At the interview formally granted to all new employees by one of the bank’s General Managers at Head Office, Christie’s minimal qualifications were laid bare, his appearance scrutinised, and his nervousness remarked on. Then he was asked why he wished to join the bank. Christie was lost, could not think of his answer. One was shortly supplied for him: most young men joined the bank for the security, for the very liberal pension which amounted to two-thirds of whatever salary the employee was receiving at retiring age. And this retiring age itself was as an act of generosity sixty, and not sixty-five!

Not only was Christie simple, he was young too, a few weeks past his seventeenth birthday at the time of this interview.

Christie was silent even at the information that he had only forty-three and not forty-eight years to wait before he was free.