“There you are,” Captain Ingleby-Lewis said, sounding mildly surprised.

Swaying slightly and bringing with him a strong smell of beer, he advanced slowly into the room. He pulled off his overcoat and draped it over one of the chairs at the table. He sat down heavily in the armchair opposite hers. His waistcoat was smeared with ash but the suit had once been a good one, and the trousers were neatly creased. Perhaps he put his trousers under the mattress of his bed while he slept.

For a moment they stared at each other. The usual social nice-ties-“Have you had lunch?” “I see it’s stopped raining”-seemed irrelevant here. They were separated by five feet of threadbare carpet and an enormous gulf of mutual ignorance.

“This can’t go on, you know,” he said abruptly, patting the pockets of his jacket. He took out a packet of cigarettes. “You can see for yourself. It’s-ah-it’s not suitable.”

“My being here?”

“Exactly. You’ve got a perfectly good home of your own. And a husband.”

“I’d rather stay here, Father.” The word Father felt awkward in her mouth, as though it belonged somewhere else, but it was also a weapon.

“But why do you want to come here?” He struck a match with a trembling hand and squinted at her through the flame. “You’ve got along perfectly well without me for nearly thirty years. To all intents and purposes, that fellow Cassington is your father, not me. Anyway, you’re married now. You’re Langstone’s responsibility. He can give you everything you need.”

“I’ve had enough of all that,” Lydia said.

“A wife belongs with her husband, you know.”

“This one doesn’t.”

“And your mother? What does she say?”

“She doesn’t know I’m here. No one does. She won’t even know that I’ve left home unless Marcus has told her.”

He smoked in silence. A cylinder of ash fell from the tip of the cigarette to the carpet. Somewhere outside a woman was shouting, “So where’s it gone then, you bastard? I want it back.” She repeated the same words over and over again: “I want it back, I want it back.”

Ingleby-Lewis cleared his throat. “I don’t mind telling you, my dear, I’ve had a few ups and downs lately. Shares not doing as well as they might. Taxation. This damned government of ours. It’s all changed since the war. If you want to live like a gentleman these days, you have to be as rich as Croesus. The long and short of it is, I can’t afford to keep you.”

“I needn’t be a burden on you.”

“But how are you going to live? Have you got any money of your own?”

“A little. And I have a bit of jewelry. I thought perhaps I could sell some of it and that would tide me over until I could get a job.”

“But you’ve got nothing coming in on a regular basis?”

She shook her head.

He sighed gustily. “A job, eh? And what sort of job could you do?”

“I don’t know. Anything.”

“Can you use a typewriter?”

“No, but I’m sure I could-”

“Have you had any sort of job in your life? A real job, I mean?”

“Well, not as such.”

“Not as such,” he echoed. “Lydia, have you ever done anything useful? Do you know anything useful? There are millions of unemployed out there. Go into that library in Charleston Street any day of the week, and it’s packed with the blighters. Why should anyone want to give you a job?”

Lydia glared at him. “I’m sure somebody would. I-I know how things are done, for example. That could be useful.”

“How things are done,” he echoed, and this time he didn’t try to disguise the sarcasm. “You mean, whether the wife of a peer goes into dinner in front of the wife of an ambassador, eh? Which flowers are best for the drawing room in September? I don’t think you’ll find there’s much call for all that. Not around here.”

“I’m sure someone must-”

“Perhaps one of your mother’s friends might take you on as a companion? Though I’m not sure your mother would be very happy about that. She’d put a stop to it if she could.”

“Then I shall advertise. It may take a while but-”

“But if you’re lucky you might find a position with the wife of some jumped-up tradesman in Turnham Green.” He flicked the cigarette end into the fireplace. “On the other hand you almost certainly wouldn’t last five minutes because as soon as you open your mouth you’d remind them what ghastly little snobs they were.”

“Father,” Lydia said. “I know it may not be easy, but could I at least stay with you for a few weeks? I can pay my own way. And I could help with-with the housework, perhaps.”

“Have you ever done any housework in your life?”

“I’m sure I could learn. Perhaps your housekeeper would be able to show me.”

Ingleby-Lewis threw back his head and laughed. “I don’t have a housekeeper. I don’t have anyone.”

She frowned. “Surely someone comes in and-”

“No. There’s nobody, Lydia, it’s as simple as that. Sometimes Serridge’s charwoman takes pity on an old buffer and tidies me up a bit but that’s out of the kindness of her heart.” He leaned toward her. “All right,” he said in a gentler voice. “You can stay for a week or two. But I’m telling you now, you won’t enjoy it. You’re not used to this sort of life.”

“Thank you.”

“Mind you, I’ll have to square it with Serridge.”

“Who’s he?”

“My landlord, among other things. That parcel downstairs was for him.” Ingleby-Lewis smiled at her, exposing brown jagged teeth. “You had better let me have a few pounds for him. He won’t let you have the room for nothing.”

Lydia opened her handbag and found her purse. “Would five pounds do for a start?”

Her father nodded. He took the money and put it in his wallet. He stood up slowly. “I have to go out for a while. I’ll leave you to it, shall I?”

“I wonder…what about food?”

“What about it? If you want to buy some, you’ll find shops in Charleston Street. Or go across to Fetter Passage.” He nodded to her and said, with a ghostly geniality that seemed to belong to a much younger, happier man, “Must dash. Au revoir, my dear.”

Lydia listened to him on the stairs. The door banged. She went to stand by the window. Captain Ingleby-Lewis walked slowly and carefully across the square and into the doorway of the Crozier. She waited a moment. From the windows of her father’s room you could see the length of Bleeding Heart Square and, on the corner by the old pump, the alley leading past the pub to Charleston Street. On the right was the bulk of the chapel with its pinnacles dark against a sky the color of dirty cotton wool. If she craned her neck she had a glimpse of Rosington Place beyond, where the long, shabby terraces faced each other, cut off from the rest of London by the railings at the end and the lodge where the Beadle stood guard with his little dog. She shivered with a mixture of cold, fear and excitement.

As she was about to turn back into the room she caught sight of the figure of a man standing in the alley near the Crozier. She expected him to go into the pub. But instead he stood looking from one end of Bleeding Heart Square to the other with leisurely attention, as though he were a sightseer. Automatically she stepped back so he would not be able to glimpse her face against the glass.

She wondered idly who he was. Just a young man in a brown raincoat with a flat cap and a muffler round his neck. Perhaps a clerk of some sort or somebody who worked in a shop. One of the army of little people, as Marcus used to say, one of those who needed other people like Marcus to tell them what to do.

The young man hurried out of the square and into Charleston Street, where he glanced up and down as if wary of pursuit. Half a dozen schoolgirls from St. Tumwulf’s threaded their way around him. He began to walk rapidly east. Narton, who had been sheltering from the wind on the steps of the public library, crossed the road and followed. He calculated that he had nothing to lose and perhaps everything to gain.