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of sods. Feet gasps, hand to her mouth, at what’s happening to the driveway lawn of her future showpiece.
    The Duke yells out, “Oi, steady on there!”
    But Churchill makes the car skid and slide away leaving two gouged tracks which Feet calls out is “vandalism.” She hurries to inspect the damage. Vandalism and grass murder, she calls it. “Nothing but utter loutish vandalism.”
    The Duke, however, is not concerned with lawn and wheel marks. He orders me to raise my fists, hold them mid-air, for his inspection. Not the fists so much, the knuckles and any signs of scarring and scratching. Signs of combat.
    He identifies a red discolouration, a definite sign of trouble. A chip of skin he describes as “very admirable” and the sort you would expect to get when you connect, not flush but off centre on someone’s chin. He smiles to the entire width of his top row of white dentures. “Goodness me. I didn’t know you had it in you.”
    Feet wants me to get a rake and repair the vandalism before it has time to dry out and be permanent. But The Duke tells me to stay right where I am. “He’s had enough for one day I think, love,” he tells Feet. “He’s learnt a few things today. About leadership. About taking no nonsense. He’s got leadership qualities.”
    He smiles the whole white width again. More than smiles —his eyes, always so deep-set and dark, have a wet glow to them. A pooled lit quality that as he moves close to place his hands affectionately on my shoulders I see myself reflected in, in miniature as in two blurry mirrors.
    I would never normally allow this physical move to be made on me, my shoulders embraced by him in a mother-like or love-like way that people do. A father should be a stone figure, twin of myself in looks and gesture. An older me whom I’m awed by but must secretly fight against and eventually overthrow.
    But this mirror lock of our eyes is paralysing. The love-pride of a human for his next in line. The Duke can never feel this way about any other. I see it now—this power I have, that I, and only I, can be allowed by this man to have over him.

T HERE IS AN EXAMPLE to set where the basics of hygiene and presentation are concerned. If the two head men of Tudor Park run around the place unshaven, what example does that set? Feet accepts that shaving is a horrible activity, scrape, scrape, scrape first thing in the morning. But if she can bear a blade across her legs for twice as long as we men take for faces, we should bear it too.
    She accuses The Duke of not having shaved for two days. Two days . If he’s attempting an impression of a rough diamond man of the land, he is doing a damn good job of it. The grey growth he has let age his face ten years stops her giving cuddles.
    As for her son, he has such long strands of that granny-hair on his chin. He needs to become acquainted more intimately with the razor. She tugs the granny-hair and calls it “bum-fluff.” I flinch away, but she has time enough for one twist and roll in her fingers.
    Please, she beg-tells The Duke. Please get him into the bathroom and teach him to shave properly and more regularly. “I haven’t seen his face smooth and clean in weeks. You’re both letting yourselves go.”
    She sighs, “My son will be shaving every day soon. Ah, milestones.”
    It galls me that there is no point to argue here. When she put it the way she has—that we two men of Tudor Park must set an example, that we shouldn’t run around like rough diamonds, I can only agree.
    Where’s the little farce of fury we always perform? Where’s my instinctive “No” or “Why?”
    I must say it anyway: “No.”
    She responds with her usual narrowing of eyes, a suck of air through her clenched teeth, the bottom row of which overbites the top in yellow anger. She slumps into a chair. Her sharpened fingers make a galloping sound on the Formica.
    For the little farce—the procedure and pleasure of it—I narrow my eyes back at her. I