Free A Coat of Varnish by C. P. Snow Page B

though, possibly yes.’
    ‘Susan has made mistakes before. She’s only twenty-three, but she’s made mistakes. I’m not going to have another. If this fellow lets her down, then he’ll have to reckon with me. I want to see her married. That’ll calm her down. She’s a good girl. Does Kate say she’s a good girl?’
    ‘Of course, Kate is very fond of her.’
    Thirkill didn’t give up. ‘That family of Loseby is no good. No earthly good. All they have is an estate they can’t keep up. No money. Grandmother was a society tart. Father useless. Useless drunk. Living in a tax haven, in Morocco. Why he wants a tax haven, God only knows. There can’t be anything in the way of tax to pay. This boy is fooling round in the Army. Precious lot of use that is. The best he can hope for is to make colonel. If he’s lucky.’
    Then he made another appeal for sympathy. ‘I wouldn’t mind so much about that. Money’s no problem for a daughter of mine. All I want to be sure of is that he’d be good to her.’ After a pause, he added: ‘Mind you, it mightn’t be any good for me.’
    ‘Whatever do you mean?’
    ‘Haven’t you thought what some of my precious colleagues would say, if my daughter married into that crowd?’
    Humphrey permitted himself a breath of realism. If Tom Thirkill, living in state in Eaton Square, thought he could ingratiate himself with the militant left, he had temporarily lost his political sense. Further, Humphrey still hadn’t seen a case, even in England in the 1970s, where a connection with the aristocracy, however down at heel, hadn’t done a public figure more good than harm.
    For once, Thirkill had the grace to laugh. It was a gritty laugh, but it broke out. Humphrey was thinking, the man wasn’t often simple, but now he was. He was nothing but an anxious father. He wanted to see his daughter married. In secret, he might like to see her married to a future marquess, but above all he wanted to see her safe. As the minutes passed, he was violently hoping to see her come in happy and tell him that she was engaged. The minutes passed. The man was anxious, and when he pressed Humphrey to stay he felt compelled to. He took another drink. They had been sitting there, making spasmodic talk, the attacking force gone out of Thirkill, for an hour and a half – it was getting on for midnight – when the outer door of the apartment banged to. Thirkill’s face opened with expectation, anxiety, hope. More minutes passed. Then there was the sound of another door shutting. Thirkill sat in silence. Finally he said: ‘She must have gone to bed.’

 
     
6
     
    The following evening, Monday, Humphrey sat in the Square gardens, watching for Kate to come home from her hospital. When she had parked her car, and he had stopped her, she was already frowning. He gave her an account of what had happened the night before, and the frown deepened, a furrow where there was already a line, becoming permanent in the high forehead. ‘Susan hasn’t spoken a word all day,’ she said.
    ‘I was afraid of that.’
    ‘The man’s a shit.’ Kate was in a bitter temper. He was used to her in her lively spirit, not often like this. She was angry with herself because she hadn’t been immune to Loseby’s blandishments. She was angry with Susan because there was someone she was fond of and couldn’t help. She was angry with Humphrey because he brought, or crystallised, bad news.
    ‘Thank you for trying,’ she said, but Humphrey, feeling ill-treated, thought that one day he might remind her that thanks like that were more efforts of politeness than demonstrations of gratitude.
    She didn’t want to listen to anything more about the Thirkills. ‘I must rush,’ she said, and forced a smile better shaped but less attractive than her habitual cheerful, disrespectful, ugly grin.
    The heat remained constant. People used to complaining about changes in the weather were now complaining it didn’t change. That Monday was 19