'Thanks, dad. Is this sherry?'

'Yes. . . . Smoke a cigarette if you like--it's the only wine that isn't spoiled by smoking.' Charles, proffering his cigarette case, thought he had conveyed his hint rather tactfully. 'I hope you like it.'

'It's--well, I daresay one could get used to it.'

'Just about my own first reaction. That, I remember, was at a Foundation dinner at Cambridge. I mixed my drinks rather recklessly--with the inevitable result. My gyp told me afterwards I'd tried to festoon the chapel belfry with toilet paper.'

Gerald laughed. 'It's hard to imagine you ever getting drunk.'

'That's because you think of me as I am today.'

'Or else because I really don't know you properly.'

The remark, so seemingly cold, was actually warm to Charles; it hinted that Gerald too was aware of the barrier and that such awareness might be a first step towards their joint effort to remove it. He said agreeably: 'I've often thought that's one of the biggest drawbacks of a career like mine. Chopping and changing posts, with you in England half the time when you were a baby, then the war came and you went to America, and even after that there was school and we could only meet during the holidays if I happened to be in London. The wonder is we know each other at all. But now you're getting older and I'm not likely to be abroad so much, things ought to work out better.'

Charles waited for a word of encouragement, then decided that the boy's friendly face was itself one. He continued: 'Besides, I'll be off duty for good in a few more years. I'd thought of buying a place in the country if I can find something that isn't too huge or too cute. How would you like that?'

'You mean a place like Beeching, dad?'

'Oh no, much humbler . . . but I'm sure you don't remember Beeching.'

'I do--because I remember Grandfather there.'

'Really?'

'There was a big white fireplace and once a hot coal fell out on the rug and Grandfather squirted soda water over it. I think that's really the first thing I remember about anything.'

'I don't recall the incident, but there was certainly a big white marble fireplace in the hall, so perhaps you're right. . . . Much TOO big--the fireplaces and everything else--we used to consume fifty tons of coal a year and still the rooms were chilly in the winter. Think of trying to get fifty tons of coal nowadays to heat a private house. . . .