Goodmans Hotel

Some time ago he had talked about everyone's life having 'compartments', for instance home and work being largely separate, and that division being a good thing because if events in one compartment went badly wrong one could still be happier in the others. Yet despite the fat salary, the high-flown job title and the Mercedes, aside from my friendship with Lizetta, work at Lindler & Haliburton gave me little satisfaction. The technical role, which had engaged my mind with system innovations and new user demands, was largely behind me and my days were now mainly taken up with trying to match budgets and expenditure, with staff issues, endless paperwork and interminable meetings. An unsettling prospect loomed ahead: that my career would end the way my old boss's had, and after decades of resentment I would take early retirement, thankful to escape the pressures of the job and the patronizing attitudes of the partners, to be replaced by someone younger, keener, and more up to date.

A family man, assuring himself that such a sacrifice at work was worthwhile for the benefit of his offspring, could perhaps accept life on these terms, but for a gay man - childless - it would lead to a growing sense of dissatisfaction, of having expended all those years to gain material wealth but no happiness. Were not the newspapers endlessly running stories of rich show business stars and heirs to fortunes driven, despite their money, to self-destruction?

If I was no longer with Lindler & Haliburton for money and the conceit of working for an established City firm, then what was I there for? What were the rich rewards for? To keep me miserably alive? And the more the years crept by and my abilities were worn away in the firm's service, the harder it would be for me to switch to something new.