By a pleasing coincidence my partner, Brian Smith, is the grandson of the original Smith: we are thus the true inheritors of the firm of Sherwood Smith, founded nearly one hundred years ago. We have our offices in Gloucester Place and we pride ourselves on our effectiveness, although the premises are not imposing and by no means extensive. There is one office apiece for each of us, while our clerk, Telfer, who is into Eastern religions, has to share a rather pleasant room overlooking the back garden with Mrs Roche, who is more of a hostess than a secretary and who knows more about the business than any of us (or so we tell her). Mrs Roche in her turn commands—and that is the right word—the services of Amanda, Julie and Anne and their computers; they share an adjacent room, also overlooking the garden, and have charge of the coffee machine. Brian and I, soberly dressed in dark suits and white shirts, look out on to Gloucester Place and its curiously bleak Georgian façades. In all the years afforded me for study of this particular architectural style I cannot view it as anything better than town planning of the cheapest kind, guaranteed to confer a deadly conformity on the urban landscape.
