♦

When he had first heard the news about her joining the brewery, he was surprised. “Apparently there’s a woman starting in the finances department,” he had told Maureen and David. They were eating in the best room, back in the days when she loved to cook and it was used for family meals. Now that he thought about this scene, he could see it was Christmas, because the conversation was reliving itself with the added detail of festive paper hats.

“Is that supposed to be interesting?” David had said. It must have been his A-level year at the grammar school. He was dressed head to foot in black and his hair almost tipped his shoulders. He was not wearing a paper hat. He had skewered it with his fork.

Maureen smiled. Harold didn’t expect her to stand up for him because she loved her son, and that was right, of course. He only wished that sometimes he didn’t feel so outside, as if what bonded them was their disassociation from him.

David said, “A woman won’t last at the brewery.”

“Apparently she is very well qualified.”

“Everyone knows about Napier. He’s a thug. A capitalist with sadomasochistic tendencies.”

“Mr Napier is not so bad.”

David laughed out loud. “Father,” he said, the way he did; suggesting the bond between them was a whim of irony, rather than blood. “He had someone kneecapped. Everyone knows.”

“I’m sure he didn’t.”

“For stealing from the petty-cash tin.”

Harold said nothing; he mopped a sprout in gravy. He too knew the rumours, but he didn’t like to think about them.

“Well, let’s hope the new woman isn’t a feminist,” David continued. “Or a lesbian. Or a socialist. Eh, Father?” He had evidently finished with Mr Napier, and was moving to subjects closer to home.

Briefly Harold met his son’s challenging eyes. In those days they still had their sharpness; it was uncomfortable to engage with them for long. “I don’t object to people being different,” he said, but his son merely sucked his teeth and glanced at his mother.

“You read the Daily Telegraph,” he said. And after that he pushed back his plate, and stood, his body so pale and hollow Harold could barely look.

“Eat, love,” Maureen called. But David shook his head and slunk out, as if his father was enough to put anyone off their Christmas lunch.

Harold had looked to Maureen but she was already on her feet, clearing away the plates.

“He’s clever, you see,” she said.

And implicit in the remark was the conviction that cleverness was both an excuse for everything and out of their reach. “I don’t know about you, but I’m too full for sherry trifle.” She bent her head and slipped off her paper hat, like something she had outgrown, and then she went to do the washing-up.

♦

Harold arrived at South Brent in the late hours of the afternoon. He trod paving stones again, and was struck both by their smallness and their regularity. He came to cream-coloured houses, and front gardens, and garages with central-locking systems; and he felt the triumph of someone returning to civilization after a long voyage.