Free The Long Prospect by Elizabeth Harrower

grass. A small illusion of cool air beat with tantalizing gentleness about his flushed face.
    â€˜Whew!’ He found a handkerchief and blotted his face and head. ‘Gets you down, doesn’t it? I’m sweating like a horse.’
    â€˜It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.’ Lilian explained his discomfort to him as though the platitude had just been thought of, and Harry, who was prepared to take seriously any words that had a remote connexion with his well-being, looked interested and even impressed to hear it.
    When Lilian reappeared, after a moment’s absence, with a glass of cold beer, he felt a rush of affection for her that quite outdid anything he had felt at the sight of Paula or Emily. She was a good sort, all right. One of the best.
    â€˜Paula knew you were coming up?’ she smiled. ‘She didn’t tell us.’
    â€˜No?’ Harry looked dense.
    â€˜You might have stayed or something.’ Lilian smiled again with sheer annoyance. ‘Oh, well!...You’ve seen Emily. She’s grown, hasn’t she?’
    â€˜Yes. Too right.’ Harry made other affirmative noises until Lilian allowed him to shut up and drink his beer by starting off on a monologue, a tapestry of non sequiturs. Harry drank, listened, and nodded, grateful to be talked at.
    He was a lazy man. He was lazy with the physical laziness common among Europeans who live in hot climates; unthinking, with the masochistic laziness of an adult whose mind has gone inadequately trained; but the lack of moral and emotional force might have been said to be an inherent limitation, rather than a wilful or accidental withholding of effort. For these reasons he looked forward to promotion and transfer in the future with more stoicism than pleasure. He was constrained to dangle before his own nose the prospect of material gain and prestige, when he thought of the future, to assuage the fear in which his lethargy went. For these reasons he sat comfortably uninvolved while Lilian talked and wondered whether Paula had told Harry that Rosen was living with her, and what he would say when they met.
    Harry was one of the family, in a way, and he was a man. When he was present his opinion had to be thought of, especially now when Rosen was beginning to irritate her.
    The unlikelihood of Harry’s forming an opinion, and the even less likely extraction of unfavourable criticism from him at this time, when he was beholden to her, she easily overlooked.
    In the kitchen, Emily glowed with soap and satisfaction. For once she was confident that she had the interest of the adult world; better still, she was attacked and defended. And Lilian would win. There was no obligation to feel more than contempt for her father, but since he had been the one to provoke this situation of interest round her—though she could not forgive—she withheld further censure.
    A little weak, a little pampered, she sat at the table and held between her hands, untouched, a glass of milk. The glass was full and perfect. With a vague idea that it would be a kind of cannibalism to ruin its perfection she pushed the glass away, for the moment, at least, renouncing it. And gazing at this symbol of her own completeness she added up her value yet again.
    On the opposite side of the table Mr Rosen sat smoking. He said, ‘Your grandmother promised me a song, Emily. How about it? And don’t spoil it this time by giggling in that way. Playing up. Sing properly and don’t laugh.’
    As long as the songs were Irish or Welsh (he himself claimed to be one or the other) he had no objection to hearing several.
    Emily grimaced. She could not leave the house and perhaps miss something important; on the other hand the pathos of Mr Rosen’s glances was nauseating. From past experience she knew he would cover his pale-blue eyes with his fingers as soon as she began to sing, and all at once it seemed worth the effort to cancel them from