by David Nobbs
‘I don’t remember that.’
‘I think you’ve done amazingly well with those flans in Schleswig-Holstein,’ said Reggie. ‘And now what I’d like you to do is pave the way for our new range of exotic ice creams. There are three flavours – mango delight, cumquat surprise and strawberry and lychee ripple.’
‘I can’t believe it. I’ve never bitten anyone.’
Reggie stood up and spoke dynamically.
‘Aren’t you listening?’ he said. ‘I’m talking about our new range of ice creams.’
‘Oh, yes. Sorry,’ said E. L. Campbell-Lewiston.
‘I’d like you to try it out in a typical German town,’ said Reggie. ‘Are there any typical German towns?’
‘All German towns are typical,’ said E. L. Campbell-Lewiston.
Reggie sipped his coffee thoughtfully, and said nothing. E. L. Campbell-Lewiston waited uneasily.
‘Is there any particular way you want me to handle the new ice creams?’ he asked at length.
‘Wanking much these days, are you?’ asked Reggie.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘We used to call you the phantom wanker. No wonder you could never hit the bloody target.’
E. L. Campbell-Lewiston stood up. His face was flushed.
‘I didn’t come here to be insulted like that,’ he said.
‘Sorry,’ said Reggie. ‘I’ll insult you like this, then. You don’t clean your teeth properly, you slovenly sod.’
‘Just who do you think you are?’ said E. L. CampbellLewiston.
‘I think I’m the man in charge of the new exotic ices project,’ said Reggie. ‘I’m the man who’s expecting you to take Germany by storm, and I have every confidence you will. I was tremendously impressed by your article on the strengths and limitations of market research in the International Deep Freeze News.’
‘Oh thank you.’
They stood up and Reggie handed Mr Campbell-Lewiston his raincoat.
‘Yes, I found your analysis of the chance element inherent in any random sample very persuasive.’
‘I hoped it was all right.’
At the door E. L. Campbell-Lewiston turned and offered Reggie his hand.
‘Er . . . all this . . . I mean, is it some kind of new middle management technique?’ he asked.
‘That’s right,’ said Reggie. ‘It’s the new thing. Try it out on the Germans.’
Joan came in, pad in hand.
‘C.J. wants to see you at eleven,’ she said.
‘Stuff C.J.,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry about yesterday, darling.’
‘It was one of those things,’ she said.
‘It did happen, didn’t it? You did come to my home yesterday?’
‘Well of course I did, silly.’
He held his hand out towards her across his desk and she stroked it briefly. Her skirt was working its way up her leg, but today she didn’t pull it down.
It had begun to rain. A train clattered along the embankment.
‘We’d better start work,’ he said.
‘I suppose so.’
He was shy of dictating to her. It seemed so foolish, when you wanted to make love, sending letters about mangoes.
‘What about tonight?’ he said.
‘I suppose I could get a baby-sitter.’
‘What about your husband?’
‘He’s away – on business.’
‘Tonight, then.’
‘Tonight.’
‘I suppose we’d better start, then.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Your breasts are wonderful.’
She blushed.
To the Secretary, Artificial Sweetening Additives Research Council. Dear Sir . . .’
Reggie strode purposefully across the thick carpet, trying to look unconcerned, as befitted a man starting a new life.
‘You wanted to see me, C.J.?’ he said.
‘Yes. Sit down.’
The pneumatic chair welcomed him to its bosom with a sympathetic sigh.
‘Don’t forget you’re coming to dinner tomorrow evening, C.J.,’ he said.
‘No. Mrs C.J. and I are looking forward to it immensely.’
‘Good.’
‘By the way, Reggie, Mrs C.J. doesn’t see eye to eye with our piscine friends. I hope that doesn’t upset any apple carts.’
‘No, C.J.’
‘People and their fads, eh?’
‘Not at all.’
‘Still, if you don’t like something, you don’t like it.’
Too true.’
‘No use kicking against the pricks.’
‘Certainly not, C.J.’
‘Neither Mrs C.J. nor myself has ever kicked against a prick.’
‘I imagine not, C.J.’
‘Now, to business,’ said C.J. ‘I didn’t get where I am today by waffling.’
‘No.’
‘Never use two words where one will do, that’s my motto, that’s my axiom, that’s the way I look at it.’
‘Absolutely, C.J.’
The treble glazing in C.J.’s windows kept out all noise. There was a thick, carpeted silence in the room.
‘Would it surprise you, Reggie, to learn that overall sales, across the whole spectrum, were down 0.1 per cent in April?’
‘Not altogether, C.J.’
The Francis Bacon stared down as if it knew that C.J. had bought it for tax purposes.
‘I don’t say to myself: “Oh well, C.J., it’s a bad time all round.” I say: “C.J., this is intolerable.” But I don’t say to you: “Pull your socks up, Reggie.” I say to you: “Overall sales, across the whole spectrum, were down 0.1 per cent in April.” I leave you to draw your own conclusions – and pull your socks up.’
‘Yes, C.J.’
‘I didn’t get where I am today without learning how to handle people.’
‘No, C.J.’
‘I give them a warning shot across the bows, but I don’t let them realize that I’m giving them a warning shot across the bows.’
‘Yes, C.J.’
‘Not that I want to be entirely surrounded by yes-men.’
‘No, C.J.’
‘So there it is, Reggie. Go full steam ahead on the exotic ices project, no holds barred, this is the big one, but don’t forget the whole spectrum.’
‘I won’t, C.J.’
‘How did it go with Campbell-Lewiston?’
‘Very well indeed, C.J.’
C.J. gave Reggie a cool, hard look.
‘Middle age can be a difficult time,’ he said. ‘Not that we’re one of those firms that squeeze chaps dry and then abandon them. We value experience too highly.’
Joan’s eyebrows said, ‘How did it go with C.J.?’
His hunched shoulders said, ‘So-so.’
That was how people talked about C.J.
‘Tea trolley!’ shouted the tea lady over by the lift.
‘Coffee?’ said Reggie.
‘You know my rules. I pay my way.’
Stupid woman. I’m worshipping your body, and you talk to me of rules.
‘I’m buying you a coffee,’ he said sharply.
‘Well all right then. Just this once. Just a coffee, though.’
He bought her three jam doughnuts and a cream horn.
‘Tonight,’ he said.
‘Tonight,’ said Joan.
The phone rang. It was Elizabeth.
‘Mother’s having an operation tomorrow,’ she said. ‘She’s convinced she’s going to die. She wants you to come down tonight. She thinks it’ll be her last chance of seeing you.’
He bought some chrysanthemums in London but they wilted on the train.
In his briefcase there were grapes, oranges and a paperback by Georgette Heyer.
He sat in the crowded buffet car. On the menu there were ‘eggs styled to choice with hot buttered toast, poached or fried’. The style of his egg was fried and broken.
‘They’re all breaking today. I can’t do nothing with them,’ explained t
he steward. ‘It’s making my bleeding life a misery, I can tell you.’
‘We all have our problems,’ said Reggie.
They passed Gatwick. A big squat jet was taking off in the grey murk. The train slowed down. Reggie willed it to go faster, to get him to Worthing while the flowers still had some life in them.
Workmen in luminous orange jackets stood and watched the train as it passed. It began to gather speed. Reggie ordered another coffee. He would have preferred a Carlsberg and a miniature bottle of whisky, but he didn’t want his mother-in-law to smell weakness on his breath.
There were brief snatches of rich, wooded countryside between the trim, boxy towns, and along the south coast there were glimpses of an oily uninviting sea.
He took a bus to the hospital. The air was heavy – hostile to chrysanthemums. The town smelt of rotting seaweed and chips. At the entrance to the hospital there was a stall selling fresh flowers.
The corridors of the hospital smelt of decline and antiseptic, and they reminded Reggie of his future. He found Blenheim Ward without difficulty. A coloured nurse wheeling a trolley of syringes and swabs smiled at him as he entered.
There were ten beds on the left and ten on the right. All were occupied. On the trestle table in the middle of the ward there were cut-glass vases full of roses and chrysanthemums.
Elizabeth’s mother was in the sixth bed on the right, propped up on two pillows, surrounded by chrysanthemums, grapes, oranges and paperbacks by Georgette Heyer. Elizabeth sat at her bedside.
Elizabeth smiled nervously at Reggie, and as she kissed him her eyes were imploring him to behave.
‘I brought you these,’ he said, embarrassed, holding out the flowers. Elizabeth’s mother looked pale.
‘Oh, Reginald, you shouldn’t have,’ she said.
‘They wilted on the train.’
‘Never mind,’ said Elizabeth. ‘It’s the thought that counts.’
‘Get a chair, Reginald,’ commanded her mother.
There were two tubular chairs wedged together at the far side of the bed. They had got jammed together. Reggie pulled and pushed and twisted, but he couldn’t disentangle them. In the end he took both chairs.
‘Sorry,’ he said to the woman in the next bed.
That’s all right,’ said the woman.
‘She can’t hear you,’ boomed Elizabeth’s mother. ‘She’s as deaf as a post.’
The ‘deaf’ woman gave her a venomous look.
Reggie sat on the chairs. They wobbled. He grinned sheepishly at Elizabeth.
‘You’ll stay the night, won’t you?’ said Elizabeth.
‘Yes. I’ll stay,’ said Reggie.
He opened his briefcase, took out the oranges and grapes and a paperback by Georgette Heyer.
‘I brought you these,’ he said.
‘Now that’s very naughty of you, Reginald,’ said his mother-in-law.
Reggie was stung. She didn’t even say thank you.
‘I won’t be able to take them where I’m going,’ she said.
Reggie’s eyes met Elizabeth’s.
‘You aren’t going anywhere,’ said Elizabeth. ‘You’re going home.’
‘Of course you are,’ said Reggie.
‘You’ll find you’ve not been forgotten,’ said his mother-in-law.
‘Mother, please.’
‘You can do what you like with the silver but I want you to keep the grandfather clock. And I’d like you to look after Edward’s gold hunter. He was attached to that watch.’
‘It’s very kind of you. Thank you very much,’ said Reggie. ‘But you’re going to be all right.’
‘We’ll see. Mind you, the doctors are all English, I’ll say that for them.’
Reggie looked round the ward. Most of the women were elderly. A few had elderly husbands at their bedsides, hushed and helpless. Some had nobody. They had retired to Sussex, to bungalows by the sea. Now their husbands had died, they knew nobody, their bungalows were two miles from the sea, their sons were in New Zealand, they couldn’t manage the hill up from the shops, they were ill.
‘You’d better put the chrysanths in a vase,’ said Elizabeth’s mother. ‘We don’t want them dying. They must have cost enough.’
‘I can afford them,’ said Reggie.
‘I hope so,’ said Elizabeth’s mother.
No, thought Reggie, you still don’t think I can support your Elizabeth in the manner to which you think she should expect to be accustomed.
He went along to the nurses’ room and filled a vase with water. He walked back, braving the stares of the old ladies. He was Goofy Perrin and he clutched the vase firmly.
He sat down on his chairs and handed the vase to Elizabeth. She arranged the flowers.
‘Very nice,’ said her mother.
‘He assured me they’d last the journey,’ said Reggie.
‘You were done,’ said Elizabeth’s mother.
Elizabeth’s hand touched Reggie’s, squeezed it, as much as to say: ‘You’re always done – and I love you for it, huggable old bear.’ But Reggie was not in the mood. He removed his hand. Then he felt awful, and felt for Elizabeth’s hand and squeezed it.
It was seven forty-four. There were still forty-six minutes to go.
‘What did you have for supper?’ he asked.
‘Sausages and mash, and tapioca. Revolting,’ said his mother-in-law.
An old woman three beds away stirred in her sleep and shouted: ‘Henry! Stop it! Stop it, Henry!’
‘She’s been going on all day,’ boomed Elizabeth’s mother. ‘“Henry,” she goes, “stop it. Stop it, Henry.” She’s mental, poor soul.’
Reggie was convinced that the whole ward could hear, and his skin crawled with embarrassment.
The coloured nurse came round with a trolley on which there were tins of Ovaltine, Milo and Horlicks.
‘I’m afraid you don’t get one, Mrs Anderson. Operation tomorrow,’ said the coloured nurse.
‘I don’t want any,’ said Elizabeth’s mother.
The coloured nurse went on to the deaf woman, who plumped for Milo.
‘I feel sorry for her,’ hissed Elizabeth’s mother at the top of her whisper. ‘She’s got such thick lips. But then I believe their men like thick lips.’
Seven fifty-one. Thirty-nine minutes to go.
‘Tell us to go if we’re tiring you,’ said Reggie.
‘Want to go, do you?’
‘No, no. But we don’t want to tire you.’
Seven fifty-two. Thirty-eight minutes to go.
‘The people in the ward seem quite nice,’ said Elizabeth.
‘I don’t talk to them,’ boomed her mother. ‘That one’s as deaf as a post and the one on the other side isn’t quite the thing at all.’
Stinging ants of embarrassment marched up Reggie’s back.
‘I’m sure they can hear you,’ he whispered.
‘I can’t hear you. Speak up,’ bawled his mother-in-law.
‘I’m sure they can hear you,’ he said.
‘Nonsense!’
Seven fifty-three. Thirty-seven minutes to go.
‘What did you have for tea?’ said Reggie.
‘Just a cup of tea, and a biscuit. The biscuit was soggy.’
Seven fifty-three and a quarter. Thirty-six and three-quarter minutes to go.
The clock struggled up the hill to eight o’clock.
‘Do you like hippos?’ said Reggie, and he heard Elizabeth’s sharp intake of breath.
‘What extraordinary things you do come out with sometimes, Reginald. Yes, as a matter of fact I’ve got rather a soft spot for them. They’re so ugly, poor things. Do you like them?’
‘No,’ said Reggie.
The nurses drew the curtains around one of the beds. After a few moments there were animal screams from behind the curtains. Nobody took any notice. They talked, listened to their earphones or just stared vacantly into space.
Reggie disliked the sight of blood, gobs of spittle on pavements, the b
acksides of cats, injections, and animal screams from old women behind curtains. He had made himself face, inch by painful inch, some of these realities, but he had never conquered them.
There came another cry: ‘Henry! Stop it! Stop it!’
There she goes again. Have some grapes, Reginald.’
‘I don’t like to eat all the grapes I brought. It makes it look as if I bought them for myself,’ said Reggie.
‘Don’t be absurd. Nobody’s remotely interested in you,’ said his mother-in-law.
Reggie reached out, tore off a handful of grapes and leant back in his chairs.
The grapes were sour. The fruiterer had done him.
The minute hand of the clock slipped slowly towards eight-thirty. The curtains round the old woman’s bed were drawn back, and she was calm again. Elizabeth was talking to her mother about a mutual friend, and Reggie had a few minutes off. He spent them in Chilhampton Ambo. Nigel was lying beside him on the grain piled high in the truck as they went slowly up the winding track that led from Twelve Acre to the Dutch Barn. He was dreaming of Angela Borrowdale’s riding breeches.
‘. . . don’t you agree, Reginald?’ said his mother-in-law.
‘What? Yes. Absolutely!’
Elizabeth smiled.
‘I’ve always had a private ward before,’ boomed her mother. ‘But I can’t afford it with all this terrible inflation. It’s coming to something. I blame the Labour government. And you wouldn’t see them in the public wards. You wouldn’t see Harold Wilson and Roy Jenkins in the public wards. They’d have a private ward in the London Clinic just to have a carbuncle lanced. Your father would have turned in his grave rather than go in a public ward. I’m only glad he’s been spared all this. Every time you open your paper! Hooligans and vandals and that dreadful Willie Hamilton, how would he like to be a queen? I blame television. Your father once saw David Frost in a restaurant, and didn’t think much of his table manners. Though he is very kind to his mother.’
Reggie thought: ‘This is me in twenty-five years’ time, and Mark and Linda coming to visit me, and watching the clock, but it isn’t going to be like that.’
It was almost time to leave.
‘Look after her, Reginald,’ said Elizabeth’s mother. ‘She’s delicate, Reginald. Don’t forget that.’
‘She’s never been ill since I’ve known her,’ said Reggie.
‘I dare say, but she’s not strong. I know. I’m her mother.’