The Reginald Perrin Omnibus

by David Nobbs

  ‘I hear the women are threatening a boycott unless they get equal pay, and the men are threatening a boycott unless they get more than equal pay,’ he said.

  ‘So I hear,’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘If that’s sport, I’m the Duchess of Argyll,’ said C.J. ‘Tell me, Elizabeth, do you believe in all this women business?’

  Be bold. Weakness will not impress C.J.

  ‘I don’t believe that women can ever attain real equality,’ she said.

  ‘Of course they can’t,’ said C.J.

  ‘That’s why they must never give up the fight for it,’ said Elizabeth.

  The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of Tony Webster and Joan. They were steered to a table between C.J. and David Harris-Jones. David Harris-Jones half rose, the confusion growing.

  ‘Morning, Tony,’ said C.J. ‘Nice place, this.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘You were jolted by my answer, C.J.,’ said Elizabeth. ‘You didn’t get where you are today by having women take the initiative. Especially when you are the boss and I am only a secretary. Why did you employ me, by the way?’

  ‘Perhaps it was conscience,’ said C.J.

  ‘Perhaps it wasn’t,’ said Elizabeth.

  Tony Webster was being served. David Harris-Jones was still trying to attract attention. Waiters are as aware of the pecking order as chicken farmers.

  ‘Do you think women are really so unequal?’ said C.J.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Elizabeth. ‘If Reggie had an affair with Joan, people would say: “Good old Reggie.” If I had an affair, they’d be shocked. “Fancy Elizabeth letting herself down like that.”’

  Their first course arrived, whitebait for C.J., gazpacho for Elizabeth.

  ‘Surely Reggie treats you as an equal?’ said C.J.

  ‘Reggie behaves like the main character in a novel,’ said Elizabeth. ‘It’s about time I had a chapter to myself.’

  They ate in silence for a few moments. David Harris-Jones was being served at last, and Tony Webster’s hand met Joan’s beneath the table.

  The hands disengaged. Elizabeth caught Joan’s eye and smiled. She felt that the smile came out as regal and patronizing. It hid the fear that Joan had had an affair with Reggie.

  ‘I expect I’ll be accused of being patronizing,’ said C.J. ‘But you are a very much more thoughtful person than I had supposed.’

  ‘It’s not been required of me,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I’ve been an appendage.’

  ‘No longer?’

  ‘Perhaps not. A dramatic development. Little woman fights back. Surrey housewife in Spanish restaurant chat holocaust.’

  Tony Webster, the collector of dolly birds, was sexily but not indiscreetly sliding his right hand up Joan’s left leg. Had Reggie done that?

  At David Harris-Jones’s table, the hands remained unengaged.

  Their paella arrived, far too succulent a dish to precede an afternoon’s work.

  Elizabeth met C.J.’s eyes, and it was almost as if they were trying to smile but had forgotten how to do it after all these years, because smiling with the eyes is not like riding a bicycle.

  The restaurant was full of the clatter of crockery and conversation. Far away, a loud crash was followed by unshaven Iberian oaths.

  ‘More paella?’ said C.J.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’re a beautiful woman, Elizabeth.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Reggie doesn’t appreciate how lucky he is.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  C.J. poured more wine. He indicated Tony and Joan with his eyes, then David and his plump young companion. Tony and Joan were talking in an animated if apparently trivial way. At David’s table the conversation flowed like glue.

  ‘Hanky-panky,’ said C.J. ‘I don’t like it and I never will.

  Large lunches, erotic thoughts. The nation can’t afford it. The International Monetary Fund would take a dim view. Would you like some trifle?’

  ‘Please.’

  C.J. ordered two portions of trifle.

  ‘I didn’t get where I am today by indulging in hankypanky,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sure you didn’t,’ said Elizabeth.

  The waiter brought the sweet trolley. They watched as if hypnotized as he gave them their trifle.

  ‘I’ve got some papers at home that need to be sorted through,’ said C.J. ‘I wonder if you could come over some time and help me.’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘How about Saturday?’ said C.J.

  ‘Saturday,’ said Elizabeth.

  Chapter 8

  ‘I don’t like your working on a Saturday,’ said Reggie.

  ‘Nor do I,’ said Elizabeth. ‘But what can I do?’

  ‘Especially when I’m working on Sundays,’ said Reggie.

  He was sitting at the kitchen table, finishing his last cup of coffee. His legs and back ached after a week at the piggery, and the washing machine and spin drier were going full blast, cleaning his pig-infested clothes.

  ‘What time will you be back?’ he said.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘Mr Pardoe said there was a lot to do.’

  ‘I thought your boss was called Steele.’

  ‘What? Oh he is. He’s lending me to Mr Pardoe.’

  ‘It makes you sound like a library book.’

  The sky was leaden and heavy summer rain drummed against the windows. There was no wind.

  ‘I’ll be back sooner if I take the car,’ said Elizabeth.

  She kissed him and left hurriedly.

  Reggie walked to the shops. A lady JP drove through a puddle and splashed him.

  ‘Hooligan,’ he shouted.

  ‘Wife away, Mr Perrin?’ said J. F. Walton, family butcher and high-class poulterer.

  ‘She’s working,’ said Reggie.

  ‘Ah!’ said L. B. Mayhew, greengrocer and fruiterer. ‘Working, eh?’

  Was that an innuendo? Reggie wouldn’t put anything past a man who raised his tomato prices by 12p a pound at the weekend.

  Home again, wet and muggy, Reggie prepared the dinner and listened to the cricket commentators valiantly waffling through the rain. Needless to say, England would have been batting on a perfect pitch before the largest crowd of the season.

  The afternoon stretched endlessly before him, bereft of the three E’s – Elizabeth, England, and Emmerdale Farm. Reggie’s mind turned to a weekend a year ago. This was a Saturday, that was a Sunday. This had dawned wet, that had dawned sunny. That time it had been he and Joan. This time it was Elizabeth and …

  No! Elizabeth wasn’t like that.

  But then no more was he, and that hadn’t stopped him.

  ‘Oh belt up, Brian Johnston,’ he cried, switching off the radio.

  Silence, save for the dripping of rain and suspicion.

  The Scottish-Hungarian boss, with the wooden leg, who drank like a fish! If his father came from Budapest, and his mother from Arbroath, he’d have a Hungarian name, not Steele.

  Steele! Pardoe! False names! Liberal party leaders! An unconscious slip. A Clement Freudian slip.

  She was having an affair. And after he had spurned Joan’s advances for her sake.

  Anger swept over him. He dialled Joan’s number savagely, as if it was his telephone that had cuckolded him.

  ‘Three-two-three-six,’ said a man, sleepily.

  The windscreen wipers hummed their monotonous symphony all the way to Godalming, and on the River Wey sad hirers of leaking cruisers played travel scrabble.

  C.J.’s pile was a mock-Tudor edifice, a fantasy of timber, gable and ostentatious thatch, built on the profits founded on the sweat of men like Reggie Perrin. Elizabeth parked beside the privet pheasants, and pulled the Gothic bell-rope.

  C.J. opened the door and stood resplendent in a velvet suit.

  ‘Come in, modom. C.J. is expecting you,’ he said with ponderous skittishness, leaving her waiting in the living-room with six paintings of ancestors – not C
.J.’s ancestors, but presumably somebody’s.

  C.J. re-entered as himself.

  ‘Elizabeth!’ he said. ‘Nice to see you.’

  She sat on the settee, facing the generous fireplace which dominated the mock-Gothic room.

  ‘Well, here we are,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, here we are,’ she said.

  ‘Champagne?’

  ‘Champagne?’

  ‘Why not?’

  He poured champagne and joined her on the settee.

  She began to feel uneasy.

  ‘Well, here we are,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘Here we are. What about these papers that need sorting, C.J.?’

  ‘First things first,’ he said. ‘More haste less speed.’

  Her uneasiness grew. Could it be that he was bent on pleasures naughtier than the grape?

  No. It couldn’t be.

  Not C.J.

  ‘Where’s Mrs C.J.?’ she asked.

  ‘In Luxembourg,’ he said. ‘More champagne?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Very wise,’ he said, pouring her another glass.

  ‘Well, here we are,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  He was bent on pleasures naughtier than the grape. Elizabeth couldn’t have been more surprised if she’d been told that Attila the Hun had rented a council allotment which was his pride and joy.

  C.J. shifted along the settee towards her. She moved away.

  ‘It’s wet, isn’t it?’ she said.

  ‘The champagne?’ said C.J., puzzled.

  ‘No. The weather.’

  ‘Oh. Yes. The champagne’s dry and the weather’s wet.’

  C.J.’s laugh was like the mating call of a repressed corncrake.

  ‘Nasty for them,’ he said.

  ‘For who?’

  ‘I don’t know. Them. One says: “It’s nasty for them.” Meaning, I suppose, for the people for whom it’s nasty because it’s wet.’

  She must know the worst. She must find out if there were any papers to sort.

  ‘I am in a bit of a hurry,’ she said. ‘Can’t we get down to it straightaway?’

  The moment she had spoken, she regretted her choice of words.

  ‘We’ll get down to it after luncheon,’ said C.J.

  They dispatched the bottle and C.J. left the room.

  He re-entered immediately.

  ‘Luncheon is served, modom,’ he said.

  They lunched off cold duck, stilton and burgundy. When he had drained the last of his wine, C.J. smiled uneasily at Elizabeth.

  ‘We’ll get down to it in a minute,’ he said.

  They returned to the living-room. C.J./butler served coffee and mints. Elizabeth and C.J./host did justice to them.

  ‘Now we’ll get down to it,’ he said.

  He gave a long deep shuddering sigh, and produced a large pile of papers.

  ‘Anybody in your firm called Thorpe?’ said Reggie casually in bed that night.

  ‘Not that I know of. Why?’

  ‘Freud? Grimond?’

  ‘What are you talking about, Reggie?’

  The Milfords returned noisily from their snifter at the nineteenth.

  ‘There seem to be a lot of people with the names of Liberal MPs. Steele, Pardoe.’

  ‘Oh yes. I hadn’t thought of that.’

  ‘No.’

  On Monday morning Reggie pretended to oversleep. He was due at the piggery at half past seven, but he was still at home at eight o’clock.

  The sun had returned, yet he handed Elizabeth her umbrella.

  ‘Umbrella,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  He handed her her handbag.

  ‘Handbag,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘Have a good day at the office,’ he said.

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘Give my love to Mr Steele and Mr Pardoe and any other members of the Liberal party who may be present,’ he said. ‘And if any of them drink like fishes and ask you to work on Saturday tell them to stick their wooden legs up their baskets.’

  Elizabeth ignored the attack.

  ‘Have a good day at the piggery,’ she said.

  ‘I won’t,’ said Reggie.

  Nor did he, because he did not go to the piggery. The moment Elizabeth had gone, he telephoned Mr Pelham.

  ‘Mr Pelham?’ he said. ‘Reg here, Mr Pelham. It’s me muwer. She’s been taken ill. I’m all she’s got, Mr P. Do you mind if I take the day off, like? … Thanks, Mr P… . Yeah, well, families are important. Very kind of you, Mr P., very kind … What? Without pay. Yeah, I understand. Oh, and Mr P.? … Give my love to the pigs.’

  Over his piggery outfit he put a filthy old raincoat smeared with creosote stains. On his head he jammed a squashed gardening hat.

  Thus disguised, he hurried along Coleridge Close. He caught sight of Elizabeth in Tennyson Avenue, followed her along Wordsworth Drive and down the snicket into Station Road.

  He waited by the station bookstall until he heard the eight sixteen come in. Then he rushed on to the platform and boarded the train.

  At Waterloo he followed her down the platform. He was only dimly aware of the loudspeaker announcement, apologizing for the fact that they were seventeen minutes late, and blaming track improvements at Clapham Junction.

  He lost her briefly on the concourse but caught sight of her again as she walked down the steps out of the station.

  Imagine his speculations as he saw her plunge into the mean streets where the head office of Sunshine Desserts was situated.

  Judge of his amazement and anger as he watched her walk towards the grim portals, pass beneath the lifeless clock, and disappear into the ignoble building with nary a glance at the bold letters that proudly flashed to an astonished world their familiar message: UNSHIN DESSERTS. He followed her up three flights of stairs, because the lift was out of order, and saw her enter the office where she worked.

  The dreadful truth hit him immediately, and he knew what he had to do.

  C.J. was staring grimly at his morning mail. The storm-clouds were gathering over Sunshine Desserts. Only he knew on what shifting sands the edifice was built, to coin a phrase.

  His jaw relaxed as he thought of the sweet loveliness of Elizabeth Perrin. Perhaps she would be his confidante. Perhaps Mrs C.J. would be injured in Luxembourg. Nothing serious. Just a few weeks in hospital, followed by six months in a convalescent home.

  Marion murmured something about Perrin and he said: ‘Send her in.’

  His face melted into a gentle smile, which froze when he saw Reggie.

  ‘Morning, C.J.,’ said Reggie.

  ‘Er … good … er … do … er … sit down.’

  ‘No,’ said Reggie.

  ‘You can sit on the … er… they’re new … Japanese.’

  ‘I’d rather stand,’ said Reggie.

  The lunatic was wearing a filthy old hat and coat, but he didn’t appear to have a gun. It didn’t occur to C.J. that he had done nothing worthy of guilt. He had thought things worthy of guilt – and that was enough.

  ‘It’s about Elizabeth,’ said Reggie.

  ‘Let’s not be hasty,’ said C.J.

  ‘She’s working here,’ said Reggie.

  ‘I know. I gave her a job.’

  ‘She’s having an affair.’

  ‘Let’s discuss this like …’

  ‘She told me she was working on Saturday,’ said Reggie. ‘Working my foot. I want you to sack her, C.J. And him.’

  C.J. lit a cigar with shaking fingers.

  ‘Him?’ said C.J.

  ‘Tony Webster.’

  ‘Ah! Tony Webster.’

  ‘Who did you think?’ said Reggie.

  ‘Who indeed?’ said C.J. ‘I was at a loss.’

  ‘Secretaries always fall in love with their bosses,’ said Reggie. ‘So I’ve heard anyway.’

  ‘Your story’s pure hearsay,’ said C.J. ‘Though you know what they say: th
ere’s no smoke without the worm turning.’

  ‘I can get proof,’ said Reggie. ‘I’ll follow her next Saturday, if she tries that one on again.’

  ‘Of course I know of Webster’s reputation,’ said C.J. ‘His appetites.’

  ‘Appetites?’

  ‘I didn’t get where I am today without knowing of Webster’s appetites.’

  ‘What do you mean, appetites?’ said Reggie.

  ‘Do sit down, and take that dreadful hat off,’ said C.J.

  Reggie sat in the little Japanese chair, and took his hat off.

  ‘What appetites, C.J.?’

  ‘Let’s say he has a weakness for women of mature years,’ said C.J.

  ‘He’s always with dolly birds.’

  ‘A front, Reggie. I didn’t get where I am today without knowing a front when I see one. And I suppose your wife is still quite an attractive woman.’

  ‘She’s a very attractive woman.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose she is,’ said C.J.

  Reggie stood up.

  ‘Will you sack them, C.J.?’ he asked.

  ‘I can’t,’ said C.J.

  ‘You sacked me.’

  ‘That’s different.’

  Reggie slammed his hat on his head and stormed towards the door, the tails of his gardening coat flying in his slipstream.

  ‘Careful,’ said C.J. ‘Look before you …’

  But Reggie had slammed the door, so we will never know how C.J. would have finished his sentence.

  At five-thirty Reggie was to be seen hanging around the end of the road, near the Feathers.

  The aim of his vigil was to catch Tony and Elizabeth in flagrante.

  Tony came down the road alone. That looked bad. Clearly the guilty parties were trying to avert suspicion.

  Reggie approached him.

  ‘Hello, Reggie,’ said Tony.

  Reggie punched him in the face. Tony staggered backwards. Reggie punched him again. Tony kicked out and Reggie stumbled.

  Reggie got to his feet. Tony watched him in amazement. Reggie advanced to hit him again, and Tony punched him in the face. Reggie butted Tony in the stomach, and Tony gave him a bang on the back of the head.

  Commuters hurried past the two grappling figures towards the safety of their trains. Tony gave Reggie one more punch and felled him before going down winded himself.

  The two men bent gasping by the wall of the Feathers. Reggie’s squashed gardening hat lay in the gutter.

  Joan hurried towards them anxiously.