The Reginald Perrin Omnibus Read online

  THE REGINALD PERRIN OMNIBUS

  David Nobbs was born in Orpington, the only son of a schoolmaster. He has written many successful novels, including The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, A Bit of a Do, The Life and Times of Henry Pratt and Going Gently. He has also written the television series Rich Tea and Sympathy, The Glamour Girls and Fairly Secret Army, and the television plays Cupid’s Darts, Our Young Mr Wignall and Stalag Luft. His auto-biography, I Didn’t Get Where I Am Today . . . was published to great acclaim in 2003. His latest novel is Sex and Other Changes. He lives in North Yorkshire.

  Also by David Nobbs

  The Itinerant Lodger

  A Piece of the Sky is Missing

  Ostrich Country

  Second From Last in the Sack Race

  A Bit of a Do

  Pratt of the Argus

  Fair Do’s

  The Cucumber Man

  The Legacy of Reginald Perrin

  Going Gently

  Sex and Other Changes

  I Didn’t Get Where I Am Today . . .

  The

  Reginald

  Perrin Omnibus

  Containing:

  The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin

  The Return of Reginald Perrin

  The Better World of Reginald Perrin

  David Nobbs

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Epub ISBN: 9781409079798

  Version 1.0

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  The Fall and Rise

  of Reginald Perrin

  Thursday

  When Reginald Iolanthe Perrin set out for work on the Thursday morning, he had no intention of calling his mother-in-law a hippopotamus. Nothing could have been further from his thoughts.

  He stood on the porch of his white neo-Georgian house and kissed his wife Elizabeth. She removed a piece of white cotton that had adhered to his jacket and handed him his black leather briefcase. It was engraved with his initials, ‘R.I.P.’, in gold.

  ‘Your zip’s coming undone,’ she hissed, although there was nobody around to overhear her.

  ‘No point in it coming undone these days,’ he said, as he made the necessary adjustment.

  ‘Stop worrying about it,’ said Elizabeth. ‘It’s this heatwave, that’s all.’

  She watched him as he set off down the garden path. He was a big man, almost six foot, with round shoulders and splay feet. He had a very hairy body and at school they had called him ‘Coconut Matting’. He walked with a lope, body sloping forward in its anxiety not to miss the eight-sixteen. He was forty-six years old.

  Swifts were chasing each other high up in the blue June sky. Rover 2000s were sliding smoothly down the drives of mock Tudor and mock Georgian houses, and there were white gates across the roads on all the entrances to the estate.

  Reggie walked down Coleridge Close, turned right into Tennyson Avenue, then left into Wordsworth Drive, and down the snicket into Station Road. He had a thundery headache coming on, and his legs felt unusually heavy.

  He stood at his usual place on the platform, in front of the door marked ‘Isolation Telephone’. Peter Cartwright joined him. A West Indian porter was tidying the borders of the station garden.

  The pollen count was high, and Peter Cartwright had a violent fit of sneezing. He couldn’t find a handkerchief, so he went round the corner of the ‘gents’, by the fire buckets, and blew his nose on the Guardian’s special Rhodesian supplement. He crumpled it up and put it in a green waste-paper basket.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, rejoining Reggie. ‘Ursula forgot my tissues.’

  Reggie lent him his handkerchief. The eight-sixteen drew in five minutes late. Reggie stepped back as it approached for fear that he’d throw himself under the train. They managed to get seats. The rolling stock was nearing the end of its active life and Reggie was sitting over a wheel. The shaking caused his socks to fall down over his ankles, and it was hard to fill in the crossword legibly.

  Shortly before Surbiton Peter Cartwright had another sneezing fit. He blew his nose on Reggie’s handkerchief. It had ‘R.I.P.’ initialled on it.

  ‘Finished,’ said Peter Cartwright, pencilling in the last clue as they rattled through Raynes Park.

  ‘I’m stuck on the top left-hand corner,’ said Reggie. ‘I just don’t know any Bolivian poets.’

  The train arrived at Waterloo eleven minutes late. The loudspeaker announcement said that this was due to ‘staff difficulties at Hampton Wick’.

  The head office of Sunshine Desserts was a shapeless, five-storey block on the South Bank, between the railway line and the river. The concrete was badly stained by grime and rain. The clock above the main entrance had been stuck at three forty-six since 1967, and every thirty seconds throughout the night a neon sign flashed its red message ‘Sunshine Desserts’ across the river.

  As Reggie walked towards the glass doors, a cold shiver ran through him. In the foyer there were drooping rubber plants and frayed black leather seats. He gave the bored receptionist a smile.

  The lift was out of order again, and he walked up three flights of stairs to his office. He slipped and almost fell on the second floor landing. He always had been clumsy. At school they had called him ‘Goofy’ when they weren’t calling him ‘Coconut Matting’.

  He walked across the threadbare green carpet of the open-plan third floor office, past the secretaries seated at their desks.

  His office had windows on two sides, affording a wide vista over blackened warehouses and railway arches. Along the other two walls were green filing cabinets. A board had been pegged to the partition beside the door, and it was covered with notices, holiday postcards, and a calendar supplied gratis by a Chinese Restaurant in Weybridge.

  He summoned Joan Greengross, his loyal secretary. She had a slender body and a big bust, and the knobbles of her knees went white when she crossed her legs. She had worked for him for eight years – and he had never kissed her. Each summer she sent him a postcard from Shanklin (IOW). Each summer he sent her a postcard from Pembrokeshire.

  ‘How are we this morning, Joan?’ he said.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Good. That’s a nice dress. Is it new?’

  ‘I’ve had it three years.’

  ‘Oh.’

  He rearranged some papers on his desk nervously.

  ‘Right,’ he said. Joan’s pencil was poised over her pad. ‘Right.’

  He looked out over the grimy sun-drenched street. He couldn’t bring himself to begin. He hadn’t the energy to launch himself into it.

  To G.F. Maynard, Randalls Farm, Nether Somerby,’ he began at last, thinking of another farm, of golden harvests, of his youth.

  Thank you for your letter of the 7th inst. I am very sorry that you are finding it inconvenient to change over to the Metzinger scale. Let me assure you that many of our suppliers are already finding that the new scale is the most realistic method of grading plums and greengages. With the coming . . . no, with the advent of metrication I feel confident that you will have no regrets in the long run . . .

  He finished the letter, dictated several other letters of even greater boredom, and still gave no thought to the possibility of calling his mother-in-law a hippopotamus.

  Another shiver ran through him. It was an intimation, but h
e didn’t recognize it as such. He thought that perhaps he was sickening for summer ‘flu.

  ‘You’re seeing C.J. at eleven,’ said Joan. ‘And your zip’s undone.’

  Promptly at eleven he entered C.J.’s outer office on the second floor. You didn’t keep C.J. waiting.

  ‘He’s expecting you,’ said Marion.

  He went through into C.J.’s inner sanctum. It was a large room. It had a thick yellow carpet and two circular red rugs, yellow and red being the colours that symbolized Sunshine Desserts and all they stood for. In the far distance, in front of the huge plate window, a few pieces of furniture huddled together. There sat C.J. in his swivel chair, behind his rosewood desk. In front of the desk were three embarrassingly pneumatic chairs, and on the yellow walls there hung three pictures – a Francis Bacon, a John Bratby, and a photograph of C.J. holding the lemon mousse which had won second prize in the convenience foods category at the 1963 Paris Concours Des Desserts. The window commanded a fine view over the Thames, with the Houses of Parliament away to the east.

  Young Tony Webster was there already, seated in one of the pneumatic chairs. Reggie sat beside him. His chair sighed. It reclined backwards and had no arms. It was very uncomfortable.

  David Harris-Jones entered breathlessly. He was a tall man and he walked as if expecting low beams to leap out at him from all sides.

  ‘Sorry I’m – well, not exactly late but – er – not exactly early,’ he said.

  ‘Sit down,’ barked C.J.

  He sat down. His chair blew a faint raspberry.

  ‘Right,’ said C.J. ‘Well, gentlemen, it’s all stations go on the exotic ices project. The Pigeon woman has put in a pretty favourable report.’

  ‘Great,’ said young Tony Webster in his classless voice.

  ‘Super,’ said David Harris-Jones, who had been to a minor public school.

  Esther Pigeon had conducted a market research survey into the feasibility of selling exotic ices based on oriental fruits. She had soft downy hair on her legs and upper lip.

  Reggie shook his head suddenly, trying to forget Miss Pigeon’s soft downy hairs and concentrate on the job in hand.

  ‘What?’ said C.J., noticing the head-shake.

  ‘Nothing C.J.,’ said Reggie.

  C.J. gave him a piercing look.

  ‘This one’s going to be a real winner,’ said C.J. ‘I didn’t get where I am today without knowing a real winner when I see one.’

  ‘Great,’ said young Tony Webster.

  ‘The next thing to do is to make a final decision about our flavours,’ said C.J.

  ‘Maurice Harcourt’s laying on a tasting at two-thirty this afternoon,’ said Reggie. ‘I’ve got about thirty people going.’

  C.J. asked Reggie to stay behind after Tony Webster and David Harris-Jones had left.

  ‘Cigar?’

  Reggie took a cigar.

  C.J. leant back ominously in his chair.

  ‘Young Tony’s a good lad,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, C.J.’

  ‘I’m grooming him.’

  ‘Yes, C.J.’

  ‘This exotic ices project is very exciting.’

  ‘Yes, C.J.’

  ‘Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?’ said C.J.

  ‘It depends on the question,’ said Reggie.

  This one’s very personal indeed.’ C.J. directed the aluminium spotlight on his desk towards Reggie’s face, as if it could dazzle even when it wasn’t switched on. ‘Are you losing your drive?’ he asked.

  ‘No, C.J.,’ said Reggie. ‘I’m not losing my drive.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said C.J. ‘We aren’t one of those dreadful firms that believe a chap’s no good after he’s fortysix.’

  Before lunch Reggie went to see Doc Morrissey in the little surgery on the ground floor, next to the amenities room.

  C.J. had given Sunshine Desserts everything that he thought a first-rate firm ought to have. He’d given it an amenities room, with a darts board and a three-quarter size table tennis table. He’d given it a sports ground in Chigwell, shared with the National Bank of Japan, and it wasn’t his fault that the cricket pitch had been ruined by moles. He’d given it an amateur dramatic society, which had performed works by authors as diverse in spirit as Shaw, Ibsen, Rattigan, Coward and Briggs from the Dispatch Department. And he had given it Doc Morrissey.

  Doc Morrissey was a small wizened man with folds of empty skin on his face and, whatever illness you had, he had it worse.

  ‘My legs feel very heavy,’ said Reggie. ‘And every now and then a shiver passes right through me. I think I may be sickening for summer ‘flu.’

  The walls were decorated with diagrams of the human body. Doc Morrissey stuck a thermometer into Reggie’s mouth.

  ‘Elizabeth all right?’ said Doc Morrissey.

  ‘She’s very well,’ said Reggie through the thermometer.

  ‘Don’t talk,’ said Doc Morrissey. ‘Bowel movements up to scratch?’

  Reggie nodded.

  ‘How’s that boy of yours doing?’ said Doc Morrissey.

  Reggie gave a thumbs down.

  ‘Difficult profession, acting. He should stick to the amateur stuff like his father,’ said Doc Morrissey.

  Reggie was a pillar of the Sunshine Dramatic Society. He had once played Othello to Edna Meadowes from Packing’s Desdemona.

  ‘Any chest pains?’ said Doc Morrissey.

  Reggie shook his head.

  ‘Where are you going for your holidays this year?’ said Doc Morrissey.

  Reggie tried to represent Pembrokeshire in mime.

  Doc Morrissey removed the thermometer.

  ‘Pembrokeshire,’ said Reggie.

  ‘Your temperature’s normal anyway,’ said Doc Morrissey.

  He examined Reggie’s eyes, tongue, chest and reflexes.

  ‘Have you been feeling listless and lazy?’ said Doc Morrissey. ‘Unable to concentrate? Lost your zest for living? Lots of headaches? Falling asleep during Play for Today? Can’t finish the crossword like you used to? Nasty taste in the mornings? Keep thinking about naked sportswomen?’

  Reggie felt excited. These were the exact symptoms of his malaise. People said Doc Morrissey was no good, all he ever did was give you two aspirins. It wasn’t true. The little man was a miracle worker.

  ‘Yes, I have. That’s exactly how I’ve been feeling,’ he said.

  ‘It’s funny. So have I. I wonder what it is,’ said Doc Morrissey.

  He gave Reggie two aspirins.

  Maurice Harcourt laid on a very good ice cream tasting. Nobody from head office liked visiting Acton. They hated the factory, with its peeling cream and green frontage, halfway between an Odeon cinema and an East German bus station. It reminded them that the firm didn’t only make plans and decisions, but also jellies and creamed rice. It reminded them that it owned a small fleet of bright red lorries with ‘Try Sunshine Flans – they’re flan-tastic’ painted in yellow letters on both sides. It reminded them that C.J. had bought two lorries with moulded backs in the shape of jellies. Acton was dusty and commonplace, but everyone agreed that Maurice Harcourt laid on a very good ice cream tasting.

  Reggie had invited a good cross-section of palates. On a long table at one end of the first floor conference room there were eighteen large containers, each one holding ice cream of a different flavour. Everyone had a card with the eighteen flavours printed on it, and there were six columns marked: ‘Taste’, ‘Originality’, ‘Texture’, ‘Consumer Appeal’, ‘Appearance’ and ‘Remarks’. The sun shone in on them as they went about their work.

  This pineapple one is too sickly, darling,’ said Davina Letts-Wilkinson, who was forty-eight, with greying hair dyed silver, lines on her face, and the best legs in the convenience foodstuffs industry.

  ‘Mark it down,’ said Reggie.

  ‘I like the mango,’ said Tim Parker from Flans.

  Tony Webster was filling in his card most assiduously. So was David Harris-Jones.r />
  ‘This lime’s bloody diabolical,’ said Ron Napier, representing the taste buds of the Transport Department.

  ‘Write it all down,’ said Reggie.

  Davina kept following him round the room, and he knew that Joan Greengross was watching them. The ice creams made him feel sick, his brain was beating against his forehead, and his legs were like lead.

  ‘Isn’t this terrific?’ said David Harris-Jones.

  ‘Yes,’ said Reggie.

  ‘A sophisticated little lychee,’ said Colin Edmundes from Admin., whose reputation for wit depended entirely on his adaptation of existing witticisms. ‘But I think you’ll be distressed by its cynicism.’

  Reggie went up to Joan, wanting to make contact, not wanting her to think that he was interested in Davina Letts-Wilkinson’s legs.

  ‘Enjoying it?’ he said.

  ‘It makes a change,’ she said.

  ‘That’s a nice dress. Is it new?’ he said.

  ‘You asked me that this morning,’ she said.

  Tim Parker took Jenny Costain to Paris. Owen Lewis from Crumbles got Sandra Gostelow drunk at the office party and made her wear yellow oilskins before they did it. But Reggie had never even kissed Joan. She had a husband and three children. And Reggie had a marvellous wife. Elizabeth was a treasure. Everybody said what a treasure Elizabeth was.

  Reggie smiled at Maurice Harcourt, and licked his cumquat surprise without enthusiasm.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said.

  He rushed out and was horribly sick in the ‘ladies’. There wasn’t time to reach the ‘gents’.

  They were driven back to head office in the firm’s bright red fourteen-seater bus. The clutch was going. Davina sat next to Reggie. Joan sat behind them. Davina held Reggie’s hand and said, ‘That was a lovely afternoon. Clever old you.’ Her hand was sticky and Reggie was sweating.

  At five-thirty they repaired to the Feathers. Faded tartan paper decorated the walls and a faded tartan carpet performed a similar function with regard to the floor. Reggie still felt slightly sick.

  The Sunshine crowd were in high spirits. David Harris-Jones had three sherries. Davina stood very close to Reggie. They smoked cigarettes and discussed lung cancer and alcoholism. Tony Webster’s dolly bird arrived. She had slim legs and drank bacardi and coke. Owen Lewis told two dirty stories. Davina said, ‘Sorry, darlings. I must leave you for a minute. Women’s problems.’