The Reginald Perrin Omnibus (77 page)

‘I get dreams, Reg,’ said Mr Pelham.

‘Dreams?’ repeated Reggie, writing ‘Dreams’ on his sheet of paper. ‘What sort of dreams?’

‘Dreams of Hell, old son,’ said Mr Pelham. ‘I dream about what’ll happen to me when I get to Hell. And I will, don’t you worry.’

‘I will worry,’ protested Reggie.

‘I won’t get a gander at those pearly gates, not if I live to be a thousand I won’t.’

He dreamt of a Hell in which there were rows and rows of Mr Pelhams, kept side by side in the dark, their innumerable cages soiled with the stains of centuries of Pelham faeces, their noses cut off, their diet unbalanced, the better to produce anaemia and white meat, while opposite them, lit by thousands of bare bulbs, hundreds of chefs turned thousands of Mr Pelhams on spits, and beyond, in a gigantic cavern, beneath vast crystal chandeliers that stretched to infinity, Satan and his thousands of sultry mistresses sat at long tables with velvet cloths, drinking dark wine out of pewter goblets and moistening their scarlet lips with spittle in anticipation of their finger-licking portions of Hades-fried Pelham.

‘I’m in a cage among all the rows of me,’ said Mr Pelham. ‘And I get brought a portion of me, on a silver tray, with barbecue sauce. And I try to eat me. I’m not bad. I taste like pork. But I stick in my throat.’

‘Has it ever occurred to you that maybe you’re in the wrong line of business?’ said Reggie.

‘It’s all I know,’ said Mr Pelham.

Reggie wrote ‘God knows what to do’ on the sheet of paper. Mr Pelham tried to see what he had written, but he shielded the paper behind a pile of books.

‘Professional secrets,’ he said.

‘Can you help me, Reg?’ said Mr Pelham.

Reggie opened his mouth, convinced that no sound whatsoever would emerge, that it would open and shut like the mouth of a stranded grayling. Imagine his astonishment, then, when he heard confident and coherent sentences emerging.

‘We can help you to make your personality whole,’ he said. ‘We can send you from here a kindly, nice, peaceful man, content with his personality, yet not complacent. This we
can
do. What we can’t do is solve the problems posed by your work. We can’t increase society’s awareness of the methods by which its food is produced or its willingness to pay the increased costs that more humane methods would entail. We can’t tell you what you should do about your conscience. We can only send you off in the best possible frame of mind to deal with these problems. The rest is up to you.’

Mr Pelham smiled happily. It was as if a great burden had been taken from his shoulders. His trust was absolute.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I knew you could do it, old son.’

When Mr Pelham had gone, Reggie found that he was trembling.

He hadn’t known that he could do it.

Three days after the arrival of the two clients, neither of them had left. It wasn’t a triumph, but it was something. And one or two forward bookings were beginning to deflower the virgin sheets on the walls of the secretary’s office.

The weather was discreetly unsettled.

It was not a busy time. When Jimmy applied to have Thursday lunchtime off, Reggie granted it without hesitation.

The purpose of his brief furlough was to visit Restaurant Italian Sorrentina La, Hill Notting, 12.30 hours, Horncastle Lettuce Isobel, engagement for the breaking off of.

It had all been a dreadful mistake.

This time there would be no cowardly desertion in the face of a church. This time he would face Lettuce bravely, across a restaurant table, and say, ‘Sorry, old girl. Just not on. Still be friends, eh? Meet, time to time, meals, odd opera, that sort of crack? Be chums?’

Mustn’t be frightened of a woman, he told himself, as the train sped with perverse punctuality towards Waterloo. Imagine her as Rommel. Come to think of it, she didn’t look altogether unlike Rommel. A touch more masculine, perhaps. His face softened with affection. Poor, dear Lettuce!

No! He hardened his heart. Eventually, warmed by four double whiskies, he made his way to La Sorrentina.

They sat at the same table. They were served by the same waiter. They ordered the same food. Only the two lady shoppers were missing.

Lettuce was fiercely bronzed by the Hellenic sun. She showed him her snapshots of Greece. He gazed at blue skies and azure seas, at dazzling white hotels and cafes, at huge Horncastle thighs that began the holiday gleaming like freshly painted lighthouses and ended up like charred trunks of oaks blackened in some forest fire.

‘Who’s the tall man with the beard?’ he asked.

‘Odd.’

‘Odd?’

‘That’s his name. Odd.’

‘Odd name, isn’t it?’

‘It’s common in Sweden.’

‘And was he?’

‘What?’

‘Odd.’

‘Not that I know of.’

She showed him the next picture.

‘Who’s the blond giant?’

‘Bent.’

‘Bent?’

‘It’s a common name in Denmark.’

‘And was he?’

‘What?’

‘Bent.’

‘No.’

‘How do you know?’

‘He didn’t appear to be.’

She produced the next picture.

‘This is Mikonos,’ she said. ‘Very touristy.’

‘Odd and Bent all present and correct.’

‘Are you jealous?’

‘Course not.’

‘Naxos,’ she said, of the next snap. ‘This was the hottest day. Thirty-four degrees Celsius.’

‘Odd and Bent aren’t absent on parade, I see.’

Lettuce put her photos away. They had done their job.

Jimmy was jealous.

They decided to get married on Wednesday, December the twenty-first, and spend Christmas in Malta.

The money continued to drift out of the once-fat bank account of Reginald lolanthe Perrin. The evenings drew in. The equinoctial gales began to blow.

On Sunday, September the eighteenth, a third client arrived. He was an insurance salesman who had lost his motivation.

‘It’s a dreadful thing to say,’ he told Reggie at his first interview, ‘but I couldn’t care less if there are hundreds of people walking the streets of Mitcham seriously under-insured.’

To Reggie’s incredulous relief, both Thruxton Appleby and Mr Pelham were showing definite signs of progress.

Under Linda’s expert tutelage, Mr Pelham produced several paintings. Porkers were his favourite subjects, but sometimes, for a change, he would paint other kinds of pig.

Thruxton Appleby was making even more spectacular progress. On one of Jimmy’s tactical exercises without troops, he helped a blind writer of Christmas card verses across Botchley High Street, and enjoyed the experience so much that he waited seven minutes to help him back again.

Joan reported few triumphs with her singing classes, but Prue was making steady progress, between the rain storms, with the thatching of the garden shed at Number Twentyone.

One or two areas gave Reggie cause for concern.

Sporting activity was conspicuous by its absence, and culture was another area where progress was tardy.

Reggie found it necessary to speak to Tom and Tony about the slow progress of their departments.

On the afternoon of Thursday, September the twenty-second, he entered the garden of Number Seventeen. The beds around the surprisingly spacious lawn were given over predominantly to roses, and he noted with pleasure that C.J. had proved diligent in removing dead heads.

Reggie knocked on the door of the garden shed, alias the Sports Centre. Tom let him in reluctantly. On the shelves all round the shed there were bottles. On the floor there were more bottles. Some of the bottles contained spirits, others contained liquids of strange exotic hue. Still others were empty. In one corner a work table had been erected. On it were huge glass bottles connected together with drips and pipes. Under the table there were many trays of fruit. Reggie’s heart sank.

‘Do you remember that I used to make home-made wine?’ said Tom.

‘I seem to recall something of the kind,’ said Reggie. ‘You’ve started making them again, have you?’

‘Oh no,’ said Tom.

‘Oh good,’ said Reggie.

‘I’m making spirits now.’

‘Oh my God.’

‘Sloe gin, prune brandy, raspberry whisky.’

‘Oh my God! May I sit down?’

Reggie sat in the one chair provided. Tom looked at him earnestly.

‘I’m afraid I’ve got a disappointment for you, Reggie,’ said Tom.

‘Oh dear. Well, tell me the worst. Let’s get it over with.’

‘None of them is ready to drink yet.’

‘Oh dear, that is disappointing. Tom, I am prepared to accept against all the odds that these things will be delicious, but I have to ask you, are they sport?’

‘I don’t follow you, Reggie,’ said Tom, taking his unlit pipe out of his mouth as if he thought that might help his concentration.

‘You were put in charge of sport.’

‘Oh that. I’m just not a sport person, Reggie.’

Reggie stood up, the better to assert his authority.

‘I thought you accepted it as a challenge, Tom,’ he said. ‘And it got off to such a good start with that football.’

Tom gazed at Reggie like a walrus that has heard bad news.

‘I’ve let you down,’ he said. ‘I’ve allowed myself to be discouraged by our early failures.’

Reggie patted him on the shoulder.

‘There’s still time, Tom,’ he said. ‘The community is young. Instigate some lively sports activities, and I’ll let you carry on with the booze production. No promises, but I may even drink some myself.’

‘Thanks,’ said Tom. ‘I won’t let you down again, father-in-law.’

Reggie went straight round to the Culture Room which was situated in the garden shed of Number Twenty-five. This garden had been largely dug up and devoted to the production of greens. The door of the shed was painted yellow. On it hung a notice which read, ‘Culture Room. Prop: T. Webster,
QCI.’

He knocked and entered.

The hut had been converted into a living-room with two armchairs and a Calor Gas fire. All round the uneven wooden walls were pin-ups of girls with naked breasts, taken from the tabloid newspapers.

Reggie gawped.

‘Knock-out, eh?’ said Tony, looking a little uneasy.

‘What are they supposed to be?’ said Reggie.

‘Culture.’

‘They aren’t culture. They’re boobs.’

‘They’re actresses,’ said Tony. ‘What are actresses if they aren’t culture?’

‘Actresses!’

‘Read any one of the captions.’

Reggie approached the endless rows of breasts nervously, and read one of the captions that nestled timorously under the vast swellings.

‘Vivacious Virginia’s a radiologist’s daughter,’ he read. ‘Her dad made some pretty startling developments in X-ray techniques, but you don’t need an X-ray to see vibrant Virginia’s startling developments. Volatile Virginia has plans to be a classical actress. Well, she might reveal some talents, but unfortunately she’d have to hide her biggest assets!’

‘Culture,’ said Tony.

Reggie peered at the equally well-developed female on Virginia’s right.

‘Curvaceous Caroline’s a colonel’s daughter,’ he read. ‘Dad might think she’s improperly dressed for parade, but then she’s fighting a different battle of the bulge from the one he got a DSO for. Come to think of it we wouldn’t mind giving Cock-A-Hoop Caroline a medal. We might even pin it on ourselves. Cultivated Caroline plans to become a Shakespearian actress. It’s a case of “from the bared to the Bard!”.’

‘What did I tell you?’ said Tony.

Reggie turned away from the multi-nippled walls of the garden shed and looked disgustedly at Tony.

‘There are hundreds of boobs in here,’ said Tony. ‘A ton of tits.’

‘What does QCI stand for?’

‘What?’

Reggie swung the door open. Daylight streamed into the little hut.

‘Prop: T. Webster, QCI,’ said Reggie.

‘Oh, that,’ said Tony. ‘Qualified Culture Instructor.’

‘I can’t talk in there,’ said Reggie. ‘Come into the garden.’

They stood on the tiny lawn, surrounded by vast beds of autumn cabbages.

‘Tony,’ said Reggie. ‘If a prospective client gets in touch with me, and says, “Do you have any cultural activities?” and I say. “Yes. We have a qualified culture instructor and he has a garden shed with a ton of tits”, what do you think will happen?’

‘He’ll sign on.’

‘Yes, well, very possibly. Forget that, then. But remove those boobs. And get some culture going. I’m not one for issuing threats, Tony. This community runs on love and trust. But if you let me down, I’m warning you, I will issue threats. And you know what they’ll be threats of, don’t you? Chucked out without a pennysville, Arizona.’

On Sunday, September twenty-fifth, two more clients arrived.

The month expired quietly. There were no mourners.

October began gloomily. The weather was unremittingly wet. There was a race riot in Wednesbury. Four headless torsos were found in left-luggage cubicles at Temple Meads Station, Bristol. A survey showed that Britain came fifth in the venereal disease tables of the advanced nations. A Ugandan under-secretary was taken to a West London hospital with suspected smallpox and claimed that it was impossible as he had diplomatic immunity. Third-form girls in a school in South London terrorized teachers after a drinks orgy.

But there was one bright spark amidst all this gloom. The fortunes of Perrins were looking up. Seven new clients arrived on Sunday, October the second, making the total twelve. And there were several forward bookings dotted around the wall charts in the secretary’s office, including one from a fortune teller who was going to have a nervous breakdown in April.

The twelve clients were Thruxton Appleby; Mr Pelham; the insurance salesman who had lost his motivation; an arc-welder from Ipswich named Arthur Noblet; Bernard Trilling, Head of Comedy at Anaemia Television; Hilary Meadows, a housewife from Tenterden; Diana Pilkington, an account executive from Manchester; a VAT inspector from Tring, who hated the fact that he liked his work; a probation officer from Peebles, who hated the fact that he hated his work; a director of a finance company that specialized in pyramid selling; an unemployed careers officer, and a middle manager in a multinational plastics concern. The work of Perrins began in earnest.