‘AN OLD ETONIAN’

One day, he fell into conversation with the old Etonian who had replaced him in the filing room; he had once been told Old Etonians were either totally charming or perfect shits. This one was the former, always broke, and was at the firm because his father nurtured ‘the vain hope that his first born would learn how to take over the family estate when he fell off his perch.’

He explained his latest money-making racket in the filing room. It involved jamming the machine for franking the postage on the hundreds of letters sent out daily. Given money to buy stamps, the machine would magically and secretly resume working and the filing room boys would pocket the cash.

‘How big is the estate?’ Ian asked.

‘Oh, I don’t know bloody great manor house, with six whole villages, in Yorkshire. Can you imagine?’

Ian couldn’t, they lived on different planets.

‘I will have to go into the House of Lords, when the title passes to me. Probably disappear and join the Foreign Legion.’

Ian was fascinated by him immaculate stiff white collar.

‘How do you get them so smart?’ he asked, conscious of his own limp efforts.

‘Easy, old chap. Regency shirts in Adams Row. The branch at Windsor did the ones for school, and this one is designed for us impoverished wage-slaves. I’ll take you down at lunchtime, if you like?’

To Ian’s dismay, the trip cost him his three shilling luncheon vouchers, but it was worth it. A dozen detachable while collars that were starched like steel. At first, life was agony as they cut into his neck. Viewing the angry circular red scar in the mirror after a week, he looked as though he had just narrowly escaped the gallows. You could always tell a Regency man, scarred for life.

Another extract from chapter forty six of – ‘Go Swift and Far – a Tale of Bath’ The first book of The Westcott Chronicles