The Reginald Perrin Omnibus (94 page)

‘Another possibility occurs to me,’ said Reggie. ‘Perhaps we could regard it as a bonus for your truly splendid cooking.’

McBlane, apparently satisfied with the sharpness of the knife, replaced it in its drawer.

‘McBlane?’ said Reggie.

McBlane turned and faced him.

‘You can make yourself understood when you want to,’ said Reggie. ‘I know you don’t like us and you feel that society has given you a raw deal, but I didn’t choose to be born English and middle-class. And I did support you in court, whatever my motives. Please, McBlane. Talk to me so that I can understand.’

‘Ye flickle mucken slampnach nae blichtig fleckwingle,’ said McBlane.

Reggie wagged his finger sternly.

‘A bit more of your jugged hare wouldn’t come amiss,’ he said.

Four clients departed. Seven forward bookings were cancelled. Four thousand pounds of Reggie’s loan had gone.

Every hour of need throws up a hero, and this one was no exception.

The hero was Doc Morrissey.

The ageing medico called on Reggie in his sun-room, on the afternoon following McBlane’s return, and plonked a milk bottle full of colourless liquid on his desk with an air of suppressed triumph.

‘Taste it,’ he said.

Reggie poured a minute measure, sipped it cautiously, then spat it out.

‘It doesn’t taste of anything,’ he said.

Doc Morrissey sat back in his chair and stretched his legs like a somnolent dog.

‘Precisely,’ he said.

‘Well, thank you very much,’ said Reggie. ‘It’s just what I wanted.’

‘Your sarcasm isn’t lost on me, Reggie,’ said Doc Morrissey.

He leapt slowly to his feet, and began to give an impression of a brilliant scientist, pacing around the sun-room like a tethered greyhound on heat.

‘It can control entirely our supplies of insulin and adrenalin, our sugar level, and blood pressure,’ he said. ‘It can cure us of all our suggestions and neuroses. It can keep our bodies in a state of perfect chemical equilibrium. It can do everything you’re trying to do here.’

Reggie lifted the bottle to the light and examined the liquid. It was absolutely clear and totally lifeless.

‘Why have I never heard of this?’ he said.

‘It’s a new invention,’ said Doc Morrissey.

Reggie turned the bottle round and round slowly.

‘British invention?’ he asked.

‘I invented it,’ said Doc Morrissey.

Reggie handed the bottle back to its creator.

‘You invented it?’ he said at last.

‘My antennae have become pretty sensitive to nuances since I started looking into this psychology lark,’ said Doc Morrissey. ‘I detect a lack of confidence in your attitude, Reggie, and it pains me.’

Reggie went to the window and looked out, drinking in the white blossom on the apple trees and the delicate pink of the almond.

Four clients jogged by on the gravel path, followed by a breathless Tom.

Faith and trust.

‘Are you prepared to stake your reputation on this working?’ said Reggie.

‘Without hesitation,’ said Doc Morrissey. ‘I bring it to you, Reggie, in your hour of need.’

Before dinner that evening, Reggie called a staff meeting. They drank coffee out of each other’s mugs. It was six fifteen on a cool spring evening, and one section of the calor gas fire was on.

Reggie sat gavel-less at his card table and explained about Doc Morrissey’s wonder drug. A milk bottle full of the stuff stood on the card table in front of him.

Doc Morrissey addressed them, his face touched with a becoming modesty. He said that the drug was made up of many ingredients with long names which would be meaningless to laymen. He proposed that the staff and guests should take regular doses of his cure-all.

‘I’m sorry,’ began Tom.

‘So am I,’ said Linda.

‘I haven’t said what I’m sorry about yet.’

I’m sorry you’re about to pontificate.’

‘Well I’m sorry that you’re sorry, Linda,’ said Tom, ‘but pompous Patterson is about to pontificate. Is it ethically desirable that we should expose people to this drug? Surely the real benefit that people get out of the place is the feeling that they have been involved in helping to create the improvements that have taken place in their mental adjustment to the environment as a consequence of the manifold activities that we provide?’

‘We don’t need to let them know they’re taking it,’ said Tom.

‘We can’t afford to look a gift horse in the mouth, or we may go down with a sinking ship,’ said C.J. ‘I didn’t get where I am today by looking gift horses in the mouth and going down with sinking ships.’

Jimmy patted Lettuce’s hand. The gesture was an admission that he also thought the ship was sinking, to join the flotilla of his past disasters. More ships had sunk under Jimmy than were afloat under the Royal Navy.

‘Army put bromide in men’s tea, subdue sexual feelings,’ he said. ‘Heat of battle, erotic fantasies dangerous. Chaps falling in love with their bayonet frogs, that sort of crack. Ends justify means. I’m for old thingummy’s wonder whatsit.’

‘Me too,’ said Lettuce.

‘Good girl,’ said Jimmy.

Reggie smiled.

‘What are you smiling at?’ said Elizabeth.

‘Do you remember the English versions on Cretan menus?’ said Reggie. ‘Some of them had lamp chops, some had lamb shops, but we never actually found one that said lamp shops. Well, I was just thinking the same thing about Jimmy. He refers to Lettuce as ”good scout”, ”stout girl”, and ”good girl”, but he never, well so far as I know he doesn’t, and I can only go by what I’ve heard, never uses the fourth possible combination ”stout scout”.’

There was a stunned silence.

‘Reggie!’ said Elizabeth.

‘Sorry,’ said Reggie. ‘It’s a bit of a red herring at this important time, but you did ask me.’

He began to sweat.

Concentrate, Reggie. This is no good.

Elizabeth gave him a worried look and he smiled reassuringly.

‘Yes, well,’ said Doc Morrissey, somewhat needled by the red herring. ‘Are there any further views on my wonder drug?’

‘Is it really going to work?’ said Tony. ‘Because I’ve had the pineapple whisky syndrome up to here and I don’t feel like scoring any more revolting drinks unless it’s going to be Results City, Arizona.’

‘We’ve never had pineapple whisky,’ said Tom.

‘Children,’ said Reggie. ‘Please! Tony does have a right to ask if it’s going to work, though. I mean, has it been tested at all?’

‘A bit,’ said Doc Morrissey.

‘Ah! Good!’ said Reggie. ‘What on?’

Doc Morrissey glanced round the company uneasily.

‘Pencils,’ he said.

‘Pencils?’ said Jimmy incredulously.

‘Pencils,’ affirmed Doc Morrissey.

‘What sort of pencils?’ said C.J.

‘HB, C.J.,’ said Doc Morrissey.

‘I didn’t get where I am today by drinking liquids that have only been tested on pencils,’ said C.J.

‘Did the pencils show a marked lack of aggression?’ said Tony.

‘Come come,’ said Reggie. ‘It’s all to easy to be sarcastic. It’s a failing that I’ve slipped into myself once or twice, but it really is terribly negative. I’m sure Doc Morrissey had his reasons. Tell us, Doc, what’s the point in testing the liquid on pencils?’

‘Not much,’ said Doc Morrissey. ‘I didn’t have any animals, though.’

‘I’m glad,’ said Tom. ‘I’m against testing animals on principle.’

‘Pencils are all right, though, are they?’ said Linda. ‘What about the poor old Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Pencils?’

‘I think vivisection of Paper-mates is shocking,’ said Joan.

‘I was outraged to read about the propelling pencil that was trained to turn round and propel itself up its own sharpener,’ said Tony.

‘Please!’ said Lettuce.

She rose from her armchair and stared fiercely at the assembly. She had a kind of beauty at that moment, as the Grampian Mountains sometimes do, when touched by the evening sun.

‘I think it’s pathetic to listen to you all being sarcastic about pencils when Doc Morrissey has stuck his head on the block for the sake of the community,’ she said. ‘I’m happy to take a dose of the medicine now.’

She sat down, and there was an abashed silence, broken only by the twanging of a spring deep in the tattered bowels of her chair.

‘Stout scout,’ said Jimmy, patting her hand with proprietary pride. ‘Count me in too.’

Reggie banged on the table with his fist.

‘Hands up all those prepared to test Doc Morrissey’s magic potion.’

The hands of Doc Morrissey, Jimmy, Lettuce, Linda and Elizabeth shot up.

‘I may as well,’ said David Harris-Jones. ‘What does it matter if it kills me?’

‘Oh get off your self-pitying backside and go and drag Prue back,’ said Reggie.

‘I happen to believe that she was justified,’ said David Harris-Jones. ‘I succumbed to craven weakness. It’s Dolly Lewellyn from Pembroke Dock all over again.’

‘Dolly Lewellyn from Pembroke Dock?’ said Reggie. ‘Who’s she?’

‘I don’t really want to go into her, if you don’t mind,’ said David Harris-Jones. ‘I didn’t much want to at the time. One isolated lapse in a lay-by on the A1076 and I had to make thirteen visits to the outpatients department at Haverfordwest General. I knew then that I wasn’t destined to be a Casanova. I didn’t have another woman from that day till I met Prue, and now I do this. Men are such fools. I . . .’

David Harris-Jones suddenly seemed to realize that he was talking to the collected staff of Perrins.

He blushed.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I . . . I didn’t . . . er . . . realize. Sorry. Tragedy must have loosened my . . . er . . .’

‘Go and find her, wherever she is,’ said Reggie.

‘. . . tongue,’ said David Harris-Jones. ‘I will. I’ll go to her mother’s and find her, wherever she is. Tomorrow. But first, I’ll take Doc Morrissey’s potion.’

‘Thank you,’ said Doc Morrissey, whose lone hand was still raised in a gesture of long-suffering patience. ‘I wondered when we were going to get back to that.’

David Harris-Jones raised his hand. So did Elizabeth, Jimmy, Lettuce and Linda.

Linda looked at Tom.

‘I still have moral qualms,’ said Tom.

‘If Doc Morrissey’s drug had been given to Jack the Ripper, his victims wouldn’t have died,’ said Reggie. ‘Do you think they’d have had qualms?’

Tom raised his arm slowly.

‘It was probably just the qualm before the storm,’ he said. ‘Joke. Joke over.’

Joan looked at Tony. Tony looked at Joan.

‘Oh come on,’ said Joan. ‘It’s May As Well Be Hung For A Sheep As Lambsville, Arizona.’

Joan and Tony raised their arms.

‘Oh well’ said C.J. ‘Never let it be said that I was the one ugly duckling that prevented the goose from laying the golden egg.’

‘I promise you I’ll never let that be said,’ said Reggie.

C.J. raised his arm.

‘And you?’ said Elizabeth.

‘Oh no,’ said Reggie. ‘Somebody has to remain totally unaffected in order to observe the results scientifically.’

Slowly, one at a time, all the hands were lowered.

‘And what more natural than that that somebody should be McBlane?’ said Reggie.

‘Perhaps you’d like to be the first to drink,’ said Doc Morrissey.

‘Splendid,’ said Reggie. ‘Absolutely splendid.’

Trust and faith. He poured himself an inch of the potion.

‘The dose is half a glass,’ said Doc Morrissey.

I want to leave enough for the others,’ said Reggie.

‘My resources are to all intents and purposes infinite,’ said Doc Morrissey.

‘Oh good,’ said Reggie. ‘Splendid.’

He drank his dose swiftly, and to his surprise he didn’t fall down dead.

All the staff took their doses.

Reggie called a special meeting of the staff and eighteen remaining guests. Doc Morrissey spoke about the drug. The staff took their second dose, and Reggie asked the guests for volunteers.

All eighteen volunteered.

Afterwards, they shared cigarettes and swapped yarns. A squash player with a drink problem sang Cherokee love songs. A time and motion man who’d investigated his own firm and been declared redundant as a result sang his own compositions, bitter-sweet laments for a less ruthless age. An overworked builder, known throughout his home town as Mañana Constructions, told an interminable story about the amazing prescience of his cat Tiddles. The manager of a drycleaner’s in Northamptonshire went into the garden and made love to a lady computer programmer from Essex. Snodgrass was quite shocked when she came upon them, shivering from cold and ecstasy, naked and dewy under the suburban stars.

In the morning David Harris-Jones set off for Prue’s mother’s place in Exeter.

McBlane prepared twenty-nine portions of chicken paprika, and C.J. felt slightly queasy at breakfast.

Shortly after breakfast, both Tony and Joan felt slightly ill.

By half past ten, all three of them, plus Linda, had retired to bed with stomach trouble.

By twenty to eleven, stomach trouble was already a euphemism.

News of the outbreak spread rapidly. So did the outbreak. Was Doc Morrissey’s potion to blame?

At five past eleven, Reggie confronted the inventive exmedico in his upstairs room at Number Nineteen.

‘Five members of my staff are ill,’ he said. ‘Three guests are feeling queasy.’

‘Four,’ said Doc Morrissey. ‘One just left me in a hurry.’

‘Your potion’s responsible,’ said Reggie.

‘It can’t be,’ said Doc Morrissey adamantly.

‘How can you be so certain?’ said Reggie. ‘Tell me just what
was
in that liquid.’

A strange smile played on Doc Morrissey’s lips.

‘It was water,’ he said.

‘Water?’

‘Plain simple water. You don’t really think I’m skilful enough to create a drug that does all I claimed for it?’

‘Well, I did wonder,’ said Reggie.

‘Oh you did, did you? I shall take that as a personal insult,’ said Doc Morrissey.

Reggie sat on the couch.

‘May I ask you why you presented us with a wonder drug which was in reality water?’ he asked grimly.

‘Faith and trust. It was a psychological, not a medical experiment, Reggie, but I didn’t want you to know it was psychological.’