The gates opened. Miss Teatime got in, then the women, and finally Pook. He had to squeeze close beside the operator—a sallow, resentful girl who accused him with her eyes all the way to the fourth floor of having designs on her soft furnishings.
At the top, they alighted in reverse order and Pook was swept for some yards before he could turn and see what Miss Teatime was doing. She was still in the lift. He pushed back towards her and was just in time to hear her say something about having left an umbrella behind when the gates shut and the lift began to descend. Pook leaped for the stairs.
“Oh, silly me!” exclaimed Miss Teatime two seconds later. “I didn’t bring it today after all.”
The girl viciously threw the lever to “Stop” and then to “Up”. “I wish you’d make up your flippin’ mind!”
“I’m really terribly sorry,” said Miss Teatime.
Back on the fourth floor, she left the lift and walked briskly through the bedroom furniture department, past the cafeteria and curtainings and down another staircase to the Peel Street exit.
In the Garden of Remembrance, Miss Teatime found Commander Trelawney (he had reluctantly divulged his rank during their first meeting, but only when he saw how truly interested she was) slewed round in the seat so that he could look at the flowers in the border.
“It’s funny,” he said, “but already I’m thinking of that one as Our Plant.”
He nodded towards the clump of polyanthus that he had pushed back in the soil. It was distinguishable by the shrunken, droopy appearance of its blooms.
“I think it’ll pick up all right.”
“Oh, I do hope so,” said Miss Teatime. “I’m not late, am I?”
“No, I came a little early today. Business before pleasure. The sooner I can get done with people like bank managers, the brighter the rest of the day looks.”
“They are a bit of a bore,” Miss Teatime agreed. “And so dilatory these days. Don’t you think so, or is it just my imagination?”
“I shouldn’t call them clippers, certainly. Mind you, one bank can be much nippier than another. And so long as you’ve got hard cash in the hold, it’ll answer the helm quickly enough.”
Miss Teatime smiled and said she supposed he was right. Not that it mattered all that much to her; she never needed to call on big sums and was quite content to leave everything as it was—neatly tied up in “securities”, whatever they were.
Trelawney looked amused. “And do you really not know anything about them?”
“Only that I can’t get at them without a fearful amount of bother. A trip to London, for one thing. I have to sign things in person on the spot. And then there’s always a teeny glass of Madeira afterwards and everybody is referred to as Mister James or Mister Charles. Oh, you’ve no idea...”
“But I have, my dear. One of my own companies is just like that. To this day they still hold their annual general meeting in a chop house, with tankards of porter all round and something they call the Chairman’s Gammon....”
“Oh, lovely.!” cried Miss Teatime.
“...and, of course, a quill to sign the minutes...”
“Yes, of course!”
“...and would you believe it, nobody can cash a single share without filling in a special requisition that has to be signed by a clerk in holy orders, the headmaster of Eton and the editor of The Times!”
“Marvellous!” laughed Miss Teatime. “Absolutely marvellous!” (Within her merriment was a tiny doubt: the headmaster of Eton...was that quite the correct title? Never mind, the point was rather trivial.)
They chatted for a while in sustained good humour until Trelawney suggested that a stroll by the river might be a pleasant way of working up an appetite for lunch. Miss Teatime agreed and they entered the series of gently descending streets, lined with old fashioned shops, that led to the Sharms—Flaxborough’s harbour district.
This had been once the residential preserve of successful shipping merchants and retired master mariners, but with the ebb of the port’s prosperity their big, rather severe looking homes had become tenements or lodging houses. Here and there was one of those depressing English institutions at whose doors and windows can always be glimpsed men in vests and women in curlers and bad tempers, that on the continent would be called brothels.
“Pretty hard tack, this lot,” the commander remarked of a group of inhabitants taking their ease outside a betting shop on the other side of the street. “That’s one reason why I like the country. If you want to leave your doors open, you can, and there’s nothing worse than good fresh air can get in.”
Miss Teatime commended his philosophy, but ventured to suggest that there was an even more secure refuge.
“And what’s that, Lucy?”
“You ought to know,” she said, giving his arm a gentle squeeze.
“Tell me.”
“A boat. A little ship.” No expectant mother could have referred more coyly to her own embryo.
Trelawney frowned but managed to look indulgent at the same time.
“Oh, but there are lots of practical difficulties, you know. You’d have to have a crew. And, my word, you have to be careful there. Then there are things like...oh, port dues and so on. And navigation. Have you thought about navigation?”
“Oh, I don’t mean a big boat. It was what I believe they call in the trade a forty-footer that I had in mind.”
“I say! You have picked up the lingo, haven’t you! I should ima...” He stared at her. Their walking slowed to a halt. They had reached the quay and the stern of a rusty old coaster towered above them.
What Miss Teatime readily identified as a roguish smile appeared on her companion’s face as he leaned against a bollard and continued to regard her intently.
“Do you know, I believe you’ve been up to something!” declared the commander.
She smiled up at the coaster’s limp red flag. “I suppose I shall have to tell you. But you mustn’t laugh. I won’t have you laughing at me, even if I am a poor landlubber.”
Trelawney clapped a hand to one eye. “Nelson’s honour!” he declared, looking more roguish than ever. Then suddenly his face was serious, perhaps even a little anxious. “Go on.”
“Well,” said Miss Teatime, polishing the clasp of her handbag with one gloved hand, “it started with father, really. He used to keep a very nice cabin cruiser—a forty-footer, I think he called it—moored on the Thames at home. Of course, during his illness it wasn’t used and then when he passed on and there was all that business of the estate being settled I really wasn’t in the mood to think about things like pleasure boats.”
The commander nodded sympathetically. “So I let it go to one of father’s old business friends who had often sailed with him and was very keen to have it. I knew what the boat was worth, because it was in the valuation at two thousand three hundred pounds—and that was only just over half what it had cost two years before. But I also knew that Mr Cambridge wasn’t terribly well off, so...well, I made him take it for five hundred. He was quite pathetically pleased and insisted on giving me an undertaking that if ever he wished to part with the boat, it would—what is the word—revert?—it would revert to me for the same money.