That particular day they had put their bicycles on the train to Tunbridge Wells and cycled through the Kent countryside, stopping at a pub for lunch. Tom got back to London late, sunburned and feeling a little heady from the lunchtime beer. He was ready to go up to his room and take a nap, but as he had passed the study on the first floor his father had called him in.
Father was sitting behind his desk. He was red in the face, and his eyes had that bleary look, seemed a little out of focus. He had already started on the whisky. There was a bottle on his desk, and a half empty glass.
‘Have you given any thought to what you are going to do, my boy?’ he asked, leaning back on his chair. ‘To do, Father?’
‘With your life, for God’s sake,’ his father said, his impatience already surfacing. ‘Have you thought about what you are going to do with your life?’
Tom considered the question carefully, trying to focus. It was not something that had troubled him unduly.
‘Why, Father?’ he asked, stalling for time. His mind went back to Elsie, and the kiss they had shared in the garden of the country pub when David had gone in for the beers.
‘Why? Because I am not prepared to finance your dissolute ways forever.’
Tom remembered that particular word. It still made him smile for some inexplicable reason.
‘Dissolute?’
‘Yes! Lazy, lax, self-indulgent. Call it what you will. You know exactly what I mean.’
His father was becoming angry now. Tom recognised the signs of his shortening temper. His face turned a purplish red, and he began to breathe quickly. He topped up his whisky glass.
‘Those days are coming to an end, my boy. I’ve arranged a position for you. Starting next Monday.’
‘A position?’
‘Yes. It is not well-paid, but it is respectable, and if you work hard it will lead to a professional qualification.’
Tom frowned, the seriousness of the situation dawning on him.
‘But, Father!’
‘Don’t Father me! I have been more than generous to you. You can’t seriously expect me to pay for you any longer. You are a grown man, for God’s sake.’
Tom stared at him, uncomprehending. He could not imagine the end to his heady days of freedom.
‘So, this position, Father. What is it exactly?’ he asked at last.
‘Well, it is in a law firm, in the city. You will be a clerk, articled to an acquaintance of mine, Mr. Arbuthnot. He is a solicitor.’
‘I’m not interested in the law.’ He was beginning to panic. His mind returned to Elsie and how she’d promised to spend a day with him the following week. Just the two of them. They’d planned to slip off to Brighton together. How could he do that, stuck in a miserable office?
‘Well, what are you interested in?’
‘Oh, in art and literature, philosophy, ideas.’
His father leaned back and laughed a cruel, humourless laugh.
‘Well, I can’t see you making a living out of any of those things.’
‘I hadn’t really thought about it like that.’
‘Well, perhaps you had better start thinking about it then, my boy. You’ve been spoilt. I blame your mother. All that is coming to an end.’
Tom knew it was useless to argue. As he left the study, his mother was waiting in the passage. She was dressed, as she always was in the evening, for her appearance on stage at the opera. Her dark hair was swept up and off her face, and she wore a black lace evening gown. She was wringing her hands.
‘I’m so sorry, Tom,’ she said gently, but he pushed past her without responding.
So the following Monday Tom put on a suit and left the house with his father to catch a tram from Gordon Square to Threadneedle Street in the city.
Number Fifty was a monolithic stone structure with porticos and an elaborate coat of arms above the door, located opposite the Bank of England. Tom mounted the stone steps to the building with a feeling of dread. The reception hall was panelled in dark oak and furnished with leather chairs, just like a gentleman’s club. He had the feeling that no sunlight ever penetrated here. His employer came to meet him. He was a greasy little man, who walked with a stoop and wore thick glasses. He greeted Tom with a damp handshake and put him to work immediately, listing an enormous pile of files to be archived.
The work was not at all as Tom had imagined. If he had ever considered it at all, he had thought of the job of a lawyer as being concerned with standing up in court, strutting about, giving eloquent and persuasive speeches in defence of his client. But this was not like that at all. It was all about paperwork: drawing up commercial contracts, memoranda and articles of association of companies, company accounts, shareholder agreements. All to be copied and listed, and filed and entered into records.
There were five partners in the firm, who were all interchangeably dull. But there was one sprightly court clerk, Gerry Buttle, who was from the East End. He had a bawdy sense of humour and provided one of the only chinks of light in the otherwise endless grey days. From the first day to the last, Tom found the work unbelievably boring. But the weeks turned to months, the months into years. It wasn’t how he’d planned to spend his youth, but he felt powerless to break free. It was if he was trapped into an endless routine by the will of his father. As if he had no choice.
The tedium was only broken by the evenings he spent out with David, who had
