context: Roseanne Rogers (Susan Douglas Rubes) trudges from place to place, searching for another living human being. A newspaper headline reports a scientist's warning that detonating a new type of atomic bomb could cause the extinction of humanity.
  Rosanne eventually makes her way to her aunt's isolated hillside house and faints when she finds Michael (William Phipps) already living there. At first she is too numb to speak and slow to recover. She later resists Michael's friendly attempt to become more intimate, revealing that she is married and also pregnant.
  Two more survivors arrive, attracted by the smoke coming from the house's chimney. Oliver P. Barnstaple (Earl Lee) is an elderly bank clerk who is in denial about his situation; he believes he is simply on vacation. Since the atomic disaster, he has been taken care of by Charles (Charles Lampkin), a thoughtful and affable African American. They both survived because they were accidentally locked in a bank vault when the disaster happened. Roseanne was in a hospital's lead-lined X-ray room, while Michael was in an elevator in New York City's Empire State Building.
  Barnstaple sickens, but seems to recover and then insists on going to the beach. There, they drag a man named Eric (James Anderson) out of the ocean surf. He is a mountain climber who became stranded on Mount Everest by a blizzard during the atomic disaster. He was flying back to the United States when his aircraft ran out of fuel just short of land. Meanwhile, Barnstaple dies peacefully.
  Eric quickly sows discord among the group of survivors: He theorizes that they are somehow immune to the radiation and wants to find and gather together other survivors. Michael, however, is skeptical and warns that radiation will be the most concentrated in the cities Eric wants to search.
  The newcomer later reveals himself to be a racist; he can barely stand living with Charles. When Charles objects, he and Eric fight, stopping only when Roseanne goes into labor; she gives birth to a boy, delivered by Michael. Afterwards, while the others work to make a better life, Eric goes off by himself. Maliciously, he drives their jeep through the group's cultivated field, destroying part of their crops. Michael orders Eric to leave, but Eric produces a pistol and announces that he will leave only when he is ready.
  Later one night, Eric tells Roseanne that he is going to the city. Wanting to discover her husband's fate, Roseanne agrees to go with him, as he had hoped; he insists that she not tell Michael. After stealing supplies, Eric is stopped by a suspicious Charles; in the ensuing struggle, he stabs Charles in the back, killing him.
  Once they reach the city, Eric begins looting, while Roseanne goes to her husband's office and then to a nearby hospital's waiting room; there she discovers her husband's skeletal remains. She now wants to return to Michael, but Eric refuses to let her go. They struggle and his shirt sleeve is torn open, revealing unmistakable signs of advanced radiation poisoning. In despair he runs away, not at all immune as his ego had led him to believe.
  Rosanne begins the long walk back to the house, but along the way, her son dies. Michael, who has been searching for Rosanne, eventually finds her, and after burying her son, they return to the house. When Michael resumes cultivating the soil, Rosanne fatalistically joins him, both now the heirs to an unknown future.
question: What did Mr. Barnstaple do for a living?
answer: Bank clerk