by David Nobbs
So – teams on pitch, take your seats, check on potted biographies in programme – it wasn’t just Climthorpe that was threatened when Dangle’s appalling back pass led to Stafford’s first goal. It was the power of Reggie Perrin’s influence over events.
Should I pray to God, thought Reggie as a brilliant move made it 2-0 to Stafford in the seventeenth minute. How can I pray to God? I believe that life is a matter of chance. Dame Fortune is a perverse and wilful hag.
Or do I?
Is there – good pass – any such thing as – oh, well saved – Free Will?
Should I, rather than praying to a possibly hypothetical God, cry out, ‘Climthorpe, Climthorpe, CLIMTHORPE, Climthorpe!’ to a definitely non-hypothetical Climthorpe. Unless we’re all solipsists – well we can’t all be solipsists – if I’m a solipsist none of them exist – and it makes no difference – you’re rubbish, Fittock, whether you exist or not.
3-0 to Stafford? No. A good save from veteran custodian, Ted Rowntree.
Free will – true or false? Ted Rowntree’s save inevitable, no credit to him? Applause of crowd philosophically naïve?
Another wave of Stafford shirts. Rowntree out of position. Dangle makes amends with goal-line clearance.
Turning point?
A shot from Clench. Weak, and straight at the keeper, but at least it was a shot.
Turning point?
Green and white joy. FITTOCK from sixteen yards. 1-2. Good old Fittock.
Half-time. Everybody drained.
Outplayed. Lucky. But only one down.
As the second half began Reggie felt that no result would please him.
If they lost, he would be sad.
If they drew, it would be boring.
If they won, it would seem to be an affirmation of his unwanted influence.
Climthorpe getting on top slowly. Suddenly, two goals in a minute. PUNT, after fine work by Clench. Then tit for tat, CLENCH, put through by Punt. 68 minutes. 3-2. Uproar. Goodbye, existentialism. Farewell, logical positivism. Hello, football. Stafford in tatters. Should be four. Could be five. Might be six. It isn’t.
Stafford come back. 83rd minute. Great goal. 3-3. Nobody deserves to lose. Great players or fate’s playthings?
88th minute, six man move, Climthorpe inspired, FITTOCK scores. 4-3.
We can never know whether we are part of an ordered pattern or whether we are tumbleweed tossed by fate – and it makes no difference.
Mr Tefloe (Redditch) is adding on too much time for injury – and it could make a hell of a difference.
The final whistle. Joy unconfined. Reggie’s excitement deep and primeval. Happy faces. Tom beaming. Elizabeth laughing. Linda laughing. Even Mr Pelham looking pleased.
Shyly, feeling surplus to requirements, visiting the rowdy changing room, sweat, buttocks, bollocks, carbolic and champagne. Smile please.
Dinner at the Climthorpe Park Hotel. Holding on. Hanging tight. Drinking. Eating. Smiling. Laughing. Speeches. Reggie speaks. Audience laughs. Everything for the best in the best of all possible Climthorpes. Clench does a drunken dance and his hamstring goes.
‘Well done, Reggie,’ says the Chairman of the Climthorpe Chamber of Commerce.
It is time, thinks Reggie, for the bubble to burst.
April produced magical days, treacherous days, stormy days, but the bubble did not burst.
Chapter 21
Reggie carried Elizabeth’s suitcases and she carried her hand-luggage. The concrete walls of the short-term car park at London Airport were daubed with welcoming messages like ‘Wogs out’ and ‘Chelsea Shed’.
C.J. was waiting. He had already booked in his luggage. He hadn’t got where he was today without having already booked in his luggage.
Elizabeth went to the bookstall to find something for the plane. She didn’t want to have to talk to C.J.
Reggie and C.J. guarded the luggage. Above their heads the indicator board rattled with information about delays. Facing them, on a circular display rostrum, was a scarlet forklift truck.
‘I want to ask you to promise me something,’ said Reggie.
‘Ask away,’ said C.J. ‘If you don’t ask, you don’t get.’
‘Very true,’ said Reggie. ‘Elizabeth seems rather nervous about this trip. Will you look after her, cherish her, pay her as much attention as you can?’
‘I’ll try,’ said C.J.
They boarded at Gate Fourteen, and Reggie watched the Boeing 727 take off for Amsterdam.
It was Monday evening. They would be away four nights.
Tuesday
‘I am extremely sorry to hear that your supplies of edible furniture have not arrived. This is due to non-arrival of supplies,’ dictated Reggie.
He had spent the evening feeling vaguely lonely in the saloon bar of the Ode and Sonnet, and he had not slept well. Now he felt crumpled.
‘Surely that’s obvious, Mr Perrin?’ said Joan.
‘What’s obvious?’
‘That the supplies haven’t arrived due to non-arrival of supplies.’
‘Exactly. It’s obvious. It’s repetitive. It’s self-explanatory. It’s tautologous. It’s saying the same thing twice in different ways. Shall we continue?’
As he dictated he paced restlessly round his executive cage.
‘I am however astounded to hear that you have not received our new range of dentures for pets, which are proving so popular with bloody idiots who put little dog dentures in glasses of water beside kennels and even budgie dentures beside their silly little pets’ cages. I can only assume that the delivery of this range is having teething troubles. You aren’t taking it down, Joan.’
‘No, Mr Perrin.’
‘I know what you’re thinking. His wife’s away for one day and already he starts going berserk.’
‘You’re getting fed up again, aren’t you?’ said Joan.
Reggie flung himself into his swivel chair, and leant forward across his huge desk.
‘Success is a trap,’ he said.
‘Like failure,’ said Joan.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I won’t go berserk like I did before.’
‘You couldn’t,’ said Joan. ‘You’ve got too many people dependent on you.’
‘Absolutely. I couldn’t. I don’t want to. Cross your legs.’
‘We have an agreement, Mr Perrin.’
‘Agreements are made to be broken. Please, Joan. Just this once.’
‘Well, all right.’
Joan crossed her legs, revealing a shapely knee and the beginnings of a widening thigh.
‘Thank you.’
They went to the pub for lunch. They stood in a crowded corner, drinks lodged perilously on a narrow shelf, meagre portions of cottage pie in hand, elbows jostled by the Amalgamated Asbestos crowd.
‘How are things going with Tony?’ said Reggie.
‘They aren’t,’ said Joan. ‘He’s still frightened of being tied down.’
‘You need to make him jealous,’ said Reggie. ‘Make him think of you as highly desirable and sexy – which of course you are.’
‘You mean go out with someone else?’
‘Yes.’ Beer down crutch, bloody Asbestos apes. ‘Yes. We must find you some suitable man, somebody who wouldn’t go too far, of course. A married man would be ideal, wife away, loyal but lonely. A simple innocent dinner in some safe place. A few words in the right direction. Jealousy in the male breast. Bob’s your uncle.’
‘I know a nice little Armenian restaurant in Godalming,’ said Joan.
‘Very apt,’ said Reggie. ‘Very safe. Godalming is not an erogenous zone.’
Darkness had fallen over canals and ornately gabled houses, over hurdy-gurdies and city gates with swollen brick bellies, over huge pylons, vast docks and great motorway complexes.
Darkness had fallen over the breasts of fat black prostitutes hanging pendulously over window-sills in the red light district of Amsterdam, and over the dead tasteful open-plan living-rooms of Philips executives in the electric l
ight district of Eindhoven.
Darkness had fallen over diamond smugglers, Lutheran vergers, barmen in homosexual clubs, and Indonesian waiters with teeth like smoke-stained Mah Jongg tiles.
Darkness had fallen over the Amsterdam Crest Motel.
‘I have a confession to make,’ he said. ‘I think it may come as rather a shock.’
‘Confess away,’ she said.
‘When I invited you to Godalming, those papers that required sorting were a ruse. I had unsorted them deliberately.’
They were sitting over a nightcap in the Tulip Bar. The lights were shaped like tulips, and there were tulips on every table.
The background music was ‘Windmills of my Mind’.
‘Why don’t you say anything?’ he said.
‘I can’t think what to say,’ she said.
They had toured the city, deciding on the sort of area and property which might be suitable for Grot, and met several estate agents. They had lunched and dined with business colleagues. It had been a good day.
Now the tide of life had receded and they were grounded in the muddy reaches of evening.
‘Another apricot brandy?’ he said.
‘No, thank you.’
‘Sit with me while I have another parfait d’amour.’
‘For a few minutes.’
Darkness had fallen over Guildford and Haslemere and the broken sandstone country of the Surrey hills.
Darkness had fallen over the Godalming Armenian Restaurant.
He drove her home. The moon began to rise, and he felt romantic stirrings.
‘Shall I tell Tony we’ve been out together or will you?’ she said.
Wednesday
On his way to the station, Reggie thought of Elizabeth and C.J.
Perhaps C.J. would be a different kettle of fish on the continent. On the dreariest of cross-channel ferries Reggie had seen the staidest of men begin to kick over the traces before the ship had even cleared Dover jetty. And Amsterdam was a far cry from Godalming.
Godalming! A horrible certainty gripped Reggie as the train lurched across the points outside Raynes Park.
He looked out dismally through windows encrusted with grime.
He was suffering from a fate worse than death. He was being cuckolded by C.J.
No! It was impossible! It was against nature.
Yet the images persisted.
Who could have told, seeing the successful businessman gazing out at Clapham Junction Station, that he was seeing C.J. and Elizabeth, dancing cheek to cheek, transferring a tulip from one mouth to the other, in a windmill transformed into an elegant night-club?
He called in on Tony’s office shortly after ten and said, ‘Just popped in to see if you want the heating back on.’
The heating had automatically gone off on the last day of April, and the weather had promptly turned bitterly cold.
‘I wouldn’t mind,’ said Tony.
‘Good. Good.’
Suddenly Reggie doubled up and clutched his stomach in agony.
‘Ouch! O’oooh!’ he groaned.
‘Are you all right?’ said Tony, vaguely alarmed.
‘Indigestion,’ said Reggie. ‘It must be those pike balls I had with Joan in the Armenian restaurant in Godalming.’
‘Really?’
Reggie’s simulated attack passed, and he stood upright again.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, I . . . er . . . I took Joan out. Yes.’
‘Great,’ said Tony.
‘Well, Joan,’ he said. ‘I told Tony.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Great.’
‘Just great?’
‘Yes.’
‘Wonderful.’
‘Armenian restaurants in Godalming are too public,’ said Reggie. ‘We ought to go somewhere private.’
‘Such as?’
‘Come home to dinner tonight, Joan. All strictly above board. We are adults, after all.’
Reggie led Joan through the quiet streets of the Poets’ Estate, where never an inquisitive face is seen, although they are there all right.
He poured them a drink and found some beef bourguignon in the deep freeze. He put the oven on at a low heat and opened a bottle of claret.
‘I bet Tony’s eating his heart out at this moment,’ he said.
‘Imagining all sorts of dreadful goings on.’
‘Not knowing what respectable, controlled adults we are.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ said Joan, and she kissed him on the lips.
‘Don’t,’ said Reggie.
She lay back on the settee and kicked her shoes off.
‘Remember the last time I was here?’ she said.
Reggie smiled.
‘I’m hardly likely to forget it,’ he said. ‘It’s not every day a beautiful girl comes to my house and I take her upstairs to bed and half my family comes round and she has to crawl out through the garden.’
He flung open the french windows and breathed in the cool, unsullied air of early May. Everywhere there were birds singing.
Ponsonby came in from the garden, saw that Reggie had company, and left in a huff.
‘Ponsonby’s jealous, anyway,’ he said.
‘You were relieved when all those people came round,’ said Joan, lying back still further and raising her knees so that her dress slid up her legs.
‘I wasn’t,’ said Reggie. ‘I most certainly was not.’
‘You were worried that you wouldn’t be able to go through with it.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Reggie. ‘Of course I wasn’t.’
‘If I said to you now “Come upstairs”, you’d be terrified.’
‘Of course I wouldn’t. How can you say a thing like that? I’d be up those stairs before you could say “I’m all right, Jack Robinson”.’
Joan got up off the settee and walked slowly towards him.
‘Come on then,’ she said.
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘You said you’d be up there like a shot.’
‘Ah! Yes! That was a hypothetical example. There’s Elizabeth and there’s Tony and . . . er . . . ooh!’
Further words were impossible. Joan kissed him gently, slowly on the mouth. He had a vision of Elizabeth kissing C.J. gently, slowly on the mouth in an attic behind an ornate gable in the Grand Place in Brussels.
‘Come on then,’ he said.
They went slowly up the stairs, kissing as they did so.
They entered the spare bedroom. Reggie turned the picture of the Queen to the wall.
‘Sorry, your Majesty,’ he said.
They kissed again.
‘No buttons on this dress,’ said Reggie.
‘No.’
‘Just a zip. Easier to undo really.’
‘Much easier.’
‘Much improved lately, British zips. They went through a sticky patch, but . . . er . . . ’
They heard a car pull to a halt.
They froze.
‘It can’t be here,’ said Reggie. ‘Lightning never strikes twice in the same . . .’
‘Hello!’ cried Linda cheerfully.
‘Hells bells. I left the french windows open,’ whispered Reggie.
‘Just coming,’ he called out.
‘Stay here,’ he whispered to Joan. ‘I’ll get rid of them.’
He dressed hurriedly, examined himself for traces of lipstick and disorder, and hastened downstairs.
Tom and Linda stood in the living-room, smiling.
‘Hello! What a surprise,’ he said. ‘I was just changing out of my office clobber.’
‘But you’re still in your office clobber,’ said Tom.
‘I mean I was just going to change out of it,’ said Reggie. ‘Then you came, just as I was starting, and I thought, “Quicker not to change out of it really.” Like a quick drink before you go?’
‘Yes. Thanks,’ said Tom.
‘We’ve got a baby-sitter,’ said Linda. ‘And we thought we’d see if you felt like comin
g out to dinner. We rang before we set off, but you weren’t in.’
Tom had a dry sherry and Linda plumped for a Cinzano bianco.
‘We’re going to this marvellous new Armenian restaurant in Godalming,’ said Linda. ‘We’ve booked provisionally for three.’
‘It’s marvellous, according to the Smythe-Emberrys,’ said Tom.
‘I’m sure it is,’ said Reggie. ‘I’m sure it’s the best Armenian restaurant in Godalming, but I happen to dislike Armenian food.’
‘When have you ever had Armenian food, dad?’ said Linda.
‘Yesterday.’
‘Yesterday? Where?’
Oh God. Here we go.
‘At the Armenian restaurant in Climthorpe.’
‘I didn’t know there was an Armenian restaurant in Climthorpe,’ said Linda.
‘It opened last week,’ said Reggie.
‘We must try it,’ said Tom.
‘Let’s go tonight,’ said Linda. ‘Godalming’s* an awful long way.’
‘You’ve booked there,’ said Reggie.
‘We can cancel,’ said Linda.
‘It’s full tonight,’ said Reggie.
‘How do you know?’ said Linda.
‘I tried to book,’ said Reggie.
‘But I thought you didn’t like Armenian food,’ said Tom.
Oh God.
‘Not for me. Someone else asked me to book,’ said Reggie.
‘We’ll go next week when mum’s back,’ said Linda.
‘It’s closing down on Saturday,’ said Reggie.
‘Closing already? Why?’ said Linda.
‘It’s a flop,’ said Reggie.
‘But you said it was full tonight,’ said Tom.
Oh God.
‘They’ve got a party of Armenian nuns tonight,’ said Reggie.
‘Where on earth are they from?’ said Linda.
‘Armenia,’ said Reggie.
‘All the way from Armenia to eat in a bad restaurant in Climthorpe?’ said Tom.
Reggie topped up their glasses like an automaton, glancing involuntarily at the ceiling as he did so.
‘They’re from the Armenian monastery at Uxbridge,’ he said.
‘I didn’t know there was an Armenian monastery at Uxbridge,’ said Tom.
Oh God.
‘It’s just opened,’ said Reggie.
‘I’d have thought they’d be guaranteed a steady trade, then,’ said Linda.
‘The nuns have to take a vow only to eat in a restaurant once a year,’ said Reggie.
