The Reginald Perrin Omnibus (95 page)

‘You concealed it for psychological reasons?’

‘Exactly. But I didn’t want you to know that the reasons were psychological. Psychology, Reggie. I wanted you to think that I was concealing the ingredients because I couldn’t remember their medical names. When in fact I was concealing them because there weren’t any. Pretty good, eh?’

‘Excellent.’

‘It was all lies, Reggie. Even the bit about the pencils. I just tossed that in to add authenticity.’

‘It wasn’t a conspicuous success.’

‘I felt that. I wanted you to gain confidence because you believed you’d taken a wonder drug.’

‘I see. Then why is everybody ill?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

Reggie looked Doc Morrissey straight in the eyes.

‘I don’t know how to put this without being mildly rude,’ he began.

‘Be mildly rude, Reggie. I can take it,’ said Doc Morrissey, smiling the cheerily mournful smile of a man reconciled to his pessimism.

‘Your medical reputation at Sunshine Desserts wasn’t high. You weren’t known as the Pasteur of the Puddings. This reputation wasn’t enhanced when you were sacked from the British Medical Association for gross professional incompetence. It is possible that, far from inspiring us to confidence, your mystery panacea has provoked us to fear, that my staff are persuading themselves into illness. The obverse of the mind over matter syndrome, Doc. The dark side of the psychological moon.’

Doc Morrissey looked stricken.

‘Mass auto-indigestion!’ he said. ‘It’s possible.’

He clutched his stomach and groaned.

‘Excuse me,’ he said, and hurried from the room.

The epidemic continued to spread.

An accident prevention officer swooned on his way to the toilet, fell downstairs and broke his leg.

Reggie sent for a doctor. He arrived at twelve twenty-three. Eight members of the staff and nine guests were by this time ill.

‘It’s mass hysteria,’ he told Reggie at the conclusion of his visit. ‘I’ve known similar things in girls’ schools, and what is this place but a girls’ school where the pupils happen to be adult and predominantly male?’

‘I see no similarity,’ said Reggie.

‘I only mean,’ said the doctor, ‘that the emotional soil is favourable to hysteria. Hysterical dysentery. Fascinating.’

‘And what do you propose to do about it?’ said Reggie.

‘Ah, that,’ said the doctor, as if treatment was an afterthought of little consequence.

He prescribed medicine for people on the National Health and a better medicine for the private patients.

‘Thank you,’ he said, as he set off down the garden path in a burst of tactless sunshine.

‘Thank you,’ he repeated, for all the world as if the epidemic was a charade laid on for his delectation.

The symptoms of dysentery are widely known and it is best to draw a veil over them. Suffice it to say that at one o’clock fifteen people were sitting down, and in only seven cases was it for lunch.

The seven lunchers tackled McBlane’s hare terrine in circumstances that were far from propitious.

‘Tidworth all over again,’ muttered Jimmy cryptically.

All five attempted to make cheerful conversation over the chicken paprika.

‘Worse than Ridworth,’ declared Jimmy, still in gnomic vein.

It was a deflated trio that struggled with McBlane’s superb lemon meringue pie.

Both men accepted coffee.

‘Far worse than Tidworth,’ asserted the gallant old soldier, rushing out to meet his Waterloo.

And so, when McBlane entered to collect the pudding plates, he found Reggie in solitary state, defiant to the last, alone on the bridge of continence as his ship was scuppered about him.

‘Thank you, McBlane,’ said Reggie bravely to the pock-marked Pict. ‘A superb luncheon.’

The bad luck that had assailed Perrins seemed determined to continue to the last.

It was bad luck that the doctor should have a drinking acquaintance who was a stringer for several national newspapers, so that Reggie spent much of the afternoon fending off the queries from the gentlemen of the press.

It was bad luck that it should be on this of all days that the environmental health officer came to review the sanitation arrangements. At first, all went well. He began with an examination of the kitchen. As luck would have it, McBlane was preparing a marinade for boeuf bourguignon, and not powdering one of his extremities or recycling his boil plasters.

McBlane appeared to be, albeit unconsciously, an advocate of Cartesian dualism. I, McBlane, can be monumentally filthy, inventively scabrous and permanently itching. You, the kitchen, must be clean and gleaming at all times. In truth, however, it was emotion and not logic which created this spectacular dichotomy. McBlane loved his kitchen. Nay, more. He was in love with it. Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, McBlane and his kitchen, three great love stories, passionate, vibrant, ultimately tragic.

Violent death parted Romeo and Juliet. Violent death parted Antony and Cleopatra. The tragedy of McBlane’s great love was different.

His passion was unrequited.

Why did the tough scion of Caledonia love his kitchen? Because he didn’t dare give his love to a woman. Women would spurn him. He had too many skin diseases.

While the kitchen didn’t love him, it didn’t spurn him. It didn’t know that he was covered in spots. McBlane, ever a realist, had settled for the kitchen.

The Environmental Health Officer didn’t know any of this.

‘Only one health hazard there,’ he told Reggie. ‘The chef.’

Their examination of the toilets was hampered by the fact that they were constantly occupied. The presence of people standing in agonized poses waiting to enter the toilets was explained away by Reggie as art therapy.

‘They’re representing the agony of the human struggle in modern dance,’ he said.

‘They look as if they’re waiting to go to the toilet,’ said the philistine official.

‘You see what you’re capable of seeing,’ said Reggie.

The Environmental Health Officer told Reggie that he’d be turning in a very unfavourable report.

‘What do you have to say to that?’ he said.

‘Excuse me,’ said Reggie.

He spent three days in bed with hysterical dysentery.

The newspaper headlines included ‘Hysteria Bug Hits Jinx Community’, The Squatters of Botchley’ and ‘Perrin Tummy KO’s Commune’.

Undoubtedly, the hysterical dysentery would have caused many of the guests to leave, if they hadn’t been too ill with hysterical dysentery.

Gradually., the staff and guests recovered. Four guests did leave.

A post-dysentery evening was planned, in which they would drink from communal bowls of Andrews Liver Salts and Bisodol.

Reggie let himself out of the side door and then remembered that he was banned from every pub in Botchley.

He walked down Oslo Avenue, and turned left into Bonn Close, a sinister figure with the collar of his raincoat turned up against the penetrating drizzle of early May.

He turned right into Ankara Grove, went down the snicket to the station, and took the narrow pedestrian tunnel under the tracks. It dripped with moisture and smelt of urine.

He plunged into the streets of the council estate, on the wrong side of the tracks. Here the houses were poor and badly maintained. Every possible corner had been cut, in the interests of persuading the inhabitants that they were inferior, so that they would accept their role in society and commit the vandalism that was expected of them, thus confirming the people on the right side of the tracks in their belief that they were right to stick these people in council estates on the wrong side of the tracks. Thus mused Reggie bitterly as he slipped through the dark, inhospitable streets.

Beyond the housing estates came the damp backside of Botchley, a rump as pitted and pocked as McBlane’s. The street lamps were widely spaced and feeble, dim as a Toc H cabaret, their faint yellow glow deepening the darkness of the night around them. Here the streets were like teeth – old, stained, badly maintained, and full of gaps. It was the sort of area that film companies use for their blitz sequences. Even the potatoes on the tumble-down, refuse-ridden allotments were suffering from planning blight.

At the far end of these streets lay the Dun Cow.

Reggie entered the public bar, a tiny, ill-lit, raucous place, where the beer tasted as if several elderly dogs had moulted in it.

But it had one great advantage. He wasn’t known here, and so the ban would not be imposed. He ordered a pint and prepared to assault it.

‘Holy God, it’s Mr Perrin himself,’ said a familiar Irish voice.

Reggie turned to find himself gazing into the agreeable features of Seamus Finnegan, the former navvy whom he had plucked from obscurity to become Admin Officer at Grot.

‘Seamus Finnegan!’ said Reggie.

‘If it isn’t, some bastard’s standing in my body,’ replied that worthy.

‘Terrible beer,’ said Reggie.

‘It is that,’ said Seamus Finnegan. ‘Undrinkable.’

‘Have another?’

‘Thank you, sir.’

They sat in a corner, watching two youths in filthy jeans throwing inaccurate darts at a puffy travesty of a board.

‘It’s good to see you, Seamus,’ said Reggie.

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Seamus.

‘Come on, Seamus. We’re friends. Less of the ”sir”.’

‘Thank you, sir, but your insistence that I don’t call you sir is based on a false premise.’

‘What premise is that?’ said Reggie.

He closed his eyes, shut his nose, and forced a sizeable draught of beer down his throat.

‘You’re thinking ”Poor Seamus. I brought him out from the obscurity of the Climthorpe Slip Relief Feeder Road, a simple tongue-tied Irishman from the land of the bogs and the little people, I rescued him from the swollen underbelly of that fat old sow that is urban deprivation, I made him Admin Officer in the hope that his simple Irish idiocy would send the whole Grot empire tumbling about our ears, but with the true contrariness of Erin he proved to be a genius, and then I disbanded Grot, leaving poor old Seamus to return to the drunken monosyllabic slime of the road works, his only companions simple oafs, and the occasional inarticulate driver of an articulated lorry, back in the gloomy underbelly of the aforementioned sow of urban deprivation from which I had so irresponsibly rescued him”,’ said Seamus Finnegan.

Reggie gave a sickly grin.

‘Well, yes, I suppose I was thinking something along those lines, if not in so many words,’ he said. ‘I’m terribly sorry, Seamus. It was a dreadful thing to do.’

‘I own eight companies,’ said Seamus Finnegan.

‘I . . . Well, that’s marvellous, Seamus. That’s marvellous. So . . . er . . .’

‘What am I doing drinking in this dismal hell-hole?’

‘Well . . . yes.’

‘It would be facile to suggest that success has not changed Seamus Finnegan. Success, sir, he’s a feller that changes everything. But it doesn’t mean that I don’t have time to slip away from my spiritual Athenaeum and while away an idle hour with the mates of my erstwhile existence. To me, sir, class distinction is a horse of dubious character, a non-runner, a late withdrawal, as the actress said to the Catholic bishop.’

‘Quite.’

‘Same again, sir?’

‘I’d rather a whisky, Seamus.’

‘Yes indeed. A noxious brew.’

Seamus went to the bar, passed a few brief words with the mates of his erstwhile existence, and returned with two large whiskies.

‘Seeing you here, Mr Perrin,’ said Seamus Finnegan, as they clinked glasses, ‘did not lead me to believe that you had fallen upon evil days. I don’t judge a man from his surroundings. His innate character, he’s the feller I look for. The old essential nature of the unique and individual homo sapiens, he’s the man for me.’

‘I am justly rebuked,’ said Reggie with a wry grin.

One of the darts players farted. There was loud laughter. Life went on. So did Seamus Finnegan.

‘However,’ he said, ‘curiosity is a frisky nag. She’s liable to sweat up in the paddock, that one. And, sir, curiosity rather than social stereotype compels me, in my turn, to ask of you, ”What
are you
doing drinking in this dismal hell-hole?”.’

Reggie described Perrins and its situation as best he could. Seamus Finnegan’s amiable ruddy face expressed shock and alarm, but when asked why, his garrulity vanished, and he displayed all the characteristics of an unusually introverted clam.

Next morning, at ten past nine, Seamus Finnegan called at Number Twenty-one, Oslo Avenue.

‘Hello!’ said Reggie. ‘To what do I owe this pleasure?’

‘Dark deeds,’ said Seamus Finnegan.

Reggie led him into the sun-room. Seamus produced a briar pipe of great age, filled it with foul tobacco at his leisure, lit it, took a puff, seemed pleased and spoke.

‘You remember my colleagues of last night?’ he said.

The mates of your erstwhile existence?’

‘Them’s the fellers. They’re right villains, them lot. Well, they’ve been having inquiries from some yobbos and ruffians with a view to duffing up a certain community that has aroused resentment.’

Reggie’s eyes met Seamus’s, and a cold fear stabbed him.

‘Perrins?’

‘Yes.’

‘When?’

‘Saturday night. It’s only rumour, but that’s one horse you can never write off.’

Thank you for warning me, Seamus.’

Reggie called a staff meeting for six thirty that evening.

At half past three, David Harris-Jones arrived back, without Prue. He was starving, and Reggie led him into the kitchen.

McBlane was upstairs, taking a rare opportunity to put his athlete’s feet up, but Reggie managed to rustle up some leftovers.

‘I got as far as Paddington, and nemesis overtook me,’ said David Harris-Jones, between mouthfuls. ‘I spent twenty-nine hours in one of the toilet cubicles. Can you imagine spending twenty-nine hours in the cubicle of a Western Region toilet?’

‘The plight is horrific, the region immaterial,’ said Reggie.

‘Every graffitus is etched on my memory,’ said David Harris-Jones, shuddering at the enormity of the obscenities.

‘It was hysterical dysentery,’ said Reggie. ‘It’s odd that you should get it in isolation like that.’