The old man got up to go. His eyes moved uncomfortably from one photograph to another. He pulled at his high collar as though he felt the room close.
"Sure you won't have anything?" said Clive.
"No, thanks," said his father.
"Well, don't you worry. I'll get some work all right. I'll have to pull my horns in a bit, though."
And that was positively all that was said. Dronda went away, that puzzled, bewildered look still hovering between his mouth and his eyes, his grey bowler still a little to one side.
After he was gone Clive considered the matter. Once the first shock was over things were really not so bad. The loss of Dronda was horrible, of course, and Clive thought of that as little as might be, but even there the war had made a difference, having shaken everything, in its tempestuous course, to the ground, so that one looked on nothing now as permanent. As to work, Clive would not mind that at all. There was quite a number of things that he would like to do. There were all these new Ministries, for instance; he thought of various friends that he had. He wrote down the names of one or two. Or there was the City. He had often fancied that he would like to go into the City. You made money there, he understood, in simply no time at all. And you needed no education.... He thought of one or two City men whom he knew and wrote down their names.
One or two other things occurred to him. Before he went out to dine he had written a dozen notes. He liked to think that he could be prompt and business-like when there was need.
During the next day or two he had quite a merry time with his friends about the affair. He laughingly depicted himself as a serious man of business, one of those men whom you see in the cinemas, men who sit at enormous desks and have big fists and Rolls-Royces. He spent one especially jolly evening, first at Claridge's, then "As you Were" at the Pavilion (Sir Billion de Boost was what he would shortly be, he told his laughing companion), then dancing. Oh, a delightful evening! "My last kick!" he called it; and looking back afterwards, he found that he had spoken more truly than he knew.
His friends answered his notes and asked him to go and see them. He went. There then began a very strange period of discovery. First he went to the Labour Ministry and saw his old friend Reggie Burr.
Reggie looked most official in his room with his telephone and things. Clive told him so. Reggie smiled, but said that he was pressed for time and would Clive just mind telling him what it was he wanted. Clive found it harder to tell him than he had expected. He was modest and uneloquent about his time in France, and after that there really was not very much to say. What had he done? What could he do?... Well, not very much. He laughed. "I'm sure I'd fit into something," he said.