The Reginald Perrin Omnibus (56 page)

Once more the resonant notes of the organ died slowly, like the last rumblings of celestial catarrh. There was a deep, damp, vaulted silence.

‘We are gathered here today,’ said the vicar, ‘to witness the ceremony of Holy Matrimony, to join together two happy and radiant souls, one of whom we see here today. Alas, the efforts of the other to be present at the greatest day of his life seem to have met with some misfortune, some setback which is doubtless not unconnected with the inclement road conditions which are affecting Bagwell Heath and its environs, not to mention large areas of the Northern Hemisphere.’

The vicar glanced at his watch. It was the largest congregation he had had for years, and he wasn’t going to let it go without a fight.

‘Let us pray,’ he said.

The congregation knelt.

‘Almighty God,’ improvised the vicar. ‘Who hast delivered many travellers safely to their havens through danger and peril, storm and avalanche, flood and snow-drift, fog and typhoon, landslide and water-spout, grant, we beseech Thee, that Thy blessed subject James Gordonstoun Anderson, may be safely delivered to this place of worship through the perils of the March snow and the dangers of the new experimental one-way traffic system in Upper Bagwell, with its linked traffic lights and mini-roundabouts, that he may be truly and gratefully and joyously united in Holy Matrimony, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.’

The congregation sat. The vicar, still ignorant of the partial destruction of his bicycle, walked as slowly as he dared into the pulpit, coughed as often as he dared, fixed the congregation with a fierce glare for as long as he dared, and finally, when he could delay no longer, spoke.

‘What is Holy Matrimony?’ he said. ‘It is the union of two souls, is it not?’

The eight Indians, who had been looking somewhat puzzled, nodded.

‘It is a solemn sacrament, which should not be entered upon lightly.’

‘If at all?’ whispered Reggie.

‘S’ssh,’ whispered Elizabeth.

‘Vicar man’s got a big nose,’ said Adam.

Reggie thought about his infrequent visits to church. They seemed doomed to irregularity. On the last occasion he had attended his own memorial service, having no right to be there. Now Jimmy was not attending his own wedding, having every right, nay, obligation to be present. Reggie reflected on the many-layered ironies of life, while the vicar talked on, in the desperate hope that the groom would find unsuspected reserves of courage, and would finally arrive.

‘Marriage is essentially a partnership,’ he was saying, ‘a matter of give and take.’

‘Give up, vicar,’ said Lettuce, in a loud, firm, resolute voice. ‘The bastard isn’t coming.’

Only on the exposed banks were there still traces of snow in the headlights. Relentless rain swept across the roads, filling the West Country rivers, turning Exe and Lyn and Dart into torrents, swelling Taw and Torridge and Tamar into muddy flood. On the darkened motorways the juggernauts sent jets of water streaming over Reggie’s car, and on the good old
A
.303 the leak in the side window of Clive ‘Lofty’ Anstruther’s Land Rover was worse than ever.

Where would Jimmy make for but back to earth, back to Trepanning House, in the County of Cornwall?

It had been decided that Reggie and Linda would stay at the Fishermen’s Arms, Clive ‘Lofty’ Anstruther would keep vigil at Trepanning House, Elizabeth would wait at home, and Tom would look after Adam and Jocasta.

Tom had wanted to go in place of Linda, but she had insisted.

‘Jimmy’ll need cheering up, Tom,’ she had said.

‘Linda’s right, Tom,’ Reggie had said. ‘Jimmy’ll need cheering up. You’d better not come.’

As they drove over Bodmin Moor, where the remains of deep drifts were turning dull and grey in the rain, it was comforting to know that they had booked rooms in the hospitable old stone inn.

The road dropped steadily off the moor towards the anonymous, eponymous town. They were heading now for the ancient battered coasts where even a gorse bush was a minor miracle. The grey villages were silent and deserted in the cruel rain.

The last bell rang just as they drew up outside the Fishermen’s Arms.

They drank beer and whisky chasers.

‘We’ve seen nowt of him,’ said Danny Arkwright. ‘Nowt of him nor t’long bugger.’

‘Well, he’ll have had to hitch-hike,’ said Linda. ‘Clive’s got their car.’

‘I made sure he were wed by now,’ said the landlord. ‘Hey, Annie!’ he shouted.

The former canteen operative joined them.

‘T’feller from Trepanning House what’s getting married today, he never turned up.’

‘Ee,’ said the landlady. ‘Who’d have thowt it?’

‘I would for one,’ said the landlord. ‘She come down here back end, stayed like. I’ve seen better faces on pit ponies. Mind you, she’d come in handy pulling a truck of coal, I grant you that.’

‘She wasn’t that bad,’ said the landlady.

‘She was t’roughest I’ve seen for a long while. I’d rather marry Keith Kettleborough,’ said the landlord.

Time passed. The lights were dimmed, and the dying firelight flickered faintly on the ceiling. Linda caught Mr and Mrs Arkwright giving her strange looks, and she felt certain that they recalled her evening in the bar with Jimmy. Mrs Arkwright insisted on giving them ham and eggs, which proved highly palatable.

When Mr Arkwright opened the door to the back yard, a gusty wind blew in and rattled the sign over the bar which announced: ‘Danny and Annie welcome you.’

At three in the morning, while they were discussing football coverage on television, they heard a Deep Sea Aggregates lorry thundering down the darkened road.

‘Which is the best football commentator, John Motson or Tony Gubba?’ asked Mr Arkwright.

‘There’s a lorry,’ said Reggie. ‘It’s stopping.’

‘I reckon it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other,’ said the landlord.

‘It’s stopped,’ said Linda.

‘Sheffield Star
“Green Un” could see them both off. Fred Walters, John Piper,’ said the landlord.

‘He’s coming this way,’ said Reggie.

‘He’ll not listen,’ said the landlady. ‘Not while he’s talking about his famous “Green Un”. First time we went to London, he said, “Hey up, our Annie. They’ve got a ‘Pink Un’ here,” and he bought two copies of the
Financial Times
.’

There was a knock on the bar door.

‘It’s him,’ said Reggie.

The landlord unbolted the door, and Jimmy staggered in. He was wearing full morning dress with a wilting carnation.

‘Sorry,’ said Jimmy. ‘Saw light on. Out on my feet. Got such a thing as a bed?’

‘Friends of yours here,’ said Mr Arkwright.

Jimmy kissed Linda and shook hands warmly with Reggie.

‘Drinks all round,’ he said. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘You may have forgotten,’ said Reggie. ‘But we went to your wedding today.’

‘Haven’t forgotten,’ said Jimmy. ‘How did it go off?’

‘It didn’t go off,’ said Reggie.

‘You did,’ said Linda.

‘Yes,’

Jimmy took a swig of whisky and sighed.

‘Poor Lettuce,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t face it. Coward. Bad business. Drummed out of regiment. Conduct prejudicial. How did she take it?’

‘Very bravely,’ said Linda.

‘It was her finest hour,’ said Reggie.

‘Nice filly,’ said Jimmy. ‘Salt of earth. Not on, though. Poor cow. Nasty business, was it?’

Reggie told the tale of Jimmy’s wedding.

‘Oh God,’ said Jimmy. ‘Consolation. She’s better off without me. Dictum. Never marry sort of chap doesn’t turn up at own wedding.’

The weather relented; Climthorpe Albion began to catch up on their backlog of postponed games and stretched their unbeaten run to twelve matches; Jimmy returned to his bachelor ways; Lettuce found that she could bear the absence of Jimmy better than the kind sympathy of her friends; the Harris-Jones’s lived in peaceful harmony and listened to their baby boy’s lungs developing healthily; President Amin led the applause for
The Admirable Crichton
, that classic play about the overthrow of imperialist authority, and C.J. and Tony Webster took up their position at Perrin Products.

‘Let’s have lunch,’ said C.J., putting his head round her office door on his second day.

It was the moment that Elizabeth had dreaded.

‘Certainly,’ she said. ‘Provided Reggie doesn’t mind.’

‘Why should he?’ said C.J.

‘No reason,’ said Elizabeth. ‘But you know how unpredictable he is.’

‘It’s only a business lunch,’ said C.J., ‘for you to report on your feasibility studies into the viability of the European side of our operations.’

‘Were you wanting to have lunch today, darling?’ she asked Reggie.

‘Not especially,’ he said, without even looking up from his desk.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Only I thought maybe you wanted to discuss my ideas for children’s toys.’

Realizing that whatever elaborate train sets you give young children they prefer to play with battered old biscuit tins, Elizabeth had suggested that they sell battered old biscuit tins at slightly less than the price of train sets.

‘We can do that tomorrow,’ said Reggie. ‘Why?’

‘Well C.J. wants me to go out to lunch with him, and I thought you might not want me to.’

Reggie looked up at last, to gaze at her in surprise.

‘Well of course I want you to,’ he said. ‘You’re his boss.’

C.J. leant round the huge candle that dominated their little table in the crowded trattoria.

‘It’s wonderful to be with you again, Elizabeth,’ he said.

‘It’s nice to work with you, C.J.’

‘Call me Bunny.’

‘You said I shouldn’t call you that at work,’ said Elizabeth. ‘This is supposed to be a business lunch.’

The waiter set the whitebait down in front of Elizabeth with a big smile.

‘No, I’m the whitebait,’ said C.J.

The waiter whipped the whitebait away and set the pâté in front of Elizabeth.

‘No, I’m avocado,’ she said.

‘So sorry,’ said the waiter. ‘All today is cock-up. Molto cock-up. We not can get staff.’

As soon as the waiter had gone, C.J. peered round the candle again.

‘Will you ever call me Bunny again?’ he said.

‘Possibly,’ said Elizabeth.

‘In Godalming? There’s been quite a build-up of papers to sort.’

‘I can’t come to Godalming. Your wife’s there.’

‘She’s going to Luxembourg to see her relatives.’

The waiter brought Elizabeth her lasagne.

‘No, I’m avocado,’ she said.

‘Bloody kitchens,’ said the waiter. ‘Nobody speaka da English.’

He whipped the lasagne away angrily.

‘Reggie’s so jealous,’ said Elizabeth.

‘Please promise to come to Godalming,’ said C.J.

‘I think the most feasible cities for our European spearhead are Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam …’

‘Amsterdam in the spring,’ said C.J. ‘We could go to Amsterdam together.’

‘I can’t see Reggie letting us go to Amsterdam together,’ said Elizabeth, as the waiter presented her with a steaming plate of mussels.

‘I think C.J.’s going to suggest that I go on a European tour with him,’ said Elizabeth as they walked to Waterloo that evening.

‘What an excellent idea,’ said Reggie.

Chapter 20

April produced magical days, treacherous days, stormy days, but no boring days.

Climthorpe Albion lost two league games on the trot but reached Wembley in the FA Trophy, where their opponents would be Stafford Rangers.

C.J. settled in at Perrin Products and Tony Webster learnt to say ‘great’ and sound as if he meant it when David Harris-Jones came up with another of his super ideas.

Sales and production boomed. Newspapers wrote articles about Grot. A plum site at Brent Cross was purchased, another in Leeds shopping precinct.

In Cornwall, the private army was in a state of full readiness waiting for the day when the balloon went up.

April produced magical days, treacherous days, stormy days, but the balloon did not go up.

Reggie’s joke had prospered beyond belief. Never had he dreamt, when Grot was a faint sparkle in his bloodshot eye, that he would own his own factory and forty-six shops, be chairman of Climthorpe Albion Football Club, be wined and dined on the Poets’ Estate, have C.J. working under him and be able to put Tony Webster under David Harris-Jones.

Why then was he restless? Why did he feel tempted towards old and familiar paths, to be outrageously rude to people he loved, to call his deceased mother-in-law a warthog, to say ‘waste-paper basket’ instead of ‘annual report’?

Had his joke lost its savour on the bedpost overnight?

April produced magical days, treacherous days, stormy days, but no boring days.

Yet Reginald Iolanthe Perrin was becoming bored.

Ponsonby sat peacefully on Reggie’s lap. He was an old cat now.

They had the house to themselves. Elizabeth had gone to dinner at Tom and Linda’s. Reggie had refused to go.

It was half past seven on an April Saturday evening. They sat by the french windows looking out over a garden exultant with spring.

‘Is this the result of my great bid for freedom, Ponsonby?’ said Reggie.

Ponsonby miaowed enigmatically.

‘Every day I get up, dress, go downstairs, have breakfast, walk down Coleridge Close, turn right into Tennyson Avenue, then left into Wordsworth Drive, go down the snicket into Station Road, catch the train, arrive at Waterloo twenty-two minutes late, walk to Perrin Products, dictate letters, send memos, make decisions, hold conferences, have lunch, hold conferences, make decisions, send memos, dictate letters, leave Perrin Products, walk to Waterloo, catch the train, arrive at Climthorpe twenty-two minutes late, walk along Station Road, up the snicket, up Wordsworth Drive, turn right into Tennyson Avenue, then left into Coleridge Close, enter the house I left that morning, have supper, go up the stairs I came down that morning, take off the clothes I put on that morning, put on the pyjamas I took off that morning, clean the teeth I cleaned that morning, and get into the bed I left that morning. Is that success, Ponsonby?’

Ponsonby miaowed, reserving judgement.