The Reginald Perrin Omnibus (6 page)

At last the taxi came. She looked immaculate in a blue and white summer dress. She walked calmly up the garden path, between flocks of somnolent greenfly. She peered uncertainly at the house, as if waiting for the porch to nod and say, ‘Yes, this is it.’ She was relaxed, unsuspecting, a secretary arriving to do some work in Surrey.

She rang the bell. It sounded cool and clear, in the thick heat.

He opened the door.

‘Hullo, Joan,’ he said. ‘Come in.’

‘Sorry I was so long.’

‘Rubbish. It’s good of you to come.’

‘So this is your house,’ she said. ‘It’s nice.’

‘Have a sherry.’

She looked at him in surprise.

‘Just a little one, before we go upstairs.’

‘Well, all right. Thank you.’

He handed her the sherry. She still suspected nothing. Presumably she pictured a group of men in conference, in a study, upstairs.

‘Cheers.’

‘Cheers.’

He sat down. She followed suit, pulling her dress down as far as it would go towards her bony knees.

‘What’s all this about?’ she asked.

‘Later.’

‘I thought it was urgent. Look, Reggie, I’ve come twenty-five miles. Can’t we get straight down to it?’

‘We’ll get down to it in a minute, Joan.’ He was holding his arm across his lap so that she wouldn’t see the bulge of excitement in his trousers. ‘Have some more sherry?’

‘No thank you.’

The world was full of her bony knees, thin arms, magnificent bust. She would repulse him, smack his face, ask for a transfer to another department.

‘Where are these other people?’ she asked.

He took her in his arms and kissed her pert lips, her snub nose. He had expected resistance, not a hard little tongue feeling its way into his mouth, and hands groping for his thighs.

His hands grasped her legs and felt their way up her thighs. Ponsonby decided that he had seen enough and left the room.

Suddenly Joan went tense. Reggie took his hands away.

‘What about your wife?’ she said.

‘She’s gone away for the day. She’s at the hippopotamus’s.’

‘The what?’

‘Oh – er – I mean her mother’s. She resembles a hippopotamus. Her mother, I mean. Elizabeth doesn’t resemble a hippopotamus at all.’

He poured her another sherry. They drank. He kissed her glistening, medium dry lips.

‘What about the neighbours?’ she asked.

They can’t see in.’

He ran his lips along her thin right arm.

‘Why now?’ she said. ‘Why today, after all these years?’

‘Suddenly it all seemed such a waste,’ he said.

For forty-six years he had been miserly, miserly with compliments, miserly with insults, miserly with other people and miserly with himself.

She kissed his right ear. He was pleased that she was so amenable, yet he felt cheated of the pleasures of seduction.

The phone rang. He tried to ignore it, but the habit was too strong for him.

It was Elizabeth. He stiffened, motioned to Joan to keep quiet.

‘Yes, I’m all right . . . No, I haven’t had lunch yet . . . No, I’m not working too hard.’ Joan leant forward to run her tongue gently over his ear. She was irresponsible, exultant, not a bit the way he’d imagined. He tried to look stern and frightened. ‘Do I? I don’t think I sound funny . . . It’s probably just the line . . . No, I’ll be having it soon . . . Pickle . . . Well of course it’s on the shelf where you keep the pickle, in the jar marked “pickle” . . . No, I’m not angry . . . I’m perfectly all right. How’s your mother? . . . Oh dear . . . Oh dear . . . Yes . . . No, I’m all right . . . Of course I’m sure . . . Bye bye, darling.’

He put the phone down.

‘Anything wrong?’ said Joan.

‘Her mother’s got to go into hospital.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

She kissed him gently on the lips. He stood up, held out his arms to her, and pulled her up off the settee. She raised her eyebrows.

‘Is it safe?’ she said.

‘Of course it is,’ he said.

They left the room. The orange cushions which his wife had embroidered herself were crumpled evidence of his betrayal.

‘I don’t like to go into our room,’ he said. ‘We’ll use Mark’s.’

‘Your son?’

‘It’s all right. He left home two years ago. It won’t be aired, but it shouldn’t matter in this heat.’

‘No.’

They went into Mark’s room. Mark had decorated it himself – green and purple paint – posters of Che Guevara and Mick Jagger. It had the sad air of an abandoned bedroom. Nothing had been altered – but it was tidy – and without Mark’s dirty socks and pants strewn all over the floor it looked cold and lifeless. But it would make a suitably unsuitable setting for their love.

‘All right?’ he asked.

‘Fine.’

‘I – er – I haven’t got any – anything – we don’t use them – Elizabeth’s got a thingummybob,’ he said, embarrassed.

‘It’s all right.’ She was embarrassed too. ‘I’ve got something in my bag.’

‘You mean . . . ?’

She blushed.

‘I always carry it, just in case.’

He showed her the bathroom.

‘Joan?’

‘Yes?’

‘Don’t . . . er . . .’

‘What?’

‘Don’t come back undressed at all. I want to . . . you know . . . undress you.’

He sat on Mark’s bed. Well, Mark old thing, your old dad’s not a has-been yet.

Che Guevara looked at him sternly.

‘Come off it, Che,’ he said. ‘You liked a bit yourself. It wasn’t revolution all the time.’

Mick Jagger gazed down on him mercilessly.

‘The permissive society comes to Coleridge Close,’ said Reggie.

It’s going to be all right. I’ll prove I’m not past it at fortysix.

I’m sorry, Elizabeth, but I do love you just as much as ever.

What’s she doing in there? Hurry up.

Don’t tell me you never had any sexual troubles, Che.

Already he couldn’t really remember what Joan looked like.

He hoped she hadn’t taken off her tights. He needed to do that himself.

Oh hell, he thought, I do believe I’m going to be shy.

Truth is, Che, I’m a bit of a coward. Wouldn’t have been much shakes in a revolution. Senior sales executive, yes. Picking off the filthy Fascist pigs one by one, no.

She came in, shyly. She hadn’t taken off her tights. They sat on the bed.

Turn your head to the wall, Che, there’s a good chap.

‘Well,’ he said, awkward, unused to this sort of thing, ‘better get undressed.’

He started to pull the tights off her. He bent down and kissed her thigh, rolled the tights off her knees, kissed her bony knees, her legs smelt of bracken, he caught Che’s eye, then unbuttoned his shirt, he was sweating, damn it, he was sweating again.

They were naked. They stood together. He was five inches taller than her. Her breasts were magnificent. He wanted to praise them but didn’t know how to do it. ‘What beautiful breasts’ would sound stilted and ‘Christ, you’ve got a marvellous pair of Bristols on you’ would sound crude. So he just held them in his hands, and smiled foolishly.

It was the hour for washing up the Sunday dinner things, as Reggie Perrin said awkwardly, ‘May as well get into bed.’

The sheets were cold even on this hot day. They lay side by side and turned to look at each other very seriously.

‘To think it took me eight years,’ he said. ‘Hardly in the Owen Lewis class.’

‘Yes, but they all have to wear yellow oilskins with him.’

The sun went behind a cloud. He pressed his body against Joan’s, and a series of fierce shudders ran through him. He could feel his forty-six years of existence streaming through his fingers and toes into the clammy summer air.

In the dark cosy cave of Mark’s bed he put the knobble of her knee in his mouth and bit it, very gently, so as not to leave embarrassing toothmarks. Suddenly his fear of impotence started up, the joy began to ebb away.

It was at this moment that the front door opened. Reggie thought, It can’t be the front door. It’s a projection of a subconscious fear. I fear Elizabeth will return, and I make myself hear her return. And then he heard the door slam shut very solidly, very physically, only one person slammed the door like that: Mark, his son, struggling actor and erstwhile admirer of Che Guevara. They should have insisted on taking Mark’s front door key when he left home.

‘It’s Mark,’ he whispered.

‘Oh God.’

‘Quick. Into the wardrobe.’

‘Hullo. Anyone at home?’ called out Mark.

‘He’ll come in here. Quick.’ Reggie practically pushed Joan into the wardrobe. He flung her clothes in after her and slammed the door. He began to dress, hurriedly, both legs in the same leg of his pants, hopping frantically, Che witnessing his humiliation, Mick Jagger laughing secretly.

‘Hullo,’ Mark called out again.

Reggie went to the door.

‘Just coming. I was having forty winks,’ he shouted. ‘Get yourself a drink.’

He hurriedly made the bed, opened the window wide, blew a kiss and an apology through the wardrobe door, and went downstairs.

Mark was lounging in an armchair, drinking whisky. He was wearing suede shoes with huge buckles, Levis, and a ‘Wedgwood-Benn for King’ T-shirt.

‘Hullo, Pater, me old darling,’ he said.

‘Hullo old son.’ He was always liable to use awkward phrases when dealing with Mark. Mark unnerved him. Mark was shorter and slimmer. He looked like a smaller edition of Reggie, portrait of the father as a young man, and Reggie found it curiously disconcerting. ‘What brings you to this neck of the woods?’

‘Just thought I’d pop down and see the old folks.’

Off-stage – and he was off-stage more than on – Mark didn’t look like an actor. He had adopted a cockney accent at the age of fourteen, dressed with a maximum of informality, and only came home when he wanted money.

‘Your mother’s out. She’s gone down to Worthing to see Granny.’

‘Oh.’

‘What are the two sherry glasses for?’ said Mark.

‘What? Oh, for drinking sherry.’

‘Twit.’

‘We had a sherry, your mother and I. Before she went.’

‘Oh.’

Reggie dumped himself down on the settee. He looked around for handbags or other incriminating evidence, but couldn’t find any.

Mark kicked off his shoes and smiled genially. He had holes in his socks again. Elizabeth had once said: ‘Peter Hall won’t want you in the Royal Shakespeare Company if you’ve got holes in your socks,’ but despite remarks of that kind Mark still got on better with her than with Reggie.

Mark saw Reggie’s involuntary glance and put his shoes on again. So he did want money.

‘Why didn’t you go with the old lady, then?’ said Mark.

‘I’ve got some work to do.’

‘I thought you said you were taking a nap.’

‘Just for half an hour. I was tired. I’ve been working all morning. Have you had lunch?’

‘I’m not hungry.’

He never was. No wonder he was only five foot seven. You didn’t get tall without working for it.

‘It’s hot,’ said Reggie.

‘Yeah.’

Reggie couldn’t think of anything except Joan, stuck in the wardrobe. Upstairs there was a new life, a life in which your son didn’t think you a poor sort of fish.

‘Why didn’t you tell us you were coming?’

‘Why bother? If you’d been out I’d have made myself at home.’

Mark made a habit of arriving unannounced so that they couldn’t stiffen their resolution not to lend him any money. He lit a cigarette and began a coughing fit.

‘You smoke too much,’ said Reggie.

‘Rubbitch.’

‘Well I’d better get upstairs and get on with my work, if you don’t mind,’ said Reggie.

‘Upstairs?’

‘Yes, I’ve one or two things to finish off upstairs. Look, old stick, go into the kitchen and have something to eat. Get me something too. There’s cold meat in the fridge, and some salady bits.’

‘In a minute. I just want to go up to my room and look for something.’

‘You can’t. I mean, it’s always in a minute with you, isn’t it? Delay, delay, delay. I’ll have to do it in the end.’

‘Oh all right, then. I’ll go and do the bloody food first. God, I wish I hadn’t come home. Nag, nag, nag. You’re like an old woman.’

‘Don’t slam the door.’

Mark slammed the door. Reggie hurried up to Mark’s bedroom and opened the wardrobe. Joan came out stiffly, clutching her clothes.

‘Sorry about this,’ he whispered. ‘He’s coming up here any minute. Go into Linda’s room, get into bed. I’ll get rid of him as soon as I can.’

They tip-toed along the corridor, he clothed, she naked, carrying her clothes.

Linda’s room had been redecorated now that she was married. It had pale pink flowery wallpaper and the wan neutrality of a guest room.

Joan hopped into bed. Reggie kissed her, blew her another kiss from the door, and hurried downstairs. Mark had laid out pork, salami, a piece of lettuce and a tomato each. Reggie got out a bottle of hock.

They took their plates and glasses into the living room.

‘Sorry I got cross,’ said Mark.

‘That’s all right, old prune.’

Silence. The sun went in behind a thicker, darker cloud.

‘That’s a new picture over the mantelpiece, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. Albufeira.’

Reggie knew that Mark looked down on him for buying Mr Snurd’s pictures.

‘I need me Edwards seen to.’

‘Edwards?’

‘Me Edward Heath. Teeth.’

Reggie never understood Mark’s rhyming slang.

‘How’s big fat sis?’ said Mark.

‘Linda? She’s fine.’

He poured a second glass of wine.

‘How’s work?’ he asked.

‘So so.’

‘Auntie Meg wrote and said how good she thought you were in that ad for fish fingers.’

‘Jesus Christ, I can do without praise for bloody adverts!’

‘I know, but you were good. I mean you can be good or bad in an advert just as much as in a play.’

‘Sorry. Can’t eat any more,’ said Mark. ‘Dad?’

‘Yes?’

‘Could you be a darling and lend us a few bob – just a quid or two – just to tide me over. Just a fiver. I’m seeing this man on Tuesday, he thinks there’s a real chance of me getting a job with his rep.’

‘Which rep is that?’

Mark looked embarrassed.