16

Mrs Ford began to want to know what kind of creature I was and what my employment prospects were. She embarked on friendly conversations to pump me.

It would have been bracing to tell her to mind her own business.

I told her that I had left a fish-and-chip shop home in Bridlington after an argument with my father. It was a story in which my father wanted me to remain frying chips but I wanted to go out into the world and improve myself.

She seemed satisfied with my explanation of myself, and when I made it clear that I had enough money to pay for my bed and board for any conceivable time to come she was sympathetic about my employment difficulties.

‘It’s all certificates nowadays. If you haven’t been to college, you haven’t a chance of getting a really good job. You’re either in or you’re out, that’s what I say. My niece’s boy is doing very well. He’s going to be a university lecturer. He’s got brains.’

Despite her smartness and her well-preserved figure, she was a vulgar defeatist. She enjoyed feeling inferior to people with ‘brains’, just as her grandmother might have enjoyed feeling inferior to the gentry.

My judgement was proved correct when she talked about a ‘brilliant’ coloured doctor. The servile kind always knew of a ‘brilliant’ coloured doctor somewhere.

To placate the desire in the house to see me in employment I began to go out to imaginary interviews from which I returned disappointed. Peter gave me advice and Mrs Ford found vacancies in the evening paper.

One morning while I was thought to be trying to make myself a clerk at the offices of a building company I bought myself a suitcase. It was of red leather and lined with pink and white silk. I had not intended to buy such an expensively feminine case, but when I saw it in the shop window I wanted it very much. I told the assistant that it was a present for my sister and asked her to wrap it for me. It was wrapped with difficulty, and I bore it away and got it into the house without Mrs Ford seeing it.