The whole proposition was very distasteful. He found himself hating the City, almost wishing he were back in the firing-line. And when, through various passages, he made his own offices, distaste deepened. Sitting there, talking generalities to Miss Macpherson (it would be time enough to tell her the business must be sold, after he had seen Maurice), memories thronged over him. He saw his father again, uncording a parcel of dock-samples, old George with his duster, Tom Simpson, himself as a raw youth.
Recollection conjured up many such pictures that morning: comedies, farces, tragedies, all enacted among the cedar-boxes and the mahogany furniture of 28 b. Lime Street.
After Miss Macpherson had given him the promised figures and gone off to her lunch, he prowled about the place. It seemed like a tomb now; all the life gone out of it. The faces of the two girls in the clerks’ room were as strange as the emptiness of the dusty racks.
Yet, for all its apparent deadness, Jameson & Company still made profits. For a moment, studying the rough balance-sheet Miss Macpherson had prepared, Peter doubted his wisdom in selling out. Why shouldn’t he make a fight for it, let her carry-on? There was enough money on deposit in the Bank to stall off Simpson’s executors for at least six months. The selling of goods, under war-conditions, presented no difficulty. What one could import, one could dispose of.
Still doubtful, he went out to lunch, avoiding the Lombard lest he should meet Beresford, going instead to a noisy old-fashioned chop-house where the food was as good as the service execrable. Over his chop, wisdom prevailed. For Patricia’s sake and the sake of his children, he dare not risk any more financial complications. With which resolution firmly in his mind, Peter walked down St. Mary Axe, entered the elaborate warehouses of Beresford and Beresford.
Maurice, dapper as ever, eye-glassed, patent-booted, but short-jacketed and bowler-hatted in deference to war-conditions, happened to be in the outer-office; welcomed Peter as a long lost brother.
“But what are you doing in mufti?” he asked, leading way through the glass-partitioned sales-rooms (which, Peter noticed, were as bare of stock as his own) into a green-carpeted sanctum of saddle-bag chairs and roll-top desks.
“Usually get out of uniform when I’m on leave,” explained Peter.
The little dude unlocked one of the desks; sat down at it; produced a box of fat oily Cabanas; pushed them across.
“Trust goods. But not at all bad,” he said.