by David Nobbs
He walked briskly to Waterloo, maintaining his Jasper Flask walk throughout.
The cracked old woman with the hairy legs approached him.
‘I wonder if you can help me?’ she said, in her deep, cracked voice. ‘I’m looking for a Mr James Purdock, from Somerset.’
‘I’m awfully sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I can’t.’
He caught the six thirty-eight.
Opposite him sat a man of quite extraordinary normality. What are your secret thoughts, thought Reggie. Do you believe that your knees are enormous? Or are you convinced that your elbows are a laughing stock? Do you have an uncontrollable horror of vegetable marrows? When you see spittle on the pavements, do you have a grotesque temptation to bend down and lick it up?
What about your sex life? Are you only really turned on after you’ve seen a hat-stand? Do you have to dress up in a Saracens’ rugby shirt and muddy boots?
Or are you just as normal as you look?
Reggie began to feel increasingly nervous as he got nearer home.
The train was eleven minutes late. The loudspeaker announcement explained that ‘someone has stolen the lines at Surbiton’. The sky had cleared of cloud, the wind had dropped, but there was a distinct chill in the air.
He walked along Station Road, up the snicket, up Wordsworth Drive, turned right into Tennyson Avenue, then left into Coleridge Close.
Mr Milford was in his garden, staring at his roses. Reggie’s house looked completely lifeless.
There it was, well-preserved, eloquent of affluence. Only an unusual incidence of dead heads on the rose bushes revealed that anything abnormal was afoot.
Of course. Elizabeth was in Worthing. Visiting her mother. Seeing Henry Possett?
He walked back up the road once more, staring at the house as he passed. There it sat, so solid, as if none of this had really happened.
He walked on towards the station. On the way he said farewell to Jasper Flask. He wasn’t sorry to see him go.
Friday
Signor Antonio Stifado stood at a bus stop opposite the hospital. Several buses passed, but he did not hail them. He was a tall, rather heavily built man and he had a big black beard. The evening sun shone on his jet-black hair.
Signor Stifado had arrived in Worthing that afternoon from London, where he had passed a disturbed night in a hotel in Bloomsbury. He had a hundred and ninety pounds in his pockets, in used fivers.
There were disadvantages in pretending to be a foreigner. Everything suddenly became very expensive. People shouted at you, as if they expected all foreigners to be deaf. But there was also one advantage. It needed concentration. It occupied the mind. It had prevented Reggie from getting too nervous.
Elizabeth’s car was parked in the main road outside the hospital, less than fifty yards from the bus stop.
Would he dare? It needed courage to admit that you hadn’t really committed suicide.
It would mean Elizabeth had done all that mourning under false pretences.
The trickle of departing visitors was becoming a flood. Visiting time was over.
There she was. And there beside her was Linda.
And there was Henry Possett.
They had reached the main gate. They were waiting to cross the road. Reggie could hear his heart pumping. He walked towards them. He had no idea what he was going to say. The traffic noises sounded far away but very loud. The sun seemed unusually bright.
All he had to do was rip off the beard and wig and say, ‘Hullo, darling. It’s me. I’m awfully sorry about what happened. I always was a bit of an arse.’
How beautiful Elizabeth was, and how tall Henry Possett was.
It might be too much of a shock. It might kill her.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘which is way to middle town?’
‘Middle town?’ said Henry Possett.
‘Middle town. Centrum. Centre ville.’
‘Oh, the town centre!’
‘Centre town. Yes, please,’ said Reggie.
They directed him. Elizabeth was close enough to touch. Soon they would move on. He must detain them.
‘Thank you. I have hotel here, Littlehampton,’ he said.
‘This isn’t Littlehampton. This is Worthing,’ said Linda.
‘Oh. Excusing me. Wort things,’ he said.
‘Worthing.’
‘Worth thing. Oh. This Worth thing, has it much far from Littlehampton?’
They told him how to get to Littlehampton. Elizabeth looked pale. It touched his heart to see how pale she was.
‘Wait a minute,’ she said. ‘If we run you home, Henry, we can take this gentleman to the station.’ She turned to Reggie and shouted, ‘We can take you to the station.’
‘Oh. Is most kind. But is no need,’ said Reggie.
He sat in the back seat of his car. Elizabeth changed to second gear too soon.
‘How was your mother?’ said Henry Possett.
‘Much more like her usual self,’ said Elizabeth. ‘How about your sister?’
‘They’re very pleased with her,’ said Henry Possett.
‘Are you on holiday?’ said Linda to Reggie.
‘Yes, I take a vacations,’ said Reggie.
‘How are you liking England?’ said Henry Possett.
‘Oh. Molto bene. Much well. England, beautiful. Devon, beautiful. Bognor Regis, beautiful. But – er – she is – how you say – much costing,’ said Reggie.
‘Very expensive,’ said Henry Possett.
‘Si. Si. Expensive,’ said Reggie.
They had to wait at a level crossing. Henry Possett tried a sentence in fluent Italian. Reggie didn’t understand a word of it.
‘Oh. You speak Italian. Bravo,’ he said. ‘But I in England only English speak, yes? Because I learn. Yes?’
‘Yes,’ said Henry Possett.
‘I didn’t know you spoke Italian, Henry,’ said Elizabeth.
A twelve-coach electric train crossed the level crossing. Motorists who had switched their engines off switched them on again.
‘Italian, Greek, Yugoslavian, French, Swedish and Danish,’ said Henry Possett.
‘Oh. This is good. I hear English mens no speaking much foreign,’ said Reggie.
The line of cars began to move.
‘Plus a smattering of Urdu and a little functional Swahili,’ said Henry Possett.
They crossed the level crossing and turned into the station forecourt.
‘Thank you very much,’ said Reggie.
Henry Possett insisted on accompanying him to the station. There was a train for Littlehampton in three minutes.
Henry Possett waited by the ticket office to make sure he got on the train all right, so he had to go to Littlehampton. When he got there he took a taxi back to his hotel in Worthing. He hurried upstairs, terrified that he would meet Henry Possett or Elizabeth in the bar.
He stayed in his room all evening. He sat at his little writing desk and wrote two letters on hotel notepaper.
The first letter was to Elizabeth.
My dear Elizabeth,
By the time you receive this letter I shall be alive. Please forgive me for deceiving you in this way, but I could see no other way out at the time. Now I realize that I cannot live without you. This evening I posed as an Italian and you gave me a lift to the station. It was so thrilling to be near you, in the same car, our car, on which incidentally I couldn’t help noticing that the road tax had run out. When you changed to second gear too soon I almost spoke. I realize that I shall have to look for a new job and I daresay that since I have rejected ambition and have no desire to work in a competitive industry again we will have to live in straitened circumstances. This will not matter to me, but I shall of course understand if you do not wish to continue our life together, but I do hope that you will.
With all my love,
Reggie.
He read the letter through three times, then crumpled it up and threw it in the waste-paper basket.
His second le
tter was also to Elizabeth.
My dear Elizabeth,
I am writing this to tell you that I am not dead, and that I love you and always will. Today when I posed as an Italian and got a lift in your car I knew that what matters most is your happiness. Too many things have changed for me to be able to offer you happiness. I no longer feel able to deliver the goods in the manner expected of me by society. I have no desire to return to industry and support you in the manner your mother would think right. I cannot believe in the expansion of industry, the challenge of the Common Market, any of the clap-trap. I see things now with a new clarity. So much seems utterly ridiculous. The shape of this pen strikes me as ludicrous. I can’t take the male sexual organs seriously. The sight of a pumice stone would be liable to drive me hysterical. Ambition seems to me totally ridiculous. When people take themselves too seriously, I shall be tempted to say ‘I love you earwig’. I can never again look at your mother without thinking of a hippopotamus.
In these last days since my fake suicide – I apologize for the distress it must have caused you and for hoping that it has caused you distress – in these last days I have adopted several personalities. Charles Windsor, Wensley Amhurst, Sir Wensley Amhurst, Lord Amhurst, Jasper Flask, Signor Antonio Stifado. Shadowy figures, without past or future, yet real enough to those who met them. It is tempting to think of myself as a shadowy figure, like them, yet the truth is very different. For me the problem of identity is not that I do not know who I am. It is that I know only too clearly who I am. I am Reginald Iolanthe Perrin, Goofy Perrin, Coconut Matting Perrin. I am absurd, therefore I am. I am, therefore I am absurd.
Tomorrow I shall adopt a permanent name, seek out a new life. It won’t be easy to forget, but I have got to make it work. It is hard to know that I shall never see you again, and that I can’t even send you this letter, and you will never receive my best wishes for the future.
With all my love,
Reggie.
He read the letter three times, crumpled it up, and threw it in the waste-paper basket.
That night, tucked up in his hotel bed in Worthing, with the sea lying dark and placid not a hundred yards away, Reggie thought: ‘Well, I’m in a mess, but at least I’ve stirred my life out of its predictable course.’
Then he wondered if a psychiatrist would say: ‘On the contrary, this is exactly what I would have expected from you.’
We can never escape our destiny, he realized, because whatever happens to us becomes our destiny.
It had all been a terrible mistake.
July
The rain fell steadily, good grey nonconformist Sunday rain. It soaked the backs of cats and dribbled down the instruments of Salvation Army bands. It reduced American tourists to pulp and splashed mud over the jeans of protest marchers. It was soft, relentless and dirty.
Reggie lay on his bed and watched a patch of damp spreading across his ceiling. He was in a cheap hotel near King’s Cross and his name was Donald Potts. He had one hundred and sixty-five pounds in his pocket, in used fivers, and he was an outcast.
He had taken off his false beard. There was no need of it now that his real beard had grown.
He went over to the mirror and examined himself. He was shocked by what he saw. He was going grey. He pulled off his wig and underneath it the hair was streaked with grey. Even the hairs on his chest were going grey. The lines on his face had deepened, and the skin was sagging. He realized with a shock that he would pass for fifty-six, rather than forty-six. This wasn’t the new life that he had promised himself, free from care.
Was it just the effect of the strain that he had been through, or had he taken on some of the years of Lord Amhurst and the rest? He shivered with horror. Perhaps he would continue to grow old at this rate. Perhaps in a month he would look like an old man of seventy-six. He began to shake uncontrollably.
He was alone, utterly alone. No family. No friends. Not even a friendly bank manager in the cupboard. He began to cry. He lay on his bed and wept, until there were no more tears and he was exhausted and empty.
This wouldn’t do. This way lay madness. He took a grip on himself and went for a walk. For three hours he walked through the streets in the glistening rain. He trudged across Regent’s Park and the open space soothed him. He would like to work in an open space like that.
He had steak and chips in a comfortless café and two pints of tasteless chemical beer in a tall, dark, shabby pub. By the time he went to bed his mind was made up. He would become a park keeper.
The thought calmed him. The new life was beginning at last. The decision had been made. He was going to be Donald Potts until he died.
Cats fought, diesels hooted, the wind howled, traffic roared, men shouted, women screamed, water pipes gurgled, dustbin lids crashed to the ground, milk bottles rolled down steps on to pavements, ambulances wailed, and Donald Potts slept.
In the morning he was Reggie again, playing at being Donald Potts. He bought some writing paper, went to the reference library and wrote to the parks departments of twenty-two London Boroughs. He was careful to make the letters suitably illiterate.
The reference library smelt of floor polish. One very old woman was hunting through the railway timetables, although she would never go anywhere again. Another old woman suddenly shouted, ‘Bastards. Bastards. Shits,’ and then retired into silence. One old man had a compulsive snort. As he listened to the compulsive snort Reggie thought about that old man’s life. His first rattle, his first step, his first word, his first wank, his first woman, his first conviction, his first stroke, his first compulsive snort. The history of a man.
He wanted to shout to the old people, ‘I am free. I have joined you. I am one of you. I shall suffer with you.’
Instead, he went out quietly and posted his twenty-two letters.
Tuesday was dry. Wednesday was dry, but in the evening it rained. On Thursday there were showers. On Friday he got his first replies. Six boroughs had no vacancies, but Hillingley suggested that he present himself at the council offices at eleven-thirty on the following Wednesday.
He spent the evenings in pubs, talking to people who looked as if they might be members of the criminal fraternity. A man called Kipper introduced him to a man called Nozzle who knew a man called Basher who knew a forger who was prepared to present Donald Potts with a birth certificate and all the documents necessary for starting a new life. It set Reggie back a hundred pounds.
He prepared for his interview thoroughly. He bought a faded second-hand suit. It was two sizes too large in some places and three sizes too small in others.
On his way to catch the Tube he stepped in some mud, smearing it carefully over his boots and up the inside of his trouser legs. A policeman gave him a suspicious look and he disappeared hastily into the subway.
The sun was shining when he reached Hillingley. It was an area of large housing estates broken by windswept open spaces and occasional industrial areas.
The council offices were a large L-shaped red-brick building situated in a corner by some traffic lights. A clock above the main door indicated that it was eleven twenty-seven. Reggie ran his hand through his hair to disarrange it, and presented himself at the reception desk.
‘I’ve got an appointment to see Mr Thorneycroft,’ he said.
‘What name shall I say?’ said the girl.
‘Say Potts,’ said Reggie.
He was sent to an office on the third floor, at the rear of the building. Mr Thorneycroft was a thin man with a long sad nose.
‘Why do you want to work in our Parks Department?’ he said, when Reggie had sat down.
‘Well, I – er – I like the open air life,’ said Reggie, adopting a Cockney accent in the best traditions of the Sunshine Desserts Dramatic Society.
‘Do you have much experience of gardens?’
‘I done a lot of odd jobs in gardens.’
‘What job do you have at the moment?’ said Mr Thorneycroft.
‘I’m temporarily unemployed,
sir.’
‘I see. What was your last position?’
‘I been working for myself. Doing odd jobs.’
‘What sort of jobs?’
‘You name it, I done it.’
‘I’d rather you named it, Mr Potts.’
‘Decorating, gardening, tiling, guttering, perching.’
‘Perching?’
‘Gutter-perching. Perching on gutters,’ said Reggie desperately.
‘Perching on gutters, Mr Potts?’
‘To repair roofs.’
‘I see. Do you have any references?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Good. Splendid. What sort of gardening do you like best, Mr Potts?’
‘My speciality, sir, is lawns, flowers, vegetables and plants.’
‘I see.’ Mr Thorneycroft made a note on a piece of paper. He liked interviewing. ‘Hedging?’
‘As and when needed, sir.’
‘I see. Compost?’
‘I can turn my hand to it.’
Mr Thorneycroft looked down at the floor.
‘Have you ever been inside?’ he said in the tones newsreaders use for disasters.
‘I’d rather not talk about it, sir.’
‘That’s not much of an answer.’
‘I’ve paid for what I done.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Twenty-eight days.’
‘Yes, but what crime did you commit?’
‘Embezzlement, sir.’
‘I see. Fine.’
‘But I’ve learnt my lesson, sir. I’ve turned over a new leaf.’ ‘Yes, and if you get the job with us you’ll be turning over lots of leaves.’ Mr Thorneycroft laughed. It was like a knife sawing through concrete. Then he became serious again. ‘Do you drink, Mr Potts?’
‘I wouldn’t say I never indulged, sir.’
‘Fine. Fine.’
‘But not to excess, sir. Leastwise, not any more.’
‘I see.’
Behind Mr Thorneycroft was a large calendar with a picture of Balmoral Castle and the legend: ‘Queen’s Garage, 19-23 Parkside, Hillingley.’ The dates of Mr Thorneycroft’s holidays were ringed in red ink.
‘I lost my Doris over that.’
‘Doris?’
