The war had jerked me out of the old life I』d known, but in the queer period that came afterwards I fot it almost pletely.
I know that in a sense one never fets anything. You remember that piece e-peel you saw iter thirteen years ago, and that coloured poster of Torquay that you o a glimpse of in a railway waiting-room. But I』m speaking of a different kind of memory. In a sense I remembered the old life in Lower Binfield. I remembered my fishing-rod and the smell of sainfoin and Mother behind the brow and Jackie the bullfind the horse- trough in the market-place. But none of it was alive in my mind any longer. It was something far away, something that I』d finished with. It would never have occurred to me that some day I might want to go back to it.
It was a queer time, those years just after the war, almost queerer than the war itself, though people don』t remember it so vividly. In a rather different form the sense of disbelieving ihing was strohan ever. Millions of men had suddenly been kicked out of the Army to find that the try they』d fought for didn』t want them, and Lloyd Gee and his pals were giving the works to any illusions that still existed. Bands of ex-service men marched up and down rattling colle boxes, masked women were singing ireets, and chaps in officers』 tunics were grinding barrel- ans. Everybody in England seemed to be scrambling for jobs, myself included. But I came off luckier than most. I got a small wound-gratuity, and what with that and the bit of money I』d put aside during the last year of war (not having had much opportunity to spend it), I came out of the Army with han three hundred and fifty quid. It』s rather iing, I think, to notice my rea. Here I was, with quite enough moo do the thing I』d been brought up to do and the thing I』d dreamed of for years—that is, start a shop. I had plenty of capital. If you bide your time and keep your eyes open you run across quite tle businesses for three hundred and fifty quid. A, if you』ll believe me, the idea never occurred to me. I not only didn』t make any move towards starting a shop, but it wasn』t till years later, about 1925 in fact, that it even crossed my mind that I might have done so. The fact was that I』d passed right out of the shopkeeping orbit. That was what the Army did to you. It turned you into an imitatioleman and gave you a fixed idea that there』d always be a bit of money ing from somewhere. If you』d suggested to me then, in 1919, that I ought to start a shop— a tobacd sweet shop, say, eneral store in some god- forsaken village—I』d just have laughed. I』d worn pips on my shoulder, and my social standards had risen. At the same time I didn』t share the delusion, which retty ong ex- officers, that I could spend the rest of my life drinking pink gin. I knew I』d got to have a job. And the job, of course, would be 『in business』—just what kind of job I didn』t know, but something high- up and important, something with a car and a telephone and if possible a secretary with a perma wave. During the last year or so of war a lot of us had had visions like that. The chap who』d been a shop walker saw himself as a travelling salesman, and the chap who』d been a travelling salesman saw himself as a managing director. It was the effect of Army life, the effect of wearing pips and having a cheque-book and calling the evening meal dinner. All the while there』d been an idea floating round—and this applied to the men in the ranks as well as the officers—that whe