The Reginald Perrin Omnibus (23 page)

Constable Barker stood up, apologized, and sat down again.

‘Couldn’t this be the exception that proves the rule, sir?’ he said.

‘In books the exception that proves the rule is the rule. In life it’s the exception. No, Barker. Forget it. Save us all a lot of trouble. Damn, it’s raining!’

‘I can’t forget it, sir.’

‘You’re different from me, Barker. I joined the force because I was six foot tall. My cousin was four foot eleven. He became a jockey. He rode seven hundred and sixty-three winners on the flat. I’d have been a jockey if I’d been four foot eleven. I’d have ridden seven hundred and sixty-three winners on the flat. Life is all a matter of height.’

Chief Inspector Gate walked over to the window and looked out over the emptying main street of the seaside town. Nobody had brought umbrellas.

‘But you’ve got a sense of vocation,’ he said. ‘That’s why you always wear green socks and drink pernod.’

‘I like green socks and pernod,’ said Constable Barker.

‘No. You’re creating your mystique. They’re Maigret’s pipe and Hercule Poirot’s moustache. You dream of the day when you’ll be Barker of the Yard. I knew I could never reach the top, not with my name. Gate of the Yard. You try too hard. You see things that aren’t there. British detection is based upon a sound principle – things are as they seem until proved otherwise.’

Chief Inspector Gate sat down again. Constable Barker sighed and stood up.

‘I’m sorry, sir. I have a hunch that he’s still alive.’

‘A hunch? Your nine ‘O’ levels and your three ‘A’ levels and all your books on criminology, and you have a hunch?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘That’s different. A good policeman never ignores a hunch. All right, Barker. I’ll tell you what we’ll do.’ It had grown unnaturally dark in the office as the storm deepened. ‘We’ll see if anyone can give us a description of the man who signed those cheques. We’ll consult a handwriting expert. We’ll go over that bloody beach with a toothcomb. If there’s anything to find out, we’ll find it out. All right? Satisfied?’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Come on, Barker of the Yard. It’s going to piss down in a minute. I’ll buy you a double pernod.’

The Market Inn was full but Reggie managed to get a room at the Crown.

it’s the last one, sir. Right at the back, I’m afraid. We’re absolutely choc-a-bloc,’ said the receptionist.

‘Why are you so full?’ said Reggie.

‘We’re always full, sir. This is a show place.’

is it?’

The receptionist looked surprised.

‘Of course it is, sir. Name?’

‘Wensley Amhurst,’ said Reggie.

His room was small and impersonal. The carpet and bedspread were bright yellow and the walls were white. There was a green telephone beside the bed.

He washed, opened the window wide, breathed in the warm Wiltshire air. There was a fresh breeze, and it smelt of rain. To the left, tucked away from the village, was a council estate, grey pebble-dash houses. They hadn’t been there when he was a boy. In the background was farming country and beech woods.

He went for a walk around the village, working up his thirst, trying to walk like a distinguished architect. He didn’t feel at all like a Wensley Amhurst yet.

It was all much smaller than he remembered. Stone houses, mainly, and a few half-timbered. Lots of thatch, immaculately kept.

He was drawn up Sheep Lane, towards the house where Angela Borrowdale had lived. He could still picture her riding breeches but not her face.

The house was an antique shop now. Chilhampton Ambo boasted three pubs, five antique shops, one grocers-cum-post office, and a boutique. Monstrous china dogs gazed out where once Angela Borrowdale, the unattainable, had sat.

Reggie had once sent her an anonymous note: ‘Meet me behind Boulter’s Barn. Tuesday. Nine p.m. An admirer.’ She hadn’t come, of course, and it gave him the hot flushes to think of that note now.

He wandered back down Sheep Lane, somewhat saddened. The old buildings were covered now with the little accessories of modern life – television aerials, junction boxes, burglar alarms. The little street was filled with middle-class married couples, walking slowly, wives slightly in front of husbands, admiring the antiques, popping into the little grocer’s and buying a pot of local jam for only twopence more than the same jam would have cost in London.

Swifts and swallows flew high up in their grey paradise of insects. Reggie entered the Market Inn, where he had drunk his very first pint of bitter, long ago.

The public bar had gone, along with its darts and skittles. It was one big lounge, filled with reproduction antiques. The Italian barmen wore red jackets. Reggie ordered a pint of bitter and stood at the bar.

There were four young farmers at the bar, chatting cheerfully. The door opened and Reggie had a wild hope that it would be Angela Borrowdale. It was a pretty blonde with a hard face. The farmers greeted her with cries of ‘Hullo, Sarah, how did it go?’ and she said, ‘We came third – Hollyhock made a nonsense of the water jump,’ and they all said, ‘Bad luck!’ and Reggie felt very old and very lonely, and one of them said, ‘Same again all round, Mario – and the usual for Sarah.’

A menu advertised smoked salmon sandwiches, prawn salads, and kipper patés. Touring couples sat in silence sipping medium sherry.

Reggie tried to be Wensley Amhurst, tried to feel natural, tried to forget that he was wearing a false beard beneath which his own hair tickled horribly.

‘Nice day,’ he said, in an upper-middle-class voice, which came out all wrong. The farmers turned and looked at him in astonishment. So did the unsuccessful Sarah. So did the Italian barmen. In the silence Reggie could hear the sound of teeming rain.

Wensley Amhurst finished his drink in silence, and hurried out into the rain. The big summer drops were bouncing back off the road. He pulled his jacket over his head and made a dash for the Black Bull, the venue of his second pint, long ago.

‘Raining, is it?’ said the landlord, laughing jovially at his wit. He was a big jovial man and he had a huge handlebar moustache.

‘Pint of bitter, please,’ said Reggie.

‘Pint of cooking,’ said the landlord.

The public bar had gone, with its darts and skittles. It was all one big bar now, its different areas separated by wrought-iron arches. The arches were festooned with plastic vines. A sickly blue and yellow carpet covered the whole floor space, and a stream of background music tinkled softly over its musical stones.

There was only one other customer, a thin gloomy man with a smaller, drop handlebar moustache.

‘Lovely weather for ducks,’ said the landlord.

‘Yes,’ riposted Reggie.

‘Still, we can’t complain,’ said the landlord. ‘We’ve done well. You a stranger here?’

‘I haven’t been here for twenty-five years,’ said Reggie. ‘I came here when I was a boy for my summer holidays.’

‘I’m from Lowestoft myself,’ said the landlord. ‘It’s a dump.’

‘I came in this pub the first time I ever got drunk,’ said Reggie. ‘I was fifteen.’

The landlord glanced involuntarily at the number plate which said ‘RU 18’, and smiled.

‘Bit different now, eh?’

‘Yes,’ said Reggie.

‘Evelyn and I took the place over in ‘63, didn’t we, Fizzer?’

‘That’s right, Jumbo,’ said Fizzer. ‘It must have been ‘63.’

‘Frightful hole. No, I tell a lie, it was bloody well ‘62. Denise had her hysterectomy in ‘63, and we’d been here a year then.’

‘That’s right,’ said Fizzer. ‘It must have been ‘62.’

‘We made a few changes, knocked the odd wall down.’

‘What about the locals?’ said Reggie. ‘Don’t they miss the darts and things?’

The landlord laughed jovially.

‘Locals? What locals? The locals can’t afford houses here. There’s only the yobbos on the council estate. Touchy sods. Won’t come in here just because I won’t let them sit on the seats in their working clothes.’

‘I think it’s a pity,’ said Reggie.

‘So do I. So do I,’ said the landlord. ‘Don’t get me wrong. Nobody likes locals as much as I do. And darts, well, I threw a pretty decent arrow myself, in my day. But it takes up too much space. No money coming in.’

In the old days, thought Reggie, country life could be pretty grim. Now, with modern transport and electricity, it’s becoming very pleasant – pleasant enough for all the working people to be forced out into the town.

‘We get a damned good crowd in here,’ said the landlord. ‘Apart from that gloomy bastard over there. Old Dave Binstead’s a regular. He’s a lad.’

Reggie looked blank.

‘The motor-cycle scrambler. He’s here every night. Then there’s Micky Fudge. You know him?’

‘No,’ said Reggie.

‘You know. The band-leader. Micky Fudge and his Fandango Band.’

I decided on an identity. Wensley Amhurst. I felt better. No saying ‘Earwigs’. No question of my legs failing to obey me.

‘Vince Cameron, the film director, he pops in Saturdays. He’s a lad. You know, he made
The Blob From Twenty Thousand Fathoms.’

‘I missed it,’ said Reggie.

And then I chose to come to Chilhampton. Why? Wensley Amhurst, the distinguished architect, has no reason to go to Chilhampton Ambo. Can’t I admit that Reggie Perrin is dead?

‘Load of old stones in a field up beyond the village,’ said the landlord. ‘Load of weirdies came along last summer and had a festival, Druids or something. I said to them, “Piss off, you load of Druids.” We get a decent crowd in here, apart from that bloody gloomy sod standing there. Of course we get the pouffes from the antique shops, but they’re decent chaps. I say to them, “Come on, you bloody pouffes, drink up or piss off.” They can take a joke.’

In my memory those summer holidays were an idyll. The exquisite agony of desiring Angela Borrowdale, the unattainable. She rode by, sometimes on the grey, sometimes on the chestnut gelding, her riding breeches wide at the thigh, her whip in her hand.

We had P.T. first lesson in the afternoon at Ruttingstagg. I’d gone back to get my gym-shoes, which I’d forgotten, and I was going back along the corridor by the notice board and I saw the headmaster’s daughter and I said, ‘Hullo. Are you better?’ and she went red and said, ‘Much better, thank you. And I say, Congrats on getting your shooting colours’ and I put my hand right up her skirt. She ran off and I went to the gym. We did vaulting and then rope climbing. I was at the top of the rope when the summons came. I changed, gathered up my bundle of P.T. things, and went up to the headmaster’s study. He made me wait outside for a few minutes although there was nobody with him. There was a smell of fishcakes and feet in the corridor.

‘My daughter alleges that you put your hand up her skirt,’ he said sternly.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Did you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know, sir.’

‘Come, come, Perrin, you can do better than that.’

‘She said something nice to me, sir.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She said, “Congrats on getting your shooting colours,” sir.’

‘Do you always put your hands up girls’ skirts when they say something nice to you?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Would you do that sort of thing at home?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Then don’t do it here. We don’t want dirty-minded little brats at Ruttingstagg. People think they can get away with it just because there’s a war on.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You’re expelled, Perrin.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Mark had done better. He’d only been expelled for drinking.

‘It’s like talking to a brick wall,’ said the landlord.

‘Sorry. I was thinking,’ said Reggie.

‘I said, “Mad Pick-Axe” Harris comes in here Fridays. You know, the explorer chap on the television,’ said the landlord.

‘Oh, really?’ said Reggie.

The door opened. Reggie looked to see if it was Angela Borrowdale, but it was a short, dapper man with a toothbrush moustache.

‘Bloody hell, look what the cat’s brought in,’ said the landlord.

‘Half of Guinness,’ said toothbrush moustache.

‘Half of diesel,’ said the landlord.

‘Lovely weather for ducks,’ said Fizzer.

‘Good-bye,’ said Reggie.

The meal at the Crown was eaten in whispers. A dropped fork was a violent outrage. He had ‘ravioli Italienne’, which meant ‘tinned’, and ‘entrecote garni’, which meant with one slice of lukewarm tomato. The homosexual Spanish waiters had sound-proof shoes and double-glazed eyes.

After dinner the rain had stopped, and he walked up the lane and had a look at the old stone farm. Dusk was gathering, and the light had been switched on in the old kitchen of his schoolboy high teas. In front of the house there were two ugly new grain silos.

He wandered back into the village. The air smelt of drying rain. He entered the crowded hotel bar. There was a sign saying ‘No Druids or Coach Parties’. It was only when somebody called her Angela that he recognized the artificially blonde middle-aged woman who was sitting on the end bar stool and behaving as if she owned the place. Her voice was hard and bossy, there were mean lines pulling down the sides of her mouth, and she wasn’t wearing riding breeches. She looked straight at him, but she couldn’t have been expected to see, in this bearded grotesque, any sign of the shy, clumsy youth of yesteryear.

Reggie sipped his whisky. Tomorrow Reggie Perrin would die, Wensley Amhurst would die, and his new life would begin in earnest.

Tuesday

The stone of the little Cotswold town was tinged with yellow. The Three Feathers was a gabled sixteenth-century building. Spells of bright sunshine were chasing away the flurries of rain. The receptionist had jet-black hair and huge grey eyes. When she smiled she might have been on location for a toothpaste ad., and when she said, ‘Room number twentyone, Sir Wensley,’ it was in a voice that would not have disgraced a BBC announcer.

Small wonder, then, that she made such an impression on ‘Mad Pick-Axe’ Amhurst, the distinguished explorer, mountaineer, anthropologist, gourmet and sex maniac.

Reggie had been given a much better room now that he was knighted. The wallpaper was luxuriant with roses, and he had a private bathroom with green marble tiles.