by David Nobbs
‘Do you mind if Tom and I pop up to my old room for a moment?’ said Linda.
‘What on earth for?’ said Reggie.
‘We’ve been having an argument. Tom says the spire of St Peter’s Church is visible from it. I’m sure it isn’t.’
‘No, you can’t go upstairs,’ said Reggie hastily. ‘We’re bringing out some new products and I’m working on them up there and it’s all a bit hush-hush.’
Linda looked at him in astonishment.
‘What do you think we are? Industrial spies?’ she said.
‘Of course not. It’s the rules, that’s all. I’ll just go and move them. Won’t be long.’
He hurried upstairs. Joan had hidden herself completely under the bedclothes.
‘It’s all right,’ he whispered. ‘It’s me.’
Her face emerged cautiously.
‘Linda’s turned up now – and she wants to come in here,’ he whispered.
‘It’s like Piccadilly Circus in this house,’ she said.
‘Sorry. It’s one of those days. There’s six of them down there. I honestly think you’d better go.’
‘Oh God.’
‘I know, but it’s not my fault. Have you got enough for a taxi?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll reimburse you later. Slip out as soon as you’re dressed. I’ll keep everyone in the living room.’
‘I feel like a criminal.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You seem nervous, father,’ said Linda, on his return.
‘What, me? Am I? Perhaps it’s the heat,’ said Reggie.
‘Awkward customer, the heat,’ said Jimmy. ‘Known sane men go mad in the tropics because of the heat. Makes you think.’
Reggie saw Linda frown at Jimmy. Something in the attitude of Mark and Jimmy made it clear to him that Tom and Linda had told them about his episode with the lions.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘I see you’ve told them about my little episode with the lions.’
‘Tricky blighters, lions,’ said Jimmy.
‘I thought you’d got more garden,’ said Mark.
‘Garden?’
‘Garden fence. Sense.’
‘That isn’t an authentic example of cockney slang, is it?’ said Tom.
‘Oh. She’s sharp today, isn’t she?’ said Mark. ‘She’s been sleeping in the knife box.’
‘I did biggies in my panties,’ said Adam, coming in through the french windows, dragging the best part of a hollyhock behind him.
‘I’ll bet you did, you dirty little bugger,’ said Mark.
Jocasta followed Adam, dragging in the worst part of the hollyhock.
Tom and Linda beamed. ‘We’re great believers in letting them learn to use the toilet at their own pace,’ said Tom.
‘May be something in it,’ said Jimmy, standing at the french windows and surveying the back garden. ‘Garden’s in good nick.’
Mark moved towards the door.
‘Where are you going?’ said Reggie.
‘For a bangers.’
‘Bangers?’
‘Bangers and mash. Slash.’
‘Ah. Yes. Well would you mind waiting a minute, old thing. The – er – the lavatory is blocked.’
Reggie thought he heard steps on the stairs.’
‘What’s wrong, father?’ said Linda.
‘Nothing’s wrong, except that everybody keeps asking me what’s wrong,’ said Reggie.
‘Yes, you’ve got a fine garden,’ said Jimmy. ‘I say, come here, Reggie. Look. Woman crawling through bushes.’ Reggie went reluctantly to the window. The others followed. ‘See the cone-shaped bush, two o’clock, middle foreground? Behind that. There’s a woman crawling through your shrubbery.’ He opened the window. ‘You – you there,’ he shouted, and Joan Greengross scampered off as fast as she could. ‘Quick. After her.’
‘No,’ said Reggie, grabbing hold of Jimmy’s arm. ‘It’s – it’s only Mrs Redgross. Poor woman – she crawls around in shrubberies. She’s not quite right.’
‘You’re as white as a sheet, dad,’ said Mark.
‘We had a nasty incident with her. I’d rather not talk about it,’ said Reggie.
There was a distant peal of thunder.
‘Better get off before Jupiter plooves,’ said Jimmy. ‘Well, thanks for the drinks. Make me own way out. Crawls through shrubberies, eh? Rum. Makes you think. So long, all.’
‘That’s odd,’ said Reggie, when Jimmy had driven off. ‘He left without any food. He came to borrow some food.’
‘That’s odd too,’ said Linda. ‘He came to borrow some food from us on Wednesday. He said there’d been a cock-up on the catering front.’
‘I find the words people use fascinating,’ said Tom. ‘I’m very much a word person. We both are.’
In the dark recesses behind the settee Adam was pummelling Jocasta.
‘Shouldn’t you stop them?’ said Reggie.
‘It doesn’t do them any harm,’ said Linda.
‘Adam’s working out his aggressions, and Jocasta’s learning to be self-reliant,’ explained Tom.
‘Oh, I see,’ said Mark. ‘I thought he was bashing the living daylights out of her. Can I go for me hit and miss now?’
‘Hit and miss?’ said Reggie.
‘Piss.’
‘Oh. Yes, I think I just heard the lavatory unblock itself.’
It grew steadily darker. Another peal of thunder broke over them.
‘Well if you’re sure you’re all right we may as well try and beat the storm,’ said Linda.
‘I’ve told you I’m all right,’ said Reggie.
‘Too dark now to see that spire anyway,’ said Tom.
As Tom and Linda drove off down Coleridge Close the first drops of rain began to fall.
Reggie and Mark went back into the living room.
‘Great hairy twit,’ said Mark. ‘What did she want to marry him for?’
‘I don’t see how you can talk about him being hairy,’ said Reggie.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well your hair isn’t exactly short, is it?’
‘Oh God. Not that.’
‘I don’t mind long hair as such, old prune. Good lord no! I hope I’m more reasonable than that. What difference does the length of your hair make? None, to me. I’m just thinking of your work.’
‘If I play long-haired parts I have to have long hair.’
‘Yes, but what about short-haired parts?’
‘So if I get a short-haired part I’ll have a bloody hair cut.’
‘There’s no need to swear at me, Mark. I’ve just given you forty quid.’
Oh God, Reggie. Shut up.
‘I hope you don’t go for auditions wearing a “WedgwoodBenn for King” T-shirt.’
‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘It’s not exactly the height of elegance. I’d like to think we brought you up to have rather better taste than that.’
A flash of lightning illuminated Mr Snurd’s pictures of the Algarve.
‘Have the money back if you want,’ said Mark.
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘You have to bring up every bloody little thing, don’t you?’
‘There are lots of things I don’t bring up. You don’t wash your feet but I draw a veil over it. I just happen to mention your hair and you go berserk. Your generation are too damned sensitive by half.’ Stop it, Reggie. But I can’t. It’s got to come out. ‘In my day we expected a bit of criticism. We took it for granted. We weren’t so damned sensitive in my day.’
Mark made a gesture imitating the winding up of a gramophone.
‘All right. I’ll leave you. I’ve got work to do anyway,’ said Reggie angrily.
‘Don’t slam the door, Dad.’
Reggie slammed the door.
He went upstairs and stood at the landing window watching the great drops of rain fall on the parched earth. A high wind was battering the roses and hollyhocks, and creating havoc among the lupins
and delphiniums. He was shaking with humiliation and anger and frustration.
If only Mark respected him. If only he could behave to Mark in a manner worthy of respect. If only Mark hadn’t come today. It was all so pointless. Did they all have to play these pathetic roles – infant, son, father, grandfather, dotard – generation after generation?
He climbed up into the loft. There were piles of mementos up there, relics of his past. He must get rid of them.
Mark watched the rain gloomily. He wanted to get away. His father always made him acutely conscious of being a failure, of disappointing his father’s hopes, of not being taller. Jimmy made him ashamed of being an actor. Who did they call in when there was a dock strike? The national theatre? No, the army.
Reggie sat on a cross-beam, listening to the rain pattering on the roof. He had rigged up an electric light in the loft, but beyond its reach there were pools of mysterious darkness. Here there were old set squares, a copper warming pan turned green, six tiny fir trees that had been part of the scenery on a model railway axed in a nursery economy drive. There were thirty-seven electric plugs, twelve bent stair rods, the battered remains of a blow football game, his old school tuck box full of faded curtains. All these ghosts would have to go.
He found a pile of old wedding photos that hadn’t been good enough to be included in the album. Could that gawky, close-cropped young idiot really be Lance Corporal Perrin? Could the naive girl in the shapeless utility wedding dress really be Elizabeth? He could hardly bear it now, the strained smile of his mother, war-widowed in 1942. Elizabeth’s father, on forty-eight hours’ leave, smiled stiffly. Her mother smiled over-brightly, a budding resemblance to a hippopotamus already faintly discernible beneath the gallant home-made hat. The embarrassments of yesterday might be bearable, but these reminders of the embarrassments of long ago were infinitely more painful. They too must go.
He could smell a dead bird in the loft, but he felt a revulsion at the thought of touching it, maggots and all, or even at feeling its shape through a newspaper as he cleared it up.
He came across a handsome mounted photo of the Ruttingstagg College Small-Bore Rifle Team – Spring 1942. Five close-cropped idiots. Standing (1. to r.): Reynolds, L.F.R.; Perrin, R.I.; Seated: Campbell-Lewiston, D.J.; Machin, A.M. (Capt.); Campbell-Lewiston, EX.
There was a list of all the engine numbers seen on a magical journey from King’s Cross to Edinburgh, in the carefree days of 1936. A cricket scorebook full of matches played with dice, in the steamy jungle of his bedroom, in the sticky days, the painful idyllic days of adolescence. England v. R.I. Perrin’s XI. Australia v. Golden Lodge Preparatory School. England against a team of all the girls Reggie had secret crushes on. Now he would burn all memories of those long hours of self -absorption, which had so worried his parents. Cricket and masturbation had been his only interests, sometimes separately, sometimes together.
At Ruttingstagg College, in Nansen House, in Lower Middle Dorm, during the Clogger Term, the other boys had listened to him talking in his sleep.
‘He bowls to Perrin. Perrin drives. Six. England 186 for 8. Perrin 161 not out,’ and then someone would throw a dead thrush at him, and he would wake up.
Moonlight streaming in through the curtainless windows of the bare wooden dormitory. Convoys on the main road. Owls hooting. Beds creaking. Wakeful hours. Now, thousands of dead thrushes later, Reggie collected together other items from the secret archives of the loft. Some of them he would show to Mark. All of them he would burn.
He climbed cautiously down the ladder, clutching his mementos. His spell in the loft had calmed him. The rain, beating ineffectually on the roof, had soothed him. He felt ashamed of his anger with Mark.
They sat deep in their armchairs, sipping tea and eating buttered toast. The thunder was moving away to the north.
Reggie wanted to say, ‘Mark, I love you. If I have resented you, it’s because I saw in you too much that reminded me of myself. We are angry with our children for making the same mistakes as we did, partly because we have an illogical feeling that they ought to have learnt from our mistakes, and partly because they remind us of our own enormous capacity for folly. Forgive me, my son.’
What he actually said was, ‘The rain’s almost stopped.’
‘Yeah,’ said Mark.
‘I’ve never told you this – eat some more toast, there’s a good chap – but you know how angry I was when you were expelled from Ruttingstagg? The fact is, I was expelled too.’
‘I know,’ said Mark.
‘What?’
Reggie stood up, a little annoyed to find that his revelation was not a revelation.
‘One of the cruds told me,’ said Mark.
‘Which one?’
‘Slimy Penfold.’
‘I hated Slimy Penfold. Now I don’t hate anyone.’
Reggie stood with his back to the brick fireplace, warming his backside on the memory of winter fires. Behind him were the white cottages of an Algarve village. In front of him was his son.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you knew?’ he said.
‘I was ashamed,’ said Mark. ‘I was more ashamed of you being expelled than me.’
‘I hated Ruttingstagg,’ said Reggie.
‘Then why the bloody hell did you send me there, you great soft berk?’
Reggie smiled indulgently at his son’s choice of words, and since he couldn’t answer the question he sat beside Mark on the settee, and patted his knee twice.
‘I’ve been sorting out some old souvenirs and things,’ he said. He put the mementos on the Danish coffee table, half of which he had given Elizabeth for Christmas, she having given him the other half. He could smell Mark’s feet.
‘Here are some pictures of our wedding,’ he said.
‘Let’s have a gander then.’
‘That’s old Uncle Charlie Willoughby, standing next to Grandpa Tonbridge.’
‘Who’s the loonie standing beside Granny Exeter?’
That’s the best man. Acting Lance Corporal Sprockett.’
‘And who’s the geyser with the boozer’s conk?’
‘That’s Uncle Percy Spillinger. Grandpa Tonbridge’s brother. You met him when you were a boy. We don’t see him these days.’
‘Why not?’
‘He’s frowned upon. He made a lot of money without doing a day’s work, he enjoys spending it, he drinks and he says what he thinks. I like him. He must be nearly eighty now. Why the hell haven’t I seen him for twenty years? It’s ridiculous.’
Reggie poured another cup of tea. The rain had stopped.
‘It doesn’t look a very happy wedding,’ said Mark.
‘It wasn’t,’ said Reggie. ‘The in-laws didn’t approve of me, because I wasn’t an officer or a war-hero. I was terrified they’d find out that I’d been expelled from Ruttingstagg. It was very difficult to get to Tonbridge, because all the cars had been laid up for the duration and the station was marked “Inverness” to confuse the Germans. It confused the guests all right. Acting Lance Corporal Sprockett had to stand on the platform with a loud-hailer and a carnation in his buttonhole shouting “Change here for Paddock Wood, Headcorn, Ashford, Folkestone and the Perrin-Anderson wedding.” We ferried everyone to the church in a ten ton truck.’
‘Poor dad.’
‘The reception was in an incredibly draughty hotel. There were dried egg sandwiches, snoek canapes and whalemeat bridge rolls. The Andersons had pooled their ration books to get the ingredients for the cake. Grandpa Tonbridge had a face about eight miles long. Auntie Katie Willoughby made rude remarks about Uncle Percy Spillinger’s war effort, Acting Lance Corporal Sprockett made a terrible speech, I had a nose bleed, and then suddenly we heard a doodlebug. Its engine cut out.’
‘Christ!’
‘We all lay on the floor. I held your mother’s hand. The doodlebug fell on the British Restaurant two hundred yards away. All the hotel’s windows were blown out and the cake collapsed.’
‘God.’
‘Well actually that seemed to break the ice.’
‘And the icing.’
‘Very good. After that it was all quite fun. They picked up Uncle Percy Spillinger two days later in Tenterden, playing bagpipes at the top of the church tower and singing “Scotland the Brave”.’
There was a long silence. Neither of them liked to say anything, for fear it would break the mood.
‘Would you like a beer, old carthorse?’ Reggie said at length.
‘I’d love one.’
Reggie poured a couple of beers, while the gloom of the storm began to lift. It was the hour of religious programmes on television.
There were pictures of Reggie with his parents. His father, the bank inspector, pointing at something in every picture. His mother, the bank inspector’s wife, always looking in the direction in which his father was pointing. His father died of a bullet through the head and his mother died of not having any interests in life except his father.
There was a picture of a very young and handsome Jimmy, on Littlehampton beach, and a snapshot of Reggie and Nigel at Chilhampton Ambo, grinning fit to bust, no doubt dreaming of Angela Borrowdale’s riding breeches.
Reggie wanted to say, ‘This is nice, old parsnip, sitting here together, just the two of us,’ but he was afraid that if he said it it would cease to be nice.
He picked up his next memento. It was an empty box. Then the doorbell rang. Damn. Damn. Damn.
It was Major James Anderson, of the Queen’s Own Berkshire Light Infantry, no longer so young and handsome.
‘Sorry to bother you,’ said Jimmy. ‘Fact is, bit of a cock-up. Forgot the blasted food.’
‘Yes. I know.’
‘Got home. Hungry family. No chow. In the doghouse. Came back quick as I could.’
‘Mark and I have been having a beer. Will you join us?’
‘Fact is, Reggie, ought to get straight back. Well, just a quick one, if you insist.’
Reggie led Jimmy back into the living room, and poured out another beer.
‘Well, Mark,’ said Jimmy. ‘How are things on the drama front?’
‘Not too bad, Uncle Jimmy.’
‘All the world’s a stage, eh?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Jolly good.’
Jimmy lolled to attention in the brown Parker Knoll chair, and took a long draught of his beer.
