by David Nobbs
‘Guidy and airseblekkt ooter her whee himsel obstrofulate pocking blae ruitsmon.’
‘Jolly good. We’ll say no more about it, then, McBlane.’
On the Thursday afternoon, in the Culture Room, alias the Websters’ bedroom, Tony was instructing Deborah Swaffham in the dramatic arts. More precisely, they were studying Antony and Cleopatra, with particular reference to the relationship between the eponymous duo. Tony was taking the part of Antony while it was Miss Swaffham’s task to portray the sultry temptress of the Nile.
Tony was feeling a certain lassitude, possibly as a result of his superb lunch of Parma ham with melon, crayfish thermidor, and syllabub.
Deborah Swaffham had long blonde hair, full lips with a suspicion of a pout, a good figure and long legs covered in a golden down. All Tony’s lassitude disappeared when she said, ‘How do you think Cleopatra would have kissed?’
‘I really don’t know,’ said Tony. ‘I’ve never given it much thought.’
‘I think she probably used lots of tongue and things, rather slowly and thoughtfully,’ said Deborah Swaffham.
‘Perhaps you’d better show me,’ said Tony.
And so, Deborah Swaffham and Tony sat in an armchair in the Culture Room on that quiet afternoon at the end of March in Oslo Avenue, Botchley, and were transported back through two thousand years of history.
After Deborah Swaffham had shown Tony how Cleopatra would have kissed, Tony showed her what he thought Antony’s attitude to breast fondling would have been.
When Tony put his tongue in Deborah Swaffham’s mouth, she gave it a little bite, like the remnants of natural aggression in a sleepy domestic cat.
‘I couldn’t do this as myself. It’s only because I’m Cleopatra,’ she said.
‘I find that hard to believe,’ said Tony.
‘Honestly, Tony. I’m very inhibited as me. If you came to my room and things, when I was me, I wouldn’t be like this. But then you wouldn’t want to come.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I’m unattractive to men. I have this frigid element which turns them off.’
‘Rubbish.’
Deborah Swaffham looked into Tony’s eyes.
He held her gaze.
‘If you came to my bedroom in Number Seventeen, I’m lucky, I’ve got a proper bedroom and no room-mate, if you came there during dinner, because food is pretty draggy, isn’t it?’
‘Food is Dullsville, Arizona.’
‘If you came this evening, would you still be able to feel attracted enough to me to try and help me get over my inhibitions and things?’
‘I could try,’ said Tony.
That evening Tony complained of indigestion – ‘probably the crayfish, I’ve never really been into crayfish’ – and told Joan that he’d miss dinner. As soon as she’d gone to eat, he sped along the road to Number Seventeen. He was awash with greedy waves of desire.
Outside Deborah Swaffham’s bedroom, he paused to tidy his hair. Then he knocked and strode in, masterfully, without waiting for a reply.
The room was empty.
‘Those meals were very expensive today,’ said Elizabeth in bed that night. ‘McBlane can’t have understood what you said.’
‘He understood all right. He’s mocking us,’ Reggie said. ‘Tomorrow I’m going to sort McBlane out. Don’t worry.’
Elizabeth took her reading glasses off and placed them on her bedside table. Then she turned towards Reggie.
‘I’m worried,’ she said.
‘Everything’s going to be all right,’ he said. You’ll see.’
Friday dawned cold and stormy. Patches of steely blue sky appeared only briefly between the angry clouds. Reggie walked slowly towards the kitchen and what might well be his final showdown with McBlane.
Adam and Jocasta burst from the kitchen, full of energy and high spirits on the first day of the school holidays.
‘Been to see Uncle McBlane?’ said Reggie, glad of an excuse for delay.
‘He’s been telling us a story,’ said Jocasta.
That’s very kind of him, isn’t it?’ said Reggie.
‘Yes,’ said Jocasta doubtfully.
Tell me’ said Reggie, ‘can you understand what Uncle McBlane is saying?’
‘Of course,’ said Adam. ‘We’re big.’
‘You can understand every word?’
‘Of course,’ said Adam.
‘Just checking,’ said Reggie.
‘Except words we don’t know,’ said Adam. ‘Like syphilitic.’
‘Yes, quite.’
Adam lowered his voice, confiding in Reggie, man to man.
‘Uncle McBlane’s stories aren’t as nice as Uncle C.J.’s stories about ants,’ he said. ‘Uncle McBlane’s stories are boring.’
‘Fucking boring,’ said Jocasta.
‘Yes, you can understand every word Uncle McBlane’s saying,’ said Reggie.
He entered the kitchen purposefully. If the pimply genius of the herbs hadn’t had a meat cleaver in his hand, Reggie’s task might have been easier.
‘Hello again,’ he said. ‘Superb meals yesterday, McBlane. Superb. Not perhaps quite as economical as I’d have wished . . .’
McBlane raised the cleaver.
‘. . . but, as I say, superb.’
McBlane grunted, and brought the meat cleaver down savagely upon the hare that he was preparing.
‘But,’ said Reggie, ‘and this implies no criticism, McBlane, but, and it is a big but . . .’
McBlane raised the cleaver once more.
‘. . . well not that big a but. A medium-sized, almost a small but. But still a but. Well, almost a but.’
McBlane hacked another portion off the splendid creature so cruelly denied the opportunity to display its seasonal mania.
Hailstones rattled against the window panes. The sky was a bruised magenta. A breeze swept through the kitchen, stirring the loose ends of McBlane’s boil plasters.
‘I gather you’re still telling stories to Adam and Jocasta,’ said Reggie. ‘Splendid. I wonder if for their age some of the stories are a little spicy, like your wonderful seafood pilaff.’
McBlane held the cleaver poised in his right hand. His poisoned thumb was encased in a sling, stained red with the blood of hares.
‘Not too spicy, I hasten to add,’ said Reggie. ‘Far from it.’
The cleaver thudded into the hare.
‘But perhaps spice, so brilliant in your seafood pilaff, is a little less appropriate in your stories.’
‘Baskard brock wee reeling brawly doon awa’ wouldna cleng a flortwingle.’
‘Come off it, McBlane,’ said Reggie. ‘Stop playing games with me, you mobile bandage emporium. You can make yourself understood when you want to, you pock-marked Caledonian loon. You’re all right when you tell your dirty stories, corrupting the children’s minds, you diseased thistle from Partick. You stand there, like a demonstration model for a lecture on skin diseases, a walking ABC of ailments from acne to yellow-fever, ruining us with your extravagances, laughing at us, mocking us. Well, rather like you, McBlane, it just won’t wash.’
Reggie stopped.
So did the hailstones.
The silence was deafening.
McBlane walked slowly towards him, the meat cleaver clasped in his right hand.
The hairs on the back of Reggie’s neck stood on end.
McBlane walked straight past him and picked another hare from a huge plate which was lying on the Scandinavian-style traditional English fully integrated natural pine and chrome work surface.
He was poker-faced, and spoke quietly.
He might have said, ‘I applaud the spirit if not the justice of your rebukes’, or, ‘I’ll endeavour to mend my ways in future’, or even, ‘You’ll pay for this, you long streak of Sassenach piss’.
Reggie would never know.
Later that afternoon, a longer, fiercer hailstorm clattered down on Botchley. Some of the hailstones were the size of exceptionally large hai
lstones. They caused the abandonment of Tom’s latest football experiment. Having failed with no opponents, trying to score for the opposition, and goals being illegal, Tom hoped that at last he’d solved the problem of removing the aggression from football. There were now two teams of equal numbers, each trying to score in the opponent’s goal. There were rules, and breaches of the rules were marked by free kicks and penalties. Players who committed serious or repeated fouls were sent off.
When he was told that this was exactly how football was played, and that the system was not notably successful, he replied, ‘Oh well, I always told you I wasn’t a sports person’.
On the way home it seemed natural that Tom should find himself walking beside Deborah Swaffham. She looked extremely attractive in her Botchley strip, her cheeks and legs reddened by the stinging hail, and Tom felt acutely conscious of the flabby whiteness of his nether limbs.
The storm abated as they crossed into Addis Ababa Avenue. Deborah Swaffham swayed towards Tom. She clutched him for support.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I thought I was going to fall.’
She kept her arm round his waist. When they turned into Washington Road, he grew visibly nervous. He lifted her arm and removed it from his waist.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I know I’m not the sort of person who turns men on and things.’
‘You are,’ protested Tom.
‘It wouldn’t worry me so much if I was ugly,’ said Deborah Swaffham as they turned into Oslo Avenue. ‘It’s knowing that I’ve got full, firm breasts and a flat, taut stomach and rounded hips, and long shapely legs, and things, and still I have this distancing effect which shrivels the male libido.’
Tom’s voice came out in a ghastly, strangulated croak.
‘I assure you my libido isn’t shrivelled,’ he said.
‘You could come to my bedroom during dinner,’ said Deborah Swaffham throatily. ‘Unless of course I’m not exciting enough for you to miss your food.’
Tom looked round furtively, to see if any of the other footballers had heard. Nobody was near them.
‘I’ll be there,’ he croaked. ‘I’m not a food person.’
‘I’m not hungry,’ Tom told Linda that evening.
‘Not hungry?’ she said. ‘Are you ill?’
‘Yes. Ill. That’s it. Ill,’ said Tom. ‘I need to go to bed.’
As soon as Linda had gone to dinner, Tom dressed rapidly and hurried to Number Seventeen.
He paused briefly outside the door to tidy his hair. Then he knocked, and plunged in, masterfully, without waiting for a reply.
The room was empty.
Tom went back to bed and lay there, deflated, angry and ravenous.
‘I thought of bringing you some cheese and biscuits,’ said Linda on her return. ‘But I thought I’d better not, if you’re ill.’
‘Quite right,’ said Tom. ‘Well, what masterpiece did I miss?’
‘Cold meats,’ said Linda. ‘McBlane has disappeared.’
The policeman arrived at midnight. Reggie went downstairs in his dressing gown, and talked to him by the remnants of the living-room fire.
Elizabeth waited anxiously. At last she heard the front door go, and Reggie came upstairs.
‘It’s McBlane,’ he told her. ‘He’s broken an arm.’
‘Oh my God,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Well, I’ll have to do the cooking, that’s all.’
‘McBlane can cook,’ said Reggie.
‘You can’t cook with a broken arm.’
‘I’ll go bail for him.’
‘Bail?’
Reggie climbed into bed and kissed her.
‘It wasn’t his arm he broke,’ he said. ‘Apparently he went into that big pub by the roundabout on the by-pass.’
‘The Tolbooth.’
‘Yes. And he attacked a Salvation Army lady with his meat cleaver when she tried to sell him the War Cry.’
‘Oh my God.’
‘I imagine that’s what she cried. Unavailingly.’
Reggie switched off the light at his side of the bed.
‘I think I may have gone a bit far in what I said to him this morning,’ he said.
‘What did you say?’
Reggie told her. She looked at him in considerable alarm.
‘Why did you say all that?’ she asked.
He shrugged.
‘People are saying you tore up a petition over Mrs Blythe-Erpingham’s head.’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Apparently you were insulting to Mr Linklater from the Town Clerk’s Department.’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh Reggie.’
‘Yes.’
‘You destroyed yourself at Sunshine Desserts, Reggie.’
‘Yes.’
‘You destroyed yourself at Grot.’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re not trying to destroy yourself again, are you?’
‘Of course not. I couldn’t stand Sunshine Desserts and I didn’t mean Grot seriously. This is my life’s work. Why should I destroy it?’
Elizabeth hugged him tightly.
‘I couldn’t bear it if everything was destroyed all over again,’ she said.
Reggie squeezed her hand tightly and pressed his body against hers.
They made love.
Afterwards, just before he drifted off to sleep, Reggie said, ‘Everything’ll be all right, darling. You’ll see.’
Elizabeth kissed him on the forehead.
‘You’ll see,’ he said.
By a stroke of ill-luck, the Tolbooth was the local of a reporter from Reuters and the arrest of the chef of Perrins, the community of faith and trust and love and peace, on a charge of assaulting a Salvation Army lady with a meat cleaver made good reading in several papers.
‘McBlane’s just an employee,’ complained Elizabeth. ‘But they make it sound as if all our ideals are in ruins.’
McBlane returned to work, but an atmosphere of gloom hung over Perrins.
Reggie took to drinking champagne. Rarely was a glass absent from his hand.
‘It’s a gesture,’ he told Elizabeth. ‘A touch of style. I have to re-establish confidence all over again. You know I don’t like the stuff. It’s far too gassy. It’s like the cigars. But what are my lungs and my digestion, compared to the future of Perrins?’
He topped up his glass.
On Sunday evening, Reggie called an emergency staff meeting. The demoralized group sat around, in the varied old armchairs, drinking coffee listlessly out of each other’s mugs. A small baize-topped card table had been set up for Reggie, opposite the fireplace. On the table was a pad of writing paper, a supply of pencils, and an auctioneer’s gavel which Elizabeth had picked up cheap at an auction of the belongings of a deceased Spraundon auctioneer. It would come in handy for keeping fractious meetings in order. So far there had been no fractious meetings, but the gavel’s brief hour of glory was at hand.
Reggie entered two minutes late. He had a fat cigar in his mouth and a glass of champagne in his hand. He sat at the table and waited for the conversation, such as it was, to cease.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Morale has declined and these things must be nipped in the bud. This meeting is to discuss which buds, and how they should be nipped, and in what. I’d like one firm suggestion for improving morale from each of you. Who’ll be first?’
He met in turn the eyes of Elizabeth, Tom, Linda, David, Prue, C.J., Jimmy, Lettuce, Tony, Joan and Doc Morrissey. Did any man ever have such a staff?
‘Get rid of Deborah Swaffham,’ said C.J.
All eyes turned towards C.J., seated in a relatively smart sofa, facing the window.
‘Is she the one with the ...’ said Reggie.
‘Yes,’ said C.J.
‘Expelling people looks to me like an admission of defeat,’ said Reggie. ‘However, if you insist on that suggestion, I’ll make a note of it.’
‘I do,’ said C.J.
‘Perhaps you could give us your reasons,’ said Reggie.
‘Certainly,’ said C.J. ‘When I do a job, I do it properly. I have never in my life spoilt a ship for a ha’porth of spilt milk, and I don’t propose to start now. So, when Miss Swaffham, during our role-playing session earlier this week, proposed a further extra-mural session one evening, I heard the trumpet call of duty. I abandoned the story I was writing for Adam and Jocasta, and she came to my room. We . . . er . . . we had a role-playing session.’
‘What roles did you play?’
‘It was her idea.’
‘What roles did you play?’
‘Doctor and patient.’
C.J. looked at Elizabeth, appealing for moral support as his reward for having left her alone throughout the community’s life. She tried to smile encouragingly.
‘I felt out of my element,’ he said. ‘I didn’t get where I am today by playing doctors and patients with Deborah Swaffham.’
Reggie took his cigar from his mouth and gazed steadily at C.J.
‘Did the role playing involve ...?’ he began.
‘An examination? Yes,’ said C.J. ‘She was the patient, by the way.’
‘Ah!’
‘It was her idea. She took off her clothes ...’
He shuddered at the memory.
‘I didn’t know whether I was coming or going,’ he continued. ‘I . . . I forgot myself, Reggie.’
‘Forgot yourself C.J.?’
‘It’s been a long time. I think everyone knows how much I miss Mrs C.J.’
‘It’s a sine qua non, C.J.’
‘Is it really? Well, there you are. Anyway, I forgot myself. She hit me. She hit me, Reggie.’
C.J. flinched as he remembered the experience.
‘We got dressed in angry silence,’ said C.J.
‘Oh, I see,’ said Reggie. ‘You’d got undressed as well.’
‘She was shy of undressing. Said she had an unsexy body. I said, “You haven’t seen mine”. She said it might help her if she did. Oh God.’