And here was all the result—an invitation to lunch.

*   *   *

Eric hated the Hall. Sometimes he felt positively suffocated there, as though he’d choke.

“When it’s mine,” he told Lily, “I shall have it pulled down.”

She was not horrified, for she didn’t really believe him. Seeing this, he launched into Communistic schemes, quoted Lenin, talked priggishly of the Manchester slums:

“We’ve no right to live here when all these people are starving.”

But she wouldn’t argue. He had to go on goading her:

“I know what I shall do. I shall give the land to the Corporation for a model village.”

She replied:

“I don’t know what I should do if anything happened to the Hall.”

She was not attending to what he said, aware only of the tone of his voice and its intention of wounding her. Her listless sadness made him suddenly fierce.

“You care more for this house than you do for human beings.”

She only answered, obstinately sad:

“I care for it because it reminds me of the time when I was happy.”

And there they were, together in the slowly decaying house, alone to all intents and purposes, for Grandad was now so comatose that you could hardly describe him as alive at all, and Mrs. Potts and Mrs. Beddoes kept their respectful distance—alone, with no Gatesley, no Scrivens, slowly grinding down each other’s nerves.

In lucid intervals he even discussed the situation with her, trying to rationalise, be clinical. He’d glibly generalised: “It’s the same with everyone. Parents never get on well with their children. That’s just human nature.” Had they both at the same instant remembered Aunt Mary? But Lily only sat with moist eyes and shook her head:

“All this is very difficult for me to understand. I don’t think my generation felt these things.”

“But, Mother, you must see that this can’t go on. What are we to do?”

“Darling, you know I only want you to be happy. You must do whatever you think best.”

No, she wouldn’t help. She surrendered nothing.

But neither do I, Eric admitted to himself.

“You’re always arguing,” she told him once.

“I hate arguing.”

Her gentle, ironic smile. He’d burst out ludicrously:

“I hate arguing, because I’m always in the right.”

It was horrible. It became a habit. There was barely a subject they could safely mention. And always, as it seemed to him later, the fault was entirely his. He was crude, overbearing. She was mild and persistent. She seemed barely to argue at all—merely, with an air of distaste, she kept the discussion alive. And in his stammering days, when he’d first begun to lecture her, she’d waited patiently for him while he gasped and mouthed—red with fury at his own impediment.