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whatnots and fannies, let’s get down to nitty-gritties – on the wall of his lavatory, and that being the case –
    ‘You are not going to let him? You can’t possibly allow him …’ Mrs Wiley squawked.
    Horace Wiley seemed to look at his wife for the first and, possibly, the last time.
    ‘Of course I denied everything,’ he said slowly, and paused. ‘I told him to bloody well come and check for himself if he didn’t believe me. Which is why the plasterers are arriving to repair the rest of the damage tomorrow.’
    ‘More damage? What damage?’
    ‘The damage done by a litre of Domestos, a hammer and a blowtorch I paid twenty-five pounds for. And if you don’t believe me, go and have a look yourself.’
    Mrs Wiley had already gone and from the silence that followed Horace knew that for the first time intheir married life he had achieved the seemingly impossible. She had nothing to say and the question of Esmond’s artistic education was shelved for good.
    Mrs Wiley had other matters to occupy her mind now and the main one was how very manly she found her husband in this moment of assertiveness. Gazing at the vandalised cloakroom wall she couldn’t help wondering whether Horace might be persuaded to try on the, to date largely unworn, buckskin breeches she had bought him as a wedding present. All in all it might turn out to be rather a good thing that the newly loud Esmond no longer lurked.

Chapter 4
    Unfortunately for Vera, Horace’s assertive moment was exactly that – a moment. He was back to his timorous ways in no time at all. And if in part it had been his mother’s ambition which had caused Esmond to react with such apparently mindless violence against anything faintly artistic or even sensitive, then his father’s influence over the next few years continued to be hardly less baleful.
    Mr Wiley’s profession no doubt contributed to his old-fashioned insistence that two plus two must invariably make four, that books had to balance and that money didn’t grow on trees but had to be earned, saved and accrue interest, and that the second law of thermodynamics applied as much to human affairs asit did to the realm of physics. Or, as he put it to Esmond one sultry afternoon when, much against both their wills, father and son were sent for a ‘nice’ walk on Croham Hurst, ‘Heat always flows from something that is hot to something that is cold, never the other way round. Is that clear?’
    ‘You mean something that is cold like an ice cube can’t warm a gas fire?’ said Esmond, rather surprising his father with his acumen. Horace himself had never thought of it in such obvious terms.
    ‘Exactly. Very good. Well, it’s the same with money. The law of thermodynamics is true in banking. Money always flows from those who have it to those that haven’t.’
    Under the birch trees at the top of Breakneck Hill, Esmond stopped.
    ‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘If the rich are always giving money to the poor, why do the poor stay poor?’
    ‘Because they spend the money of course,’ said Horace irritably.
    ‘But if the rich give away their money, they can’t keep it – and if they don’t keep it they can’t stay rich,’ Esmond objected.
    Mr Wiley looked wistfully at a distant golfer and sighed. He did not play golf himself but he rather wished he had taken it up. The desire to hit something was almost overwhelming and a small white ball might just have served as a sufficient substitute for his son. Resisting this impulse, he instead did his bestto smile and at the same time to answer Esmond. Not that he had a clue what to say. He was saved by a faintly religious upbringing.
    ‘The poor are always with us,’ he quoted.
    ‘But why are they always with us?’
    Mr Wiley tried to think of a good reason for repeating a statement he had never considered before in any depth. There hadn’t been any need to. The poor didn’t require his services as a bank manager or, if they did, couldn’t