The Betrayal

by L.P. Hartley

Genres: General Fiction; Classics

Synopsis

The sequel to The Brickfield provides charming glimpses of early 20th century English childhood Richard Mardick, now an aging novelist, is forced by circumstances to look back on the days of his boyhood and confesses to Denys Aspin, his young secretary and biographer-to-be, how Lucy's death has forever marred his life and distorted his inner peace. The consequences of this rash disclosure range from threats and blackmail to the entirely unpredictable reactions of Richard's friends.

Release date: June 1, 2014

Publisher: John Murray

Print pages: 432

Sample

Chapter 1

‘Oh, Richard,’ said Denys, ‘someone rang up when you were out, but wouldn’t leave a name.’

Richard dropped into a chair. He was tired, and his doctor had told him never to stand when he could sit.

‘How tiresome of them,’ he said. ‘Perhaps it was a burglar, trying to find out if anyone was in the flat.’

‘If so, it wasn’t the burglar himself,’ said Denys. ‘It was a woman’s voice.’

‘She may have been his stooge,’ said Richard. ‘What sort of voice was it?’

‘Oh, quite a cultivated voice – the voice of someone you might know.’

‘And she left no message?’

‘No, I said you were out, and I didn’t know when you would be back. I know you don’t want to be bothered with the telephone.’

‘All the same,’ began Richard, and stopped, because he didn’t want to seem to be criticizing his friend and secretary. ‘I wonder who she was. Did she say anything else?’

‘She asked me how you were.’

‘And you said, better?’

‘I should have liked to,’ Denys said. ‘But how could I? I said you were much as usual.’

‘Funnily enough, I do feel better,’ Richard said. ‘I believe I’ve felt better ever since that evening when—’

‘When you made the Great Confession? When you came clean?’ said Denys, smiling. He got up and examined the chimney-piece. ‘I was just making sure those tablets were there. Yes, here they are.’

‘Good,’ said Richard. ‘How wonderful it would be not to need them. Since that night, I’ve sometimes felt as though I didn’t – but the metaphorical heart hasn’t anything to do with the physical heart, has it?’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Denys. ‘You must ask your doctor.’

At that moment the telephone bell rang. Richard got up.

‘I’ll take it, Denys.’

‘Do you think you ought to?’

‘Oh yes, it might be the lady who rang me up before.’

A moment later he put his hand over the mouthpiece.

‘It’s someone for you, Denys. Would you like to take the call in my room?’

‘I don’t see why,’ said Denys. ‘Who is it?’

‘She didn’t say.’

‘Oh, it was a woman? I’ve always told my friends not to ring me up here, because I know that it disturbs you. I’ll go into your room.’

‘Nothing to worry about, I hope?’ asked Richard when Denys came back.

‘No, why do you ask?’

‘I thought you looked a bit worried.’

‘I worry about you sometimes,’ said Denys, ‘but not about myself, or not much. Should we have a drink? It’s getting on for drink-time.’

Richard looked at the little ormolu clock on the chimney-piece. It was surmounted by a gilt Cupid, toying with his bow.

‘It’s nearly twelve o’clock,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we might. Be barman for us, Denys.’

Denys got up, and with slow but practised gestures went through the necessary rites. Richard watched him. ‘Where should I be without Denys?’ he thought.

 

But of course Denys had to go out sometimes, just as Richard had, he couldn’t be a watch-dog all the time, he had to have his days off. Richard thought of him as a friend, not as an employee, but an employee he was, in the eyes of the world, and had an employee’s privileges, as well as duties. Sometimes Richard asked him what he did in his spare time, sometimes not; it depended on whether he was in the mood to think curiosity a good thing or a bad thing. Lack of interest must be a bad thing, where someone you were fond of was concerned; it was unnatural too. Yet how easily interest sharpened into inquisitiveness, and even into suspicion! On the whole Richard was grateful to people who asked him questions about himself. He hadn’t much to hide, except that one thing, the secret he had confided to Denys. But supposing that in the blissful days of his love-affair with Lucy, or in the dreadful days after her death, someone had had an inkling and had questioned him! Charlie Wittold might have; Charlie, but for whose information on sex matters – but for whose obsession with sex matters – there might have been no serpent in the garden. Richard believed he owed such happiness as he had enjoyed in life to the fact that no one had suspected, still less, accused him, for if they had, he would have given himself away, and he could never have survived the shame of a public exposure. He couldn’t now, for that matter, when, as the doctor told him, he had so little time left for feeling ashamed in. How lucky he had been to find at last a confidant!

Whether his disclosure had shocked Denys he didn’t know. He had worked himself up so much, first by re-living the events and then by relating them, that he had hardly noticed their effect on Denys. Denys wouldn’t have shown what he felt in any case; that baby-face was also a poker-face, and, besides, he wouldn’t have wanted to seem too critical of an employer even if Richard had confessed to committing a murder – as in fact he had, for if he hadn’t actually killed Lucy, he was to blame for her death. But for him, she might still be alive. The degree of his culpability didn’t much matter. Denys must have been shocked; horrified, Richard hoped; for if his own intensity of feeling hadn’t evoked a like intensity of feeling, his relief would have been proportionately less. The remedy had to be as drastic as the disease, or almost, for it to work. And it had worked, or why did he feel better? Not really better, of course; the heart had its diseases that an easier conscience couldn’t cure: the doctor’s verdict still stood, as Denys had reminded him.

Waiting for Denys to come back, Richard wondered how he, Richard, would have felt had their situations been reversed and he had received a similar confidence from Denys. Would he have shrunk from Denys in horror? Would he have said, ‘Your engagement is terminated – leave next week’? Denys had come without a proper reference because he had never done a job of this sort before – and the reference he had was rather negative and non-committal. Supposing it had said, ‘Mr. Aspin is sober, honest and trustworthy, but we are obliged to say that he did once commit a murder,’ would Richard have engaged him? And if Denys had asked for a reference from him (employers were not under the same obligation, fortunately, to produce credentials) and someone had said, ‘Mr. Mardick is honest, sober, and trustworthy, and to the best of our knowledge solvent, but he has committed a murder,’ would Denys have accepted the post? Richard doubted it.

Denys – Denys Aspin. The Aspin was in a way the key to their relationship which had grown stronger and closer as the years passed. Denys had told him a good deal about his life, of course, and there was no murder in it, or any crime at all; it had been a pillar-to-post existence, cramped, after his schooldays, by lack of funds. At twenty-eight Denys had been as glad of a comfortable home and an assured income as Richard had been to give him one. It had proved an ideal arrangement, but it wouldn’t have been so ideal but for the Aspin element. That they were, he and Denys, employer and employee, might have been an obstacle to friendship; but the Aspin aspect somehow equalized their relationship. There might be money on Richard’s side, but there was birth and breeding on Denys’s – the blood of the ancient Border family which had outlasted the ruins of their Norman castle ran in his veins. He had the right to use their motto, which they shared with other families: ‘Tyme Tryeth Troth,’ whereas Richard had no motto to fall back on. Richard was not specially a snob; but he had a romantic feeling that amounted to reverence for such vestiges of the past as had survived the Great Divide of 1939. When Denys fixed on him that long reflective stare he liked to think of it as an Aspin trait – and that the height, and long fingers, and deliberate movements, too, had come down through a long line of Aspin ancestors.

It was half-past ten, too early for Denys to be back from whatever he was doing, but not too early for Richard to start hoping for his arrival. He might go to bed, but he wouldn’t go to sleep until he knew that Denys was home; it brought him a sense of security that was more efficacious than a sleeping pill. Denys knew this and rarely prolonged his absences beyond midnight. How happy Denys had made him. Most of his friends had been older than he was – he seemed to have gravitated towards older people; and when they died, taking a part of his life’s experience with them, he hadn’t had the emotional energy to replace them. How much easier it was to let such emotional outgoings as he had left – a thin enough trickle – centre on Denys, who was paid to accept them uncritically – than venture out into a new world of friendships. And ever since he had told Denys his secret, the bond between them had been strengthened immeasurably. Let other suns decline, so long as this one shone!

At peace with himself, at peace with posterity who, thanks to Denys’ memoir, would not have a totally false idea of him – at peace, almost, with God, Richard awaited Denys’s return.

The memoir would be a compromise with Truth, but it would be a gesture to Justice which posterity could interpret as it liked. Toute vérité n’est pas bonne à dire; some truths were better unspoken; nor, except in the law-court, was it essential to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. A vague suggestion that, as his father used to say, there was a smell of rum somewhere, would be enough; no need to indicate exactly where it was. And it was just possible that there were others to consider besides posterity and himself. Others who might be hurt or scandalized by too much truth-telling. Not his father and mother, they had lived to a great age, pleased by his success though regretting (at least his mother regretted) that he was not married; but they were dead many years ago. And Lucy’s father, their contemporary, must long ago have joined his wife – and Lucy. And the lady who had passed as Mrs. Soames and Lucy’s mother – she too must be dead. Their attempt to deceive posterity hadn’t succeeded; their relationship had been brutally shown up at the Coroner’s Court by the governess who blew the gaff. Richard had never heard what happened to them afterwards, hadn’t wanted to hear; for they, too, were his victims. But were they, altogether? Were they not also victims of their own unwisdom, their selfishness where Lucy was concerned? Were they not to blame for keeping her to themselves and never letting her go out? Were they not to blame for refusing her request – the request which must have cost her so much to make – to be allowed to see him, Richard? For if they could have met openly and not clandestinely, as even in those days boys and girls were allowed to meet, those sweet encounters in the Brickfield, with their disastrous consequences, might never have taken place. Instead, a long, innocent, conventional courtship, meetings at St. Botolph’s and the Hollies, rambling jaunts together, without the fatal seal of secrecy on them, might have culminated in marriage, as Mr. and Mrs. Soames, so called, realized when it was too late. Too late they had a vision of where Lucy’s true happiness might lie, too late, but so compelling that they had offered, so Richard’s mother told him, to help to pay his fees at a public school. His father refused; but it was their idea that he should go there, to be made a worthy husband for Lucy. But by then it was too late, just as it was too late to acquaint Lucy with the facts of life, which today every schoolgirl knows and sometimes acts upon, long before she has reached sweet seventeen.

Mr. Soames and his wife’s sister were behind the times, in more ways than one.

Was there anyone else to consider, in defence of the doctrine of the economy of truth? Yes, there was. Richard’s cousins, in and around Rookland, and their children, for Aunt Florrie’s descendants had increased and multiplied. Though he seldom saw them he was their blood-relation. How would they like this scandal exploding in their midst when he was dead and gone?

And lastly, Aunt Carrie, the only survivor of his mother’s brothers and sisters. The darling of her family, the Holy Family, as Uncle Austin used to call it, idolized, almost deified by his mother: how could he expose her to such a blow? She might not outlive him, for she must be nearly eighty; but if she did! He had been her favourite once, or so he thought; but many people, outside the family circle as well as inside it, thought they had been her favourites. She was still out in Australia, where she had been granted to the full the life of self-sacrifice she always seemed to crave, for not many years after she and Uncle James arrived there, he had a nervous breakdown from which he never recovered. He went on with his work, he was well enough for that, but a cloud settled on his mind which never lifted, religious melancholia it was, and she, who had never been particularly religious, daily searched the Scriptures for texts that would relieve him. For a long time she and Richard corresponded, she followed his career with interest, she congratulated him on his success. But she had to keep up with everyone; small wonder if, after a time, her pen flagged and some of the urgency and intimacy died out of her letters. She had her life there, too, and friends who prized her: it was inconceivable that she should not have. She dwelt lovingly on their peculiarities and foibles and tried to make them real to Richard; but she must have known that as news (and what other news had she?) they couldn’t be of much interest to someone years younger than herself, who would never see them, and to whom they were only names. And Australia was so far away, a letter was almost dead after the six weeks it took to reach him. And even after the air-mail had speeded letters up, hers had begun to come more sparingly, and when they did come were not always quite coherent. Her legend had survived in Richard’s imagination, not she herself: but that legend was strong enough to make him dread more than anything else the thought of hurting her.

It was her marriage to Uncle James that had put the idea of marriage with Lucy into his head. If only it had occurred to him earlier, how much might have been saved!

Sometimes he wondered whether Aunt Carrie, through some slip on his part or second-sight on hers, had divined the fact that he was seeing Lucy. He remembered his last conversation with her, and how she warned him not to let his whole affection centre on one person; she was referring, as she told him, to her own case, her absorbing love for the man who died in her arms; but she might have had some premonition of what was happening, or going to happen, to him. He hadn’t thought so then; then he had taken her warning as a sign that she was not in love with Uncle James. Whether, later, she fell in love with him Richard doubted; that she loved him was certain, and loved him increasingly as his mental state grew worse. There had been no children; child-bearing was as inconceivable in connection with Aunt Carrie as it would be with a phoenix. How close she had always been to him in one way, and in another, how remote! For months at Rookland they were living under the same roof and yet, but for one or two conversations, she might have been as far away as she now was, in Australia. But the climate of her mind had enfolded him as it had his mother, and it was when he was spiritually most in touch with her that the thought of Lucy became most unbearable.

Thank goodness, Aunt Carrie would never know.

And it was this consideration, more than any other, that was ministering to his peace of mind, when the telephone bell rang.

‘Can I speak to Mr. Mardick?’

‘Yes, this is Richard Mardick.’

‘Oh, Mr. Mardick, I rang you up some time ago, but I was told you were out.’

‘I am so sorry. Did you leave your name?’

‘Yes, I think I did, I’m almost sure I did. Lucilla Distington. You wouldn’t remember it, but I met you at a cocktail party, and you were kind enough to say you would come and have a meal with me sometime.’

‘I should love to,’ said Richard, but he couldn’t remember her from Adam – or from Eve. How mortifying that this sort of thing was always happening to him now.

‘I hope it wasn’t too late to ring you up,’ she apologized in a pleasant, rather low voice, that oddly enough seemed to ring a bell, although her name didn’t. ‘I thought I might catch you before you went to bed. I’m such an admirer of your work – that is my excuse.’

‘I’m so glad,’ said Richard automatically. ‘But I’m on the retired list now.’

‘Oh no, you mustn’t say that. Well, I was wondering if luncheon some day next week might be possible.’

‘I’m sure it would be,’ Richard said. ‘I have very few engagements.’

‘Should we say Wednesday then, about one, at 105 Onslow Square?’

‘That would be perfect.’

‘I shall look forward so much to seeing you,’ she said. ‘Good night.’

Richard went back to his chair in a confused state of mind. He hadn’t wanted to accept the invitation, he didn’t want to accept any invitation. He was much happier here, snug in his flat, dreaming away his time with Denys. A luncheon-party! Sometimes he still went to them, but only with people he knew, and people who knew about his state of health.

He didn’t want to make any more friends or even acquaintances; the process of withdrawal must go on. He was happier when reconciled to his fate than when fighting it, or trying to ignore it. And his physical infirmity still embarrassed him. If he went out he felt he ought to explain: ‘You mustn’t mind if I pass out before lunch is over.’ Most troubles mattered less if you kept them to yourself, and illness was certainly one. A few were better shared, but only by one person.

Still Denys didn’t come and presently Richard’s mood of pleased acceptance gave way to anxiety. Denys knew that Richard fretted if he stayed out late; he worried lest Denys should have forgotten to take his latch-key, or been run over: a dozen things might have happened to him. And yet how could Richard expect a young man, with plenty of friends, to be in before midnight, as if he was living in a College? It was neurotic to get into this fuss. Like a sensible person, Richard went to bed; but unlike a sensible person he didn’t go to sleep; he kept an ear cocked for the click of the door. And when it came, how overwhelming his relief. Trying to scold Denys without seeming to, he said: ‘You are a monster! You said the lady who rang up when I was out didn’t leave her name.’

‘Well, did she?’

‘She said she did – Lucilla Distington, it was.’

Denys, who had the irresponsible and optimistic look of someone who has enjoyed his evening out, said airily: ‘Yes, I remember now. But I didn’t think you would want to be bothered with her. You’ve often told me you didn’t want strangers impinging on your life.’

‘That’s true, only you might give me the choice where to draw the line.’

‘That’s just what I was trying to save you from,’ said Denys, putting on Richard’s dressing-gown and walking to and fro as if it was fancy dress. ‘I know how you hate decisions. This Mrs. Distington—’

‘She didn’t say she was Mrs.’

‘I should give her a miss.’

Richard laughed half-heartedly.

‘And I hope you did. Madam I cannot, mistress I would not call you. But what did happen?’

‘Well, I’ve got to lunch with her,’ said Richard, moving his head restlessly on the pillow. ‘If you had warned me, I could have thought up an excuse.’

‘Because her name’s Lucilla?’

‘No, it’s a pretty name, but next time—’

‘Next time I’ll let you stew in your own juice,’ said Denys threateningly. He took off the dressing-gown and threw it on a chair. ‘There! I wash my hands of you. I won’t try to protect you any longer from a designing female, Miss or Mrs.’

Richard laughed happily, and five minutes later was asleep.

Chapter 10

It was then that Richard began to feel the need of his old friends. Where were they, and why didn’t they come to see him? For three years he hadn’t missed them much. Denys gave him everything he wanted, above all what he wanted most and most felt the lack of – the opportunity to give. Had he had anything to give besides himself when he knew Lucy, he would have given it to her. His nature demanded it then, this pouring out of all he had; it had never demanded it since, till he met Denys. Denys’s givability was his great attraction; it was a passport to felicity, renewable with every gift. Richard wasn’t aware of wanting an exchange, for Denys was himself the exchange. With his friends he exchanged presents, but there was little emotional release in them: he had to think what they would like, just as they had to think what he would like. He was glad if his presents pleased them, disappointed if they didn’t; but no spiritual outgoing took place on either side; they were just tokens of friendship. On the material plane, most of his friends had everything they wanted, just as he, Richard, had most things that he wanted. It wasn’t really possible for him to confer a benefit on them, or they on him, except as an expression of good-will – a formality almost. Whereas everything was grist to Denys’s mill – a cheque was enough to make him happy – if not as happy as it made him, Richard.

His friends were not bound to him by presents, they were bound by other, more intangible ties, and it was only now that he asked himself why he valued them, and what had occurred to loosen them. Alternative or allied answers stared him in the face. Either his friends recognized his absorption in Denys, and left him alone to enjoy it; or they recognized but didn’t like it, and therefore left him alone: it came to the same thing. Not one of them had made any comment; not one of them had told him he might not have chosen the best way of being happy. Why should they? His mother or his father would have told him soon enough; Aunt Carrie might have suggested something, as she had once before, when he was too far gone with Lucy to take heed. But now he was too old to be scolded or even advised. They had only one course, to withdraw: and they withdrew.

He still had one friend left in whom he could confide – and she was a comparatively recent friend. To Lucilla he told, as lightly and ironically as he could, the story of his domestic troubles.

‘It seems so childish to complain of them,’ he said, ‘when practically nobody has them, domestics, I mean, not domestic troubles – but you can’t have one without the other. You see, Lucilla, I do want to make people happy. It isn’t an affectation when I say so. But as soon as they realize this – or so it seems to me – they want to take advantage of it, and at my expense, in more ways than one. If I could be a martinet, a proper disciplinarian, I think they would like it better. But I can’t be.’

‘When you say “they”,’ Lucilla asked, ‘do you include Mr. Aspin? He isn’t exactly a servant, is he?’

Richard didn’t like this question.

‘Well no,’ he said, ‘he isn’t of course. I employ him, but he’s a friend. I meant Mrs. Cuddesdon and Mrs. Stonegappe. Mrs. Cuddesdon didn’t, and Mrs. Stonegappe doesn’t, like him. Why, I don’t know, except that he’s a gentleman and therefore not of their class.’

‘Mrs. Cuddesdon said it was he who listened in to the telephone,’ Lucilla reminded him.

‘Yes, but not until I had taxed her with doing it. You know what those people are – they cannot admit they are in the wrong, or they lose face, and, among each other, never hear the last of it. They have to be in the right. You couldn’t expect Mrs. Cuddesdon or Mrs. Stonegappe to admit they weren’t.’

‘But you haven’t asked Mrs. Stonegappe whether she has taken things, have you?’

‘No, I haven’t, Lucilla. I can’t bring myself to. But I suppose I shall have to, or Denys will be walking out again.’

Lucilla was silent for a moment: then she said:

‘Does Mrs. Stonegappe know that you suspect her?’

‘I think she must,’ said Richard. ‘Otherwise, why should she be in such a black mood all the time? She never smiles and hardly ever speaks – she’s been a different woman since Denys came back. I feel sure she has tumbled to it that he knows and has told me.’

‘There is another possible explanation.’

‘What’s that?’

‘She might be jealous,’ said Lucilla, slowly.

‘Jealous? But who of?’

Lucilla gave him a long look.

‘Of Denys, I suppose.’

‘Of Denys, but why?’

‘Because of his friendship with you.’

Richard stared at her. The idea that he could occasion jealousy in any breast was so new to him that he didn’t know what to make of it. As an ex-novelist, of course, he knew about the passions, and not altogether at second-hand: he could still remember what it felt like to hold Lucy in his arms, and perhaps the most operative part of his life had been spent in two contradictory efforts – to recover, and to root out, that feeling. But jealousy, no. Experience had never put jealousy in his way. Denys had had his nights out, and his week away; but Richard hadn’t felt jealous – he had put it all down to Denys’s youth and need to be amused. His behaviour had been inconvenient and inconsiderate but, good heavens! It hadn’t hatched the green-eyed monster. Moreover, Richard disapproved so much of jealousy – that most destructive and unrewarding of emotions – that he didn’t feel he could ever be guilty of it. And as for being the cause of it, that too was unthinkable. Poor old Richard, with one foot in the grave! It was almost indecent. Jealousy, he had nearly forgotten there was such a thing. And to put Mrs Stonegappe in the same class with Othello!

Out of the mists of his bewilderment, he said, repeating his thoughts aloud, ‘But, Lucilla, how could I make anybody jealous?’

She replied with a gulp: ‘You underrate yourself. You are too modest.’ And to his amazement and horror he saw tears filling her eyes. Presently they dried; and Richard was able to attribute Lucilla’s momentary lapse to one of those unaccountable gusts of feeling to which women are subject.

Afterwards she applied herself wholeheartedly to his problem. ‘Who orders the food?’ she asked. ‘You or Denys or Mrs. Stonegappe?’

‘Not I,’ said Richard, ‘it’s one of the others.’

‘But don’t you know which?’

‘I suppose it’s Denys, as he does the cooking.’

‘Really you are hopeless,’ said Lucilla with a mock severity of manner that he hadn’t noticed in her before. ‘I shall have to come and do your housekeeping for you.’ She gave him a moment to reply to this, and when he didn’t, went on. ‘My advice is that you and Denys should make a list every night of all the eatables in the fridge, and the cupboards too, and check it the next morning, when Mrs. Stonegappe’s gone.’

‘Couldn’t Denys do it by himself?’ asked Richard, to whom anything in the nature of a list was an abhorrence.

‘I suppose he could,’ she answered, ‘but I think you ought to share it with him, just to satisfy yourself. It takes two people to make an inventory, you know, one may always overlook something. And then if you find that things are missing—’

‘Yes?’ said Richard.

‘Then you’ll have to speak to Mrs. Stonegappe.’

‘If you knew how I hated that!’ said Richard.

‘I do know, and I think it’s a pity that your mother, who wisely told you of so many things that would be useful to you in later life, didn’t tell you that sometimes you would have to be disagreeable, for the good of all concerned. But perhaps she did.’

‘I’m sure I’m often disagreeable,’ Richard said, ‘but not often deliberately.’

‘Well, this time you must steel yourself, or you may have Denys leaving you for good, which would be a calamity, wouldn’t it? I quite understand how he feels. When there are two people, suspicion must fall on both.’

‘You don’t suspect Denys, do you?’ Richard asked.

‘No, but I sympathize with his wish to clear himself.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Richard, ‘now you’re taking his side.’

‘Only,’ Lucilla said, ‘in this particular instance. I haven’t always, have I? I know how valuable he is to you – or should I say, invaluable? You couldn’t get on without him, could you?’

‘I did, for a week,’ said Richard.

‘Yes, I know, but you were miserable. No, that’s too strong a word, but could you envisage the future without him – I mean, and not feel too depressed?’

Truthfulness had been enjoined on Richard as a child, and he tried to answer truthfully.

‘Really, Lucilla, I don’t know. You see, I’m not quite well, as I told you, it’s nothing much but sometime it might be. So I want to have someone about in case – well – it should get worse. And someone to run the flat, too.’

‘I quite see,’ Lucilla said, ‘how much you count on Mr. Aspin. He was with you, wasn’t he, long before I knew you. I can’t think he’ll leave you, Richard, over such a trifle as a dishonest daily woman – tiresome as it is, and many people besides you have found it so. But whether he’s an Aspin or not’ – she smiled – ‘his future is wrapped up in you, isn’t it? For his own sake, and in his own interest, he couldn’t be so silly as to throw all that away. Who would he find to look after him as – as lovingly as you do? He’s young