeed and you could only get it if you really needed it, if you were a doctor, for instance, or perhaps needed it on a farm. Lord Peter just might have got some when he was actively employed by the Foreign Office, but otherwise you went by public transport or, preferably, not at all ("Is your journey really necessary?").

[azdak.livejournal.com]

Oh no, poor Harriet! Still - burdens of gratitude aside - I feel it can only be good for their relationship for her to learn that he's fallible in stupid self-destructive ways and not just in sacrificial manpain ways. Perhaps she'll now think twice about the wisdom of agreeing to "obey" someone who in certain respects is no more sensible than Jerry is.

Are the chess pieces going to survive in this reality? After all, if they don't appear as as obvious gift from the Dons' Delight, there's no motive for crushing them. That would be a great bonus. I always felt sorry about the wanton destruction of the chess set.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Perhaps he will be an early proponent of biodiesel. Or, post his European jaunt, get a job as a motorcycle courier to assuage his desire for speed.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Yes, there is nothing Harriet could possibly have done to avoid this that would have been better than what she did (would it have been better to make Peter miserable by asking for a crap present? No! She's done something really nice and look what happens. Idiot).

Jerry is going to use this one for a very long time. Assuming that Peter does not want this news to get back to his brother and sister-in-law, Jerry is about to be in a very powerful bargaining position.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Bringing Wimsey down from his godlike pedestal can only be good for all concerned. I am sure that (once the nervous breakdown at nearly killing Harriet is over with) Bunter will also derive considerable amusement from it.

I think that the chess pieces are currently in an unremarkable cardboard box either in Wimsey's hotel room or Harriet's locked bedroom, and will survive unscathed. Unless Mr Pomfret or his friend bought them, because Wimsey couldn't get there before closing time yesterday...

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

Mr Pomfret has seen Harriet gazing at them in the window and stole the lot for her while drunk. Then clambers over the wall with them and arranges them on the lawn beneath her window in massive and disastrous Grand Gesture.

I was going to say it is lucky for Harriet's reputation that the dons don't know about Mr Pomfret but then thought that what with the witness and the gossip network, am I supposed to have assumed that they do?

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I can see the headlines now. Harriet, not contented with murdering her ex-lover, is now manipulating young undergraduates into committing theft for her through her sexual wiles. Police are investigating her whereabouts in connection with several recent jewel thefts.

Possibly the Proctor was too embarrassed by the whole thing to mention it. But if the dons do know, it would add force to Miss Hillyard and Annie's feelings that Harriet is messing Peter around.

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

Betcha the servant network knows, adding force to the cruel, callous, unfeeling women who tear out the hearts of innocent young men without a backward glance part of the motive.

And Harriet still allows him to strangle her?

[(Anonymous)]

Loved it! But after this, assume the strangling lessons are off? Or Harriet has some interesting trust issues :)
-M

RE: And Harriet still allows him to strangle her?

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

This is on the way back to Oxford after the strangling issues. But Harriet might want to spend a moment considering whether Peter's subconscious is contemplating murdering her as a way out!

[sonetka.livejournal.com]

"Yes, about those bills I've been running up, Uncle Peter ...."

I am somewhat concerned about Miss de Vine's fate now. Will Peter be able to decipher everything and run interference before Miss de Vine gets back to her room on the night in question? Or is Annie going to end up in the dock for murder?

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Now look (http://nineveh-uk.dreamwidth.org/158412.html) what you made me do...

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

The Gibson's post-war and I imagine a lot of the knocked down stuff is too, but the site is pretty big. It feels implausible to me that it was just the Infirmary building and Outpatients, plus gardens and graveyard, until 1939 when it presumably got covered in pre-fabs.

Ah! University website says:

1924

William Morris (later to become Lord Nuffield) presents the Infirmary with £90,000, which ushers in a new era of expansion.

1929

The Observatory site is purchased, which allows the Infirmary to expand. Over the next ten years the Infirmary transforms from a competent county hospital to a world leader in medical research.

***

So additional wards seem plausible, though for the sake of fiction I would put both Saint-George and Harriet in the main building.

RE: And Harriet still allows him to strangle her?

[(Anonymous)]

Oh shoot - got my timeline messed up! Sorry! And yes, Harriet has got to wonder if Peter really wants to do away with her!
-M