The Three Brothers Thomson

Twas a wet afternoon in London Town.
The downpour had served to suppress the normal propensity for smoke fuelled fug in the atmosphere and the good citizens were able to partake of their daily chores without stumbling into each other, into the path of a carriage or standing in something deposited by a horse.
In Carey Street the usual be-wigged lawyers flitted back and forth from their chambers to debtors and Royal courts pausing only to catch up on the latest gossip or to ascertain in what sort of humour were the attendant judges and magistrates.
Mr Thomson, the senior as he had assumed upon the unfortunate demise of his father two years and more ago, glanced anxiously at his timepiece. He blinked upon re-assuming the light of day after a turgid meeting with Counsel in the deep bowels of the Georgian establishment that housed a number of barristers at law.
Some hours had elapsed in the uncomfortable environment of a session of cross examination in preparation for what seemed odds on as a future hearing in the full glare of the High Court. He felt that he had presented a reasonable account of himself as an Expert Witness but the experience had been sobering and draining in the extreme.
His day had begun well before the crowing of the cock on a cold station platform some distance up north. The locomotive had been on time but had adopted a laborious course southwards to the Capital seemingly called upon to stop at every major town from Doncaster to Retford, Newark to Grantham and Peterborough to Kings Cross.
Expenditure on a first class seat had been well adjudged in that he had been able to review the depositions and suppositions of the case with files opened and strewn over a small table whilst the countryside passed by his window. The train staff were polite and sensitive to a regular topping up of caffeine and danish pastries and even offered a daily newspaper although it remained folded and unread amongst the more pressing documents of the day.
So to London. Frantically searching his pockets he retrieved the tickets for the underground portion of the journey and descended into the depths of the Metropolis. Jostling commuters and others seemingly on their own mission and agenda swarmed around him on the mechanical staircasing and through the well lit and slightly fumey corridors and tunnels.
After only two stops on that blue designated route it was once more a matter of working a path up to the surface.
Holborn.
Teeming with traffic and the cries of street vendors the scene was everything that he expected of London Town. He was early for the appointment and so undertook a walking reconaissance of the immediate area. First passed was the Old Curiosity Shop of Mr Dickens' fame. The predominantly Georgian and earlier town houses were splendid in their scale and architecture although the majority were no longer the single residences of the gentry but bore the emblems and insignia of various companies and corporations.
In the middle of the built enviroment were the landscaped squares of gardens and parks where many a mortal combat duel had taken place to settle some affront or rude insult. The Porter's Lodge at the gated entrance to New Square was occupied and beady eyes assessed and permitted his passage into the inner sanctum.
So, the interrogation had passed and he looked forward very much to meeting his two brothers in The Seven Stars Public House, Queer Street.
It was an ale house that had not changed in perhaps three or more centuries. A red brick and stucco fronted two storey building dwarfed amongst the Inns of Court. Leaded glass in the old timber windows was pitted and distorted from the original hand floated manufacturing process. The landlady, Roxy Beaujolais was sitting in her own court and company just inside the door. A real character whose own back story was a matter of much fantastical speculation. On her lap sat a pitch black pedigree cat wearing a starched white ruff collar and going by the name of Thomas Payne.
It was into this situation that Mr Thomson senior came willingly for to meet with his two brothers, Mr Thomson the not so senior and Mr Thomson the younger. Not so senior was stood facing the bar and newly senior caught his attention in the mirror hung prominently thereon. They embraced as brothers do so as to give no cause to the other drinkers that they were nothing more than brothers.
It had been some months since they had had an opportunity to meet, at the usual Yuletide gathering at the family home in Yorkshire. There was no dwelling on protocol or tradition and the first of many toasts was made with full ale glasses in hand.
The younger was soon to arrive and the same welcoming ritual was completed with all due regard but not so as to impinge on drinking time. It was, the senior mused, as though no time had passed whatsoever since they had all, at one time, been but nippers.
There was an age gap of 12 years between the three but they were remarkably alike in manner, temperament and sense of humour. It was to be a bawdy and rowdy session under the supervision of Roxy with much reminiscing and musing on times and personalities past. The world was put to rights in the three following hours of elbow resting and imbibing on the gingham covered tables of the lounge bar. A few lawyers wandered in and out, strangely supping without ceremony a short measure of spirits as though to provide Dutch courage for their closing statements or in anticipation of a resounding victory or not.
Mr Thomson, the senior welcomed the chance of a tete a tete with his remarkable brothers and later as they piled him onto the northbound train with a written label with travel arrangements secured to his lapels they swore an oath that the next such gathering would be sooner rather than later.