The Reginald Perrin Omnibus (33 page)

He speared another snail and ate it slowly.

‘Finished?’ said the waiter.

‘Finished,’ said Henry Possett.

‘I’m terribly sorry,’ said Elizabeth.

The first kiss between Elizabeth and Martin Wellbourne took place on the sofa in Elizabeth’s living room. Ponsonby was their only witness.

Reggie had used a small amount of scent, in order not to smell like Reggie.

‘It’s odd,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Until yesterday I was engaged to be married to Henry Possett, yet I don’t feel guilty about that. I feel guilty towards Reggie.’

‘I don’t think he’d mind,’ said Reggie.

‘How can you tell?’ said Elizabeth.

Ponsonby joined them on the sofa. On the television Malcolm Muggeridge was talking with the sound turned down.

‘If I was Reggie, and I was able to watch what’s going on in this room,’ said Reggie, ‘I think I’d be rather proud at seeing how much you had loved me.’

‘Oh yes, I did love him,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Oh, Martin, and now I love you. Is that terrible?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Elizabeth?’

‘Yes.’

‘Will you marry me?’

When Linda heard the news of the engagement, she drove straight round to Clytemnestra Grove and rang the bell beneath which it said ‘Potts’ on an untidy strip of dirty white paper.

‘You shouldn’t have come here,’ said Reggie, who had a cold coming on.

He led her up the bare brown stairs and into his ungainly brown room. She refused to sit down.

‘You can’t marry mother, father,’ she said. ‘It’d be bigamy.’ ‘It can’t be bigamy,’ said Reggie. ‘I’m the same man both times.’

‘Mother doesn’t know that,’ said Linda. ‘It’s bigamy as far as she’s concerned.’

‘She doesn’t know I’m still alive,’ said Reggie. ‘It isn’t bigamy as far as anyone’s concerned.’

He made a cup of Camp coffee on his grimy gas ring.

‘Can’t you tell her the truth?’ she said. ‘That’s what you wanted me to do earlier.’

Things are different now,’ said Reggie. ‘She’s in love with Martin Wellbourne. I daren’t destroy that.’

‘It’s not right,’ said Linda stubbornly.

‘I know she’ll be happy, and that’s what matters,’ said Reggie.

‘She’ll know,’ said Linda. ‘Women sense these things. You can’t hide it from your own wife.’

‘I’ll be different in every way, Linda. I’ll eat differently, live differently, talk differently, sneeze differently, cough differently. I’ll become Martin Wellbourne. I look different already. I’m greyer, slimmer, I’ll have electrolysis, I’ll use after-shave and scent. My body won’t look the same, feel the same or smell the same.’

‘Some parts will,’ said Linda.

‘Elizabeth won’t examine me under a microscope,’ he said. ‘You forget that as far as she’s concerned I’m dead. In her own mind, she knows I’m dead. The possibility just won’t occur to her.’

‘I still think you’re behaving badly and irresponsibly, father.’

‘What about your mother?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What about her behaviour? She shouldn’t be falling in love with me so soon after my death. It’s not very flattering.’

He looked at the horrible, bulky, brown furniture that went with Donald Potts. Soon all that would be gone for ever.

‘Are you warm enough?’ he said.

‘It is a bit chilly,’ said Linda.

He lit the gas fire.

‘Do you and Tom have separate bank accounts?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Why?’

‘Can you lend me £200?’

‘What for?’

‘To set myself up as Martin Wellbourne I need documents and things.’

‘I’m sure it’s all against the law,’ said Linda.

‘Haven’t you ever done anything illegal?’ said Reggie.

Linda blushed.

‘What’ll you do for a living?’ she asked.

‘I’ll live off your mother. There’s my savings, my life insurance policies, my pension. We’ll manage.’

‘Won’t you feel humiliated?’

‘Of course not. It’s my money. I’ll be marrying into my own money. And don’t worry, old girl. Our secret is safe.’

He didn’t accompany Linda downstairs, for fear that he would meet Miss Pershore. But in the morning, when he went downstairs to collect his milk, she was there.

‘She’s young enough to be your daughter,’ she said coldly.

Donald Potts disappeared off the face of this earth without a flicker of surprise or interest. Society does not mourn for the under-gardeners at its mental homes.

Martin Wellbourne took rooms in Kensington and acquired the necessary documents from his forger. He wrote himself a few glowing references from his Brazilian employers.

He went down to Coleridge Close every evening, despite a streaming cold. He was rather proud of his new sneeze, and it proved a great success. He told Elizabeth all about his family, how he was an only child, his mother and father had been killed on holiday in Turkey, when their mule was in collision with a bus, how his fiancee had been drowned in a mangrove swamp before his very eyes, and all his family trophies and snapshots had been burnt in a gas mains explosion in Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

‘You’ve had your share of tragedy,’ said Elizabeth.

‘One soldiers on,’ he said.

After they had eaten their supper they sat in the dark, the room lit only by the flickering smokeless fuel in the grate.

‘Will you be happy to live here?’ said Elizabeth.

‘It’s lovely,’ he said. ‘Reggie’s taste was very similar to mine.’

‘You’re alike in so many ways,’ said Elizabeth. ‘But deep down you’re very different.’

‘How do you know?’ said Reggie.

‘Feminine intuition,’ said Elizabeth. ‘We women have a sixth sense about these things.’

Reggie walked across the thick carpet of C.J.’s office towards the pneumatic chairs. The Bratby and the Francis Bacon were still there, but the picture of C.J. at the Paris Concours Des Desserts had gone. The cult of personality was over.

‘Nice to see you again, Mr Wellbourne,’ said C.J., shaking his hand. ‘Sit down.’

Reggie sat down. His chair hissed at him.

‘I could have sworn you were called Windpipe,’ said C.J.

‘That was a mistake,’ said Reggie.

‘Good. Fine,’ said C.J. ‘Now, I’ll come straight to the point. Cigar?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘No formality, please, Melvyn. Call me C.J.’

‘My name’s Martin, C.J.’

‘Even better. Where was I?’

‘You were coming straight to the point.’

‘Absolutely. Are you sure you won’t have a cigar?’

‘Really, no.’

‘Mind if I do?’

‘Not at all.’

C.J. lit his cigar.

‘I’ll come straight to the point,’ he said. ‘I met you at Elizabeth’s, I liked what I saw, I liked the fact that you had come straight from Brazil, uncluttered with preconceptions about modern British industry. I’ve got a job for you.’

‘Well, that’s very kind of you,’ said Reggie. ‘But I’m not sure it’s quite what I have in mind.’

‘Don’t fancy the grind of office life, eh? Don’t want to give your life to desserts?’

‘Frankly, no.’

‘It isn’t anything like that.’

A tug hooted on the river.

‘What’s business all about, Wellbourne?’ he said. ‘Profits? Not a bit of it. Products? Don’t you believe it. Our overall sales, across the whole spectrum, were down 0.3 per cent last month.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that, C.J.,’ said Reggie.

‘I couldn’t care less myself,’ said C.J. He walked over to the window and gazed out. ‘London’s river,’ he said. ‘As English as Yorkshire Pudding. A grimy snake worming her way to the sea. I love it. The smell of salt and mud. Barges piled with timber. The harsh cries of herring gulls. It was here before we came here. It will be here long after we have gone. We are but specks in the infinite, Mrs C.J. and I. So why worry about profits?’

C.J. sat down again. Reggie looked at him in amazement.

‘Happy employees, that’s what business is all about,’ said C.J., and he paused to relight his cigar. ‘But unfortunately all these falling sales, these shrinking dividends, a fiasco we had recently, a damn fool scheme for selling exotic ices, all this is undermining staff morale. There are danger signals, chaps starting to think their knees are enormous, the usual sort of thing.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Reggie.

‘I have reasonable private means, Martin,’ said C.J. ‘And I intend to live more moderately. Possessions bring misery. I am selling various of my properties. I’m buying a smaller house. With my own money I am setting up a foundation to provide a full range of social services and social functions for all my staff and their dependants.’

‘It sounds a very good idea, C.J.,’ said Reggie.

‘It’s the kind of project Mrs C.J. and I are in industry for,’ said C.J. ‘Now we are going to appoint a director, with a salary of six thousand pounds per annum rising to seven thousand pounds after one annum. How would you like to have a crack at it?’

‘Well I’ve never done anything like it before,’ said Reggie.

‘Nor have we,’ said C.J. ‘That’s why you’re the man for the job.’

‘I’d love the job,’ said Reggie.

C.J. stood up.

‘We need a name for the organization,’ he said.

‘I suppose we do,’ said Reggie.

‘I didn’t get where I am today without calling it the Reggie Perrin Memorial Foundation,’ said C.J.

‘My name’s Constable Barker,’ said the intense young man at the door of Reggie’s Kensington flat.

‘Oh. Yes,’ said Reggie.

‘I’ve caught you at last,’ said Constable Barker.

Reggie froze. So this was it.

He led Constable Barker into the living room. It was comfortable in the impersonal way of furnished flats. Whatever could conceivably have a tassel, had a tassel.

‘I need a drink,’ said Reggie. ‘Will you join me?’

‘No, thank you. I only drink Pernod on duty,’ said Constable Barker, who was wearing green socks.

‘Well, there’s not much I can say,’ said Reggie, pouring himself a large whisky from the cut glass decanter.

‘I suppose not,’ said Constable Barker. ‘You hadn’t seen him for many years, had you?’

‘Who?’ said Reggie.

‘Mr Perrin. That’s who we’re talking about, isn’t it?’

‘Oh. Mr Perrin. Yes. Of course,’ said Reggie.

‘You were a close friend of his, weren’t you, Mr Wellbourne?’ said Constable Barker, who looked ill-at-ease in his armchair.

‘Oh. Yes. Yes, I was. Very close. Yes,’ said Reggie.

‘He isn’t dead,’ said Constable Barker.

‘What? Not dead? You mean … he’s still alive? But … that’s incredible.’

Careful, Reggie, don’t overdo it in your relief. This man is a fanatic, but he’s for real.

‘He booked into several hotels under the names of Charles Windsor, Sir Wensley Amhurst and Lord Amhurst.’

This young man has talent. He’s dangerous. He must be dealt with.

‘But why?’ said Reggie. ‘Have you any idea why?’

‘No, and I can’t prove any of it, but I’m sure of it, as sure as I am that your name’s Martin Wellbourne.’

‘Quite. And what do you want me to do?’

‘I just wondered if you could tell me anything that might help?’

A police siren blared its way down Kensington High Street. Constable Barker swelled with pride.

‘Even if your far-fetched theory is right, constable, why not leave this man in peace?’ said Reggie.

‘That’s not the spirit that’s made the British police force the finest in the world,’ said Constable Barker. ‘I’ve lost the trail, but I’ll find it again. I’ll find it, if I have to go to the ends of the earth.’

‘Ends of the earth,’ said Reggie. ‘You may just have to at that.’

‘What do you mean by that, sir?’

Reggie poured himself another whisky.

‘It was something he said to me once at Cambridge, over a drink,’ said Reggie. Constable Barker leant forward eagerly. ‘I must try and remember the exact words. He said, “Martin, there’s one place I’ve always wanted to go to. I know nothing about it. It’s just a place on the map. But it’s become an obsession. One day I’ll go there. I must. I might even end my days there.”’

There was a moment’s silence, apart from the muted roar of the traffic far below them.

‘Do you remember what that place was, sir?’ said Constable Barker.

‘I do indeed,’ said Reggie. ‘It was a place called Mendoza, in the Argentine.’

‘Thank you very much indeed, sir,’ said Constable Barker.

On the last day of the month, a day of Scotch mist and condensation, a small family party gathered at the home of Mrs Elizabeth Perrin, widow of Mr Reginald Iolanthe Perrin.

The purpose of the party was to celebrate in an intimate manner the impending nuptials of Mrs Elizabeth Perrin and Mr Martin Wellbourne.

The guests were Linda, Tom, Mark, Jimmy and Elizabeth’s mother. Jimmy’s wife Sheila was unable to attend owing to ‘illness’.

The curtains were drawn on a gently sodden world. The smokeless fuel glittered in the grate, and there was a splendid array of liquid and solid refreshments laid out on the trolley.

Elizabeth stood with her back to the fire and faced her guests. She looked beautiful and dignified in a long, black, sleeveless dress which emphasized the golden harvest that was her hair.

‘I’d like to say a few words,’ she said. ‘As you know, I’ve decided – Martin and I have decided – oh, gosh, what am I saying, I’ll be in trouble – come here Martin.’

Reggie shook his head.

‘He’s shy,’ said Elizabeth, laughing. ‘Come on!’

Reggie stood up and joined her by the fire. He was pulling at his beard in his embarrassment. Elizabeth put her arm round him.

‘No doubt some people will say that I – that we – are being a little hasty,’ said Elizabeth. ‘So I’d like to say now that I’m sure that my dear Reggie wouldn’t have wanted me to live in the past. Nothing I do can bring him back again, and there’s no point in pretending that it can. You all know Martin, he was a friend of Reggie’s, and I’m sure that if Reggie was alive he’d be pleased that – well of course if Reggie was alive I wouldn’t be – oh dear. Anyway I don’t know why I’m making a speech really – sorry – anyway there’s heaps to drink.’

‘Bravo! Congratulations!’ said Jimmy.

‘Congratulations,’ echoed Tom and Linda.

Mark remained silent.

They all replenished their glasses.