No More than Human By Maura Laverty Part II

Delia, like Maura Laverty, was a budding writer and began to write poems and stories which she sent to Irish magazines. She got a fan letter from an Irish man who worked as a horse trainer and she and he began to write to each other. Through her Spanish friends she meets Siemen a young Hungarian, who asks her out, but at the same time she meets up again with Rafael, a young Spanihs man who is very good looking and charming. She starts to go out with him, though her friends warns her that a well to do Spanish man wont marry a penniless Irish girl. However Delia is in love and happy and Rafael keeps taking her out and talking about them having a little house. Then after some time, they are in a restaurant and he has to hurry her out because he sees his mother and sister there. He tells her that he cannot marry her, its understood that he will marry another girl....Delia is shocked and upset and angry, and tells him she will not be his mistress, and she walks out. She recovers from her unhappiness, but she is worried about money and realises that she needs to get a new job. She gets an offer of a governess job, and travels for the interview, however she finds when she gets there that her new employer is a midlde aged married man who wants a mistress cum secretary, not a governess. She refuses but he tells her callously that she should have known what he was offering, and refuses to pay her expenses. She meets his boss, an Irish American, who also tells her that she should not have been so foolish and she lashes out at him, telling him that she did not know what she was being expected to do. Embarrassed, he apologises and asks her what she really would like to do, and she says she has been studying book keeping and typing and shorthand, but she has no experience in office jobs. He suggests that he gives her a job for a few months, which will give her the experience but warns her he can't pay much. Delighted, she accepts.