The Reginald Perrin Omnibus by Nobbs David

The Reginald Perrin Omnibus by Nobbs David

Author:Nobbs, David [Nobbs, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Cornerstone Digital
Published: 2009-12-23T00:00:00+00:00


Chapter 16

Doc Morrissey arrived promptly at twelve on the Tuesday. He sat down with alacrity and back-ache.

‘What’s the trouble?’ said Reggie.

‘No idea.’

‘You ought to see an osteopath,’ said Reggie, offering him a cigar.

‘I shouldn’t smoke,’ said Doc Morrissey, accepting. ‘I’ve got some kind of a breathing problem, don’t know what it is.’

Reggie felt embarrassed in Doc Morrissey’s presence. To the struggling medico, the three telephones, the cigars and the large desk must be vulgar signs of success and opulence.

‘Well, how are things with you, Doc?’ he asked with forced breeziness.

‘I got dismissed from the British Medical Association.’

‘Oh dear. What was it for?’

‘Gross professional incompetence.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘I got these terrible stomach pains. I’d rushed a mutton vindaloo at lunch-time and I put it down to indigestion.’

‘Treacherous chaps, mutton vindaloos.’

‘Well exactly. My sentiments entirely. I paid a visit to this character, and lo and behold, he’d got the same pains as me. “Indigestion,” I said, and I gave him the white pills. People like indigestion pills to be white, I find.’

‘And it wasn’t indigestion?’

‘Acute appendicitis.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘I realized the truth when I collapsed at evening surgery and my partner diagnosed that mine was acute appendicitis.’

‘Oh dear.’

Reggie leant forward persuasively.

‘I’ve got a vacancy for a manager at my Climthorpe branch,’ he said. ‘How would you like it?’

Doc Morrissey stared at him in amazement.

‘Me? You’re offering me a job?’

‘Yes.’

Doc Morrissey relit his cigar with trembling fingers.

‘I think you’d be the ideal man for the job,’ said Reggie.

‘But I’ve never managed a shop in my life.’

‘When you started out as a doctor, you’d never been a doctor.’

‘No. And look what happened.’

‘Healing was not your metier,’ said Reggie.

‘No.’

‘You were a square peg in a round hole.’

‘I felt that.’

Reggie held his lighter out and relit Doc Morrissey’s cigar.

‘I didn’t get where I am today without knowing a square peg in a round hole when I . . . oh my God.’

‘What?’

‘I used C.J.’s phrase.’

Reggie was deeply shocked. Did it mean he was beginning to take his tycoonery seriously?

‘Sorry. I’m a bit shocked,’ he said.

‘I’m not surprised. What a terrible thing to happen.’

‘I didn’t get where I am today by using C.J.’s phrases.’

‘Absolutely not, Reggie.’

‘Where were we, Doc?’

‘I was being a square peg in a round hole.’

‘Oh yes.’

Doc Morrissey abandoned the cigar. It had fractured and wasn’t drawing.

‘I’d like you to take the job, Doc.’

‘I’d like to take it, Reggie.’

‘Good. Let’s go and have a spot of lunch.’

Reggie put an affectionate arm on Doc Morrissey’s shoulder and steered him towards the door.

‘I can’t eat much,’ said the stooping ex-diagnostician. ‘My stomach’s playing me up.’

‘You really ought to see a doctor,’ said Reggie.

‘I don’t trust them,’ said Doc Morrissey. ‘All they ever do is give you two aspirins and tell you they’ve got it worse.’

The illuminated inn-sign of the Dissipated Kipper swung in the cold gusty wind high up on the Hog’s Back in the Surrey hills. Motorists scurrying home at sixty-five miles an hour caught a brief glimpse of a dandyish smoked herring with a paunch and a monocle holding a glass of whisky in his hand while placing his bet at the roulette table.



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