The Beaufort Sisters. Jon Cleary

If one can swallow one’s conscience, and I’ve been chewing mine for some time, there’s no pain at all in being a bludger. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but that’s the way it is going to be, I’m afraid. I enjoy luxury. Just as you do,’ he added unmaliciously.

      ‘I was born to it,’ she said, as if that were some sort of argument. But he was unimpressed and she went on, ‘What are you going to do, then?’

      ‘I’ll do what all the other bludgers – ’

      ‘Don’t use that word.’

      He looked at her quizzically, bounced the ball a few times. She felt awkward, somehow naked; this was a crisis in their marriage and she was unprepared for it. From the maples at the rear of the park there came the plaintive note of a mourning dove; but across the lawns the laughter of Michael, Sally and Prue was a counterpoint. Somewhere a lawn-mower whirred and out on the parkway traffic growled, hummed and sighed. In the midst of an ordinary day, surrounded by the security that she treasured, she felt her life falling apart. She stared at him for some help, but he was blind to or ignored her silent plea.

      ‘I shan’t make myself conspicuous. I’ll fill in my time so that, if nothing else, I’ll look busy. But most of all I’ll concentrate on being a father. Just to make sure Michael doesn’t grow up in my image.’

      ‘Whose image do you want for him?’

      ‘Not your father’s.’ He smiled, but still managed to sound good-humoured.

      She felt bewildered, first by Margaret’s outburst, now by this casual declaration by Tim that he was throwing in the towel. True, she had orginally wanted him to become part of the family, though at the time she had not really appreciated how much that surrendering of his independence would mean to him. But in the three years they had been married she had come to see his point, to share his determination to be his own man and not her father’s. He was not becoming her father’s man now. What was worse, he was settling for being her man, letting her money keep him. Her disappointment in him sickened her, yet she knew that she was the one who had planted the seed of corruption.