The Reginald Perrin Omnibus

by David Nobbs

  ‘Is it really? Amazing,’ said Reggie. ‘Any news of Woking?’ Elizabeth stood up hurriedly.

  ‘Will you help me a moment, darling?’ she said, striding to the door.

  ‘Right,’ said Reggie. ‘Jimmy, give everyone a refill will you?’

  ‘Message received,’ said Jimmy. ‘Drinks situation in control.’

  ‘I had to get you out of there,’ said Elizabeth, when they were in the kitchen. ‘You looked as if you were ready to explode.’

  ‘I’m sorry, darling, but it isn’t exactly Café Royal stuff, is it? I mean I don’t imagine Oscar Wilde said: “Hello, Bosie. What’s the old A.282 like these days? Only I haven’t seen it recently, because I’ve had this awful runny summer cold, I’ve been sneezing all over my new slatted garden furniture.”’

  Elizabeth peered into an orange casserole, and a succulent aroma of fowl and wine arose.

  ‘Do you think Tom’s all right?’ she said.

  ‘He’s got a cold.’

  ‘He’s had several colds.’

  ‘All right. He’s had several colds.’

  ‘It’s not like him. He’s not a cold person. He told me so himself.’

  ‘I’m sure he did.’

  She tasted the succulent dish, and it evidently pleased her, since she added no further seasoning.

  ‘Do you think he’s run down because things aren’t “all right” between him and Linda?’

  ‘What? Women and their imaginations – you’re incredible. I distinctly heard Mrs Milford sneeze the other day. Is divorce pending, do you think?’

  ‘Sarcasm is not a lovable trait, Reggie.’

  ‘I’m sorry, darling. M’m, that smells good.’

  Elizabeth laughed. He kissed her. They stood in front of the oven, and their tongues entered each other’s mouths.

  ‘Oops, sorry,’ said Lettuce, turning scarlet. ‘I’m looking for the powder-room.’

  Reggie explained the way and Lettuce departed in some confusion.

  ‘That’ll give her something to think about while she clips her moustache,’ said Reggie.

  ‘Reggie!’ said Elizabeth, and then she laughed. ‘Poor Jimmy!’ she said. ‘Poor Jimmy and poor Linda. Do we ever like the people our loved ones love?’

  Reggie behaved himself at dinner, and the wine and conversation flowed round the oval walnut table in the dignified, rarely used dining-room with its dark green striped wallpaper.

  Tom arrived as they were finishing the kipper pâtè.

  ‘How did you get here?’ said Linda.

  ‘Taxi,’ said Tom.

  ‘How’s your cold?’ said Elizabeth.

  Linda did a frantic sneezing and nose-blowing mime to Tom. He stared at her in astonishment.

  ‘What cold?’ he said. ‘I haven’t got a cold.’

  ‘Linda said you had a frightful cold,’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘Several colds,’ said Reggie.

  ‘Of course I haven’t got several colds,’ said Tom.

  ‘Tom!’ said Linda.

  ‘These are nice chairs,’ said David Harris-Jones.

  ‘Top-hole chairs,’ said Jimmy.

  ‘How could I have several colds?’ said Tom.

  ‘A-1 seating arrangements,’ said Jimmy.

  ‘One cold at a time,’ said Reggie. ‘You’ve been absent from our gatherings with a string of absolute snorters.’

  ‘I haven’t had a cold for six years,’ said Tom.

  ‘Tom!’ said Linda.

  ‘Have I said something wrong?’ said Tom.

  ‘Yes, Tom, you have,’ hissed Linda. ‘Those times you wouldn’t come, I pretended you’d got colds.’

  Elizabeth gave Tom some pâté. He sat between Prue and Lettuce and ate hungrily.

  ‘If you said I’d got a throat it would have sounded more convincing,’ he said with his mouth full. ‘I do get the occasional throat. My throat’s my Achilles heel. Some people are throat people. Other people are cold people. I’m a throat person.’

  Linda burst into tears and rushed from the room. Jimmy hurried after her. He caught her up on the landing.

  ‘Chin up,’ he said, and kissed her.

  ‘Not here,’ she said, pushing him off. ‘Not here.’

  ‘Sorry. Out of bounds,’ he said, handing her one of his demob handkerchiefs. ‘Good blow.’

  Linda blew her nose and returned to the dining-room. Lettuce gave Jimmy a cold look. Elizabeth brought in the casserole of pigeons in red wine and there were exaggerated cries of delight.

  Tom patted Linda’s hand across the table.

  ‘Sitting at home, all alone, I thought what a fool I’d been,’ he said.

  ‘Every marriage, bad patches,’ said Jimmy. ‘Par for course. Bad patch in my marriage. Honeymoon to divorce.’

  ‘That’s all in the past,’ boomed Lettuce.

  ‘Thanks, Lettuce,’ said Jimmy, stroking the rocky amplitude of her knees beneath the table. On its way back to his glass Jimmy’s hand rested briefly on what he thought was Linda’s thigh. Feeling his thigh being stroked, Tom gazed at Prue in some surprise.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Prue. ‘I’ve gone a bit funny with food lately. I can’t seem to eat birds.’

  ‘She doesn’t mind just sitting there and having nothing, though, do you?’ said David Harris-Jones.

  ‘There’s one thing I would like, if you’ve got it,’ said Prue. ‘Bath Olivers and marmite.’

  They demolished their pigeons and Prue demolished her Bath Olivers and marmite.

  ‘Lettuce, Prue?’ said Reggie, passing round the green salad.

  ‘No thank you. It wouldn’t really go,’ said Prue.

  ‘Lettuce, Lettuce?’ said Reggie.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Lettuce.

  Reggie caught Linda’s eye.

  Elizabeth asked Jimmy to help her clear up.

  ‘Message received,’ he said. ‘Chin-wag time.’

  In the kitchen Elizabeth said: ‘I have to ask you. Will you give up your private army now you’re engaged?’

  “Fraid not, old girl,’ said Jimmy. ‘I’ve put Lettuce in picture. She approves. Grand girl, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Jimmy picked up the large cut-glass bowl containing the lemon mousse.

  ‘No oil-painting myself,’ he said.

  ‘It’s been over two years,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Do you really think your army will ever be needed?’

  ‘Hope not,’ said Jimmy. ‘Deterrent. Prevention better than cure.’

  They all enjoyed the lemon mousse, except for Prue.

  ‘It’s the texture,’ she said. ‘I’ve suddenly gone all silly over textures.’

  ‘You’re a sensible girl not to be embarrassed,’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘Prue is a lovely girl,’ said Reggie. ‘She’s not embarrassed. She doesn’t talk about garden furniture. She’s going to have a lovely baby.’

  ‘I tell you what I’d really like,’ said Prue. ‘Some more Bath Olivers and marmite.’

  They soon polished off the lemon mousse, and there was cheese to follow. Prue soon polished off the Bath Olivers and marmite, and there were Bath Olivers and marmite to follow.

  ‘Last time I came to this house,’ said David Harris-Jones, ‘I got drunk. I got blotto. I got arse-holed.’

  David Harris-Jones roared with laughter. Tom and Linda wanted to do the washing up. So did Jimmy and Lettuce.

  ‘Let Tom and Linda do it,’ said Reggie.

  When they had left the room, Reggie said: ‘They want to be alone for a few minutes to patch up their differences.’

  David Harris-Jones fell asleep, and Prue’s contractions began.

  ‘I think I’m starting,’ she said.

  They woke David Harris-Jones up and told him the news. He fainted.

  There was a loud crash of crockery from the kitchen, followed by the slamming of a door. Then the door slammed again, and a car drove off very fast.

  David Harris-Jones began to come round, Prue had another contraction, and the
doorbell rang.

  It was Tom.

  ‘Linda’s driven off in the car,’ he said.

  Reggie took Prue, David and Tom in his car. He dropped David and Prue at the maternity home and took Tom to his home.

  It was five past two when he got home.

  ‘I don’t dislike people,’ he said. ‘Just dinner parties.’

  Chapter 16

  Doc Morrissey arrived promptly at twelve on the Tuesday. He sat down with alacrity and back-ache.

  ‘What’s the trouble?’ said Reggie.

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘You ought to see an osteopath,’ said Reggie, offering him a cigar.

  ‘I shouldn’t smoke,’ said Doc Morrissey, accepting. ‘I’ve got some kind of a breathing problem, don’t know what it is.’

  Reggie felt embarrassed in Doc Morrissey’s presence. To the struggling medico, the three telephones, the cigars and the large desk must be vulgar signs of success and opulence.

  ‘Well, how are things with you, Doc?’ he asked with forced breeziness.

  ‘I got dismissed from the British Medical Association.’

  ‘Oh dear. What was it for?’

  ‘Gross professional incompetence.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘I got these terrible stomach pains. I’d rushed a mutton vindaloo at lunch-time and I put it down to indigestion.’

  ‘Treacherous chaps, mutton vindaloos.’

  ‘Well exactly. My sentiments entirely. I paid a visit to this character, and lo and behold, he’d got the same pains as me. “Indigestion,” I said, and I gave him the white pills. People like indigestion pills to be white, I find.’

  ‘And it wasn’t indigestion?’

  ‘Acute appendicitis.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘I realized the truth when I collapsed at evening surgery and my partner diagnosed that mine was acute appendicitis.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  Reggie leant forward persuasively.

  ‘I’ve got a vacancy for a manager at my Climthorpe branch,’ he said. ‘How would you like it?’

  Doc Morrissey stared at him in amazement.

  ‘Me? You’re offering me a job?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Doc Morrissey relit his cigar with trembling fingers.

  ‘I think you’d be the ideal man for the job,’ said Reggie.

  ‘But I’ve never managed a shop in my life.’

  ‘When you started out as a doctor, you’d never been a doctor.’

  ‘No. And look what happened.’

  ‘Healing was not your metier,’ said Reggie.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You were a square peg in a round hole.’

  ‘I felt that.’

  Reggie held his lighter out and relit Doc Morrissey’s cigar.

  ‘I didn’t get where I am today without knowing a square peg in a round hole when I . . . oh my God.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I used C.J.’s phrase.’

  Reggie was deeply shocked. Did it mean he was beginning to take his tycoonery seriously?

  ‘Sorry. I’m a bit shocked,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not surprised. What a terrible thing to happen.’

  ‘I didn’t get where I am today by using C.J.’s phrases.’

  ‘Absolutely not, Reggie.’

  ‘Where were we, Doc?’

  ‘I was being a square peg in a round hole.’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  Doc Morrissey abandoned the cigar. It had fractured and wasn’t drawing.

  ‘I’d like you to take the job, Doc.’

  ‘I’d like to take it, Reggie.’

  ‘Good. Let’s go and have a spot of lunch.’

  Reggie put an affectionate arm on Doc Morrissey’s shoulder and steered him towards the door.

  ‘I can’t eat much,’ said the stooping ex-diagnostician. ‘My stomach’s playing me up.’

  ‘You really ought to see a doctor,’ said Reggie.

  ‘I don’t trust them,’ said Doc Morrissey. ‘All they ever do is give you two aspirins and tell you they’ve got it worse.’

  The illuminated inn-sign of the Dissipated Kipper swung in the cold gusty wind high up on the Hog’s Back in the Surrey hills. Motorists scurrying home at sixty-five miles an hour caught a brief glimpse of a dandyish smoked herring with a paunch and a monocle holding a glass of whisky in his hand while placing his bet at the roulette table.

  Reggie swung carefully off the A.31 into the asphalted car park of the popular road house. His heart was beating fast as he stepped out of the night into the bright warmth of the bar.

  Models of a Spitfire, a Mosquito and a Lancaster stood on the wide window-sills. Aeroplane propellers hung on both brick chimney pieces and a third concealed the florid wrought iron grille above the bar. A fourth smaller propeller adorned the upper lip of the beefy landlord.

  ‘Pint of bitter, please,’ said Reggie.

  ‘Pint of bitter. Whacko,’ rumbled mine enormous host.

  ‘You’re ex-RAF, are you?’ said Reggie.

  ‘Got it in one,’ said the landlord. ‘Have you heard the one about the Irish kamikazi pilot, flew twenty-seven successful missions? Did you hear about the Irish Bill Haley band, two o’clock, seventeen o’clock, nine o’clock rock?’

  ‘Why is the pub called the Dissipated Kipper?’ said Reggie, deliberately handing the landlord a ten pound note.

  ‘Ah! Thereby hangs a tale. Thereby hangs a tale,’ said the landlord, counting out Reggie’s change. ‘Nobody knows. All I know is, there’s only one pub called the Dissipated Kipper, and this is it. Ask anyone from Dorking to Basingstoke where the Dissipated Kipper is, and they’ll say: “That’s Tiny Jefferson’s place on the Hog’s Back.” ’

  Suddenly Joan was there beside him kissing him and all thoughts of Tiny Jefferson receded.

  They sat in an alcove beside one of the brick chimney breasts. Joan winked shyly with her right eye and kissed him again.

  ‘This is nice,’ she said.

  ‘Yes . . . er . . . yes it is.’

  Reggie disengaged himself gently from the kiss.

  ‘Joan, I . . . er . . . I have a proposition to make,’ he said.

  ‘That sounds promising,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll give you fifty per cent more than you’re getting at the moment,’ he said.

  There was a brief silence.

  ‘What are we talking about?’ she said.

  ‘Money,’ he said. ‘I’m offering you a job.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  ‘Well what did you think . . . oh, I see. No, Joan, I . . . er . . . I’m asking you to be my secretary.’

  ‘Come on. Buy up or shove off, Farnham Rentals,’ yelled Tiny Jefferson to a group of young men laughing pleasantly at the bar.

  ‘How are things?’ said Reggie.

  ‘Pretty grim,’ said Joan. ‘My boss is a big man in ointment. I type letters about wonder cures for acne and blackheads.’

  Reggie put a sympathetic hand on her knee.

  ‘He’s also the fly in the ointment,’ said Joan. ‘He’s as randy as nobody’s business.’

  Reggie removed the sympathetic hand from her knee.

  ‘The Tony business hit me hard,’ she said. ‘I don’t seem to have much luck in marriage.’

  ‘I’d like to wring his neck,’ said Reggie.

  ‘Join the queue.’

  A large man with a ginger moustache, sitting in the alcove opposite, gave Reggie a smile of lecherous connivance.

  ‘I want to make one thing clear,’ said Reggie. ‘Oh God, I sound pompous. My offer of a job is purely professional. Whatever happened before mustn’t happen again.’

  ‘Nothing happened before.’

  ‘Whatever almost happened before mustn’t even almost happen again.’

  ‘I understand, Mr Perrin. You’re important now. You’ve got too much to risk losing it by flirting with a bit of stuff at the office.’

  ‘Well there’s no more to be said then,’ said Reggie.


  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Joan.

  Reggie looked her straight in the eyes.

  ‘I love Elizabeth,’ he said. ‘I can’t imagine her going off to have assignations with people from Godalming, so I don’t feel I should. If you think that my conditions will be too difficult

  ‘You mean, if I feel incapable of being in close proximity to you without having irresistible sexual desires . . .’

  Reggie laughed.

  ‘Same again?’ he said.

  ‘My turn,’ said Joan.

  ‘No, no,’ said Reggie. ‘I asked you here.’

  ‘I insist,’ said Joan.

  Reggie watched her as she walked to the bar.

  She turned to smile at him and he looked away.

  The man in the opposite alcove winked. Reggie thought about giving him a glacial stare, decided that would be intolerably priggish, and winked back.

  When Joan returned, they sat in silence for some moments.

  ‘Well?’ said Reggie at length.

  ‘I would have to make a condition as well,’ said Joan.

  ‘Fire away.’

  ‘When I walked to the bar just then, I felt you looking at me.’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘No looks, Mr Perrin. If I am not to be allowed a personal relationship, you will give me no lecherous glances, no furtive looks when I cross my legs, no helping hand that strays slightly when I put on my coat, no meaningful remarks about how I spend my weekend, nothing whatever that could be regarded as in any way sexual.’

  ‘I think that’s fair,’ said Reggie. ‘But in that case I must make another condition. Phase Three of our Social Contract. If I’m not to look at you crossing your legs, you mustn’t cross your legs. Nothing in any way provocative.’

  ‘I suppose that’s fair enough too,’ said Joan.

  ‘Do you think I ought to introduce the conditions into a written contract?’ said Reggie. ‘It might open a new chapter in industrial relations.’

  ‘Won’t it be a bit uncomfortable?’ she said. ‘Sitting there not touching each other and not looking at each other not crossing our legs.’

  ‘It’ll still be better than Miss Erith,’ said Reggie.

  ‘In that case I accept,’ said Joan.

  It was decided that she would start on the first Monday in February.

  ‘How are your children?’ he asked.

  ‘What children? I haven’t got any children.’

  ‘What? But you always used to have three children.’