After her sisters had been consumed into the local sweet factory she got a job as a filing clerk in a solicitor’s office and, it seemed to her, a precarious toehold on the slippery slope that would lead her out of a slummish and ugly environment into the glossy perfection of middle-class life. A world where you didn’t have to go to a park filled with screaming kids and snapping dogs to enjoy grass and trees but had them actually belonging to you, in your own garden. Where people washed their clothes before they looked dirty and men shook hands when they met whilst women brushed powdered cheek against powdered cheek in easy, meaningless display.
Barbara was not especially intelligent but she was shrewd and worked hard and quietly, keeping her mouth shut and her eyes alert. She started to take clothes from one of the larger department stores in Slough - choosing, as nearly as she could, styles resembling those worn by the elder partner’s young married daughter. This stage of affairs continued until she was almost eighteen. She was still a virgin, partially because she’d never met anyone she fancied enough but mostly because she had some vague extravagant idea that to be able to offer virginity to a serious suitor might cancel out the debit of her shabby beginnings. She never mentioned them of course, but was constantly nervous in case the easy, upper-class patronage that she encountered in the office would somehow flush them to the surface.
Alan Cater, newly articled to the firm, started work there on her eighteenth birthday. He was tall, fair, had sharp blue eyes and smoked slim brown cigars. He had a red Cobra sports car and a watch that was the slimmest wafer of gold. He smiled a lot, especially at Barbara. He touched her too, only casually, nothing you could take offence at: a hand on her shoulder, an arm around her waist at the filing cabinet. She was rather shocked at the surge of pleasurable excitement she felt when he did this but said nothing, not realizing that her quickened breath and flushed skin gave her away.
One evening in midsummer he was late leaving the office. He was playing tennis straight from work and had gone into the cloakroom to change. Barbara never left before he did. She had graduated to dicta-typing, taking lessons in the evening, and was covering her machine when he came out in brief shorts and a white Aertex shirt. Everyone else had gone. He had stood looking at her for a long moment, first at her face, then everywhere else. Then he locked the door and told her he had been longing for this moment. Barbara had felt sick with excitement. He stood very close to her, said, ‘Shall I show you what you do to me?’ and guided her hand. As he opened her blouse, in the moments before she was completely swept away, Barbara saw them framed in the doorway of an old country church, herself in white of course, Alan in morning suit. There would be champagne afterwards and a three-tier cake, with some kept back for the christening.
‘You’re a lovely girl, darling.’ He unhooked her bra. ‘Come on - what’s the matter? You’re not going to pretend you’re surprised?’
‘My legs seem to be giving way . . .’
‘That’s soon solved. There’s a settee in old Rupert’s office. And a mirror.’
They walked there, arms entwined, leaving her blouse and brassiere on the typewriter. They lay on the settee facing the mirror and a net-curtained window looking on to the street. When she was quite naked Alan threatened to pull the nets back. This, which should have alarmed her, made her even more excited. He seemed to know exactly what he was doing. It hardly hurt at all, not like people said it did, it just seemed to be over so quickly. She wanted more and he gave her more. After an hour someone knocked at the outer door and he smiled, touching her lips with his finger. She was sitting straddled across his knees and saw a girl in a white tennis dress, her long hair tied back with a scarf, walk past the window. It was nearly nine o’clock when they finally left.
After this they met often, usually quite late in the evening, Alan explaining that he had to catch up with his studies first. He would drive out into the green belt and find a secluded spot or, if the weather was bad, they would use his car. She never took him to her tiny bedsitter and had already told him (to save awkward questions at invitation time) that she was an orphan. On the evenings they didn’t meet she was restless, consumed with longing. He treated her very professionally in the office, occasionally winking at her when the coast was clear. Once, when they had been briefly alone, he had stood behind her chair and slipped his hand down her shirt.
Halfway through the winter she discovered she was pregnant. She had felt slightly anxious when telling him, as if it had been all her fault. She ended her confession by asking what his parents would say. He had looked disbelieving, incredulous and then amused for a moment, then given her a casual hug before saying, ‘Don’t worry. We’ll sort something out.’