“That’s just what I am,” said Bertram, “devilish hard put to it.”
“What can you do?”
Bertram mentioned the blessed word “organising,” but again the secretary smiled and shook his head. Then he asked a series of questions, like a machine-gun opening rapid fire.
“Do you write a decent hand? No? Can you type? No? Any good at figures? No? Shorthand? No? Knowledge of engineering? book-keeping, surveying,—any business, trade, or profession? No?”
“I was at St. Paul’s School,” said Bertram, “and one year at Oxford. I’m a jolly good gunner, and I was brought up as a gentleman. Hasn’t England any place for my sort?”
He was resentful of the smiling ironical look of the man interrogating him.
“Not any kind of place at all, old man”—Bertram wished he wouldn’t “old man” him so much—“unless you have a social pull. That’s still some good for jobs in Government offices and that kind of thing, but it’s getting less valuable as time goes on. Without it, fellows like you—and me—haven’t a dog’s chance. How do you think I got this job when I became demobbed?”
“Haven’t an idea,” said Bertram.
“Why, my pater is Chief Clerk of Marylebone. Social pull, my boy! Nothing else. There are thousands of young officers, ex-airmen, ex-everything, who’ll have to emigrate, or starve to death. There’s no alternative. . . . Well, there’s one!”
“What’s that?”