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at Lloyds Bank in Swiss Cottage and transferred to it the balance of my account in Cardiff. Then I told them to sell my few little
investments and had the money paid into my Swiss Cottage account. Then I began to draw the money out in cash and pay it into my account under my own name at the National Provincial Bank in
Swindon.
    I didn’t go down to see Mother during this time. She had an eye like a knitting needle, and sometimes being asked questions got on your nerves. It always surprised me she’d swallowed
the Pemberton story so easily. Perhaps I’d cooked up so much about him that I almost believed in him myself. It’s a great help with people like Mr Pemberton, to believe in them
yourself.
    One day when I’d been with Rutland’s seven weeks I was called into a sort of summit conference and there they all were: Mr Ward, and the progress chaser, Mr Farman, and the sales
manager, Mr Smitheram. Newton-Smith, the fourth director, was there too, an enormous great man with a moustache and a thin squeaky voice as if he’d just swallowed his kid brother.
    Old Mr Holbrook did most of the talking, and as usual he made it sound like an election speech, but in the end I realized he was saying they were all pleased with the way I’d helped to
rearrange the bookkeeping on the retail side, and now they wanted to ask my advice about reorganizing the cash system of the works itself. I was flattered in a way and a bit caught out of step,
because the one they should have really asked first was Susan Clabon; and after a minute I suddenly looked up and saw Mark Rutland watching me and knew he was behind this, behind me being invited
in like this.
    I asked questions and listened, and soon saw there were two opinions about it on the board. Then I gave mine as well as I could, though I sided more than I wanted to with the stick-in-the-muds
because on the whole the more machines you have the harder it is to cheat.
    In spite of what Dawn Witherbie had said I was quite surprised at the polite nastiness there was under the skin at that board meeting. It seemed to be Mark Rutland against the Holbrooks and Sam
Ward, with Rex Newton-Smith acting peacemaker and the other people trying to keep their feet dry.
    Just as it was over the bell went for the dinner break and there was the clatter of feet on the stairs coming up to the canteen. I thought as I left I’d walk through the printing shop
while it was all stopped. Almost right off Terry Holbrook caught me up.
    ‘Congratulations, Mrs Taylor.’
    ‘What on?’
    ‘Do I need to say, my dear? Not to an intelligent girl like you.’
    I said: ‘You should have asked Susan Clabon to come in as well as me. It wasn’t really fair to her.’
    ‘They did want to,’ he said. ‘But I wouldn’t hear of it. I said you’d got better legs.’
    I looked at him quickly then, like you turn and look suddenly at someone who’s leaned on you suggestively in a bus.
    He said: ‘In twelve months you’ll be chief cashier. Twelve months after that – who knows, my dear. You need sun blinkers to look steadily at your brilliant future with
Rutland’s.’
    We walked down between the litho machines. There were several girls and men still lingering. By now I knew most of them by sight and a few by name.
    ‘Hullo, June,’ Terry said to one of the girls familiarly. ‘Ready for the dance next week?’
    She was one of the girls who worked a folding machine, and the three-sided plywood partition round her high chair was stuck with pictures of Pat Boone and Cliff Richard and Tommy Steele and
Elvis Presley.
    ‘You a jive expert?’ Terry Holbrook asked me, looking where I was looking.
    ‘I’ve done it,’ I said. ‘But a long time ago.’
    ‘Blasé, that’s what she is,’ he said to the girl. ‘Hullo, Tom. Back any winners on Saturday?’
    ‘Yes, one,’ said a young man who was wiping some yellow dye off his thumb. ‘But it was Eagle Star at five to four on, so I didn’t clear anythink by