GETTING FIXED.
"Now mind, my boy, what you've got to do is to tell all your friends you are out looking for a job, and they'll give you introductions. Nothing like 'em; a friend at court, you know, and all that." This was from one of the friends to whom I had applied for a post. The advice was all he had to offer me.
I acted on it, and found my friends only too ready to give the required introductions. With alacrity they minuted me on from one to another till I felt as if "passed to you, please" had been scrawled all over me. But I persevered, and eventually weeded out from my list of introductions half-a-dozen that were addressed to solid men, high up in the City, who might be counted on not to miss the chance of a good thing. That is how in the early days of the Peace I was disposed to regard a demobilized young officer who had worn red tabs.
The first name on my selected list was John Pountney, of the firm of Laurence, Pountney & Co. My wife's uncle had been at school with John Pountney's brother, who unfortunately had no connection with the firm. But no matter; I filled up a form in the outer office—"Nature of Business, personal"—and sent it in with my note of introduction attached. John Pountney saw me. He did all the talking in quite an affable manner, told me of his son's experiences in the War, deplored the high price of petrol and his wife's difficulties in obtaining servants, and then: "Well, let's get to business. So you would like good employment in the City? What can you do?"
I began: "Well, Sir, when I was on the Staff——" He interrupted: "Now, don't go on to say that you can organise;" and he shook a finger at me playfully and was off once more with an anecdote about an officer in his son's regiment.
Eventually I found myself being bowed out in a rather dazed condition. Only one thing emerged at all clearly out of the whole interview; and I took from my pocket a sheet of paper, on which I had jotted down my most telling qualifications, and with a stub of blue pencil regretfully but firmly biffed out item No 1, Organising Ability.
I next approached the firm of Walbrook Bros., armed with a letter from a man who had once belonged to the same golf-club as the senior Walbrook brother.
"I can't read your friend's name," said this magnate, "but whoever he is he seems to think that you are the sort of man who might be useful in my business. What can you do?" and he leaned back patiently in his chair, finger-tips to finger-tips, but with all the appearance of one ready to pounce at my first weak statement.
"For the best part of four years," I began, "I have been living in France, and——"
He pounced. "Ah, French! I thought so. Now if you had said Spanish, or even Russian ..."