The Reginald Perrin Omnibus (27 page)

‘I’d rather not talk about it, sir.’

‘That’s not much of an answer.’

‘I’ve paid for what I done.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Twenty-eight days.’

‘Yes, but what crime did you commit?’

‘Embezzlement, sir.’

‘I see. Fine.’

‘But I’ve learnt my lesson, sir. I’ve turned over a new leaf.’ ‘Yes, and if you get the job with us you’ll be turning over lots of leaves.’ Mr Thorneycroft laughed. It was like a knife sawing through concrete. Then he became serious again. ‘Do you drink, Mr Potts?’

‘I wouldn’t say I never indulged, sir.’

‘Fine. Fine.’

‘But not to excess, sir. Leastwise, not any more.’

‘I see.’

Behind Mr Thorneycroft was a large calendar with a picture of Balmoral Castle and the legend: ‘Queen’s Garage, 19-23 Parkside, Hillingley.’ The dates of Mr Thorneycroft’s holidays were ringed in red ink.

‘I lost my Doris over that.’

‘Doris?’

‘My wife, sir, as was. I lost her on account of the drinking and the embezzlement.’

‘I see. Well that’s all very satisfactory, Mr Potts. It sounds as though you’re just the man we’re looking for. We need an under-gardener at the North Hillingley Mental Hospital. How does that strike you?’

‘Well, I had thought more of parks.’

‘We don’t have any vacancies in parks.’

‘I’ll be happy to give it a try, sir.’

‘That’s the spirit.’ Mr Thorneycroft stood up. ‘I’ll send you to see our Mr Bottomley. He’s the head gardener. If you hit it off with him, you can start Monday.’

Reggie did hit it off with their Mr Bottomley, so he started Monday. He knew they must be desperate for staff, yet he felt as proud of landing the job as he had ever felt in his life.

The search for lodgings in the Hillingley area proved a problem. Mrs Jefferson of Carnforth Road took one look at him and said, ‘The vacancy’s gone.’ So did Mrs Riley of Penrith Avenue. Mrs Tremlett, of Aspatria Drive, said, ‘I don’t hold with beards. I’ve nothing against them as such, but I don’t hold with them, and that’s the end of the matter.’ Mr Beatty, also of Aspatria Drive, said, ‘Ma’s visiting the grave, but I don’t think you’re quite the sort of thing she had in mind.’

Finally he found a room in the home of Mr and Mrs Deacon of Garstang Rise.

‘We’ve never had lodgers, not so’s you’d speak of,’ said Mr Deacon. ‘But there’s the boys gone, and the inflation, and Mrs Deacon’s legs, and we’re none of us getting any younger as regards that.’

‘I think I’ll be very happy here,’ said Reggie.

‘This is a happy house, Mr Potts,’ said Mr Deacon. ‘And as regards the lights going off suddenly, don’t worry. They only do that when we watch BBC2.’

Reggie’s room was tastefully furnished, with shocking pink and cobalt blue the predominating features of the colour scheme. The smallest room in the house was situated at the top of the stairs. It had a mustard yellow lavatory-brush receptacle and matching holder for the spare toilet roll. From his window Reggie could see most of Garstang Rise, and a small stretch of Egremont Crescent.

Mr Deacon took him to the Egremont Arms, while Mrs Deacon watched ‘Alias Smith and Jones’ in the dark.

‘I’m glad you’re here. It’s company for Mrs Deacon. She gets a bit down at times. It’s the inflation. It’s gone to her legs,’ said Mr Deacon.

The pub was vast and had a large car park. In the public bar there was a darts board and in the lounge bar there was a pop group but Mr Deacon and his cronies patronized the saloon. The tenor of their discourse was nostalgic. Hillingley wasn’t what it was, nor was the nation, that was their theme.

This country’s had it,’ said Mr Deacon.

Reggie expressed his regret for the passing of the steam engine, the brass bedstead and the pyjama cord.

‘This country’s had it,’ said Mr Jefferson.

‘What’s your opinion as regards women and where they used to keep their hankies?’ said Mr Deacon.

‘How do you mean?’ said Reggie.

‘Don’t let the talking stop the drinking,’ said the landlord.

‘Well,’ said Mr Deacon. ‘What’s your opinion as regards my teacher keeping her hanky right up her knickers, which was blue?’

‘I ain’t got no opinion as regards that,’ said Reggie.

‘I don’t blame you. Same again?’ said Mr Deacon.

One evening, shortly before eight o’clock, as Reggie was reading the
Evening Standard
with his feet up, there was a knock at the door.

‘Come in,’ he said, putting his feet down hastily.

It was Mrs Deacon.

‘I’ll come straight to the point,’ she said. ‘You’re coloured, aren’t you?’

‘Of course I’m not,’ said Reggie. ‘I’m just a bit sunburnt from the open air life, that’s all.’

‘Not that I’m prejudiced,’ said Mrs Deacon. ‘But it’s the religious side, isn’t it? You have your customs, we have ours.’

‘Mrs Deacon, I’m not bleeding well coloured.’

‘It’s Mr Deacon I’m thinking of. It’s his legs. The inflation’s hit them very badly. He has a hard day down the electricity. You can’t expect him to sit there facing Mecca while he has his tea. He wouldn’t stand for it.’

‘Mrs Deacon, I am as white as you are and prejudice is an ugly thing,’ said Reggie.

Mrs Deacon grabbed his paper and tore it right through Sam White’s revelations about Aristotle Onassis.

‘You nig-nogs are all the same,’ she said, and with that she left the room.

Some minutes later there was another, milder knock on the door. It was Mr Deacon. He seemed uneasy.

‘You’ve done it now,’ he said. ‘Mrs Deacon’s an emotional woman. It’s a lonely life for her. Donald. Garstang Rise isn’t Paris.’

‘I realize that,’ said Reggie, ‘but she called me a nig-nog.’

‘You don’t want to worry as regards that. She won’t let her own brother in the house. Says he’s a Sikh. She claims she looked in his front room and saw him wearing a turban.’

‘Was he?’

‘Course he bloody wasn’t. He’d just washed his hair, hadn’t he? He’d got a towel round his head. It’s all a pigment of her imagination, Donald, but it’s what I’ve got to live with. It’s the cross I’ve got to bear. You’re the first man she’s allowed in the house for eight years. I thought it was going to be all right at last.’

‘I’m very sorry, George.’

‘Don’t worry as regards that. It’s not your fault. But it’s no life for me. I can’t invite me friends in and have her accusing them all of being Parsees. I’ve done everything for her, redecorated, rewired the house with my own bare hands.’

The room was plunged into darkness. Mr Deacon consulted his watch.

‘She’s watching ”Call My Bluff”,’ he said.

‘I think I’d better look for somewhere else,’ said Reggie.

‘I think you had as regards that,’ said Mr Deacon.

Two days later Reggie moved into Number thirteen, Clytemnestra Grove, on the other side of the borough. It was a two-storey house, converted into three flats. Miss Pershore of the Scotch Wool Shop lived on the ground floor, and Mr Ellis, an upholsterer, occupied the first floor front. Reggie had the first floor back.

‘I think I’m going to be very happy here,’ said Reggie.

‘This is a happy house, Mr Potts,’ said Miss Pershore.

August

August came in like a leaping gazelle and went out like a pregnant ant-eater. Which is to say that it began with high hopes of a golden climax to the summer and ended in childish tears, endless inspections of sodden wickets, and record losses on municipal deck chairs.

Reggie’s August began with hopes of a new life. It ended with his being driven back inexorably towards his old one.

The North Hillingley Mental Hospital was a large rambling building of dark Cambridgeshire brick. It had an imposing central tower in the French style. The spacious gardens were surrounded by a high brick wall topped with fragments of broken glass in many colours.

Reggie did his work to the satisfaction of all concerned. When it was expected of him that he mow a certain lawn, he did in fact mow that lawn. If a drooping hollyhock had to be secured to a wall with a nail and strong garden twine, Reggie would secure that drooping hollyhock to that wall with a nail and strong garden twine. Mr Bottomley found no fault with him.

From time to time various patients spoke to him. One of them told him that the curfew had been fixed for seven p.m. and the Arabs would attack before dawn. Reggie thanked him for his timely warning.

A second man informed him that the district commissioner would be stopping off at his bungalow next day, and invited Reggie to join them for a spot of tiffin. He accepted the invitation with alacrity.

One day of rain squalls and high winds a patient watched him bedding out plants for several minutes, and then said, ‘Those are plants.’

‘Thank you very much,’ said Reggie politely.

‘Any time,’ said the patient.

Five days a week he took sandwiches to work, did his stint in the gardens, downed tools at five-thirty, had a quick drink with Mr Bottomley, returned to his brown room full of bulky furniture, cooked himself some food out of tins or packets, read a book and went to bed. His health was good, although his hair grew steadily greyer.

At weekends he went to the Clytemnestra, and had a few pints of light and bitter. Occasionally he met Miss Pershore or Mr Ellis there.

One Thursday afternoon Joan Greengross visited the Mental Hospital. Reggie was cutting dead heads off rosebushes. Around the lawns were luxuriant flower beds and fine old oak and beech trees. Outside the walls traffic thundered ceaselessly. Inside, all was peace and quiet in the afternoon sun. Several patients were playing tennis. And suddenly there she was, with her trim legs and her blue lightweight coat bulging pointedly over her breasts. Reggie’s heart stood still, and he snipped two splendid Queen Elizabeth roses off in his astonishment.

How did she know that he was here? Why should she visit him in the afternoon?

She walked past him up the drive, not recognizing him in these surroundings, in his gardening clothes, with his long grey hair, grey beard and lined, tanned face.

She disappeared through the visitors’ entrance. He busied himself in his work, but his heart was racing. All pretensions towards being Donald Potts were gone.

A few minutes later she reappeared, pushing a wheelchair. In it was a middle-aged man whose mouth hung half-open. Reggie watched her as she wheeled the pathetic figure along the gravel path towards the tennis courts. Then he went up to a male nurse, who was settling old ladies in wicker chairs on the terrace.

‘Who was that man in the wheel-chair?’ he asked. ‘Only it looked like an old friend of mine. Lewis, he was called. Owen Lewis.’

‘That’s Mr Greengross,’ said the male nurse. ‘He’s been here ten years. He suffered brain damage in an accident.’

Reggie was badly shaken. After work that day he drank four pints. All that time she had been with him at Sunshine Desserts, all that time she had talked about her husband, and never once had he suspected, and he had meddled with her deepest emotions, in his blundering ignorance. He felt physically sick.

When he got home Miss Pershore met him in the hall.

‘You’ve been indulging,’ she said.

‘I was upset,’ he said. ‘I saw a ghost from my past today.’

‘It’s funny,’ she said. ‘I’d never imagined you as having a past.’

He had no stomach for his instant chicken dinner in his remorselessly brown bed-sitting room. He went to bed early but he didn’t sleep.

He had wild thoughts of going to see Joan, of revealing his identity to her. But it wouldn’t do any good. There could be nothing further between him and Joan.

He buried his head in his pillow and let the tears flow, and he murmured just one word. It wasn’t ‘Joan’. It was ‘Elizabeth’.

The following night Reggie had a dream so vivid that when he woke up he could remember every detail.

He was digging in a huge formal garden, with rows of statues and hundreds of fountains. Joan was wheeling her husband along in the hot sunshine. She was entirely naked. Her pubic hair had been shaved off except for a tiny triangle, and she had three breasts, a small one nestling between two huge ones. The doctor was walking in the grounds. His name was Freud. He nodded to Reggie and pointed at Joan. ‘Very revealing,’ he said, and laughed. His laugh was like a knife sawing through concrete.

Joan’s husband opened his half-open mouth until it was a great gaping hole. He had no teeth. Suddenly he screamed. An enormous noise like a siren came out of his mouth. It rose and fell. Reggie knew immediately what it was. It was the four-minute warning, but it wasn’t for a nuclear attack, it was for the end of the world.

The cry The end of the world!’ went up. People were running on all sides. Some of them were throwing themselves into the fountains. Reggie could hear a lark singing. Adam and Jocasta were crying.

‘What is it?’ Adam asked.

‘It’s the end of the world, dear,’ said Linda. ‘We’re all going to be blown up.’

C.J. hurried past them. He seemed angry.

‘I didn’t get where I am today by getting blown up in the end of the world!’ he shouted.

Reggie saw Mark and Henry Possett among the crowds. Henry Possett was undressing quite calmly. Mark was leaning against a Grecian urn. He was wearing a T-shirt and jeans. Elizabeth, who was naked, said, ‘I do think you might have put on clean socks, today of all days,’ and Mark said, ‘How was I to know it was going to be the end of the world?’

Tony Webster ran past them. Tears were streaming down his face. He threw himself into one of the fountains, crying, ‘I’ve no prospects.’

Henry Possett hung his clothes on a statue and lay down with Elizabeth on the rabbit-cropped grass. They began to make love. Reggie watched them. The lark sang louder and louder, but nobody listened. Henry Possett shouted in ecstatic Urdu as their love-making grew more and more passionate. Joan was frantically building a stone shelter round her husband’s wheel-chair. Dr Freud threw himself into the fountains. The jets of water grew higher and higher, the wind sent the spray swirling over the lawns, the lark grew louder still, Henry Possett’s Urdu groans grew more and more triumphant, people were running and screaming, there was a rumbling, Reggie braced himself against the force of the explosion.