The breeze through the open balcony door was a clear easterly, tasting of salt. I scanned column after column of ‘Positions Vacant—Women and Girls’ and knew the world had awoken to prosperity. Fred had forced me to do the same. The position I obtained was in the administration wing of a hospital. It was far less responsibility than I could have had—I could not face the prospect of teaching again—but I was happy to succumb to the excuse of leaving higher employment for the returned men. ‘The younger girls, well, they leave us when the babies start arriving.’ The chief administrator, Mr Anderson, a man whose thick moustache was matched by his bushy eyebrows, frowned at me during the interview. ‘I have lost many a good female clerk to the natural way of things.’ ‘Yes, of course,’ I said and adjusted myself in the leather chair to avoid the beam of mote-filled light falling across my hands. ‘But we will not have that problem with you.’ He smiled, as if he had paid me a compliment.
What do You think about The Heaven I Swallowed (2013)?
