The Reginald Perrin Omnibus (14 page)

‘What? And then I apologized, did I?’

‘No, you roared with laughter.’

‘Oh my God! I said: “Do you like old beans, old bean?”’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh my God!’

They had a bet about whether your underpants were coloured or not.’

‘What?’

‘They took down your trousers to see.’

‘But I’ve got my Beethoven pants on.’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh my God! Did I really say: “What’s grist to the nose is mill to the grindstone?”’

‘Yes.’

There’s only one good thing about it,’ he said. ‘At least I wasn’t wearing my Mahler jockstrap.’

After he’d put David Harris-Jones to bed in the spare room, Reggie rang Elizabeth.

‘Hullo,’ she said sleepily.

‘Hullo. How’s your mother?’

‘She’s all right. Do you know what time it is? It’s nearly twelve. I was asleep.’

‘Is it? Sorry.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Of course I am. It all went off very well.’

‘What went off very well?’

‘Nothing. My quiet evening at home. My quiet evening at home went off very well.’

‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

‘I’m all right, I tell you.’

An owl hooted, and a dog barked. Banal noises of a summer’s night.

‘You’ll never guess who I met at the hospital,’ said Elizabeth.

‘Henry Possett.’

‘Yes. He told me he met you on the train.’

‘Yes. He never married, then.’

‘No.’

‘What, you just had a few words with him, did you, and then went home?’

‘No, he took me out to dinner.’

‘Oh.’

‘You’re not annoyed, are you?’

‘No.’

‘You are.’

‘I am not annoyed. Why should I be annoyed? I couldn’t care bloody less about Henry Possett.’

After he’d slammed the phone down Reggie became worried that he’d upset Elizabeth. He imagined her lying there, miserable, alone, unable to sleep. He rang her to apologize.

‘Hullo,’ she said sleepily.

‘It’s me again,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to say I’m sorry I woke you up.’

‘You’ve just woken me up again,’ she said.

‘Sorry,’ he said.

Wednesday

Reggie lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, trying not to think of Henry Possett. How could she want to kiss a man with such thin lips?

The clock struck two. It was warm, and he lay naked beneath a thin sheet. Sleep wouldn’t come. His mind was a-whirl with plans.

First there was his speech on Friday. Then C.J.’s fishing contest on Saturday. After that his work would be finished. He’d go down to the south coast somewhere, leave his clothes in a neat pile on the beach. He’d need money. He began to work out a way of getting enough money for his needs, without arousing suspicion.

An owl struck three. He put his pyjamas on and went downstairs. He made himself a mug of cocoa, poured himself a large whisky, and sat at the kitchen table.

Ponsonby rushed in through the cat door and jumped onto his lap with a stifled yelp.

‘Hullo, Ponsonby,’ said Reggie. ‘Your silly master couldn’t sleep. No. He couldn’t. He’s got plans, you see. He’s got to make a speech on Friday, to a conference to celebrate international fruit year. “Are we getting our just desserts?” by R. I. Perrin. What a silly title the silly men thought up. Well, it’s not going to be quite what people expect. Then there’s C.J.’s fishing contest. There’ll be a surprise there as well.’

Ponsonby purred lazily.

‘Cheers, Ponsonby. Here’s to the success of my plans.’

He raised his glass of whisky. Ponsonby’s puzzled eyes followed it. He looked at Reggie questioningly.

Reggie fetched a saucer of milk and put it by the table.

‘Bottoms up, Ponsonby,’ he said.

Ponsonby lapped up the milk, then returned to Reggie’s lap.

‘Well, we’ve got to do something unpredictable occasionally, haven’t we?’ said Reggie. ‘Nobody thinks much of me. Past it. On the slippery slope. Sad, really. Not a bad chap. Always buys his round.

‘I’ll show them, though. I think I surprised them tonight. Well, you’ve got to. There comes a time in your life, Ponsonby, when you think: “My God, I’m two-thirds of the way to the grave, and what have I done?”

‘Well I’m going to do a few things. I am. Things I should have done years ago. I’m going to put a few cats among the pigeons, if you’ll excuse the expression.’

Ponsonby purred.

‘I admire cats. You think you’ve got their number and suddenly off they go. You don’t see them for a fortnight, you give them up for dead, and back they come.’

David Harris-Jones tottered into the kitchen, unable to stand up straight, his eyes bloodshot, his face a pale greyish-green. He staggered towards the sink.

‘Cocoa?’ said Reggie.

‘Aspirin,’ he gasped.

Reggie poured him a glass of water and gave him three aspirins. He was wearing a pair of Reggie’s pyjamas, which were very much too broad for him.

Reggie soaked a dishcloth and handed it to him.

Press it against your forehead.’

‘Thanks.’

Ponsonby popped out for a bit of mousing. The two men sat in silence, in the kitchen, in the temperate night, David holding a damp dishcloth to his forehead, Reggie sipping cocoa and whisky. By the time they went to bed dawn was breaking.

Reggie was lulled to sleep by the dawn chorus. Birds sang on the farm, in his dream. He was riding on the cart that carried the grain to the barn, playing in the haystacks at threshing time, applying calamine lotion to his bites, in that chalky, grainy season. Half-awake, he lived again his incipient manhood, drank his first pints in the village pubs, and on the way home he peed on the glow-worms to put them out. Half-asleep, he saw Tony Webster riding naked through the streets of Chilhampton Ambo with Angela Borrowdale on a huge chestnut horse and he saw himself with white hair and a cracked, leathery old face, watching through a telescope. He looked through the telescope and saw himself watching through another telescope, and he was completely bald.

He left David Harris-Jones sitting on the bed in the guest room, in his vest, holding his pants and trying to summon up the will power to stand up and put them on. At his side was the damp dishcloth.

He didn’t do the crossword on the train. All that seemed childish now.

The train reached Waterloo eleven minutes late. The announcer said, ‘We apologize for the delay to the train on platform seven. This was for connectional purposes.’ Again he allowed the cracked old woman with the hairy legs to accost him.

‘Excuse me,’ she croaked. ‘I wonder if you can help me? I’m looking for a Mr James Purdock, from Somerset.’

‘I’m awfully sorry,’ said Reggie. ‘I’m afraid I can’t.’ He wanted to say more, much more. ‘I would help you if I could,’ he said, but she had gone, and was even now accosting a loss adjuster.

Joan was wearing a midi that hid her knees. Reggie went briefly through his mail. It was necessary to perform all the normal functions. He must allay all suspicion between now and Friday, otherwise he would never get a chance to put his plans into action.

‘How did your dinner party go?’ she asked coolly.

‘Quite well, thank you,’ he said.

At ten o’clock Roger Smythe from public relations rang. Reggie arranged to meet him for lunch next day to discuss his speech for Friday.

Leslie Woodcock from Jellies looked in shortly afterwards.

‘Hullo,’ he said. ‘I hope I don’t intrude.’

‘No, come in,’ said Reggie. ‘Sit down.’

Leslie Woodcock had a strange walk, with his legs held well apart due to a secret fear that his knees were swelling to an enormous size. He sat down and produced a grey folder which he handed to Reggie.

‘I hope you’re holding your Thespian talents available for our drama effort this year, Reginald,’ he said in his dry, whining voice.

‘Yes,’ said Reggie. There wasn’t much point in telling him that he wouldn’t be there.

‘Oh good. A lot of people found the Brecht rather heavy going last year, so we’re doing a sort of musical spoof about the fruit industry. We’re calling it “The Dessert Song”. Book by Tony Briggs, lyrics by yours truly.’

‘Oh, that sounds interesting,’ said Reggie.

‘I have the synopsis here. I rather fancy you for the part of Farmer Piles – a slightly risque reference, perhaps, but all in good clean fun.’

‘I’ll have a look at it,’ said Reggie.

‘Well, I must get back. My jellies are calling me.’

‘Thank you, Leslie.’

He dictated some letters rapidly, giving an impression of keenness.

The phone rang. Could Reggie see C.J. at eleven-thirty? Reggie could. C.J. wanted to see David Harris-Jones as well, and they couldn’t trace him. Could Reggie oblige?

Reggie obliged. He rang his home. David answered weakly.

‘How are you, David?’ he said.

‘I’ve just put my left sock on.’

‘C.J. wants to see you at eleven-thirty.’

‘Oh my God!’

Ditto, thought Reggie. ‘Oh my God’ for me too. It was all very well no longer being afraid of C.J., but today’s interview could be distinctly awkward. Supposing C.J. decided he was unfit to deliver his talk on Friday?

As soon as Joan had left his office he began his work. He had to learn how to forge his own signature, to sign his name in a way that was sufficiently like his own signature to pass muster in a bank, but sufficiently unlike it to pass as a forgery to a hand-writing expert.

He was concentrating so hard that he didn’t hear the tea lady’s shout of ‘Tea trolley’.

Joan came in with a coffee and a jam doughnut. He hid his sheet of signatures hastily.

‘My turn today,’ she said, not coldly, but without any special warmth. ‘You’ve done it three times running.’

‘Thank you, Joan,’ he said.

It needs as much generosity to receive charity as to give it. Are we so screwed up, he thought, that we can accept nothing without paying it back?

He entered the silent, padded world of C.J.

‘Sit down, Reggie,’ said C.J.

The carpet was so soft that he could hardly lift his feet. He trudged on, seeming to reach CJ.’s end of the room incredibly slowly. He sat down. The pneumatic chair sighed in sympathy.

‘I suppose I should apologize for last night,’ he said.

‘It was an odd way of getting your point across, but it was worth making,’ said C.J. ‘As somebody once said, “I like what you say, but I don’t defend your right to say it”.’

‘I think it was the other way round, C.J.’

‘Oh. He got it wrong. Well anyway you see my point.’

Reggie stared at the Bratby, the Francis Bacon, the picture of C.J. holding the champion lemon mousse, the blue sky beyond the treble-glazed windows.

‘Speech coming on all right?’ said C.J.

‘Very well, C.J.’

‘Good. Big fillip for the firm, getting a speaker at the conference. I didn’t manage it without pulling one or two strings. I know you won’t let us down.’

Marion brought in two black coffees. Perhaps C.J. was feeling a little frail this morning too.

‘Mr Harris-Jones is here, sir,’ she said.

‘Keep him a moment, will you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

C.J. leant forward and strummed on his desk.

‘I want to talk to you about Harris-Jones,’ he said.

‘I think he was just a little drunk, C.J.’

‘Yes, yes, not bothered about that,’ said C.J. impatiently. ‘The Letts-Wilkinson was drunk as well. Though I was not impressed with her dress. That sort of thing encourages hanky-panky.’

‘Yes, C.J.’

‘We aren’t one of those firms where people can indulge willy-nilly in hanky-panky with their secretaries.’

‘No. Quite.’

‘Neither Mrs C.J. nor myself has ever indulged in hankypanky with our secretaries.’

‘I can believe that, C.J.’

C.J. turned the aluminium lamp onto Reggie’s face. Reggie leant back in his chair, which made a noise like a fart. C.J. frowned.

‘Sorry, C.J. It was the chair.’

‘Very embarrassing. I’ve complained to the makers. Not at all the sort of thing we want at Sunshine.’

‘Certainly not, C.J.’

‘Do you think Harris-Jones is homosexual?’

‘What? Good lord, no!’

‘Hm. Spillinger does. Never had any complaints about him?’

‘Never.’

‘Never felt any stray fingers round your bum?’

‘Good lord, no!’

‘We’ll have him in. I’d like you to stay.’

Reggie’s heart sank.

David Harris-Jones knocked weakly, tottered over the carpet, collapsed into a chair. He was wearing last night’s crumpled clothes. He looked terrible.

‘Cigar?’ said C.J.

‘No, thank you, C.J. I don’t smoke cigars.’

‘A-ha!’ C.J. gave Reggie a meaningful look. ‘Girl friend doesn’t like the smell of them, eh?’

‘Oh – I – er – I don’t actually have a girl friend at the moment, I’m afraid.’

‘A-haa! You went to boarding school, didn’t you, Harris-Jones?’

‘Yes, C.J.’

‘A-haa!’

Reggie stared at a stainless steel wall light, to avoid CJ.’s meaningful look.

‘All of this arises out of last night’s little shindig, Harris-Jones.’

‘I’m sorry, C.J. I got drunk.’

‘These things happen,’ said C.J. ‘Though they won’t happen again. We’re not one of those firms that believes in acting as a moral watchdog over you. Heaven forbid. Your private life is your own affair. Otherwise it wouldn’t be private. Nevertheless, there have to be limits. I mean, just to give an example, we couldn’t employ homosexuals. You might be sent to Russia. They’d play on your weakness, photograph you, blackmail you.’

David Harris-Jones said nothing.

‘I wonder if you’re altogether cut out for this kind of life,’ said C.J. ‘I mean perhaps you’d be happier in some other field. Running a boutique, for instance. Or opening a restaurant. Or you could have your own chain of hairdressing salons. There are plenty of avenues open for the gifted homosexual.’

David Harris-Jones’s face turned from pale green to bright red.

‘Are you? – look here – but surely – ’ He managed with a supreme effort to get up from his pneumatic chair. ‘You bastard!’ he said. ‘You bloody bastard!’

‘Sit down!’ barked C.J.

David Harris-Jones hesitated, then sat down. Reggie was sweating profusely.