‘Well, then, if I am, you’re like Aunt Maxine; she’s coarse and selfish, and so are you. Pity you and Aunt Maxine aren’t a bit more virginal. Besides, I’m not virginal. I can’t help it if drink and being pawed about bores me. I’ve tried to like it, god knows.’

‘There you are! Trying to like it! You make me sick. And anyway if you don’t like it, you needn’t stop other people.’

‘Yes, I need, when it’s bad for them.’

‘It isn’t bad for us – just as though we were kids! It’s natural and good for us.’

‘For other people, not for us, because we’ve got an awful heredity. We ought to be frightfully careful about drink and sex because of Father.’

Francis shook his head.

‘Much better to get it out of our systems.’

‘You silly little fools,’ said Sophia coldly and patiently. ‘Can’t you see that you’re only driving it into your systems, as you call them, and getting a taste for it, instead of controlling yourselves and sublimating it?’

‘Oh, and collecting stamps, I suppose, or pressing seaweed, like Uncle Preston used to?’

‘There are other things to do. I thought when we came here you’d have hobbies and things,’ she began to cry again at the memory, ‘and live orderly lives—’

‘God! Hobbies!’

‘Yes, I did. I tried to make it nice for you,’ she was crying so much that the words were almost inaudible, ‘and make everything comfortable so that you wouldn’t want the things Father wanted.’

‘Well, you had a funny way of making things nice, being virginal about our friends and getting in a damned inefficient old tart like Tessitt who couldn’t keep the place clean, and never having a joint on Sundays …’

‘We did … Oh Harry, we did have a joint on Sundays sometimes!’

‘Only if I cooked it.’

‘I tried … I did try!’

‘It was nice at first, Harry,’ said Francis, reluctantly, looking down at his sobbing sister. ‘Only things went to bits, somehow.’

‘We none of us like the same things, that’s the trouble,’ he added moodily.

‘You and I do. We like having a marvellous time and not being melodramatic. God’ – he clenched his fists and gritted his teeth again – ‘how I loathe melodrama! Anyway, we shan’t have scenes with Juan. He’s not a Garden, thank god. He’s a normal, sensible chap,’

‘You’re not going with Juan.’

‘I tell you we are. You’d better shut up. We’re going the week after next when the aunt goes off to Paris. It’s all fixed up. Juan’s twenty-one and he’s got his own money and so am I and I’ve got mine—’

‘Not much of it left, I should think, by now … oh, oh! and I did so hope you’d want to invest it …’

‘Catch me. Filthy stuff; I want to get rid of it as soon as I can.’ His angry young face grew sad for a second.

‘And I’m coming too,’ said Francis.’ I only hope the old fools will try to stop me. I should enjoy it. I should just tell Uncle Preston exactly what I think of him. I should tell him …’