by David Nobbs
He was concentrating so hard that he didn’t hear the tea lady’s shout of ‘Tea trolley’.
Joan came in with a coffee and a jam doughnut. He hid his sheet of signatures hastily.
‘My turn today,’ she said, not coldly, but without any special warmth. ‘You’ve done it three times running.’
‘Thank you, Joan,’ he said.
It needs as much generosity to receive charity as to give it. Are we so screwed up, he thought, that we can accept nothing without paying it back?
He entered the silent, padded world of C.J.
‘Sit down, Reggie,’ said C.J.
The carpet was so soft that he could hardly lift his feet. He trudged on, seeming to reach CJ.’s end of the room incredibly slowly. He sat down. The pneumatic chair sighed in sympathy.
‘I suppose I should apologize for last night,’ he said.
‘It was an odd way of getting your point across, but it was worth making,’ said C.J. ‘As somebody once said, “I like what you say, but I don’t defend your right to say it”.’
‘I think it was the other way round, C.J.’
‘Oh. He got it wrong. Well anyway you see my point.’
Reggie stared at the Bratby, the Francis Bacon, the picture of C.J. holding the champion lemon mousse, the blue sky beyond the treble-glazed windows.
‘Speech coming on all right?’ said C.J.
‘Very well, C.J.’
‘Good. Big fillip for the firm, getting a speaker at the conference. I didn’t manage it without pulling one or two strings. I know you won’t let us down.’
Marion brought in two black coffees. Perhaps C.J. was feeling a little frail this morning too.
‘Mr Harris-Jones is here, sir,’ she said.
‘Keep him a moment, will you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
C.J. leant forward and strummed on his desk.
‘I want to talk to you about Harris-Jones,’ he said.
‘I think he was just a little drunk, C.J.’
‘Yes, yes, not bothered about that,’ said C.J. impatiently. ‘The Letts-Wilkinson was drunk as well. Though I was not impressed with her dress. That sort of thing encourages hanky-panky.’
‘Yes, C.J.’
‘We aren’t one of those firms where people can indulge willy-nilly in hanky-panky with their secretaries.’
‘No. Quite.’
‘Neither Mrs C.J. nor myself has ever indulged in hankypanky with our secretaries.’
‘I can believe that, C.J.’
C.J. turned the aluminium lamp onto Reggie’s face. Reggie leant back in his chair, which made a noise like a fart. C.J. frowned.
‘Sorry, C.J. It was the chair.’
‘Very embarrassing. I’ve complained to the makers. Not at all the sort of thing we want at Sunshine.’
‘Certainly not, C.J.’
‘Do you think Harris-Jones is homosexual?’
‘What? Good lord, no!’
‘Hm. Spillinger does. Never had any complaints about him?’
‘Never.’
‘Never felt any stray fingers round your bum?’
‘Good lord, no!’
‘We’ll have him in. I’d like you to stay.’
Reggie’s heart sank.
David Harris-Jones knocked weakly, tottered over the carpet, collapsed into a chair. He was wearing last night’s crumpled clothes. He looked terrible.
‘Cigar?’ said C.J.
‘No, thank you, C.J. I don’t smoke cigars.’
‘A-ha!’ C.J. gave Reggie a meaningful look. ‘Girl friend doesn’t like the smell of them, eh?’
‘Oh – I – er – I don’t actually have a girl friend at the moment, I’m afraid.’
‘A-haa! You went to boarding school, didn’t you, Harris-Jones?’
‘Yes, C.J.’
‘A-haa!’
Reggie stared at a stainless steel wall light, to avoid CJ.’s meaningful look.
‘All of this arises out of last night’s little shindig, Harris-Jones.’
‘I’m sorry, C.J. I got drunk.’
‘These things happen,’ said C.J. ‘Though they won’t happen again. We’re not one of those firms that believes in acting as a moral watchdog over you. Heaven forbid. Your private life is your own affair. Otherwise it wouldn’t be private. Nevertheless, there have to be limits. I mean, just to give an example, we couldn’t employ homosexuals. You might be sent to Russia. They’d play on your weakness, photograph you, blackmail you.’
David Harris-Jones said nothing.
‘I wonder if you’re altogether cut out for this kind of life,’ said C.J. ‘I mean perhaps you’d be happier in some other field. Running a boutique, for instance. Or opening a restaurant. Or you could have your own chain of hairdressing salons. There are plenty of avenues open for the gifted homosexual.’
David Harris-Jones’s face turned from pale green to bright red.
‘Are you? – look here – but surely – ’ He managed with a supreme effort to get up from his pneumatic chair. ‘You bastard!’ he said. ‘You bloody bastard!’
‘Sit down!’ barked C.J.
David Harris-Jones hesitated, then sat down. Reggie was sweating profusely.
‘Why does the suggestion that you’re a homosexual annoy you so much?’ said C.J.
‘Because – I don’t know – I’ve nothing against them -some of my best friends – no, very few of my best friends -no, it’s just that it’s annoying because it’s not true.’
‘Fair enough,’ said C.J.
‘There’s nothing wrong with being homosexual,’ said David Harris-Jones. ‘But I’m not.’
‘Fair enough. Reggie, you’re Harris-Jones’s departmental head. Perhaps you’d like to have a word.’
‘Yes. Er – certainly,’ said Reggie. He felt a sudden desire to say ‘parsnips’. For some reason he wanted to say, triumphantly, ‘parsnips’. He mustn’t. He must remain normal. He looked at C.J. Could C.J. see that he wanted to say ‘parsnips’? Was that sort of thing visible? Control yourself, Reggie. ‘You see, David,’ he said. ‘C.J. is naturally anxious, and so am I, to see that there is no hanky-panky connected with the firm.’
‘Absolutely,’ said C.J. ‘I couldn’t have put it better myself.’
‘What C.J. was wondering, and I must say I agree with him,’ said Reggie, and the words were as hard to swallow as a strawberry and lychee ripple, ‘is whether it’s suitable for a junior executive to wear underpants decorated with Beethoven.’
‘Exactly!’ said C.J. ‘I didn’t get where I am today by wearing underpants decorated with Beethoven.’
‘What C.J. wonders, and I must say I wonder it as well,’ said Reggie, ‘is why you have a picture of Beethoven on your underpants.’
‘I – er – I would have thought a man’s underpants were his own affair,’ said David Harris-Jones.
C.J. barked into the intercom, ‘Get Webster for me.’
‘I think what C.J. feels is that, although it is perfectly true that by and large a man’s underpants are indeed his own affair, there could be occasions – in a traffic accident, for example – where this might not be so,’ said Reggie reluctantly. ‘I don’t think it’s altogether unreasonable to ask you to explain what after all are a somewhat unconventional pair of pants.’
‘I admire Beethoven,’ said David Harris-Jones angrily. ‘I was in Bonn. I saw these pants. They had them in my size. They were seventy-three per cent Terylene. I bought them.’
‘There, that wasn’t so painful, was it?’ said C.J.
‘No, C.J.’
‘Why don’t you have a girl friend?’
‘Well – you know – it’s just that I – girls – er – opportunities in Haverfordwest weren’t exactly – and I always – the truth is, women frighten me, sir.’
The intercom buzzed discreetly.
‘Mr Webster is here,’ said Marion.
‘Send him in.’
There was a firm, yet not too firm, knock on the door.
‘Come in.’
Tony Webster walked composedly, but not too composedly, towards them. He was wearing a double-breasted light grey suit and a pale purple floral shirt with matching tie.
‘What would you do if I asked you to show me your underpants?’ said C.J.
‘I’d assume there was some good reason behind it,’ said Tony Webster.
‘Quite. Would you mind showing us your underpants?’
Tony Webster unzipped his trousers and pulled them down. His underpants were blue, but not too blue.
‘Plain blue. An excellent colour,’ said C.J. ‘You see, Harris-Jones. A splash of colour, but not inconsistent with executive dignity. Well, I think no more need be said about that little incident.’
Tony Webster zipped up his trousers and the three of them left the room together.
Reggie sighed and mopped his brow with his handkerchief. David Harris-Jones sighed and mopped his brow with Reggie’s dishcloth.
That’s my dishcloth,’ said Reggie.
Tony Webster showed no surprise.
Reggie hurried out of the building. He had a lot to do during his lunch break.
He walked towards Waterloo Bridge and hailed a taxi.
‘Parsnips,’ he said.
‘I don’t know it. Is it a new restaurant?’ said the taxi driver.
‘When I say parsnips, I mean Bishopsgate,’ said Reggie.
Davina was wearing dark glasses and looking extremely fragile. Uncle Percy Spillinger rang shortly after twelve.
‘Hullo, my darling,’ he bawled.
‘Hullo.’
‘The sun is smiling upon Abinger Hammer. Is it an omen? What is your answer, my little angel cake?’
‘I can’t speak freely here.’
‘I haven’t slept a wink all night.’
‘I have to go now.’
‘Say something to me, my treasure.’
‘I must ring off.’
‘What?’
‘Give me a ring later.’
‘What?’
‘Give me a ring.’
‘Straightaway. The best that Abinger Hammer can provide.’
Linda rang Worthing and caught her mother just before she went to the hospital. She told her all about Reggie’s strange dinner party. Elizabeth said she’d come home as soon as the afternoon visiting was over.
Adam and Jocasta were looking at Watch With Mother, and Linda was sitting on the chaise longue. All three were naked.
‘I didn’t know whether to tell you,’ said Linda.
‘I’m glad you did,’ said Elizabeth.
She put the phone down and watched the television. Lies. All lies. She switched it off.
‘Hedgehogs aren’t a bit like that,’ she said.
Reggie had a busy lunchtime in the tall, narrow, crowded streets of the City. He visited eleven branches of his bank, and in each one he wrote out a cheque for thirty pounds, showed them his banker’s card, and signed the cheque with his forged signature. He asked for the money in used fivers, saying the new ones sometimes stuck together.
When he had reached the end of his cheque book, he threw it in a waste-paper basket. He popped into the Feathers just before closing time. He was somewhat foot-weary, and he had three hundred and thirty pounds in his pocket.
The bar was empty except for Owen Lewis and Colin Edmundes.
‘You’re late,’ said Owen Lewis.
‘I’m having an efficiency drive,’ said Reggie.
‘Time and motion wait for no man,’ said Colin Edmundes.
Reggie ordered two scotch eggs, forgetting that he hated them.
‘Hey, I heard rumours you’re giving Joan dick at last,’ said Owen Lewis.
‘That’s a private matter,’ said Reggie coldly.
‘You old ram, you!’ said Owen Lewis.
The scotch eggs tasted of sawdust.
‘I hear Briggs and Woodcock are writing a musical,’ said Owen Lewis.
‘Yes,’ said Reggie.
‘The unspeakable in pursuit of the unsingable,’ said Colin Edmundes.
Reggie left one and a quarter scotch eggs uneaten.
‘Well, you pulled through,’ said Elizabeth.
‘So far.’
‘You’re going to be all right.’
She held her mother’s hand. Her mother looked pale and elderly.
‘Perhaps it would have been better if I’d gone,’ said her mother.
‘You’re not to talk like that, mother.’
The Australian nurse wheeled the tea trolley round. She stretched a point and gave Elizabeth a cup.
‘I shan’t be able to come this evening,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Reggie’s not well.’
‘He’s not strong. Mind you look after him.’
‘Yes, mother!’
‘That nurse is Australian. She has very dry skin.’
‘Ssh, mother.’
‘She can’t hear.’
Elizabeth’s mother sipped her tea and pulled a face.
‘You’ll feel better soon,’ said Elizabeth.
‘We’ll see. Though I must say I have got faith in that doctor. He speaks so nicely.’
Elizabeth felt irritated. What had that got to do with it? Yet she checked her irritation. Hadn’t she herself sounded rather like that, at the game reserve, about Adam and Jocasta?
Reggie was growing like his father and she was growing like her mother. She felt very close to her mother today, and yet also far away, like lying in bed when you weren’t well and feeling tiny and enormous all at once.
Reggie’s chrysanthemums were drooping in their cut-glass vase. The ward was filled with sunshine and flowers.
‘She wants to rub oil into it,’ said her mother.
‘What?’
‘Her skin. Nothing serious wrong with Reggie, I hope.’
I’ve believed in you all these years, God, thought Elizabeth. Please make it nothing serious. I want my Reggie.
A thin layer of high white cloud drifted across the sun. The afternoon was bright but hazy. Reggie was busy planning his speech for Friday. He hardly heard the trains rumbling past on the embankment.
Joan brought him tea and a macaroon. She didn’t seem angry any more. There was so little time. So little time to spend with Joan, so little time to spend with Elizabeth.
‘Can you come out this evening?’ he said.
‘Oh, I’d love to. I don’t know. I don’t know whether I can arrange it.’
‘Can’t your husband hold the fort? Can’t you tell him you’re working late?’
‘I’ll try.’
He couldn’t get back into his speech. He rang Worthing but there was no reply. She was still at the hospital – or having tea with Henry Possett.
Oh, Reggie, you’re supposed to have forgotten Henry Possett.
Joan was standing by his desk.
‘It’s all right for tonight,’ she said.
His eyes met hers.
‘Book us into a hotel,’ he said.
The Elvira Hotel in North Kensington wasn’t the Ritz. It was three early nineteenth-century houses knocked together. It had peeling stucco on the walls, and peeling walls underneath the stucco. But it was the twenty-seventh hotel Joan had tried, and the other twenty-six had all been full.
‘I booked on the phone,’ Reggie told the bored young desk clerk. ‘Mr and Mrs Smith.’
The girl handed him the register to sign. She chewed gum constantly, and had Radio One playing on a transistor beneath the desk. He felt awkward. It was the dirtiness, the false name, the dull brown walls. It was unbearable when things turned out exactly the way you expected them to be.
He signed their names: ‘Mr and Mrs Smith, of Birmingham.’ Above their names in the register were Mr and Mrs Smith of London, Mr and Mrs Smith of Manchester, Herr and Frau Schmidt of Stuttgart, and Olaf Rassmussen, from Trondheim. Reggie felt sorry for Olaf Rassmussen, from Trondheim.
‘Where’s your luggage?’ said the girl.
‘We don’t have any,’ said Reggie, a
nd he squeezed Joan’s hand.
‘You’ll have to pay in advance. It’s six pounds fifty with breakfast and ten per cent service.’
‘I don’t know if we’re going to get good service yet, do I?’
‘Service is included.’
‘And we may not be staying for breakfast.’
‘Breakfast is included.’
Reggie got out seven pounds, taking care not to show how much money he had in his pocket.
‘I haven’t got any change. Sorry,’ said the girl.
‘We’ll wait,’ said Reggie.
The girl went off reluctantly.
‘Let’s get upstairs,’ said Joan. ‘It’s horrid here.’
‘No. They’re counting on that. It’s a racket.’
An English couple wandered sadly into the foyer, on their way out. An Italian couple wandered wearily into the foyer, on their way in.
‘Did you get to Madame Tussaud’s?’ said the Englishman.
‘Yes. Madame Tussaud is good.’
‘Yes. Very good.’
‘Much good. Very many waxwork.’
Reggie was willing the Englishman to say something interesting to cheer up the weary Italians.
‘Lots of waxworks,’ said the Englishman.
‘So many,’ said the Italian woman, and they all laughed.
‘Very like. Like what they are like,’ said the Italian man.
‘Good likenesses,’ said the English woman.
‘Yes. I am sorry. My English.’
‘It’s very good,’ said the Englishman.
‘No. I think not,’ said the Italian man.
‘Ah – well – arrivederci,’ said the Englishman.
‘Good-bye,’ said the Italian man.
They all laughed.
Can passion, that hothouse plant, flower in this cold soil, thought Reggie.
‘What’s keeping that bloody girl?’ he muttered.
‘Come on,’ said Joan.
‘No. It’s the principle.’
The girl came in slowly, with their change.
‘About time,’ said Reggie. ‘About bloody time!’
‘Room forty-eight,’ said the girl. ‘Fourth floor. The lift’s stuck.’
They trudged up staircases increasingly narrow, on carpets increasingly threadbare.
Room forty-eight was a tiny box with ill-fitted cupboards of bulging brown hardboard. It overlooked a sooty parapet, stained with pigeon droppings.
