Читать книгу Round the Bend онлайн

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It was a first-class job, of course, as good as any I could hope to get. I was only thirty-one years old. "The main office would be here, sir, I suppose?" I asked. "I'd do most of the work from here, and travel to Bristol and Belfast?"

"That's right," he said. "I thought you might take over Mr. Holden's old office. I'll have that room next to it divided into two, and you can have your secretary in there unless you want her in the room with you." Then he went on to talk about the salary, which was good, and as we talked I knew that it would never work. Unless I came to work each day by helicopter I'd have to use the same streets and the same Underground and the same passages and roads about the works that I had walked with Beryl.

I said presently, "I've got a month's leave due to me, sir. Can I take that now?"

"That's right," he said. He glanced at the calendar. "Oh well, that takes us up to Christmas. Suppose we say you'll start immediately after that."

I thanked him, and agreed, and then he took me for a walk around the works and we talked about the layout of the place, and what parts we would shut down or use as stores, and how the rest of it should be reorganised. I had only half my mind on the job. At every corner there was some new place I had forgotten about where I had walked and talked with Beryl in the lunch hour. When finally Mr. Evans asked me to stay and lunch in the canteen I couldn't take it any longer, and I said that if he'd excuse me I'd get off down to my home in Southampton that afternoon.