The Reginald Perrin Omnibus (53 page)

‘In his statement Mr Jefferson said: “It has come to my notice that there are rumours of serious difficulties and irregularities at Sunshine Desserts. This is nonsense. We have had our troubles, but we will overcome them. I didn’t get where I am today without learning how to overcome troubles.

”I only wish these vile rumours could be printed, so that I could have an opportunity to sue these despicable scandalmongers.

”It has been suggested that there is no smoke without a fire. I might reply that it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good.”

‘The exact meaning of Mr Jefferson’s last remark is somewhat obscure, and it remains to be seen how his statement will be greeted by market sentiment, which is notoriously sceptical of protestations of innocence.’

”Very interesting,’ said Reggie. ‘So, his name’s Charles Jefferson, is it?’

They went to the pub for lunch and everyone discussed how long it had taken them to get to work. One man had spoken on the telephone to a man whose brother worked with a man who had taken three hours to drive from North Ockendon to South Ockendon.

In the afternoon they set off for home. It was seven forty-five before they arrived.

It had not been a constructive first day for Elizabeth.

The cold snap passed. The trains returned to normal. Mr Bulstrode’s pneumonia responded to treatment.

The shares of Sunshine Desserts slumped.

The first reactions to Grot’s fifty per cent across the board price rises were favourable. Sales hardly dropped, and in some shops actually rose.

The shares of Perrin Products and of Grot rose.

The Honorary President of Climthorpe Albion Football Club, of the Southern League First Division South, collapsed at a health farm and died. Reggie was invited to take his place. He accepted with pleasure and took his seat in the director’s box in the rickety, green-painted, four hundred seater grand-stand. Also present were the Chairman of the Climthorpe Chamber of Commerce, and Reggie’s bank manager, who intimated that he would feel happier with life at this moment in time if Reggie were to make more use of the bank’s credit facilities.

A keen wind kept the crowd down to 327. Takings in the bar were twenty-eight pounds seventy-five pence.

Climthorpe beat Waterlooville 5-1, with goals from
PUNT, HTTOCK, CLENCH (2)
and
RUTTER.
They rose two places to fifteenth.

Truly it began to seem that Reginald Iolanthe Perrin had a magic touch. Many shrewd students of life were heard to aver that he was an all-round good egg.

Notices of dismissal were given to all Sunshine Desserts’ employees, and the receiver was called in.

A scandal over illicit share dealings in Luxembourg, Guernsey and Rhodesia broke over the head of C.J. There were dark tales linking his name with the arrest of the master of a Swedish cargo vessel in Bilbao for gun-running, and the shooting in Chile of a Turk said to have been spying for the CIA in Poland.

C.J.’s brother, Mr Cedric ‘Tiny’ Jefferson, landlord of the Dissipated Kipper on the Hog’s Back, spoke freely to thirsty pressmen about his brother. It seemed that C.J. had not been born in Riga, the Balkans or America. He was born and bred in Eltham, the son of a London Transport bus inspector, and had served in the Pay Corps during the latter stages of the Second World War. The brothers had drifted apart socially more than they had geographically, and Cedric ‘Tiny’ Jefferson had no idea if the rumours of scandal were true. But he had once met a foreigner with a duelling scar at C.J.’s house, so there might well be something in it. Had the thirsty pressmen heard the one about the Irish kamikazi pilot?

Climthorpe beat Trowbridge 2-1 away, with goals from
MALLET
and
FITTOCK
. Fittock became leading scorer for the season, with four goals.

Reggie and Elizabeth received an invitation to attend the wedding of James Gordonstoun Anderson and Lettuce Isobel Horncastle in the Church of St Peter at Bagwell Heath. They accepted.

Climthorpe beat Metropolitan Police 4-2, with goals by
CLENCH, MALLET, FITTOCK
and
P.C. TREMLETT
(own goal). The crowd was 426.

One evening, when the weather was dry with a moderate frost, and there was nothing much on television, there was a ring at Reggie’s door.

A girl of about nineteen, shivering with cold and embarrassment, tried to smile at him and failed.

‘Mr Perrin?’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘I work at your shop Grot. I’d like to talk to you.’

He invited her in. She refused a drink, saying she’d prefer coffee. Elizabeth went to get her one.

‘Now then,’ said Reggie, feeling suddenly rather old. ‘What’s all this about?’

She wasn’t exactly pretty, but there was a certain rather delicate charm about her pinched features.

‘It’s Mr Morrison, the manager,’ she said.

‘You don’t like Mr Morrissey?’

‘He’s all right. It’s just that he . . .’

She hesitated.

‘You can tell me,’ he said. ‘What’s he done?’

She sat uncomfortably on the edge of her chair. There was a beauty mark on her left cheek, and a hole in her tights. Few of the Grot shops employed girls like this. Most of them employed dolly girls with voices like hysterical gravel. Reggie liked her.

‘He hasn’t done nothing really, not, you know, done.’

‘Well what has he not done then?’

‘He undresses us.’

‘He takes your clothes off?’

‘He sort of gives us these looks.’

‘He undresses you in his mind?’

‘Yeah. Me and Doreen.’

‘And you don’t like that?’

‘Doreen doesn’t mind. She’ll give as good as she gets, that one.’

‘But you’re different?’

‘Yeah. I know it’s supposed to be permissive and that, but I’m not like that.’

Elizabeth entered with the coffee and sat beside the girl.

‘Has he done anything else except look?’ said Reggie.

‘He sort of touches you, know what I mean? Not like touches you exactly, nothing you can put your finger on, he sort of brushes up against you, like it’s an accident, only you know it isn’t. Doreen says not to worry, they’re all dirty old men at that age, but I don’t like it. I know I shouldn’t have come here, Doreen’ll kill me if she finds out, but I like it there, I hated it at the shoe shop and the darts factory, I don’t want to leave.’

She burnt her lips on the coffee, and her hands were chapped. Her inability to relax made Reggie tired.

‘What do you want my husband to do?’ said Elizabeth.

‘I don’t want to get Mr Morrison into trouble,’ said the girl.

‘You want me to stop him doing it, without telling him that I know he does. That won’t be easy,’ said Reggie.

The coffee was making the girl’s nose run, and Elizabeth gave her a tissue.

‘Does he do anything except give you looks and brush against you?’ said Reggie.

‘He makes remarks,’ said the girl.

‘What sort of remarks?’

‘You know, remarks.’

‘Suggestions?’ suggested Elizabeth.

‘Not so’s you’d call them suggestions. Just remarks. I mean he’s quite nice really.’

‘And the running of the shop’s all right?’ said Reggie.

‘I wouldn’t like to run him down behind his back.’

‘Of course not. So there’s no problem apart from the looking and the touching and the remarks?’

‘Oh no. I mean . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘There’s the prices.’

‘The prices?’

‘He gives things away cheap to people he’s sorry for.’

‘What sort of people?’

‘Kids. The old folk. Girls. Especially girls.’

The grandfather clock in the hall struck nine.

‘So trade’s good anyway?’ said Reggie.

The girl seemed a little uneasy about answering.

‘Put it this way,’ she said at last. ‘We’re running out of things.’

‘You shouldn’t run out of things,’ said Reggie. ‘Why do you think you’re running out of things?’

‘It’s not for me to say,’ said the girl.

‘Suppose I asked you directly why you think Mr Morrissey is running out of things.’

‘He forgets to order them, if you ask me. I think he gets in a bit of a tiswas with the book side of things.’

She finished her coffee, sniffed as quietly as she could, and dabbed irresolutely at the end of her nose with the tissue.

‘Thanks for the coffee,’ she said.

‘You’re welcome,’ said Elizabeth.

‘Tell me,’ said Reggie. ‘Can you think of anything else Mr Morrissey does wrong apart from giving you looks and making remarks and brushing up against you and selling things cheap to kids, the old folk and girls, especially girls, and forgetting to make his orders and getting in a tiswas over the books?’

‘No,’ said the girl. ‘And even if I could I wouldn’t tell you. I wouldn’t want to run him down behind his back.’

In the morning Reggie called in to see Doc Morrissey. The shop was in the High Street now, between the Leeds Permanent Building Society and the Uttoxeter Temporary Building Society. The single word
GROT
was painted in elegant gold, and the interior of the shop was decorated in green and gold.

Reggie could see that the shop was badly run. The window-display was uninspired, there were gaps on the shelves, and the items in the display-counters were haphazardly arranged.

The girl who had visited him blushed scarlet. The busty Doreen looked at her in surprise.

Doc Morrissey was reading the
Daily Mirror
in his office. He leapt to his feet when Reggie entered.

‘I was just having a few moments to myself,’ he said. ‘We’ve been rushed off our feet all week.’

‘Everything all right?’ said Reggie.

‘Splendid.’

‘One or two lines seem a little non-existent.’

‘Trade’s so good. And I’ve got some stuff coming in the morning.’

‘Good. Managing the books all right?’

‘It’s a doddle,’ said Doc Morrissey, bringing an expansive hand down on a row of ledgers, from which a cloud of dust arose.

‘No trouble with VAT?’

‘VAT?’

‘You’re supposed to keep full VAT records.’

‘Ah yes. I remember now.’

Reggie asked Doc Morrissey to come to the office on early closing day, and bring all the books with him.

As he was passing the War Memorial on his way to the station, a Grot van crawled by in the traffic. It was olive green and had on its side, in gold lettering: ‘GROT – Never Knowingly Oversold.’

‘Going to Climthorpe?’ Reggie called out hopefully.

‘No, squire. Uxbridge,’ said the driver. ‘No orders for Climthorpe.’

Miss Erith was working out her notice, and Reggie detected an icy hauteur beneath her habitual frigidity, as she said: ‘Mr Fogden to see you, sir.’

Reggie re-read Owen Lewis’s letter of recommendation.

‘Dear Reggie,’ it ran. ‘I have a vague acquaintance called Fogden who invents things. He has a new line he thinks you may like. He’s a founder member of the fruit-cake brigade and an absolute pain in the backside, uses my local when he’s on parole from the loonie-bin. I happened to mention I knew you and he’s been pestering me to put him in touch ever since. I’d be eternally grateful if you’d get him off my back.’

Reggie put the letter down and sent for Mr Fogden. There entered a small man with a bald head, a drooping moustache, a shiny suit, and a large, shabby portmanteau. He looked like a Hercule Poirot impressionist who had fallen on hard times.

‘I’ve had a letter of recommendation from Mr Lewis,’ said Reggie. ‘He speaks of you in the warmest terms.’

‘How gratifying,’ said Mr Fogden. ‘I always had the impression that he disliked me. Well, well. I shall go round to the hostelry that he frequents this very evening and purchase him a thankful libation.’

‘Good idea,’ said Reggie. ‘He’ll appreciate that. Now, what is your great idea?’

‘Edible furniture.’

‘I see.’

‘I’ve had no joy at all at Waring and Gillow. Maples rebuffed me – I can use no other words – and for a store of style and initiative I felt that Heals treated me with short shrift.’

Reggie leant forward and favoured the little inventor with an incredulous gaze.

‘Do you mean to say that you take your edible furniture seriously?’ he said.

Mr Fogden looked affronted.

‘But of course,’ he said. ‘It’s cheap to make, comfortable to sit in and tasty to eat.’

‘I see. Well why are you coming to me then?’ said Reggie. ‘My stores sell only useless objects.’

‘You are my last hope,’ said Mr Fogden. ‘All other avenues are closed to me.’

‘Well, what have you got to show me?’

‘I have some samples in my portmanteau,’ said Mr Fogden. ‘They are miniatures to the scale of one in thirty.’

He opened the case with tremulous fingers. Reggie gazed at an array of minuscule chairs, tables and wardrobes.

‘They look very nice,’ he said. ‘What exactly have you here?’

‘Gingerbread chairs,’ said Mr Fogden. ‘Toffee tables. A marzipan pouffe. A G-plan macaroon. A steak chair . . .’

‘A steak chair? Surely it’ll go off, become a high chair?’

‘They made the same cheap crack at Heals.’

‘Do you really think, Mr Fogden, that people will want to eat stuff that, has been sat upon by human bottoms?’ said Reggie.

‘Oh dear oh dear. Just what the man said at Waring and Gillow. Where is the spirit of innovation that made Britain great?’

Mr Fogden clipped his portmanteau shut.

‘This nation is the graveyard of its own inventors,’ he said. ‘Boffin Island? More like Baffin Island, say I.’

And he set off towards the door.

‘Wait a minute,’ said Reggie. ‘I’d like to try them.’

Mr Fogden reopened his portmanteau, and Reggie nibbled at two chairs, bit firmly into a table and toyed with a chest of drawers.

Surely nobody would buy edible furniture that tasted horrid?

He hadn’t taken Grot so seriously when he had founded it. Was he taking it so seriously now that there wasn’t room to provide a little income for this harmless lunatic in his declining years?

‘I’ll put the idea up to the board,’ he said.

Doc Morrissey sat in the easy chair by Reggie’s desk, clutching his sparkling new briefcase so tightly that there were white patches on his knuckles.