The Reginald Perrin Omnibus (3 page)

He didn’t actually solve the clues in that time, of course. In the spaces of the crossword he wrote: ‘My name is Reginald Iolanthe Perrin. My mother couldn’t appear in our local Gilbert and Sullivan Society production of
Iolanthe
, because I was on the way, so they named me after it instead. I’m glad it wasn’t
The Pirates of Penzance.’

He put the paper away in his briefcase, and said to the compartment, ‘Very easy today.’

They arrived at Waterloo Station eleven minutes late. The loudspeaker announcement blamed ‘reaction to rolling stock shortages at Nine Elms’. The slightly fat girl left the compartment first. The upholstery had made little red lines on the back of her thighs.

The computer decided that the three most popular ice cream flavours were book-ends, West Germany and pumice stone. This was found to be due to an electrical fault, the cards were rapidly checked by hand, and this time the three most popular flavours were found to be mango delight, cumquat surprise, and strawberry and lychee ripple.

Reggie held a meeting of the exotic ices team in his office at ten-thirty. Tony Webster wore a double-breasted grey suit with a discreetly floral shirt and matching tie. His clothes were modern without being too modern. Esther Pigeon wore an orange sleeveless blouse and a green maxi-skirt with long side vents. Morris Coates from the advertising agency wore flared green corduroy trousers, a purple shirt, a huge white tie, a brown suede jacket and black boots.

‘What is this?’ said Reggie. ‘A fashion show?’

David Harris-Jones telephoned at ten thirty-five to say that he was ill in bed with stomach trouble, the result of eating forty-three ice creams.

Joan provided coffee. Reggie explained that there would be trial sales campaigns of the three flavours in two areas – Hertfordshire and East Lancashire. David Harris-Jones would be in control of Hertfordshire and Tony Webster of East Lancashire, with Reggie controlling the whole operation.

‘Great,’ said Tony Webster.

Esther Pigeon gave them the results of her survey. 73% of housewives in East Lancashire and 81% in Hertfordshire had expressed interest in the concept of exotic ice creams. Only 8% in Hertfordshire and 14% in East Lancashire had expressed positive hostility, while 5% had expressed latent hostility. In Hertfordshire 96.3% of the 20% who formed 50% of consumer spending potential were in favour. Among the unemployed only 0.1% were in favour. 0.6% had told her where they could put the exotic ice creams.

‘What does all this mean in laymen’s terms?’ said Reggie.

‘This would be regarded as a reasonably satisfactory basis for introducing the product in the canvassed areas,’ said Esther Pigeon.

The sun was streaming in on to the dark green filing cabinets, and Reggie watched the bits of dust that were floating around in its rays. He could feel his shivering again, like a subdued shuddering from his engine room. Suddenly he realized that Esther Pigeon was talking.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I missed that. I was looking at the rays of dust in the sun. They’re rather pretty.’

There was a pause. Morris Coates flicked cigarette ash on to the floor.

‘I was saying that there were interesting variations from town to town,’ said Esther Pigeon, who had huggable knees but an indeterminate face, and was usually ignored by 92.7% of the men on the Bakerloo Line. ‘There was a lot of interest in Hitchin and Hertford, but Welwyn Garden City was positively lukewarm.’

‘Hitchin has a very nice church,’ said Reggie. It slipped out before he could stop it. Everyone stared at him. He was sweating profusely.

‘It’s very hot in here,’ he said. ‘Take your jackets off if you want to.’

The men took their jackets off and rolled up their sleeves. Reggie had the hairiest forearms, followed by Esther Pigeon.

He was very conscious of his grubby white shirt. The sartorial revolution had passed him by. He resented these well-dressed young men. He resented Esther Pigeon, whose vital statistics were 36-32-38. He resented Tony Webster who sat quietly, confident yet not too confident, content to wait for his inevitable promotion. He resented the film of skin which was spreading across their forgotten coffees.

They turned to the question of advertising.

‘I was just thinking, off the top of the head, beautiful girl,’ said Morris Coates. ‘Yoga position, which let’s face it can be a pretty sexy position, something like, I’m not a writer, I find it much easier to meditate – with a cumquat surprise ice cream – one of the new range of exotic ice creams from Sunshine.’

‘Ludicrous,’ said Reggie.

Morris Coates flushed.

‘I’m just exploring angles,’ he said. ‘We’ll have a whole team on this. I’m just sounding things out.’

It wasn’t any use being angry with Morris Coates. It wasn’t his fault. Somebody had to man the third-rate advertising agencies. If it wasn’t him, it would be somebody else.

‘What about sex?’ said Morris Coates.

‘What about something like, off the top of the head, I like to stroke my nipple with a strawberry and lychee ripple,’ said Reggie.

Morris Coates turned red. Esther Pigeon examined her finger nails. Tony Webster smiled faintly.

‘All right, fair enough, sex is a bum steer,’ said Morris Coates. ‘Perhaps we just go for something plain and factual, with a good up-beat picture. But then you’re up against the fact that an ice cream carton
per se
doesn’t look up-beat. Just thinking aloud. Sorry.’

‘Well I’ll be interested to see what you come up with,’ said Reggie.

‘Incidentally,’ said Morris Coates, ‘is the concept of a ripple, in the ice cream sense of the word, fully understood by the public?’

‘In the Forest of Dean, in 1967, 97.3% of housewives understood the concept of a ripple in the ice cream sense of the word,’ said Esther Pigeon.

‘Does that answer your question?’ said Reggie.

‘Yes. Fine,’ said Morris Coates.

Reggie stood up. The sweat was pouring off him. His pants had stuck to his trousers. He must get rid of them before he said something terrible.

To his relief they all stood up.

‘Well anyway we’ll expect something from you soon, Morris,’ he said. They shook hands. He avoided Morris’s eyes. ‘Fine. We’ll be in touch,’ he said.

He shook hands with Esther Pigeon.

‘Well, thank you again, Miss Pigeon,’ he said, avoiding her eye. ‘That was a very comprehensive and helpful report.’

‘This is a potential break-through in the field of quality desserts,’ said Esther Pigeon.

When Morris Coates and Esther Pigeon had gone, Tony Webster said, ‘I must say how much I admired the way you handled Morris and his third-rate ideas.’

Reggie looked into Tony’s eyes, searching for hints of sarcasm or sincerity. Tony’s eyes looked back, blue, bright, cold, with no hint of anything whatsoever.

Reggie couldn’t bear the thought of going to the Feathers for lunch. He must get away. He must be able to breathe.

It was very hot and sticky. He walked across Waterloo Bridge. It was low tide. A barge was chugging slowly upstream. In the Strand he saw a collision between two cars driven by driving instructors. Both men had sunburnt left arms.

Reggie realized that he was hungry. He went into an Italian restaurant and sat down at a table near the door. On the wall opposite him there was a huge photograph of Florence.

The waiter slid up to his table as if on castors and smiled with all the vivacity of sunny Italy. He was wearing a blue-striped jersey. Everything irritated Reggie, the long menu with its English translations, the chianti flasks hanging from the ceiling, the smiling waiter, sautéed in smug servility.

‘Ravioli,’ he said.

‘Yes sir. And to follow? We have excellent sole today.’

‘Ravioli.’

‘No main course, sir?’

‘Yes. Ravioli. I want ravioli followed by ravioli. I like ravioli.’

The waiter slid off towards the kitchens. The restaurant was filling up rapidly. Soon Reggie’s ravioli arrived. It was excellent.

A couple in their mid-thirties joined him at his table. He finished his ravioli. The waiter took it away and brought his ravioli. The couple looked at it with well-bred surprise.

The second plate of ravioli didn’t taste as good as the first, but Reggie ploughed on gamely. He felt that their table was much too small, and all the tables were too close together. He came out in a prickly sweat. The couple must be staring straight into his revolting, champing jaws.

They were clearly in love, and they talked animatedly about their many interesting friends. Reggie wanted to tell them that he too had an attractive wife, and two fully grown children, one of whom had herself given birth, in her turn, to two more children. He wanted to tell them that he had friends too, even though he rarely saw them these days. He wanted to tell them that his own life had not been without its moments of tenderness, that he was not always a solitary muncher at the world’s crowded tables.

Their heads dipped towards the River Arno as they ate their minestrone. Reggie finished his second plate of ravioli. The waiter slid complacently up to the table with the sweet trolley.

‘Ravioli, please,’ said Reggie.

The waiter goggled at him.

‘More ravioli, sir?’

‘It’s very good. Quite superb.’

‘Ravioli, sir, is not a sweet. Try zabaglione, sir. Is a sweet.’

‘Look, I want ravioli. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Reggie glared defiantly at the happy couple. He caressed one of their feet under the table with his shoe. The man put his arm round the woman’s waist and squeezed it. Reggie drew his shoe tenderly up a leg. The woman held the man’s hand and squeezed it.

Their main course arrived. Reggie watched them eating, their jaws moving rhythmically, and he felt that he never wanted to eat anything again.

His third plate of ravioli arrived. He ate it slowly, grimly, forcing it down.

Every now and then he touched the happy couple’s legs with his feet. This made them increasingly tender towards each other, and their increasing tenderness made Reggie increasingly miserable.

He shovelled two more envelopes of ravioli into his mouth and chewed desperately. Then he kicked out viciously with his foot. The happy man gave an exclamation of pain, and a mouthful of half-chewed stuffed marrow fell onto the table.

During the afternoon the merciless sun crept round the windows of Reggie’s office. It shone on Joan Greengross’s thin arms, which were sunburnt except for the vaccination mark. It mocked the dark green filing cabinets, the sales graphs, the eight postcards from Shanklin (IOW), the picture of the Hong Kong waterfront which illustrated May and June on the Chinese calendar.

Everything was normal, yet nothing was normal. There he was, dictating away, apparently in full command of himself, and yet everything was different. There was no longer anything to prevent his doing the most outrageous things. There was nothing to stop him holding a ceilidh in the Dispatch Department. Yet he didn’t. Very much the reverse.

He felt an impulse to go down to C.J.’s office, walk up to C.J.’s desk, and expose himself. One pull on his zip, and, hey presto, a life’s work undone. That was power.

‘Are you all right?’ said Joan.

‘Of course I am. Why?’

‘We’re in the middle of a letter, and you haven’t spoken for ten minutes.’

He felt he owed her an explanation.

‘Sorry. I’m rather full of ravioli,’ he said.

He finished the letter. Joan was looking a little alarmed.

‘One more letter,’ he said. ‘To the Traffic Manager, British Rail, Southern Region. Dear Sir, Every morning my train, which is due at Waterloo at eight fifty-eight, is exactly eleven minutes late. This is infuriating. This morning, for reasons which I need not go into here, I caught a later train, which was due in at nine twenty-eight. This train was also exactly eleven minutes late. Why don’t you re-time your trains to arrive eleven minutes later? They would then be on time every morning. Yours faithfully, Reginald I. Perrin.’

Reggie had four whiskies at the Feathers. Davina stood very close to him. Owen Lewis from Crumbles told three dirty stories. Reggie went to the ‘gents’ and before he had started Tony Webster came in and stood at the next urinal. There was a slot machine on which was written: ‘The chocolate in this machine tastes of rubber.’ Reggie couldn’t go. He never could when Tony Webster was standing beside him. He pretended that he’d been, shook himself as if to get the last drips off, did up his zip, and left the ‘gents’.

When Tony Webster came out of the ‘gents’ Reggie tried not to look embarrassed. He bought a bacardi and coke for Tony’s dolly bird. She was wearing a mini-skirt that was short but not too short, and a thin lace blouse that you could almost see through. She had a flat chest and artificial blonde hair. Reggie didn’t imagine that Tony Webster had any problems in bed.

He walked home the long way, across the park. There were cricketers practising in the nets, and he watched some children clambering over a brightly coloured tubular dragon erected for them by the Parks Department.

He plunged into the quiet jungle of the Poets’ Estate. He sauntered along Masefield Grove. How was it that his legs kept going forward like this, even though he wasn’t telling them to? He looked down at his legs, and they seemed to be separate beings, strolling along down there. It was lucky they weren’t keen on mountaineering, dragging him up Annapurna on their holidays.

The pollen count was high, and he could hear Peter Cartwright sneezing inside Number 11, Tennyson Avenue.

He walked slowly up Coleridge Close. His neighbours at Number 18, the Milfords, were watering those parts of their front garden which were already in shadow. Later they would go for a snifter at the golf club.

His neighbours at Number 22, the Wisemans, had been told that the golf club had no vacancies.

‘You’re late,’ said Elizabeth.

‘I missed the train,’ he lied.

‘I don’t mind, but it’s all dried up,’ she said.

He hadn’t the energy to explain that man had only existed for a minimal proportion of this earth’s history, Britain was only a small island, he was just one insignificant speck which would be gone for ever in another thirty years, and it really didn’t matter if two small lamb chops were all dried up.