by David Nobbs
They walked back to the end of the cliffs and struggled off the beach on to the cliff path.
They set off along the path towards the west. Behind them the eastern sky began to pale.
Reggie squeezed Elizabeth’s hand.
‘We’ll see them some time, somehow,’ he said. ‘Tom, Linda, the children, Jimmy. Even Mark. We’ll find a way.’
The path climbed steeply. Every few minutes they paused to get their breath back and transfer their cases from one hand to the other.
‘We need a name,’ said Reggie.
‘Mr and Mrs Cliff,’ said Elizabeth.
‘Mr and Mrs Sunrise,’ said Reggie.
‘Mr and Mrs Oliver Cromwell,’ said Elizabeth.
‘Mr and Mrs Nathaniel Gutbucket,’ said Reggie.
‘Names don’t matter,’ said Elizabeth.
‘That’s why they’re so difficult to choose,’ said Reggie.
A glorious sunrise sparkled in the east, and sent traces of glowing light across the sea far below them. It was a magnificent morning for starting a new life.
The path wound up through gorse and scrub. The blackberries were finished.
Far below them a lone cormorant sped low over the waves.
They skirted a pit, roped off for fear of falls.
‘If we find a suitable name in that pit, we’ll be happy ever after,’ said Reggie.
‘I’m frightened,’ said Elizabeth.
They gazed down into the pit.
‘Mr and Mrs Tin-Can,’ said Elizabeth.
‘Mr and Mrs Dead-Thrush,’ said Reggie.
‘Mr and Mrs Morning-Dew,’ said Elizabeth.
‘Mr and Mrs Rabbit-Droppings,’ said Reggie.
‘Mr and Mrs Gossamer,’ said Elizabeth.
They walked on up the path and came to a little open space where a seat had been provided by a benevolent council.
‘Shall we rest a moment, Mrs Gossamer?’ he said.
‘Why not, Mr Gossamer?’ said she.
They sat and rested, watching the day gather strength. Far away to sea a little coaster was making too much smoke.
Beside them was a telescope, which the council’s telescope locker-up had forgotten to lock for the winter, and behind them a hedge marked the edge of a field of rape.
From the hedge there slowly emerged an old tramp, dressed in filthy rags, his face smeared in grime.
The tramp shambled towards them.
‘10p for a cup of tea, guv’nor,’ he said.
Reggie fished out a l0p piece. There was something vaguely familiar about the tramp which he couldn’t place.
‘I didn’t get where I am today without asking for l0p for a cup of tea,’ said the tramp.
He pointed towards the beach, indicated the telescope with his eyes and set off slowly on his shambling way.
Elizabeth handed Reggie a l0p piece. He inserted it in the slot and looked down at the beach through the telescope.
Already, there were thirty-nine sets of clothes side by side on Chesil Bank.
The Better World
of Reginald Perrin
To my mother
1 The Plan
He awoke suddenly, and for a few moments he didn’t know who he was.
Then he remembered.
He was Reginald Iolanthe Perrin and he was fifty years of age.
Beside him his lovely wife Elizabeth was sleeping peacefully.
It took him a few moments longer to realize where he was.
He was in room number two at the George Hotel in Netherton St Ambrose in the county of Dorset. The pale light of a late October morning was filtering through the bright yellow patterned curtains on to the bright green patterned wallpaper and the bright red patterned carpet.
On a small round table by the window stood the wherewithal for making tea and coffee.
Soon hotels would expect you to print your own morning newspaper.
He closed his eyes, but the decor faded only slowly.
Suddenly he sat bolt upright. He wasn’t Reginald Iolanthe Perrin at all. He was Arthur Isambard Gossamer, and it was the lovely Jennifer Gossamer who was sleeping so peacefully beside him.
It was still late in the month of October, and he was still fifty years of age.
Three days ago they had left their old clothes on the pebbles of Chesil Bank and set off in disguise towards a new life.
Wait a minute. He was Reginald Iolanthe Perrin, former senior sales executive at Sunshine Desserts. He had caught the eight-sixteen every weekday morning for twenty-five years. He had given the best years of his life to puddings. How had he come to be wandering the world disguised as Arthur Isambard Gossamer?
Perhaps it was all a dream.
Perhaps he was a dream.
He stepped out of bed carefully, not wishing to wake his wife, whether she was called Elizabeth or Jennifer, whether she was part of a dream or not. He tiptoed across the room, and drew back the curtains gently. There was nothing there. Just a white wall of absolute blankness.
‘Oh my God,’ he said.
‘What is it?’ said his wife sleepily.
‘There’s nothing. There’s nothing outside the window at all.’
‘It’s fog, you fool. They forecast it.’
A double-decker bus edged slowly past the hotel, its outline faintly visible in the thick autumn fog, the passengers wraiths. A wave of relief swept over Reggie.
‘We really do exist,’ he said.
‘We can go where we like and be whoever we like,’ said Reggie as they finished their breakfast alone in the autumnal dining room.
‘The world is our oyster, as C.J. would say,’ said Elizabeth.
‘Yes, I’m afraid he probably would,’ said Reggie.
He smiled at the memory of his former boss, who had also left his clothes on Chesil Bank and set off for a new life, dressed as a tramp. Reggie wondered how he was faring on this raw October morning.
There was silence save for the hissing of the gas fire and the crunching of toast by middle-aged teeth. There were hunting scenes on their table mats.
‘We’re free from the grinding wheels of commerce. We’re free to shake off the bonds of an acquisitive society,’ said Reggie.
‘Yes.’
Reggie’s coffee spilt over the scarlet coat of the Master of Foxhounds. He rubbed it around the mat, spreading the thin grey liquid over man and hound alike.
He gave a curious half-smile. For a moment he looked like the Mona Lisa’s brother.
‘Let’s go home,’ he said. ‘Let’s become Mr and Mrs Perrin again. We’ll sell the house. We’ll sell Grot. We’ll sell the shops, the prime sites, the juggernauts. Then, when we’re rich, we’ll really be free to shake off the bonds of an acquisitive society.’
The sun shone out of a cloudless early December sky. The Mediterranean was deep blue. Seven cats lurked, waiting for crumbs.
They were breakfasting on the terrace of their hotel in Crete. They had sold the house in Coleridge Close. They had sold Grot. They had sold the prime sites, the juggernauts. They had set off on a world tour. Even allowing for the depredations of Capital Gains Tax, they were rich.
Below them a ragged olive grove fell stonily towards a tiny private beach. Across the bay, the stern masculine mountains wrapped their secrets firmly to their dark breasts.
The tea came in tea-bags which you made in the cup. The instant coffee came in individual sachets.
The cats waited.
Reggie sighed.
‘Happy?’ said Elizabeth.
‘Wonderfully happy,’ said Reggie, tugging at the lid of his individual jar of apricot jam.
‘I’m glad,’ said Elizabeth.
‘I’m glad you’re glad,’ said Reggie, ‘It makes me very happy, darling, to know that you’re glad I’m happy.’
‘I’m glad,’ said Elizabeth.
An old woman dressed in black rode her donkey through the olive grove. Behind her trailed a mangy goat. She did not look at the gleaming white hotel. Nor did t
he mangy goat.
Reggie removed the tea-bag from his cup and placed the sodden lump in his saucer. It oozed a thick acrid liquid. When he lifted his cup, drops spilt on his fawn holiday trousers and his buff short-sleeved holiday shirt.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘This is sheer bliss.’
He sighed.
The cats waited.
‘If you’re so happy, why do you keep sighing?’ said Elizabeth.
‘Sheer bliss isn’t enough,’ he said.
‘Did you mean what you said yesterday?’ said Elizabeth.
Reggie sipped his beer slowly. They were sitting on the terrace of the tourist pavilion at Phaetos.
‘That sheer bliss isn’t enough?’ he said. ‘Oh, yes.’
Below them, the fertile Messara Plain stretched to the foot of Mount Dhikti and the Lasithi Range.
They were weary after exploring the remains of the Minoan palaces.
‘Is it guilt?’ said Elizabeth.
‘I expect so,’ said Reggie glumly. ‘It usually is. Guilt, the curse of the middle classes.’
Far away, cow bells jingled.
A robin hopped on to a nearby table.
More than fifteen hundred years before Christ, the unique, intricate and artistically joyous civilization of the Minoans had flourished here. Now, far overhead, a plane laid a thin vapour trail across the clear blue sky, like planes the world over.
‘Summer in England, winters in Crete and Gozo, it isn’t for me,’ said Reggie.
Eighteen French tourists with blue guide books and painful feet invaded the winter peace of the tourist pavilion.
‘There must be something that it’s absolutely right for me to do next,’ said Reggie.
The French tourists sat noisily all about them. They had bought oranges and postcards.
Far above, two vultures waited.
For what?
The French tourists sucked their oranges.
The cow bells tinkled.
A scooter roared briefly, then spluttered into silence.
‘It’s simply this,’ said Reggie. ‘I’m just an ordinary bloke, old Goofy Perrin from Ruttingstagg College. I’m no different from anyone else who walked out on his job, faked suicide, started a new life, returned home in disguise and remarried his wife, opened a shop selling goods that were guaranteed useless, to his amazement succeeded, walked out again, faked another suicide and started another new life.’
‘But no one else has done that,’ said Elizabeth.
‘Exactly,’ said Reggie. ‘So there must have been some purpose behind it.’
The bones of ten red mullet were eloquent evidence of their greed. In the wine bottle only a few drips of retsina remained. In the salad bowl, one piece of cucumber floated bravely in the succulent dark-green olive oil of Greece.
Elizabeth smiled at Reggie.
Reggie smiled at Elizabeth.
‘This is the life,’ said Elizabeth.
‘That’s just it,’ said Reggie. ‘It isn’t the life at all.’
He clasped Elizabeth’s right hand, firmly yet tenderly.
‘I want a home again,’ he said.
She smiled at him.
‘Oh so do I,’ she said.
‘Then I can start on my plans,’ said Reggie.
A spontaneous outbreak of singing began. They smiled and clapped.
When they had entered the restaurant, they had bought twenty plates, to break when the spontaneous singing began. They broke them now. The plates were English. The Cretans found that they broke more easily than other plates, and imported them in bulk.
‘There are still some things we British do best,’ mouthed Reggie across the hubbub.
Elizabeth grinned.
The singing and dancing and breaking of plates ended as suddenly as they had begun.
‘What plans?’ said Elizabeth.
‘I don’t know,’ said Reggie.
On their first day back in London Reggie discovered what their plans were.
They were staying in a hotel, tourists in their own town. It was eleven days before Christmas and tawdry angels hung listlessly over the Oxford Street crowds. Elizabeth had gone to buy shoes. It was an afternoon of raw mist and intermittent drizzle, eminently suited to the purchase of footwear.
It was three minutes to two when Reggie entered the bank where the fateful revelation was to come to him.
There were queues of equal length at the windows of Mr F. R. Bostock and Miss J. A. Purves. Reggie didn’t join the queue of Miss J. A. Purves, who was moderately attractive. Looking at the breasts of bank clerks was a thing of the past, and so he chose the queue of Mr F. R. Bostock, who was moderately unattractive.
Rarely can virtue have been so instantly rewarded. At that very moment Miss J. A. Purves closed her window and set off, did Reggie but know it, to have a late lunch with her friend from the Halifax Building Society, Mr E. D. Renfrew (withdrawals).
A large, florid man moved angrily over from Miss Purves’s window and stood in front of Reggie.
The man behind Reggie, a small, leathery man with a spectacularly broken nose, leant forward and prodded the florid man in the back.
The florid man turned and glared at Reggie.
‘What’s the big idea?’ he said.
‘It wasn’t me,’ said Reggie.
‘This man was ‘ere before you,’ said the small, leathery man with the broken nose.
‘I have been waiting twenty minutes,’ said the florid man, with the careful enunciation that follows a large liquid lunch, ‘and I’m in a tearing hurry.’
‘Listen mush, that man was before you,’ said the broken nose.
‘Thank you, but it’s quite all right,’ said Reggie, turning towards him.
‘What did you say?’ said the large, florid man slowly.
‘I said, “Thank you, but it’s quite all right”,’ said Reggie, whirling round to face him.
‘Not you. Him,’ said the florid man, pointing dismissively at the leathery man.
‘I said, “That man was before you”,’ said the leathery man.
‘Nobody orders me around,’ said the florid man.
‘What did you say?’ said the broken nose.
‘It honestly is quite all right,’ said Reggie, turning first to one, then the other, smiling desperately. ‘I’m in no particular hurry.’
‘I said, “Nobody orders me around”,’ said the florid man. ‘So kindly mind your own business.’
The queue shuffled forward towards Mr F. R. Bostock’s window, but the argument continued.
‘Ah, but it is my business, innit?’ said the broken nose. ‘This gentleman ‘ere ‘as waited just as long as what you have, and then, lo and behold, you barge in in front of him, you great fat pig.’
‘Please, it’s all right,’ said Reggie. ‘It’s raining outside, so why hurry?’
‘What did you say?’ said the florid man with icy anger.
Reggie swung round to face him.
‘I said, “It’s raining outside, so why hurry?” ’ he said.
‘Not you. You keep out of this,’ said the florid man.
‘Next,’ said Mr F. R. Bostock, who now had an empty window.
‘Thank you for standing up for me,’ said Reggie to the broken nose. ‘I’m very grateful, but let’s forget it.’
‘I won’t bleeding well forget it,’ said the broken nose. ‘If you won’t stand up for yourself, I will.’
‘You called me a fat pig,’ said the large, florid man.
‘Come on, come on, who’s next?’ said Mr F. R. Bostock.
‘I do not like being called a fat pig and I’ll ask you to kindly keep your hideous broken nose out of my business,’ said the large man, who was growing steadily more florid.
The small man, who had no comparable chance of growing steadily more leathery, grabbed hold of Reggie and used him as a screen against the florid man.
‘Oh, it’s aspersions on my wonky hooter now, is it?’ he said, prodding the florid man with Reggie. ‘It�
��s down to personal abuse, is it? Well sod off, you fat drunken pig.’
‘You started it. You called me a fat pig,’ said the florid man, prodding Reggie to emphasize his point.
‘You are a fat pig,’ said the broken nose, thumping Reggie’s back.
‘Please,’ said Reggie, shaking himself clear of the two men.
‘Will somebody come and get served?’ said Mr F. R. Bostock.
‘If you’re in a tearing hurry, do go ahead,’ said Reggie, to the florid man.
‘I’m not in such a hurry that I’ll allow a pipsqueak short-house with a nose as bent as West End Lane to call me a fat drunken pig and then accuse me of using personal insults,’ said the florid man.
‘You did,’ said the broken nose. ‘A broken nose, that’s a personal disability, allied to your squints and your ‘are-lips. Being a fat drunken pig, that’s your bleeding character, innit? That’s having too many double brandies down the bleeding golf club.’
‘Please, gentlemen,’ said Reggie.
‘Sling your hook, you,’ said the broken nose. ‘My quarrel’s with alcoholics anonymous here.’
‘Come outside and repeat that,’ said the florid man.
‘With pleasure,’ said the broken nose.
Reggie, who had been feeling more and more like a United Nations Peace Keeping Force, suddenly stopped whirling dizzily about. He smiled broadly.
Thank you, gentlemen,’ he said.
He shook them both warmly by the hand.
Thank you once again,’ he said.
They stared at him in astonishment, their quarrel momentarily forgotten.
‘Please,’ pleaded Mr F. R. Bostock. ‘Will somebody come and get served.’
‘Shut up,’ said Reggie.
He walked briskly out of the bank. He knew now what he had to do.
He hummed gaily as he walked through the Oxford Street drizzle towards the shoe shop.
Then he remembered that he’d forgotten to draw out any money.
He returned to the bank and joined the back of Mr F. R. Bostock’s queue.
Reggie and Elizabeth just had time for a corned beef sandwich and a drink before closing time. The big-eared landlord opined that the weather was bad for trade. It was the worst pre-Christmas trade since he’d moved from the Plough at Didcot.
They sat in the corner by the grimy window. Elizabeth showed Reggie her new shoes. In vain. He was far, far away, in the land of his plans. But how could he tell Elizabeth? How could he persuade her to spend the rest of her life in the way he wanted? Not here. Not in this inhospitable hostelry. Tonight, in an intimate restaurant, over the last of an excellent burgundy.
