The Reginald Perrin Omnibus (52 page)

‘What’s the trouble?’ said Reggie.

‘No idea.’

‘You ought to see an osteopath,’ said Reggie, offering him a cigar.

‘I shouldn’t smoke,’ said Doc Morrissey, accepting. ‘I’ve got some kind of a breathing problem, don’t know what it is.’

Reggie felt embarrassed in Doc Morrissey’s presence. To the struggling medico, the three telephones, the cigars and the large desk must be vulgar signs of success and opulence.

‘Well, how are things with you, Doc?’ he asked with forced breeziness.

‘I got dismissed from the British Medical Association.’

‘Oh dear. What was it for?’

‘Gross professional incompetence.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘I got these terrible stomach pains. I’d rushed a mutton vindaloo at lunch-time and I put it down to indigestion.’

‘Treacherous chaps, mutton vindaloos.’

‘Well exactly. My sentiments entirely. I paid a visit to this character, and lo and behold, he’d got the same pains as me. “Indigestion,” I said, and I gave him the white pills. People like indigestion pills to be white, I find.’

‘And it wasn’t indigestion?’

‘Acute appendicitis.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘I realized the truth when I collapsed at evening surgery and my partner diagnosed that
mine
was acute appendicitis.’

‘Oh dear.’

Reggie leant forward persuasively.

‘I’ve got a vacancy for a manager at my Climthorpe branch,’ he said. ‘How would you like it?’

Doc Morrissey stared at him in amazement.

‘Me? You’re offering me a job?’

‘Yes.’

Doc Morrissey relit his cigar with trembling fingers.

‘I think you’d be the ideal man for the job,’ said Reggie.

‘But I’ve never managed a shop in my life.’

‘When you started out as a doctor, you’d never been a doctor.’

‘No. And look what happened.’

‘Healing was not your metier,’ said Reggie.

‘No.’

‘You were a square peg in a round hole.’

‘I felt that.’

Reggie held his lighter out and relit Doc Morrissey’s cigar.

‘I didn’t get where I am today without knowing a square peg in a round hole when I . . . oh my God.’

‘What?’

‘I used C.J.’s phrase.’

Reggie was deeply shocked. Did it mean he was beginning to take his tycoonery seriously?

‘Sorry. I’m a bit shocked,’ he said.

‘I’m not surprised. What a terrible thing to happen.’

‘I didn’t get where I am today by using C.J.’s phrases.’

‘Absolutely not, Reggie.’

‘Where were we, Doc?’

‘I was being a square peg in a round hole.’

‘Oh yes.’

Doc Morrissey abandoned the cigar. It had fractured and wasn’t drawing.

‘I’d like you to take the job, Doc.’

‘I’d like to take it, Reggie.’

‘Good. Let’s go and have a spot of lunch.’

Reggie put an affectionate arm on Doc Morrissey’s shoulder and steered him towards the door.

‘I can’t eat much,’ said the stooping ex-diagnostician. ‘My stomach’s playing me up.’

‘You really ought to see a doctor,’ said Reggie.

‘I don’t trust them,’ said Doc Morrissey. ‘All they ever do is give you two aspirins and tell you they’ve got it worse.’

The illuminated inn-sign of the Dissipated Kipper swung in the cold gusty wind high up on the Hog’s Back in the Surrey hills. Motorists scurrying home at sixty-five miles an hour caught a brief glimpse of a dandyish smoked herring with a paunch and a monocle holding a glass of whisky in his hand while placing his bet at the roulette table.

Reggie swung carefully off the A.31 into the asphalted car park of the popular road house. His heart was beating fast as he stepped out of the night into the bright warmth of the bar.

Models of a Spitfire, a Mosquito and a Lancaster stood on the wide window-sills. Aeroplane propellers hung on both brick chimney pieces and a third concealed the florid wrought iron grille above the bar. A fourth smaller propeller adorned the upper lip of the beefy landlord.

‘Pint of bitter, please,’ said Reggie.

‘Pint of bitter. Whacko,’ rumbled mine enormous host.

‘You’re ex-RAF, are you?’ said Reggie.

‘Got it in one,’ said the landlord. ‘Have you heard the one about the Irish kamikazi pilot, flew twenty-seven successful missions? Did you hear about the Irish Bill Haley band, two o’clock, seventeen o’clock, nine o’clock rock?’

‘Why is the pub called the Dissipated Kipper?’ said Reggie, deliberately handing the landlord a ten pound note.

‘Ah! Thereby hangs a tale. Thereby hangs a tale,’ said the landlord, counting out Reggie’s change. ‘Nobody knows. All I know is, there’s only one pub called the Dissipated Kipper, and this is it. Ask anyone from Dorking to Basingstoke where the Dissipated Kipper is, and they’ll say: “That’s Tiny Jefferson’s place on the Hog’s Back.” ’

Suddenly Joan was there beside him kissing him and all thoughts of Tiny Jefferson receded.

They sat in an alcove beside one of the brick chimney breasts. Joan winked shyly with her right eye and kissed him again.

‘This is nice,’ she said.

‘Yes . . . er . . . yes it is.’

Reggie disengaged himself gently from the kiss.

‘Joan, I . . . er . . . I have a proposition to make,’ he said.

‘That sounds promising,’ she said.

‘I’ll give you fifty per cent more than you’re getting at the moment,’ he said.

There was a brief silence.

‘What are we talking about?’ she said.

‘Money,’ he said. ‘I’m offering you a job.’

‘Oh, I see.’

‘Well what did you think . . . oh, I see. No, Joan, I . . . er . . . I’m asking you to be my secretary.’

‘Come on. Buy up or shove off, Farnham Rentals,’ yelled Tiny Jefferson to a group of young men laughing pleasantly at the bar.

‘How are things?’ said Reggie.

‘Pretty grim,’ said Joan. ‘My boss is a big man in ointment. I type letters about wonder cures for acne and blackheads.’

Reggie put a sympathetic hand on her knee.

‘He’s also the fly in the ointment,’ said Joan. ‘He’s as randy as nobody’s business.’

Reggie removed the sympathetic hand from her knee.

‘The Tony business hit me hard,’ she said. ‘I don’t seem to have much luck in marriage.’

‘I’d like to wring his neck,’ said Reggie.

‘Join the queue.’

A large man with a ginger moustache, sitting in the alcove opposite, gave Reggie a smile of lecherous connivance.

‘I want to make one thing clear,’ said Reggie. ‘Oh God, I sound pompous. My offer of a job is purely professional. Whatever happened before mustn’t happen again.’

‘Nothing happened before.’

‘Whatever almost happened before mustn’t even almost happen again.’

‘I understand, Mr Perrin. You’re important now. You’ve got too much to risk losing it by flirting with a bit of stuff at the office.’

‘Well there’s no more to be said then,’ said Reggie.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Joan.

Reggie looked her straight in the eyes.

‘I love Elizabeth,’ he said. ‘I can’t imagine her going off to have assignations with people from Godalming, so I don’t feel I should. If you think that my conditions will be too difficult

‘You mean, if I feel incapable of being in close proximity to you without having irresistible sexual desires . . .’

Reggie laughed.

‘Same again?’ he said.

‘My turn,’ said Joan.

‘No, no,’ said Reggie. ‘I asked you here.’

‘I insist,’ said Joan.

Reggie watched her as she walked to the bar.

She turned to smile at him and he looked away.

The man in the opposite alcove winked. Reggie thought about giving him a glacial stare, decided that would be intolerably priggish, and winked back.

When Joan returned, they sat in silence for some moments.

‘Well?’ said Reggie at length.

‘I would have to make a condition as well,’ said Joan.

‘Fire away.’

‘When I walked to the bar just then, I felt you looking at me.’

‘I was.’

‘No looks, Mr Perrin. If I am not to be allowed a personal relationship, you will give me no lecherous glances, no furtive looks when I cross my legs, no helping hand that strays slightly when I put on my coat, no meaningful remarks about how I spend my weekend, nothing whatever that could be regarded as in any way sexual.’

‘I think that’s fair,’ said Reggie. ‘But in that case I must make another condition. Phase Three of our Social Contract. If I’m not to look at you crossing your legs, you mustn’t cross your legs. Nothing in any way provocative.’

‘I suppose that’s fair enough too,’ said Joan.

‘Do you think I ought to introduce the conditions into a written contract?’ said Reggie. ‘It might open a new chapter in industrial relations.’

‘Won’t it be a bit uncomfortable?’ she said. ‘Sitting there not touching each other and not looking at each other not crossing our legs.’

‘It’ll still be better than Miss Erith,’ said Reggie.

‘In that case I accept,’ said Joan.

It was decided that she would start on the first Monday in February.

‘How are your children?’ he asked.

‘What children? I haven’t got any children.’

‘What? But you always used to have three children.’

Joan blushed deeply and Reggie felt embarrassed for her.

‘Wishful thinking,’ she said.

He stroked her hand and explained about the lecherous man in the opposite alcove, and as they walked to their cars he patted her on the bottom and said ‘Room 238’ in a loud whisper. The man winked.

In the car park, while the sign of the Dissipated Kipper clanked in the rising gale, Reggie turned towards Joan.

‘The conditions of employment are not yet binding,’ he said.

Their lips met. They worked hungrily at each other’s mouths.

A car swung into the car-park and they were flooded in the glare of its headlamps.

Then the lights were switched off, and their kiss ended.

‘Try and have a good Christmas, Mrs Webster,’ said Reggie.

On the Sunday before Christmas, news came at last of Mark’s activities. A report in the
Observer
named him as one of the cast in a group of freelance theatrical mercenaries, dedicated to the incitement of revolutionary fervour through the unlikely medium of the plays of J. M. Barrie, rewritten by the legendary Idi ‘Post-Imperialist Oppression’ Okombe. Appearing with him were such shadowy figures of menace as Tariq Alhambra, known as the Red Gielgud, and lovely Belinda Longstone, the polystyrene heiress.

The news lent an unusual gravity to the seasonal toast of ‘absent friends’.

Chapter 17

Swirling snow filled the world on the first Monday in January. Bewildered robins huddled in the nooks of apple trees, and the imprints of Elizabeth’s Wellington boots on the white pavements of the Poets’ Estate looked dainty beside the huge depressions left by Reggie.

It was the first time in more than twenty-five years of married life that they had set out for work together and their hands linked tenderly beneath their stout gloves. The trim gardens were transformed into white fantasies, and the names of the great poets were hidden beneath the snow.

On Climthorpe Station people stood five deep. No trains came. It was so quiet that you could have heard the shares of a pin company drop.

‘Three inches of snow, and the nation grinds to a halt,’ grumbled an investment consultant.

‘I was in twenty-two inches of snow in Montreal, and my train was thirty seconds late,’ countered a fabrics manufacturer.

‘We had seven-foot drifts in the suburbs of Helsinki,’ put in a quantity surveyor. ‘My train was one minute early.’

‘I was standing by the St Lawrence river, waiting for a ferry,’ said Reggie. ‘There was a seventy mile an hour blizzard, four feet of level snow, and thick ice on the river. The ferry didn’t come for three months.’

Elizabeth squeezed his arm.

They managed to force themselves on to the second train of the morning, and arrived at Waterloo at ten past eleven.

At twenty-five past eleven the joint managing directors of Perrin Products approached the main entrance of Head Office arm in arm. The sky was a dirty yellow and light snow was still falling.

They climbed the steps cautiously.

‘You don’t have to open the doors,’ said Reggie. ‘They slide automatically.’

‘We
have
come up in the world,’ said Elizabeth.

The doors jammed and they crashed into the glass. They were shaken but not injured.

Many people including Miss Erith had still not arrived. Mr Bulstrode didn’t arrive at all. At two o’clock he decided to turn round and go home, and it was eight thirty-five before he managed it.

Reggie installed Elizabeth in her office, where she would oversee the creation of a European empire for Grot. There were three potted plants and pictures of Chartres, Speyer, Milan and Louvain cathedrals.

There was a hesitant knock on the door.

‘It’s your office,’ said Reggie. ‘It’s for you to say: “Come in.” ’

‘Come in,’ said Elizabeth self-consciously.

It was David Harris-Jones.

‘How’s the baby boy?’ said Elizabeth.

‘Super,’ said David. ‘We’re going to call him Reginald and we want you to be the godfather, Reggie.’

‘Thank you,’ said Reggie.

David Harris-Jones handed him a copy of the
Guardian
. It was open at page thirteen.

‘Column three,’ he said.

‘Rumours of trouble at Sunshine Desserts, the London food manufacturers, were strongly denied last night by the Managing Director, Mr Charles Jefferson,’ read Reggie in the financial news.

‘Results at Sunshine Desserts have been disappointing for some time, but in recent weeks there have been rumours of a more disturbing kind, and there have been embarrassing delays in delicate merger negotiations with one of the convenience food giants.

‘Shares have fallen steadily, closing on Friday at 57½p – 19p down in a month – and an interim dividend declaration has been delayed.

‘Mr Jefferson is something of a mystery man, cloaking his personal life in obsessive secrecy. He is known to his employees simply as C.J., and is variously rumoured to hail from Riga, the Balkans and even America. He lives in a large house near Godalming, and his one known relaxation is fishing.