It would be nice if I could tell you that I was a great help to my father in his time of trouble, suddenly proved myself a man and developed qualities which no one had suspected in me—and so on and so forth, like the stuff you used to read in the uplift novels of thirty years ago. Or alternatively I’d like to be able to record that I bitterly resented having to leave school, my eager young mind, yearning for knowledge and refinement, recoiled from the soulless mechanical job into which they were thrusting me—and so on and so forth, like the stuff you read in the uplift novels today. Both would be complete bunkum. The truth is that I was pleased and excited at the idea of going to work, especially when I grasped that old Grimmett was going to pay me real wages, twelve shillings a week, of which I could keep four for myself. The big carp at Binfield House, which had filled my mind for three days past, faded right out of it. I’d no objection to leaving school a few terms early. It generally happened the same way with boys at our School. A boy was always “going to” go to Reading University, 01 study to be an engineer, or “go into business” in London, or run away to sea—and then suddenly, at two days’ notice, he’d disappear from school, and a fortnight later you’d meet him on a bicycle, delivering vegetables. Within five minutes of Father telling me that I should have to leave school I was wondering about the new suit I should wear to go to work in. I instantly started demanding a “grown-up suit,” with a kind of coat that was fashionable at that time, a “cutaway,” I think it was called. Of course both Mother and Father were scandalised and said they’d “never heard of such a thing.” For some reason that I’ve never fully fathomed, parents in those days always tried to prevent their children wearing grown-up clothes as long as possible. In every family there was a stand-up fight before a boy had his first tall collars or a girl put her hair up.

So the conversation veered away from Father’s business troubles and degenerated into a long, nagging kind of argument, with Father gradually getting angry and repeating over and over—dropping an aitch now and again, as he was apt to do when he got angry—“Well, you can’t ‘ave it. Make up your mind to that—you can’t ‘ave it.” So I didn’t have my “cutaway,” but went to work for the first time in a ready-made black suit and a broad collar in which I looked an overgrown lout. Any distress I felt over the whole business really arose from that. Joe was even more selfish about it. He was furious at having to leave the bicycle shop, and for the short time that he remained at home he merely loafed about, made a nuisance of himself and was no help to Father whatever.