The Lightning Cage Read Online Free Page B

teacher, but on the whole I didn’t dislike them. I simply could not see the point of throwing my words into that great thrashing pool, as they grew so quickly from shivering spawn into feeding sharks. To read them a poem felt at times like offering up a sacrifice before a particularly murderous sect. I recited one by Pelham, and they never cleared their heads of turmoil long enough to take in a single line. But I made enough money to buy myself a car on hire purchase, a second-hand convertible MG that didn’t tell me off whenever I pressed it up to ninety miles an hour. Then I started scanning the Situations Vacant columns.
    The ad spoke about a printing firm in Wandsworth, which was looking for someone well educated and presentable, who must also have a car and a clean driving licence. Previous experience in the business preferred but not essential. I posted my letter requesting an interview that evening. And the next Monday I drove over there.
    As you make your way out of the centre of Wandsworth along Garratt Lane, there is a scatter of industrial buildings by the edge of the tiny River Wandle. One of these, built sometime in the 1920s in a parochial version of the International Style, was Shipley’s Print Group. The whitewash on its walls had long turned to grey, and the yellow paint of its metal window frames was peeling at the same slow, consistent rate throughout. I parked my ageing green MG at the edge of the courtyard, and went in to be interviewed. Opposite the entrance area was a full-length mirror, and I stopped to examine myself. At five foot ten and a half, I was trim, muscly but trim, my black hair cropped to my temples, my chin blue from the scraping of the razor’s edge, my face solid and serious, no hint of weakness about it. I had inherited my father’s professional brown eyes, and square-set features. And my suit was neatly pressed, my black shoes brilliant with polish: I had always taken a certain pride in my appearance.
    Andrew Cavendish-Porter was about my height, but his suit was a lot more expensive. His light brown hair was brushed back from his forehead and had started to thin. His jowls were dark and heavy and I could see the beginning of a paunch which even his expensive tailoring could not entirely disguise. But the scowl of care and concern on his face vanished suddenly as he treated me to his smile. It was a smile that suggested his bank account was in a lot better shape than mine. His wide grey eyes were almost unnerving in their unblinking calm. His voice was low and soothing and within minutes he was explaining that he was forming a new division within the company for a particular area of specialisation that he had in mind, and needed initially a sales rep who could probably soon be promoted to an account manager, assuming all worked out as he hoped. I wasn’t at all sure of the difference between these job descriptions, but I nodded intelligently, showed enthusiasm and alacrity, expressed my particular interest in the world of printing. In short I played the applicant to perfection and was told the following week that I’d been given the job.
    Outside on the tarmac forecourt, Andrew shook my hand and stared at my MG.
    â€˜That yours, is it?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜First car I ever had.’
    I pointed in turn to the classic Jaguar parked some way off in the corner. ‘Would that be yours?’
    â€˜Yes,’ he said happily. ‘One of them anyway.’
    *   *   *
    And so I became a sales rep for the Shipley Print Group, driving up and down motorways in my car, and taking great care to keep all my petrol receipts. I picked things up quickly. My patter about the particular benefits the company afforded was soon as impressive as anyone else’s. And Andrew Cavendish-Porter was as good as his word. Within a year I was an account manager, and six months later my MG was replaced by a company car, a BMW. I bought a flat in