by David Nobbs
There were four young farmers at the bar, chatting cheerfully. The door opened and Reggie had a wild hope that it would be Angela Borrowdale. It was a pretty blonde with a hard face. The farmers greeted her with cries of ‘Hullo, Sarah, how did it go?’ and she said, ‘We came third – Hollyhock made a nonsense of the water jump,’ and they all said, ‘Bad luck!’ and Reggie felt very old and very lonely, and one of them said, ‘Same again all round, Mario – and the usual for Sarah.’
A menu advertised smoked salmon sandwiches, prawn salads, and kipper patés. Touring couples sat in silence sipping medium sherry.
Reggie tried to be Wensley Amhurst, tried to feel natural, tried to forget that he was wearing a false beard beneath which his own hair tickled horribly.
‘Nice day,’ he said, in an upper-middle-class voice, which came out all wrong. The farmers turned and looked at him in astonishment. So did the unsuccessful Sarah. So did the Italian barmen. In the silence Reggie could hear the sound of teeming rain.
Wensley Amhurst finished his drink in silence, and hurried out into the rain. The big summer drops were bouncing back off the road. He pulled his jacket over his head and made a dash for the Black Bull, the venue of his second pint, long ago.
‘Raining, is it?’ said the landlord, laughing jovially at his wit. He was a big jovial man and he had a huge handlebar moustache.
‘Pint of bitter, please,’ said Reggie.
‘Pint of cooking,’ said the landlord.
The public bar had gone, with its darts and skittles. It was all one big bar now, its different areas separated by wrought-iron arches. The arches were festooned with plastic vines. A sickly blue and yellow carpet covered the whole floor space, and a stream of background music tinkled softly over its musical stones.
There was only one other customer, a thin gloomy man with a smaller, drop handlebar moustache.
‘Lovely weather for ducks,’ said the landlord.
‘Yes,’ riposted Reggie.
‘Still, we can’t complain,’ said the landlord. ‘We’ve done well. You a stranger here?’
‘I haven’t been here for twenty-five years,’ said Reggie. ‘I came here when I was a boy for my summer holidays.’
‘I’m from Lowestoft myself,’ said the landlord. ‘It’s a dump.’
‘I came in this pub the first time I ever got drunk,’ said Reggie. ‘I was fifteen.’
The landlord glanced involuntarily at the number plate which said ‘RU 18’, and smiled.
‘Bit different now, eh?’
‘Yes,’ said Reggie.
‘Evelyn and I took the place over in ‘63, didn’t we, Fizzer?’
‘That’s right, Jumbo,’ said Fizzer. ‘It must have been ‘63.’
‘Frightful hole. No, I tell a lie, it was bloody well ‘62. Denise had her hysterectomy in ‘63, and we’d been here a year then.’
‘That’s right,’ said Fizzer. ‘It must have been ‘62.’
‘We made a few changes, knocked the odd wall down.’
‘What about the locals?’ said Reggie. ‘Don’t they miss the darts and things?’
The landlord laughed jovially.
‘Locals? What locals? The locals can’t afford houses here. There’s only the yobbos on the council estate. Touchy sods. Won’t come in here just because I won’t let them sit on the seats in their working clothes.’
‘I think it’s a pity,’ said Reggie.
‘So do I. So do I,’ said the landlord. ‘Don’t get me wrong. Nobody likes locals as much as I do. And darts, well, I threw a pretty decent arrow myself, in my day. But it takes up too much space. No money coming in.’
In the old days, thought Reggie, country life could be pretty grim. Now, with modern transport and electricity, it’s becoming very pleasant – pleasant enough for all the working people to be forced out into the town.
‘We get a damned good crowd in here,’ said the landlord. ‘Apart from that gloomy bastard over there. Old Dave Binstead’s a regular. He’s a lad.’
Reggie looked blank.
‘The motor-cycle scrambler. He’s here every night. Then there’s Micky Fudge. You know him?’
‘No,’ said Reggie.
‘You know. The band-leader. Micky Fudge and his Fandango Band.’
I decided on an identity. Wensley Amhurst. I felt better. No saying ‘Earwigs’. No question of my legs failing to obey me.
‘Vince Cameron, the film director, he pops in Saturdays. He’s a lad. You know, he made The Blob From Twenty Thousand Fathoms.’
‘I missed it,’ said Reggie.
And then I chose to come to Chilhampton. Why? Wensley Amhurst, the distinguished architect, has no reason to go to Chilhampton Ambo. Can’t I admit that Reggie Perrin is dead?
‘Load of old stones in a field up beyond the village,’ said the landlord. ‘Load of weirdies came along last summer and had a festival, Druids or something. I said to them, “Piss off, you load of Druids.” We get a decent crowd in here, apart from that bloody gloomy sod standing there. Of course we get the pouffes from the antique shops, but they’re decent chaps. I say to them, “Come on, you bloody pouffes, drink up or piss off.” They can take a joke.’
In my memory those summer holidays were an idyll. The exquisite agony of desiring Angela Borrowdale, the unattainable. She rode by, sometimes on the grey, sometimes on the chestnut gelding, her riding breeches wide at the thigh, her whip in her hand.
We had P.T. first lesson in the afternoon at Ruttingstagg. I’d gone back to get my gym-shoes, which I’d forgotten, and I was going back along the corridor by the notice board and I saw the headmaster’s daughter and I said, ‘Hullo. Are you better?’ and she went red and said, ‘Much better, thank you. And I say, Congrats on getting your shooting colours’ and I put my hand right up her skirt. She ran off and I went to the gym. We did vaulting and then rope climbing. I was at the top of the rope when the summons came. I changed, gathered up my bundle of P.T. things, and went up to the headmaster’s study. He made me wait outside for a few minutes although there was nobody with him. There was a smell of fishcakes and feet in the corridor.
‘My daughter alleges that you put your hand up her skirt,’ he said sternly.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Did you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘Come, come, Perrin, you can do better than that.’
‘She said something nice to me, sir.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She said, “Congrats on getting your shooting colours,” sir.’
‘Do you always put your hands up girls’ skirts when they say something nice to you?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Would you do that sort of thing at home?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Then don’t do it here. We don’t want dirty-minded little brats at Ruttingstagg. People think they can get away with it just because there’s a war on.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You’re expelled, Perrin.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Mark had done better. He’d only been expelled for drinking.
‘It’s like talking to a brick wall,’ said the landlord.
‘Sorry. I was thinking,’ said Reggie.
‘I said, “Mad Pick-Axe” Harris comes in here Fridays. You know, the explorer chap on the television,’ said the landlord.
‘Oh, really?’ said Reggie.
The door opened. Reggie looked to see if it was Angela Borrowdale, but it was a short, dapper man with a toothbrush moustache.
‘Bloody hell, look what the cat’s brought in,’ said the landlord.
‘Half of Guinness,’ said toothbrush moustache.
‘Half of diesel,’ said the landlord.
‘Lovely weather for ducks,’ said Fizzer.
‘Good-bye,’ said Reggie.
The meal at the Crown was eaten in whispers. A dropped fork was a violent outrage. He had ‘ravioli Italie
nne’, which meant ‘tinned’, and ‘entrecote garni’, which meant with one slice of lukewarm tomato. The homosexual Spanish waiters had sound-proof shoes and double-glazed eyes.
After dinner the rain had stopped, and he walked up the lane and had a look at the old stone farm. Dusk was gathering, and the light had been switched on in the old kitchen of his schoolboy high teas. In front of the house there were two ugly new grain silos.
He wandered back into the village. The air smelt of drying rain. He entered the crowded hotel bar. There was a sign saying ‘No Druids or Coach Parties’. It was only when somebody called her Angela that he recognized the artificially blonde middle-aged woman who was sitting on the end bar stool and behaving as if she owned the place. Her voice was hard and bossy, there were mean lines pulling down the sides of her mouth, and she wasn’t wearing riding breeches. She looked straight at him, but she couldn’t have been expected to see, in this bearded grotesque, any sign of the shy, clumsy youth of yesteryear.
Reggie sipped his whisky. Tomorrow Reggie Perrin would die, Wensley Amhurst would die, and his new life would begin in earnest.
Tuesday
The stone of the little Cotswold town was tinged with yellow. The Three Feathers was a gabled sixteenth-century building. Spells of bright sunshine were chasing away the flurries of rain. The receptionist had jet-black hair and huge grey eyes. When she smiled she might have been on location for a toothpaste ad., and when she said, ‘Room number twentyone, Sir Wensley,’ it was in a voice that would not have disgraced a BBC announcer.
Small wonder, then, that she made such an impression on ‘Mad Pick-Axe’ Amhurst, the distinguished explorer, mountaineer, anthropologist, gourmet and sex maniac.
Reggie had been given a much better room now that he was knighted. The wallpaper was luxuriant with roses, and he had a private bathroom with green marble tiles.
He took a bath. There was a hand-held shower for washing the back, and he utilized this attachment to the full. Outside, thrushes and blackbirds were singing, and occasional spots of rain pattered against the frosted glass.
Reggie endeavoured to think as he imagined Sir Wensley Amhurst would think.
Sir Wensley Amhurst thought about the pretty receptionist. God, she’d look good in fawn riding breeches.
After his bath he settled in the lounge with a copy of the Field and ordered China tea and crumpets.
How would Sir Wensley use his considerable charms upon a pretty receptionist?
Reggie wandered over to her, adopting an almost imperceptible limp, a relic of a fall on the Matterhorn.
‘Can you order me The Times?’ he said.
‘Certainly, Sir Wensley,’ said the flashing smile.
‘Er …’
‘Yes, Sir Wensley?’
‘Nothing.’
Sir Wensley limped through the stone jewel that was Chipping Hampstead-on-the-Wold. He limped past its four pubs, seven antique shops, three potteries, five boutiques, and its superior store selling local jams and herbal soaps. To him it wasn’t a town, it was a tribal centre of the English middle class. His keen anthropological eye noted that there wasn’t a coloured person in sight.
He acquired a bit more character with the purchase of a handsome locally-made walking stick. He limped up the lane past the magnificent early English church on to the open wold.
‘Mad Pick-Axe’ Amhurst sat on top of a stone wall and looked out over the fields. All this had once been a huge sheep run but most of it was under cultivation now. Sad, thought the reactionary explorer.
A finch, or was it a warbler, flew into a little clump of elms, or were they hornbeams? Let’s just say a small bird landed on a big tree.
Reggie felt annoyed by his ignorance. Sir Wensley Amhurst would have known about such things.
He returned to the hotel, stopping on the way to consume two pints of foaming English beer. How often had he dreamt of beer like this as he cut laboriously through the mangrove swamps of the Amazon Basin with his pick-axe!
He smiled at the pretty receptionist, decided not to make his approach to her until after dinner, and enjoyed his traditional Cotswold meal of gazpacho, duck à l’orange and zabaglione.
After dinner a sallow young man was occupying the receptionist’s booth, and he abandoned his plan of ordering early morning tea.
He went out for his after-dinner constitutional, and there, coming towards him down the main street, was the receptionist. She had beautiful slender legs and her heels clacked loudly. The surprise of seeing her took his breath away. She said, ‘Good evening, Sir Wensley,’ and hesitated just perceptibly in her path. ‘Good evening,’ he said, and he hesitated, then walked on.
He turned to watch her walk away from him. She went up the road that led to the church and just before she disappeared she turned and looked in his direction.
Bloody hell, thought Reggie, that wasn’t ‘Mad Pick-Axe’ Amhurst, who once had seven Chinese women in one glorious night on the Shanghai waterfront. That was Goofy Perrin.
He walked round a back lane, coming out at the end of the road to the church. There was no sign of the receptionist.
He went into a pub on the hill by the church. It was packed and smoky, and she wasn’t there either.
He limped back to the hotel and went early to bed. He couldn’t sleep. His hatred of ‘Mad Pick-Axe’ Amhurst was too strong.
Wednesday
It was shortly after tea-time when the last bus delivered Lord Amhurst into the charming Oxfordshire village of Henleaze Ffoliat. Lord Amhurst was a bearded man with dark hair and a gammy leg. He looked round the little square with every appearance of pleasure, and then disappeared into the Ffoliat Arms.
At this very moment, had Lord Amhurst but known it, Chief Inspector Gate was attempting to dislodge a particularly stubborn piece of wax from his right ear with the aid of a safety match. Two minutes later, however, a weary Constable Barker entered his office and sank gratefully into the chair proffered to him for just such a purpose.
‘Nothing,’ he admitted. ‘The cashiers have been questioned at all the banks where the cheques were cashed. A few of them remember the man. If their descriptions are accurate, he was a tall dark fair-haired bald man of average height with a hooked Roman nose, one blue eye, one green eye and one brown eye.’
Chief Inspector Gate tossed his waxed match towards the waste-paper basket and missed.
The handwriting expert thinks the signatures on the cheques are genuine forgeries,’ he said. ‘But he can’t rule out the possibility that they’re forged forgeries, in other words genuine.’
Constable Barker sighed.
‘None of that proves anything either way,’ he said.
‘There’s no motive. Perrin hasn’t taken out any insurance policies lately.’
‘Anything from the beach, sir?’
‘Nothing much. There are no reports of any mysterious strangers. The only thing our chaps found on the beach was this pin.’
Chief Inspector Gate handed a small pin to Constable Barker. He examined it keenly. Then he stood up. He seemed excited.
‘This could be a pin off a new shirt,’ said Constable Barker. ‘He could have been putting on new clothes.’
‘He could have put on two enormous coconuts and done a moonlight impression of Raquel Welch,’ said Chief Inspector Gate. He examined his ear with another match. ‘It’s not much to go on, is it?’
‘I suppose not. But I’ve got a hunch that my hunch is right.’
Chief Inspector Gate threw the match towards the waste-paper basket. It landed bang in the middle, and he smiled with ill-concealed satisfaction.
‘Possibly,’ he said. ‘But as far as our investigations are concerned, Reginald Perrin is dead.’
Reggie’s room, now that he was a hereditary peer, was much better than the one he’d been given when he’d merely been knighted for services to the nation. He enjoyed a luxurious bath, utilized the disposable shoe-cleaning pads, sat in his comfortable armchair by the balcony doo
r, and smoked one of Lord Amhurst’s favourite cheroots as he admired the view. He looked out over a diminutive valley of small grassy fields. A low arched stone bridge carried a grassy farm track over a little river. Between the showers a bright sun shone. He had two hundred and twenty-five pounds in his pocket.
When he had finished his cheroot he took a turn round the aristocratic little town. There were four hotels, three pubs, five antique shops, six potteries, two boutiques and a suede boutique. He limped badly – the legacy of an accident on the Cresta Run, where he had been a distinguished performer in the two-man bobsleigh.
He limped back across the square, filled with parked cars and coaches, and entered the Ffoliat Arms. Its handsome three-storey frontage was covered in Virginia creeper.
He crossed the foyer, threading his way between suits of old English armour, and entered the bar. It was beset rather than decorated by antlers.
The bar had six occupants. Four of them were Americans, the fifth was an attractive blonde, and the sixth was his son-in-law Tom. Tom was sitting at a corner table with the attractive blonde. Reggie almost forgot that he was supposed to be Lord Amhurst. Then he recovered himself, ordered a whisky and soda, and limped to a table as close to Tom as he dared. He sat beneath a magnificent set of antlers. His heart thumped, but Tom gave no sign of recognition. He was drinking white wine. So was his blonde companion.
So, thought Reggie, fear giving way to anger, this is how you treat my daughter, you swine.
‘It’s a very lovely house indeed,’ Tom was saying. ‘It’s got charm and distinction. Now let’s just see. Four recep., six bed., three bath. Stables. Seven acres. I’d have thought we’d be thinking in terms of at least sixty-five thou.’
‘Fine,’ said the blonde, who looked about thirty and had slightly plump arms and legs. She had a deep tan, and she was wearing a low-cut green and white striped dress. Tom was staring straight at her luxuriant cleavage.
‘You have a wonderful staircase,’ he said. ‘Marvellous mouldings.’
‘Thank you,’ she said.
Tom’s next words were drowned in a burst of American laughter. When it died down Reggie heard him say, ‘I love stone houses. I’m very much a stone person.’