The Reginald Perrin Omnibus (59 page)

When he went downstairs again Tom said, ‘But you’re still in your office clobber.’

‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘I forgot what I went upstairs for.’

‘I don’t like Brussels,’ said C.J. ‘One ornate square, sprouts, and a little boy who widdles. It isn’t enough.’

They were having a nightcap in the British bar of the Brussels Dragonara. There were large photographs of the Tower of London, Hampton Court, Dovedale, Ullswater and the Middlesbrough Dragonara.

They had enjoyed a constructive day. In the morning they had sorted out the property situation in Rotterdam, and after lunch on a TEE train they had done the same thing with regard to Brussels.

‘Didn’t you like me a little in Godalming?’ said C.J. ‘I had a feeling that you liked me a little in Godalming.’

‘Yes, I liked you a little in Godalming.’

‘Surely, if you liked me a little in Godalming, you could like me a lot in Brussels?’

‘It isn’t a question of geography,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I was upset then. I had been through bewildering experiences.’

‘Now
I
have been through bewildering experiences,’ said C.J.

‘Mutatis mutandis,’ said Elizabeth.

‘I can’t speak French,’ said C.J. ‘All I know is business.’

‘A far cry from Renaissance man,’ said Elizabeth.

‘Pardon?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Have another peach brandy?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘Stay with me while I have another tia maria.’

‘Just for a few minutes.’

She couldn’t bear to see him like this. It was as if she had caught Krupp taking a teddy bear to bed.

Thursday

The Bavarian evening was in full swing. The grotesque fat man in shorts and braces twirled the pig-tailed maiden round and round. Her traditional skirt swirled and revealed naked thighs above her white socks. The audience banged their beer mugs, and roared.

The couple turned to face the audience, and Reggie saw that they were C.J. and Elizabeth.

They began to undress. The audience howled with pleasure, and Reggie woke up.

He went straight to Tony’s drab little office and said ‘Ah, Tony! Just the man I wanted to see.’

‘I guessed I was when I saw you come into my office,’ said Tony.

‘Quite. Stupid thing to say, really. Tony, I’d like you to tour all Grot shops, incognito, no great hurry, and just check on how they’re being run, quality of displays, assistants, etcetera. Full expenses, of course.’

‘Great.’

‘Seeing much of Joan these days?’

‘I’ve been a bit tied up lately,’ said Tony.

‘She was round my house last night,’ said Reggie. ‘Very pleasant.’

‘Great.’

‘Morning, Joan,’ he said, as he passed through the outer office. ‘Twenty-two minutes late. A badger ate a junction box at New Maiden.’

‘You don’t believe those excuses, do you, Mr Perrin?’ said Joan coldly.

‘Of course not,’ said Reggie. ‘But I admire their creative powers, even if a touch of desperation has crept in of late. Come through a moment, would you?’

He entered his office, threw his umbrella towards the hat-stand, missed, straightened one of Dr Wren’s horrific sketches of Ramsey, Isle of Man, and sat at his desk.

Joan sat opposite him, pad poised, legs aggressively uncrossed, and wearing her longest skirt.

‘First of all,’ said Reggie. ‘Deepest apologies for last night.’

Joan made no reply.

‘It really wasn’t my fault, you know.’

Joan remained silent.

The red phone rang. Joan answered it.

‘New York on red, Mr Perrin,’ she said, handing Reggie the receiver.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Mr Perrin has been admitted to an isolation hospital. He has a rare variant of green-monkey fever, known as mauve-baboon fever. Ring back in six months. Goodbye.’

He put the phone down.

‘You see how important you are to me,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Joan. ‘I know it wasn’t your fault really, but it’s a bit humiliating sliding down married men’s drainpipes.’

‘It wasn’t in vain,’ said Reggie. ‘I spoke to Tony, and there were definite signs of jealousy.’

‘Really? What did he say?’

‘It wasn’t so much what he said exactly.’

‘What did he say, Mr Perrin?’

‘Great.’

‘Just “great”?’

‘It was the way he said it. The signs are there, but we’re doing it all wrong. The male possessive instinct is very bound up with territory. Suppose I come to your place tonight? That’ll hook him.’

The white walls of Joan’s little bedroom in her flat in Kingston-on-Thames were covered in Spanish mats, with orange the predominant colour. A soft dusk was beginning to fall as Reggie and Joan found coitus uninterruptus at last.

They lay side by side in the narrow bed, happy, incredulous.

Then the doorbell rang. Four short staccato rings.

‘Oh my God,’ said Joan. ‘That’s Tony’s ring. He always rings like that.’

She ran naked out of the room and rushed along the corridor to the window above the door.

‘I’ll be down in a minute,’ she called out of the window. ‘I’ve just had a bath.’

She returned more slowly to the bedroom. Reggie looked at her questioningly from the bed.

‘There’s a very solid drain-pipe,’ she said. ‘It shouldn’t be too difficult.’

‘I know I’m not particularly human,’ said C.J. ‘My worst enemies couldn’t accuse me of being particularly human. But I can change.’

‘No,’ said Elizabeth.

‘You can take the leopard to the water, and he’ll change his spots,’ said C.J.

‘No,’ said Elizabeth.

They were enjoying an early nightcap on the Rhine Terrace of the Holiday Inn, Düsseldorf. Great caravans of barges slid slowly up the broad brown river in the last of a lingering dusk.

Elizabeth yawned. All this travel was proving tiring.

‘Bored?’ said C.J.

‘No.’

‘I know I’m boring.’

‘No.’

A young page in a blue jacket with gold buttons was searching vainly for a Mr Antinori of Poggibonsi. He had concealed his acne spots beneath white powder.

‘Elizabeth?’ said C.J. in a husky whisper.

‘No,’ said Elizabeth.

‘You don’t know what I’m going to say,’ said C.J.

‘No,’ said Elizabeth.

‘I was only going to say that I love you,’ said C.J.

‘No,’ said Elizabeth.

Friday

‘Twenty-two minutes la . . . ’

‘Thank you,’ said Joan, kissing him excitedly on the mouth. ‘Thank you, you darling man.’

‘What is all this?’

‘It worked,’ said Joan. ‘It worked.’

‘Well of course it . . . what worked?’

‘Your plan. Tony’s moving back in with me tomorrow.’

‘Oh. Good. Good. Wonderful.’

‘I let him see you as you slid down the drain-pipe.’

‘Wonderful.’

‘Thank you.’

‘It’s our last night,’ said C.J.

‘Yes,’ said Elizabeth.

‘Tomorrow night you will be in Reggie’s arms, and I’ll be at home too.’

‘Yes.’

They were having a nightcap in the Tongan bar at the Paris Post House. Pictures of the burly Tongan rulers adorned the walls, and the ashtrays were in the shape of the island.

‘Soon Mrs C.J. goes to Luxembourg. Would it be wrong of me to hope that some minor complaint will again keep her recuperating in that lovely land? A mild but persistent attack of yellow jaundice, perhaps.’

‘Yes,’ said Elizabeth. ‘It would be very wrong.’

Her constant rebuffs, gentle and inevitable as they were, were beginning to make Elizabeth feel mean. She closed her eyes and fought off this dangerous feeling. She conjured up a picture of Reggie alone with Ponsonby in the quiet Climthorpe night, steadfast in his love and affection for his unworthy wife who hadn’t even had the wit to take Grot seriously when he had first presented the idea to her.

She longed, with all her being, for the moment when she and C.J. would drive away from London Airport in separate cars.

‘Penny for them,’ said C.J.

‘What? Oh, I was just thinking what a romantic place Paris was,’ she said, getting up to go to bed.

C.J. sighed.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I suppose it was.’

Saturday

‘So you had a nice time with C.J., did you?’ said Reggie.

‘Not bad,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Quite nice, considering.’

‘Quite,’ said Reggie. ‘You got on all right together, then?’

‘Not too badly, considering.’

They were sitting in the living-room, having a pot of tea. It was four o’clock on a grey, cold Saturday.

‘How did
you
get on?’ said Elizabeth.

‘Oh not too bad,’ said Reggie. ‘Not too bad, considering.’

‘You weren’t too bored and lonely, then?’

‘No, I . . . I wasn’t too bored and lonely. I found one or two things to do.’

‘Oh good.’

Elizabeth lifted the tea cosy, which had purple lupins embroidered on it, and poured them a second cup.

‘One isolated lapse isn’t the end of the world,’ said Reggie. ‘I mean, what is unfaithfulness and adultery compared to terrorism and gun-running and drug rings and bank raids and imprisonment without trial and mass torture and genocide and kidnapping and corruption and massacre?’

Elizabeth’s hand shook as she poured Reggie his cup of tea.

‘What are you trying to tell me?’ she said.

‘I’m trying to tell you, darling, that if anything occurred between you and C.J. that shouldn’t have occurred, I forgive you.’

‘Anything occurred between me and C.J.! Of course it didn’t.’

‘No, of course it didn’t. I wasn’t for a moment suggesting that it had. I was just saying that
if
it had,
if
it had, I’d forgive you. No, of course it didn’t. How could it, with C.J.? The mind boggles.’

A plane roared overhead, carrying, as it chanced, forty-six members of the Grenoble Philatelic Society, on their annual trip to buy cheap sweaters at Marks and Spencers.

‘Did you really think I was having an affair with C.J.?’

‘No. No. Darling, how could you think I could think such a thing? No, I just formed the idea, probably quite wrongly, that it was C.J. you were seeing in Godalming.’

‘It was.’

‘Ah!’

‘But nothing happened. Nothing could ever happen between me and C.J.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me it was C.J.?’

‘I thought you’d be cross.’

‘I would have been.’

An unnatural darkness had descended from a constipated sky, and the electric fire glowed brightly.

‘I thought for a minute you were going to tell me
you
had had an affair,’ said Elizabeth.

‘Me!’ said Reggie. ‘Me! No! How could you think a thing like that?’

‘I didn’t, till you mentioned the subject.’

‘If I had had an affair – I haven’t, but if I had – would you forgive me?’

‘I’d try to. I might find it difficult.’

Reggie put his arm round Elizabeth.

‘I’m glad you’re back,’ he said.

‘From now on we must do everything together,’ he said. ‘Everything.’

It pains me, faithful reader, to admit that from then on they did not do everything together. That very evening Reggie did something on his own. He opened his heart to Ponsonby.

Elizabeth, being much fatigued after her travels, had retired early to bed. It was ten o’clock on a chill May night. Ponsonby was purring on Reggie’s lap. A glass of whisky stood on the smallest table in the nest.

‘You are Watson to my Sherlock Holmes,’ Reggie told Ponsonby. ‘Hercule Poirot had his Hastings, Raffles his Bunny. I have my Pussy. These side-kicks of literature performed valuable functions, Ponsonby. They did. They were emotional hot water bottles, confidantes, sounding-boards, call them what you will.’

Ponsonby called them nothing.

‘And they provided useful information for the reader. They were a convenient literary device. Since I’m not a fictional character I don’t need a literary device. But I do need a confidante. You are a perfect confidante, since you don’t understand a blind word I say.’

Ponsonby looked up at Reggie with earnest eyes.

‘You do try to understand, don’t you? Do you ever feel a sense of humiliation as the words wash over you, utterly beyond your well-meaning grasp?’

Ponsonby miaowed.

‘I am trapped in a success story that I never expected, Ponsonby. I have got to escape from it.

‘I have created a monster called Grot. I have got to destroy that monster.

‘I could sell it, Ponsonby, but I prefer not to do that. I would rather destroy it myself – I who created it. That would be much more pleasing.

‘I want to destroy it secretly, so that nobody will ever know that it was deliberate. I want to destroy it from within, slowly, so that those with the sense to see what is happening can leave of their own free will, in good time. I have responsibilities to them, you see.’

Ponsonby miaowed. It seemed that he saw.

‘How am I going to do it, I hear you ask. Well, it’s very simple. I am going to employ in key roles people who are utterly unfitted for those roles, people uniquely qualified to destroy my empire. What do you think of that as a wheeze?’

Ponsonby acquiesced silently.

‘Oh good. I’m glad you agree,’ said Reggie.

Chapter 22

‘I didn’t think I’d see the inside of this office again,’ said Doc Morrissey.

‘How are things?’ said Reggie.

‘Very promising,’ said Doc Morrissey. There are gleams on the horizon. There are fingers in pies. There are irons in fires. These things take time.’

‘How would you like a job with me, Doc?’

Doc Morrissey’s jaw dropped in astonishment.

‘But you sacked me?’

‘This would be a completely different job, Doc. Cigar?’

‘Doctor’s warned me off them. Thanks.’

Doc Morrissey leant forward to light his cigar, and there was an ominous cracking of bone.

‘What’s it to be this time, Reggie? Assistant boilerman?’ he said.

‘No. Head of Forward Planning.’

‘Head of Forward Planning?’

‘I believe that your talents do not lie with the specific. Whatever you do – diagnosis of ailments, running a shop, maintaining a boiler – will be a fiasco.’