Read Seven Dials for Free Online

all as it should be done. I’ll give you five thousand for the fund, Mrs Harry here will set about starting a Benefit Night and you can get on with your usual appeals and flag days and so forth. Who’s to sit on this subcommittee then -’
    The remainder of the members of the Board who had clearly felt somewhat excluded from the discussion of ways and means into which the Lacklands had launched themselves now became very animated and Max leaned back in his chair and watched them a little sardonically as they began to jockey for places on the subcommittee, all trying to get themselves nominated without actually offering so that they could put on a show of polite diffidence and be coaxed to accept, and thought about his father’s scheme for Peter.
    It was an excellent one, and he only hoped it would work. Because if it didn’t, and Peter refused to be pulled out of his clearly desperately deep slough of despond, something more active would have to be done, whether Peter liked it or not. It was one thing to leave a man who had clearly suffered a great deal in peace to lick his wounds and recover; quite another to allow him to crawl into a hole and rot. If he refuses this, Max thought, I’ll have to start to bully him. One way or another we’ll get Peter sorted out, and he sketched a faint wink at his father and then looked at his watch.
    ‘I’ll have to go, I’m afraid,’ he announced as the talk sagged for a moment. ‘I’m not available for the subcommittee so you don’t need me, and I do have to go to a special Board for a patient, so if you’ll excuse me - ’ And he collected his papers together and made for the door.
    ‘Dine tonight, m’boy?’ Sir Lewis grunted at him as he passed his chair and Max nodded.
    ‘If I can, Father, I’ll telephone. Depends on how the day goes.’
    ‘Good. You’re looking better -’ And Max realized suddenly that for the past hour he had thought of many things, but never once of Emilia and a great wash of guilt filled him and he nodded sharply at the old man and made for the door as fast as he could.
    Damn him, damn him, damn him for a stupid old fool. Why had he had to say that, to remind him? And the guilt flooded up again, this time for his anger at his father and as he closed the door behind him he managed a wry grin. He really was becoming fit to be one of his own cases, with such waves of absurd and irrational feeling overwhelming him and he shook his head at himself and then turned to make his way to the stairs. He had work to do, thank God, and that would sort him out -
    His secretary came panting up the stairs towards him as he reached the end of them, her face quite puffed up with the importance of her message and he looked at her with his usual mixture of irritation and gratitude. She really was incredibly efficient and helpful; if only she wasn’t also so doggedly adoring and pompous, and he schooled his face carefully and said as colourlessly as he could, ‘Yes, Miss Curtis? A message?’
    ‘That Board, sir-they’ve had to postpone for an hour. I told them they’d be ruining your entire day, that you had a great many appointments all carefully slotted in, but they were adamant, really adamant. They have to wait for this wretched man from the War Office, it seems, and he’s tied up, so there’s nothing they can do - I was very terse with them, I can tell you. Very terse. But there it is - ’
    ‘Have I got so many appointments?’ he asked and she pursed her mouth and smirked slightly. ‘Well, actually, sir, it’s not as bad as it might be. Your next is a call out to Friern for Dr Samuelson, who wants a second opinion on that schizophrenic child, so it could be worse. But still, it’s not right to mess you about that way -’
    ‘Then I could go back to the boardroom I suppose - ’ Max said, hesitating. To go and sit in his office and do his letters, as he would have to do some time in the next week, was possible, but suddenly the thought of being