'I think,' said Rupert, 'that there is only one way you can decide.'

'Yes,' said Colin, lifting his head.

'Yes,' said Frances.

'Then, that's it. And now put the other out of your heads. Now.'

'I suppose once a Sixties' household, then always a Sixties' household,' said Colin. 'No, that's not my little aperçu, it is Sophie's. She thinks it's all lovely. I did point out that it was not she who would be doing the work. She said she would muck in – with everything, she said.' He laughed.

Back in bed Rupert said, 'I don't think I could bear it if you died. But luckily women live longer than men.'

‘And I can't imagine not being with you. '

These two people of the word had hardly ever said more than this kind of thing. ‘We don't do too badly, do we?' was about the limit. To be so thoroughly out of phase with one's time does take a certain bravado: a man and a woman daring to love each other so thoroughly – well, it was hardly to be confessed, even to each other.

Now he said, ‘What was all that about the kittens?'

‘I have no idea. Not in this house, and I am sure not at his school. Progressive schools don't drown kittens. Well, not so their pupils can see. '

‘Wherever it happened, it went deep. '

‘And he's never mentioned it before. '

‘When I was a boy I saw a gang of kids torturing a sick dog. That taught me more about the nature of the world than anything else ever has. '

Lessons began. Rupert tutored Clever and Zebedee in maths: beyond knowing their multiplication tables they were as blank sheets, he said, but they were so quick, they could catch up. Frances found that their reading had been extraordinary: their memories retained whole tracts of Mowgli and Enid Blyton, and Animal Farm and Hardy, but they had not heard of Shakespeare. This deficiency she proposed to remedy; they were already reading everything on the shelves in the sitting-room. Colin came in with geography and history. Sylvia's little atlas had done good service, the boys' knowledge of the world was wide, if not deep; as for history, they did not know much beyond The Renaissance Popes — this being a book on Father McGuire's shelves. Sophie would take them to the theatre. And then, without being asked, William began teaching them from old textbooks, and it was this that really did them good.

William said he was unnerved by their application: he himself had to do well, but compared to them...’You'd think their lives depended on it,' and added, making the discovery for himself, ‘I suppose their lives do depend on it. After all, I can always go and be...' 'What?' enquired the adults, grasping at this opportunity to glimpse what really went on in his mind. 'A gardener. I could be a gardener at Kew,' said William gravely. 'Yes, that's what I'd really like. Or I could be like Thoreau and live by myself, near a lake and write about Nature.'

Sylvia had died intestate, and so, the lawyers said, her money would go to her mother, as the next of kin. A good sum it was, well able to see the boys through their education. Andrew was appealed to, as Phyllida's old mate, and, dropping into or through London, he went to see Phyllida, where this conversation ensued.

'Sylvia would have wanted her money to educate the two African boys she seems to have adopted.'

'Oh yes, the black boys, I have heard about them.'

'I'm here formally to ask you to relinquish that money, because we are sure that is what she would have wished.'

'I don't remember her saying anything to me about it.'

'But, Phyllida, how could she?'

Phyllida gave a little toss ofher head, with a small triumphant smile, that was amused, too, like someone applauding the vagaries ofFate, having won a fortune in the sweepstake, perhaps. 'Finders keepers,' she said. 'And anyhow, something nice is owed to me, that's how I see it.'

There was a family discussion.

Rupert, though a senior editor in his newspaper, and adequately paid, knew that even when he had finished paying for Margaret's school fees (Frances now paid for William) he would have to keep Meriel.

Colin's intelligent novels, described by Rose Trimble as 'elite novels for the chattering classes', were not going to provide for more than the child, and Sophie, who as an actress was often resting. He spent so little on himself he hardly counted.

Frances found herself in a familiar situation. She had been offered a job helping to run a small experimental theatre: her heart's desire, a lot of fun but not much money. Her reliable and serious books, bought by every library in the land, brought in good money. She would have to say no to the theatre and write books. She said she would be responsible for Clever, and Andrew would pay for Zebedee.

Andrew proposed to start a family, but he earned so well he was sure he could manage Zebedee. Things did not turn out as he expected. The marriage was already in trouble, would soon dissolve, after not much more than a year, though Mona was pregnant. Years of legal wrangling would follow, but when Andrew did wrest time with his child from the jealous mother, the little girl was mostly with her cousin Celia, sharing whatever au pair was around, and Celia's daddy's attention. Colin, as Sophie often wailed, was such a wonderful father, and she was such a rotten mother. ('Never mind,' prattled Celia, when Sophie said this, 'you are such a pretty yummy mummy we don't care.')

Where was everyone going to fit in?

Clever would have Andrew's old room, Zebedee Colin's. Colin would use the sitting-room to work in. William was in a room on Frances's and his father's floor. The au pair used Sylvia's old room.

And the basement flat? Someone was in it. Johnny was in it.

Frances had been on her way to a bus stop when she heard hurrying steps behind her and, ' Frances, Frances Lennox. ' She turned to see a woman whose white hair was being blown about while she tried to keep a scarf in place. Frances did not know her... yes, she did, just: it was Comrade Jinny, from the old days, and she was chattering, ‘Oh, I wasn't sure, but yes it's you, well we' re all getting on aren't we, oh dear, I simply had to... it's your husband you see, I'm so worried about him. '

'I left my husband fit and well not five minutes ago.'

'Oh dear, oh dear, silly me, I meant Johnny, Comrade Johnny, if only you two knew what you meant to me when I was young, such an inspiration, Comrades Johnny and Frances Lennox...' 'Look, I'm sorry, but...'

'I hope I'm not speaking out of turn.'

' Just tell me, what is it?'

'He's so old now, poor old thing...

'He's my age.'

'Yes, but some people wear better than others. I just felt you ought to know,' said she, running off and sending back scared but aggressive waves of the hand.

Frances told Colin who said that as far as he was concerned his father could sink or swim. And Frances said that she was damned ifshe was going to pick up Johnny's pieces for him. That left Andrew, who dropped over from Rome for the afternoon. He found Johnny in a quite pleasant room, in Highgate, in the house of a woman he described as the salt of the earth. He was a frail old man with fans of silvery hair around a shiny white pâté, all pathos and vulnerability. He was pleased to see Andrew but he wasn't going to show it. 'Sit down,' he said. 'I'm sure Sister Meg will make us all some tea.’But Andrew remained upright, and said, 'I've come because we hear you've fallen on hard times.'

'Which is more than you have done, so I'm told.'

'I'm glad to say what you hear is all true.'

Not many people in the world would see Johnny's lot as a hard one, but after all, he had spent probably two-thirds ofhis life in comradely luxury hotels in the Soviet Union, Poland, China, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia; in Chile and Angola and Cuba -wherever there had been a comradely conference, Johnny had been there, the world his barrel of oysters, his honeypot, his ever-open jar of Beluga caviar, and here he was, in one room -a nice room, but one room. On his old-age pension. 'And of course the senior bus pass helps.'