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Roger squirms. ‘Father, if any one were to hear you!’

‘They won’t. The door is shut, Amy is gone to bed, and all is quiet in our street. Won’t you–won’t you say something civil to me in return, Roger?’

Roger looks at him and away from him. ‘I sometimes–bragged about you at school.’

Mr. Torrance is absurdly pleased. ‘Did you? What sort of things, Roger?’

‘I–I forget.’

‘Come on, Roger.’

‘Is this fair, father?’

‘No, I suppose it isn’t.’ Mr. Torrance attacks the coals again. ‘You and your mother have lots of confidences, haven’t you?’

‘I tell her a good deal. Somehow–‘

‘Yes, somehow one can.’ With the artfulness that comes of years, ‘I’m glad you tell her everything.’

Roger looks down his cigar. ‘Not everything, father. There are things–about oneself–‘

‘Aren’t there, Roger!’

‘Best not to tell her.’

‘Yes–yes. If there are any of them you would care to tell me instead–just if you want to, mind–just if you are in a hole or anything?’

‘No thanks,’ very stiffly.

‘Any little debts, for instance?’

‘That’s all right now. Mother–‘

‘She did?’

Roger is ready to jump at him. ‘I was willing to speak to you about them, but–‘

‘She said, “Not worth while bothering father.”‘

‘How did you know?’

‘Oh, I have met your mother before, you see. Nothing else?’

‘No.’

‘Haven’t been an ass about a girl or anything of that sort?”

‘Good lord, father!’

‘I shouldn’t have said it. In my young days we sometimes–It’s all different now.’

‘I don’t know, I could tell you things that would surprise you.’

‘No! Not about yourself?’

‘No. At least–‘

‘Just as you like, Roger.’

‘It blew over long ago.’

‘Then there’s no need?’

‘No–oh no. It was just–you know–the old, old story.’

He eyes his father suspiciously, but not a muscle in Mr. Torrance’s countenance is out of place.

‘I see. It hasn’t–left you bitter about the sex, Roger, I hope?’

‘Not now. She–you know what women are.’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘You needn’t mention it to mother.’

‘I won’t.’ Mr. Torrance is elated to share a secret with Roger about which mother is not to know. ‘Think your mother and I are an aged pair, Roger?’

‘I never–of course you are not young.’

‘How long have you known that? I mean, it’s true–but I didn’t know it till quite lately.’

‘That you’re old?’

‘Hang it, Roger, not so bad as that–elderly. This will stagger you; but I assure you that until the other day I jogged along thinking of myself as on the whole still one of the juveniles.’ He makes a wry face. ‘I crossed the bridge, Roger, without knowing it.’

‘What made you know?’

‘What makes us know all the new things, Roger?–the war. I’ll tell you a secret. When we realised in August of 1914 that myriads of us were to be needed, my first thought wasn’t that I had a son, but that I must get fit myself.’

‘You!’

‘Funny, isn’t it?’ says Mr. Torrance quite nastily. ‘But, as I tell you, I didn’t know I had ceased to be young, I went into Regent’s Park and tried to run a mile.’

‘Lummy, you might have killed yourself.’

‘I nearly did–especially as I had put a weight on my shoulders to represent my kit. I kept at it for a week, but I knew the game was up. The discovery was pretty grim, Roger.’

‘Don’t you bother about that part of it. You are doing your share, taking care of mother and Emma.’

Mr. Torrance emits a laugh of self-contempt. ‘I am not taking care of them. It is you who are taking care of them. My friend, you are the head of the house now.’

‘Father!’

‘Yes, we have come back to hard facts, and the defender of the house is the head of it.’

‘Me? Fudge.’

‘It’s true. The thing that makes me wince most is that some of my contemporaries have managed to squeeze back: back into youth, Roger, though I guess they were a pretty tight fit in the turnstile. There is Coxon; he is in khaki now, with his hair dyed, and when he and I meet at the club we know that we belong to different generations. I’m a decent old fellow, but I don’t really count any more, while Coxon, lucky dog, is being damned daily on parade.’