by David Nobbs
Joan blushed deeply and Reggie felt embarrassed for her.
‘Wishful thinking,’ she said.
He stroked her hand and explained about the lecherous man in the opposite alcove, and as they walked to their cars he patted her on the bottom and said ‘Room 238’ in a loud whisper. The man winked.
In the car park, while the sign of the Dissipated Kipper clanked in the rising gale, Reggie turned towards Joan.
‘The conditions of employment are not yet binding,’ he said.
Their lips met. They worked hungrily at each other’s mouths.
A car swung into the car-park and they were flooded in the glare of its headlamps.
Then the lights were switched off, and their kiss ended.
‘Try and have a good Christmas, Mrs Webster,’ said Reggie.
On the Sunday before Christmas, news came at last of Mark’s activities. A report in the Observer named him as one of the cast in a group of freelance theatrical mercenaries, dedicated to the incitement of revolutionary fervour through the unlikely medium of the plays of J. M. Barrie, rewritten by the legendary Idi ‘Post-Imperialist Oppression’ Okombe. Appearing with him were such shadowy figures of menace as Tariq Alhambra, known as the Red Gielgud, and lovely Belinda Longstone, the polystyrene heiress.
The news lent an unusual gravity to the seasonal toast of ‘absent friends’.
Chapter 17
Swirling snow filled the world on the first Monday in January. Bewildered robins huddled in the nooks of apple trees, and the imprints of Elizabeth’s Wellington boots on the white pavements of the Poets’ Estate looked dainty beside the huge depressions left by Reggie.
It was the first time in more than twenty-five years of married life that they had set out for work together and their hands linked tenderly beneath their stout gloves. The trim gardens were transformed into white fantasies, and the names of the great poets were hidden beneath the snow.
On Climthorpe Station people stood five deep. No trains came. It was so quiet that you could have heard the shares of a pin company drop.
‘Three inches of snow, and the nation grinds to a halt,’ grumbled an investment consultant.
‘I was in twenty-two inches of snow in Montreal, and my train was thirty seconds late,’ countered a fabrics manufacturer.
‘We had seven-foot drifts in the suburbs of Helsinki,’ put in a quantity surveyor. ‘My train was one minute early.’
‘I was standing by the St Lawrence river, waiting for a ferry,’ said Reggie. ‘There was a seventy mile an hour blizzard, four feet of level snow, and thick ice on the river. The ferry didn’t come for three months.’
Elizabeth squeezed his arm.
They managed to force themselves on to the second train of the morning, and arrived at Waterloo at ten past eleven.
At twenty-five past eleven the joint managing directors of Perrin Products approached the main entrance of Head Office arm in arm. The sky was a dirty yellow and light snow was still falling.
They climbed the steps cautiously.
‘You don’t have to open the doors,’ said Reggie. ‘They slide automatically.’
‘We have come up in the world,’ said Elizabeth.
The doors jammed and they crashed into the glass. They were shaken but not injured.
Many people including Miss Erith had still not arrived. Mr Bulstrode didn’t arrive at all. At two o’clock he decided to turn round and go home, and it was eight thirty-five before he managed it.
Reggie installed Elizabeth in her office, where she would oversee the creation of a European empire for Grot. There were three potted plants and pictures of Chartres, Speyer, Milan and Louvain cathedrals.
There was a hesitant knock on the door.
‘It’s your office,’ said Reggie. ‘It’s for you to say: “Come in.” ’
‘Come in,’ said Elizabeth self-consciously.
It was David Harris-Jones.
‘How’s the baby boy?’ said Elizabeth.
‘Super,’ said David. ‘We’re going to call him Reginald and we want you to be the godfather, Reggie.’
‘Thank you,’ said Reggie.
David Harris-Jones handed him a copy of the Guardian. It was open at page thirteen.
‘Column three,’ he said.
‘Rumours of trouble at Sunshine Desserts, the London food manufacturers, were strongly denied last night by the Managing Director, Mr Charles Jefferson,’ read Reggie in the financial news.
‘Results at Sunshine Desserts have been disappointing for some time, but in recent weeks there have been rumours of a more disturbing kind, and there have been embarrassing delays in delicate merger negotiations with one of the convenience food giants.
‘Shares have fallen steadily, closing on Friday at 57½p – 19p down in a month – and an interim dividend declaration has been delayed.
‘Mr Jefferson is something of a mystery man, cloaking his personal life in obsessive secrecy. He is known to his employees simply as C.J., and is variously rumoured to hail from Riga, the Balkans and even America. He lives in a large house near Godalming, and his one known relaxation is fishing.
‘In his statement Mr Jefferson said: “It has come to my notice that there are rumours of serious difficulties and irregularities at Sunshine Desserts. This is nonsense. We have had our troubles, but we will overcome them. I didn’t get where I am today without learning how to overcome troubles.
”I only wish these vile rumours could be printed, so that I could have an opportunity to sue these despicable scandalmongers.
”It has been suggested that there is no smoke without a fire. I might reply that it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good.”
‘The exact meaning of Mr Jefferson’s last remark is somewhat obscure, and it remains to be seen how his statement will be greeted by market sentiment, which is notoriously sceptical of protestations of innocence.’
”Very interesting,’ said Reggie. ‘So, his name’s Charles Jefferson, is it?’
They went to the pub for lunch and everyone discussed how long it had taken them to get to work. One man had spoken on the telephone to a man whose brother worked with a man who had taken three hours to drive from North Ockendon to South Ockendon.
In the afternoon they set off for home. It was seven forty-five before they arrived.
It had not been a constructive first day for Elizabeth.
The cold snap passed. The trains returned to normal. Mr Bulstrode’s pneumonia responded to treatment.
The shares of Sunshine Desserts slumped.
The first reactions to Grot’s fifty per cent across the board price rises were favourable. Sales hardly dropped, and in some shops actually rose.
The shares of Perrin Products and of Grot rose.
The Honorary President of Climthorpe Albion Football Club, of the Southern League First Division South, collapsed at a health farm and died. Reggie was invited to take his place. He accepted with pleasure and took his seat in the director’s box in the rickety, green-painted, four hundred seater grand-stand. Also present were the Chairman of the Climthorpe Chamber of Commerce, and Reggie’s bank manager, who intimated that he would feel happier with life at this moment in time if Reggie were to make more use of the bank’s credit facilities.
A keen wind kept the crowd down to 327. Takings in the bar were twenty-eight pounds seventy-five pence.
Climthorpe beat Waterlooville 5-1, with goals from PUNT, HTTOCK, CLENCH (2) and RUTTER. They rose two places to fifteenth.
Truly it began to seem that Reginald Iolanthe Perrin had a magic touch. Many shrewd students of life were heard to aver that he was an all-round good egg.
Notices of dismissal were given to all Sunshine Desserts’ employees, and the receiver was called in.
A scandal over illicit share dealings in Luxembourg, Guernsey and Rhodesia broke over the head of C.J. There were dark tales linking his name with the arrest of the master of a Swedish cargo vessel in Bilbao for gun-running, and the shooting in Chil
e of a Turk said to have been spying for the CIA in Poland.
C.J.’s brother, Mr Cedric ‘Tiny’ Jefferson, landlord of the Dissipated Kipper on the Hog’s Back, spoke freely to thirsty pressmen about his brother. It seemed that C.J. had not been born in Riga, the Balkans or America. He was born and bred in Eltham, the son of a London Transport bus inspector, and had served in the Pay Corps during the latter stages of the Second World War. The brothers had drifted apart socially more than they had geographically, and Cedric ‘Tiny’ Jefferson had no idea if the rumours of scandal were true. But he had once met a foreigner with a duelling scar at C.J.’s house, so there might well be something in it. Had the thirsty pressmen heard the one about the Irish kamikazi pilot?
Climthorpe beat Trowbridge 2-1 away, with goals from MALLET and FITTOCK. Fittock became leading scorer for the season, with four goals.
Reggie and Elizabeth received an invitation to attend the wedding of James Gordonstoun Anderson and Lettuce Isobel Horncastle in the Church of St Peter at Bagwell Heath. They accepted.
Climthorpe beat Metropolitan Police 4-2, with goals by CLENCH, MALLET, FITTOCK and P.C. TREMLETT (own goal). The crowd was 426.
One evening, when the weather was dry with a moderate frost, and there was nothing much on television, there was a ring at Reggie’s door.
A girl of about nineteen, shivering with cold and embarrassment, tried to smile at him and failed.
‘Mr Perrin?’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘I work at your shop Grot. I’d like to talk to you.’
He invited her in. She refused a drink, saying she’d prefer coffee. Elizabeth went to get her one.
‘Now then,’ said Reggie, feeling suddenly rather old. ‘What’s all this about?’
She wasn’t exactly pretty, but there was a certain rather delicate charm about her pinched features.
‘It’s Mr Morrison, the manager,’ she said.
‘You don’t like Mr Morrissey?’
‘He’s all right. It’s just that he . . .’
She hesitated.
‘You can tell me,’ he said. ‘What’s he done?’
She sat uncomfortably on the edge of her chair. There was a beauty mark on her left cheek, and a hole in her tights. Few of the Grot shops employed girls like this. Most of them employed dolly girls with voices like hysterical gravel. Reggie liked her.
‘He hasn’t done nothing really, not, you know, done.’
‘Well what has he not done then?’
‘He undresses us.’
‘He takes your clothes off?’
‘He sort of gives us these looks.’
‘He undresses you in his mind?’
‘Yeah. Me and Doreen.’
‘And you don’t like that?’
‘Doreen doesn’t mind. She’ll give as good as she gets, that one.’
‘But you’re different?’
‘Yeah. I know it’s supposed to be permissive and that, but I’m not like that.’
Elizabeth entered with the coffee and sat beside the girl.
‘Has he done anything else except look?’ said Reggie.
‘He sort of touches you, know what I mean? Not like touches you exactly, nothing you can put your finger on, he sort of brushes up against you, like it’s an accident, only you know it isn’t. Doreen says not to worry, they’re all dirty old men at that age, but I don’t like it. I know I shouldn’t have come here, Doreen’ll kill me if she finds out, but I like it there, I hated it at the shoe shop and the darts factory, I don’t want to leave.’
She burnt her lips on the coffee, and her hands were chapped. Her inability to relax made Reggie tired.
‘What do you want my husband to do?’ said Elizabeth.
‘I don’t want to get Mr Morrison into trouble,’ said the girl.
‘You want me to stop him doing it, without telling him that I know he does. That won’t be easy,’ said Reggie.
The coffee was making the girl’s nose run, and Elizabeth gave her a tissue.
‘Does he do anything except give you looks and brush against you?’ said Reggie.
‘He makes remarks,’ said the girl.
‘What sort of remarks?’
‘You know, remarks.’
‘Suggestions?’ suggested Elizabeth.
‘Not so’s you’d call them suggestions. Just remarks. I mean he’s quite nice really.’
‘And the running of the shop’s all right?’ said Reggie.
‘I wouldn’t like to run him down behind his back.’
‘Of course not. So there’s no problem apart from the looking and the touching and the remarks?’
‘Oh no. I mean . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘There’s the prices.’
‘The prices?’
‘He gives things away cheap to people he’s sorry for.’
‘What sort of people?’
‘Kids. The old folk. Girls. Especially girls.’
The grandfather clock in the hall struck nine.
‘So trade’s good anyway?’ said Reggie.
The girl seemed a little uneasy about answering.
‘Put it this way,’ she said at last. ‘We’re running out of things.’
‘You shouldn’t run out of things,’ said Reggie. ‘Why do you think you’re running out of things?’
‘It’s not for me to say,’ said the girl.
‘Suppose I asked you directly why you think Mr Morrissey is running out of things.’
‘He forgets to order them, if you ask me. I think he gets in a bit of a tiswas with the book side of things.’
She finished her coffee, sniffed as quietly as she could, and dabbed irresolutely at the end of her nose with the tissue.
‘Thanks for the coffee,’ she said.
‘You’re welcome,’ said Elizabeth.
‘Tell me,’ said Reggie. ‘Can you think of anything else Mr Morrissey does wrong apart from giving you looks and making remarks and brushing up against you and selling things cheap to kids, the old folk and girls, especially girls, and forgetting to make his orders and getting in a tiswas over the books?’
‘No,’ said the girl. ‘And even if I could I wouldn’t tell you. I wouldn’t want to run him down behind his back.’
In the morning Reggie called in to see Doc Morrissey. The shop was in the High Street now, between the Leeds Permanent Building Society and the Uttoxeter Temporary Building Society. The single word GROT was painted in elegant gold, and the interior of the shop was decorated in green and gold.
Reggie could see that the shop was badly run. The window-display was uninspired, there were gaps on the shelves, and the items in the display-counters were haphazardly arranged.
The girl who had visited him blushed scarlet. The busty Doreen looked at her in surprise.
Doc Morrissey was reading the Daily Mirror in his office. He leapt to his feet when Reggie entered.
‘I was just having a few moments to myself,’ he said. ‘We’ve been rushed off our feet all week.’
‘Everything all right?’ said Reggie.
‘Splendid.’
‘One or two lines seem a little non-existent.’
‘Trade’s so good. And I’ve got some stuff coming in the morning.’
‘Good. Managing the books all right?’
‘It’s a doddle,’ said Doc Morrissey, bringing an expansive hand down on a row of ledgers, from which a cloud of dust arose.
‘No trouble with VAT?’
‘VAT?’
‘You’re supposed to keep full VAT records.’
‘Ah yes. I remember now.’
Reggie asked Doc Morrissey to come to the office on early closing day, and bring all the books with him.
As he was passing the War Memorial on his way to the station, a Grot van crawled by in the traffic. It was olive green and had on its side, in gold lettering: ‘GROT – Never Knowingly Oversold.’
‘Going to Climthorpe?’ Reggie called out hopefully.
‘No
, squire. Uxbridge,’ said the driver. ‘No orders for Climthorpe.’
Miss Erith was working out her notice, and Reggie detected an icy hauteur beneath her habitual frigidity, as she said: ‘Mr Fogden to see you, sir.’
Reggie re-read Owen Lewis’s letter of recommendation.
‘Dear Reggie,’ it ran. ‘I have a vague acquaintance called Fogden who invents things. He has a new line he thinks you may like. He’s a founder member of the fruit-cake brigade and an absolute pain in the backside, uses my local when he’s on parole from the loonie-bin. I happened to mention I knew you and he’s been pestering me to put him in touch ever since. I’d be eternally grateful if you’d get him off my back.’
Reggie put the letter down and sent for Mr Fogden. There entered a small man with a bald head, a drooping moustache, a shiny suit, and a large, shabby portmanteau. He looked like a Hercule Poirot impressionist who had fallen on hard times.
‘I’ve had a letter of recommendation from Mr Lewis,’ said Reggie. ‘He speaks of you in the warmest terms.’
‘How gratifying,’ said Mr Fogden. ‘I always had the impression that he disliked me. Well, well. I shall go round to the hostelry that he frequents this very evening and purchase him a thankful libation.’
‘Good idea,’ said Reggie. ‘He’ll appreciate that. Now, what is your great idea?’
‘Edible furniture.’
‘I see.’
‘I’ve had no joy at all at Waring and Gillow. Maples rebuffed me – I can use no other words – and for a store of style and initiative I felt that Heals treated me with short shrift.’
Reggie leant forward and favoured the little inventor with an incredulous gaze.
‘Do you mean to say that you take your edible furniture seriously?’ he said.
Mr Fogden looked affronted.
‘But of course,’ he said. ‘It’s cheap to make, comfortable to sit in and tasty to eat.’
‘I see. Well why are you coming to me then?’ said Reggie. ‘My stores sell only useless objects.’
‘You are my last hope,’ said Mr Fogden. ‘All other avenues are closed to me.’
‘Well, what have you got to show me?’
‘I have some samples in my portmanteau,’ said Mr Fogden. ‘They are miniatures to the scale of one in thirty.’