He must get a bike. Save the fares. He was earning a hundred pounds a year devilling for the absent Silk with the difficult wife. Three hundred a year in all, with the very odd Brief. He had one good suit, kept his shoes soled and heeled, washed his new-fangled nylon shirt every evening and hung it round the geyser in the communal bathroom at his lodgings, to dry for the morning. To keep up appearances before solicitors and clients. Not that there were any clients. Not for him. Not for years yet. Maybe never. Nobody knew him. Along the passage the old Silk farted again.
It had been nearly a year ago that Eddie, walking round the once-beautiful London squares one evening — without money there was nothing else to do, he was putting the hours in until bedtime — had thought of the building and engineering aspect of the Law. The War was over. One day — look at Germany — rebuilding of the ruins must surely occur in this country. Building disputes, he thought. There’ll be hundreds of them. Enquiring about, he had found a set of engineering Chambers that had been bombed and moved into this backwater of Lincoln’s Inn.
There was not even space for a Clerk’s room. This had had to be rented across a yard. The Senior Clerk, who looked like an unsuccessful butler and spent much time in rumination, left early after lunch for South Wimbledon. The clever Junior Clerk, Tom, hideously unemployed, worked like mad around the pubs at lunchtime among the Clerks of other Chambers, trying to get leads on coming Cases and plotting where he would move to next. He liked Eddie and was sorry for him. “I should pack it in, sir,” he said one day. “You’re worth better than this — First from Oxford. I can’t sell you here. Go to New Zealand.”
I might, thought Eddie today, looking through the door to the grander room and then beyond it out of the old, absent Silk’s window to the rain falling. Between the building and the Inn garden where stood a great tree which had survived other wars, a white Rolls-Royce was parked. He could see the chauffeur inside it in a green uniform. Not usual. Eddie sighed, and lifted the next pages of transcript off the pile.
The street door of the Chambers now banged open against the wall and feet came running towards Eddie’s alley. The Junior Clerk, macintosh flapping — he’d been waiting to go home — flung open his door and shouted, “Come on, sir. Quick. Quick, sir! Get up. Leave those papers. Get into that front room. Behind the desk. You’ve got a client.”
“Client?”
“New solicitor. Get the dust off those sets of papers. Smarten your clothing. Where’s that classy clothes-brush of yours? Here. I’ll put his wife’s photo out of sight. Wrong image. You’re young and free to travel. I think you’re on the move.”
“Move?”
“I’ve got you a Brief. It’s a big one. Four hundred on the Brief and forty a day. Likely to last two weeks.”
“Whoever—?”
“Don’t ask me. It’s Hong Kong. It’s a Chinese dwarf.”
“You’ve gone insane, Tom. It’s a hoax.”
“Turned up in that Rolls. I’ve had him sitting in the Clerk’s room twenty minutes. I’ll bring him over.”
“wait!”
“Wait? Wait? Look, it’s a pipeline failure in Hong Kong. You’re on your way.”
“A Chinese dwarf?”
“Come back. Where you going, sir? I bring him over here to you, you don’t go running after him.”
“Where is he now?” Eddie shouted from the courtyard.
“He’s still in the Clerks’ room. I told him I was coming to see if you were free. I bring him to you. Gravitas, sir.”
But Eddie was gone, over the courtyard, under the lime tree, running in the rain. The chauffeur in the Rolls turned to look, raising an eyebrow.
Eddie ran into the Clerks’ room, where Albert Loss was seated on the sagging purple sofa playing Patience.
“Coleridge!”
“Spot the lady. Kill the ace of spades.”
“Coleridge! God in heaven, Coleridge. But you’re dead. The Japanese killed you.”
“Colombo didn’t fall. You are an amnesiac. There were initial raids. And then they left us alone. You should have stayed. I found my uncle. Several of them. All attorneys. And so I became one too.”
“This is the most wonderful. . How ever did you find me?”
“Law Lists, my dear old chum. Top of the Law Lists. Thanks to me. I directed you, you will remember, towards the Law. And now I am Briefing you. My practice is largely in Hong Kong. I hope you have no serious family ties?”
“Not a tie. Not a thread. Not a cobweb—Coleridge!”
“Good. Then you can fly to Hong Kong next week? First class, of course. We must not lose face before the clients. We’ll put you up in the Peninsular.”
“I’ll have to read the papers.”
“Nonsense, Fevvers. You’ll do it all in your head. On the plane. Open-and-shut Case, and I taught you Poker. You can think. I’m flying back myself tomorrow.”
“This is a dream. You’re exactly the same. You haven’t aged. By the way, what happened to my watch?”
“Ah, that had to be sacrificed in the avuncular search. But you have aged, Fevvers. You have been aged by your Wartime experiences, no doubt?”
“You could say that. Coleridge, come on! Let’s go out. Where are you staying?”
“The Dorchester, of course. But there is no time for social punishment. I fly tomorrow and I must see my builders. I’m buying a house in the Nash Terraces of Regent’s Park. All in ruins. Practically free at present. If you want it to rent, after the pipeline, it’s yours. By the way, were you met?”
“Met?”
“At Liverpool? Off the old Portuguese tub?”
“Yes. Yes, I was—”
“I was forced to borrow your address book. I’m afraid it has fallen by the way. My uncles were very close to the Corps of Signals. And of course I have a phenomenal memory.”
“You should be a spy.”
“Thank you, but I am in gainful employment. It’s very good to see you, Feathers. Very nice clothes-brush. Do you want it?”
“Yes. Coleridge!”
“And by the way,” Albert Loss said at the car, the chauffeur towering above him, holding a brolly, “while I’m away in Hong Kong, do make use of the Royce.”
LAST RITES
Indigestion,” said the hotel to Claire over the telephone. “A very bad case of indigestion.”
“He said on the postcard a sprained ankle.”
“The indigestion followed. It was the prawns. Looked identical to a heart attack. He’s been in hospital. He’s back here again now recovering from the hospital. Can we get him for you? He’s out in the sun, well wrapped up. Who shall we say?”
“Will you say Claire? And that I had his postcard.”
“We were very glad of those postcards.”
“Hello,” said Filth, tottering in. “I was wondering if someone could find me a priest.”
The bar listened. The nice girl came and sat him in a chair. Dialling the number for him, handing him the phone, she said, “Sir Edward, the priest business was last week.”
“What? Hello? Claire? There are things I want to get off my chest. This episode was rather alarming. Some unfinished business. You know what I’m talking about.”