It’s so silly, he laughed.

You’re the silly one, said Julia.

She sat on the chair to change her shoes.

And those girls, he asked, what are their names?

Blessed if I know, Julia said.

He loved Julia.

Julia, he said, will you marry me?

She sat in her stockings, on her flat feet.

It’ll be a bit of a wait, said Julia.

I’m five, he said. And two months.

Once he went with her to Oxford Street and saw a suite of furniture. He said that they would have that. It was shiny and smart, upholstered in what looked like crumpled velvet, with buttons pinning it down.

Mother began to say she was poor. She didn’t know what she was going to do.

I shall have to sell my furs, she sighed. And what shall I do without my pretty furs?

She had a habit, when you were brought in most evenings, before it was bedtime, and she was alone with books, she had a habit of asking for advice. Or at least she spoke out into the room, sitting carelessly in her chair, with one hand drooping over the side. It fascinated him to watch this hand, while pretending not, while sitting on the floor with a picture book. And the hand was pale, if they had not turned on the light, or it hung golden in the firelight with a glittering of rings. She got up and moved vaguely to touch a flower in a vase. He felt that she was not there. In spite of her asking voice, she was not there. He watched the hand as it moved a lily. It was white, and it smelt as white as lilies.

What shall we do? asked the absent voice.

Julia saw a fur in Oxford Street. She’s going to save up and buy it, he said.

She laughed.

Yes, she said. Of course there’s always Oxford Street.

It hurt him that she laughed. He turned the pages of the picture book. But people were mostly like that. The voices that asked the questions and seemed to know the answers, and you wondered why they asked, why they remained a long way off in a world of hidden answers. Even Julia was like that. But in Mother’s face there was something particularly mysterious, connected, he felt, with the noises in the room that you didn’t mention, or only once, and then not really, you were afraid to lift up the curtain on Mother’s face.

Where is Father? he once asked.

He heard the scraping of a turned page, and the bumping of his heart, that was a bumping also in the dressing-room. Then there was silence and a chiming clock.

Father, she said, has gone away.

Somehow he did not want to ask why.

There was a boy in the Park, he said, who can turn a double somersault. He lives in Eccleston Square.

He did not look up at Mother’s face. He was a bit uncomfortable, almost afraid.