Everyone would magnanimously pretend that nothing had happened, so long as you never seemed to be having a good time or developing too high an opinion of yourself – from now on you could count yourself lucky if they let you learn shorthand and typing. Look where so-called cleverness got you . . . My father was appalled, but also triumphant. Just as in the old days he’d done his best to beat vicarage corruption out of me, now he righteously denounced me for my scandalous offence against decency, monogamy and my mother. He galloped off on his high horse, chivalrously saving her once again from the horrible past, and she was up behind him, her arms clasped round his shining armour. I wept and sulked, and called up in my mind’s eye a rival image of a louche Lord Carlton riding by, but it was no good, he wasn’t going to. Nonetheless I swore to myself that rather than go to their Church of England Home I’d hitch a lift down the brand-new M1 motorway to London, ask the way to Soho, and look for a man who’d have a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth and a knowing, appraising smile, who’d fix me up with a back-street abortion, so that I could start my career in vice.
