Free Dark Places by Kate Grenville

through the big shabby wooden gates of the delivery yard, I felt myself entering the world I had until now been only preparing for.
    The figures of those gadflies at the University, and the finicking lecturers in their billowing black, became as wispy as a bit of smoke in the crisp sunlight of this yard, where great lumps of men in blue singlets and braces exchanged shouts as they heaved boxes off drays, and the horses shifted their hooves around their piles of steaming dung. Every sound, every muscle, every hair had a mass about it that I relished: things here took up space, they sat indubitable under this shadowless light.
    In Father’s presence I had been bewildered by the activity of this organism called the Business—all those minions behind etched-glass windows, men in striped shirts and sleeve-protectors scratching away into ledgers, women carrying bundles of things, vague echoing shouts and thuds from lower regions—and I had been too wary of Father thinking I was a dolt, unfitted to fill his shoes, to ask the questions that might have made it clearer.
    Today, Good Old Rundle gushed with too much eagerness, ushered me with too much obsequiousness, so that it verged on the parody, behind Father’s desk, into Father’s chair, and seemed prepared to exclaim all day on the remarkable fact of Poor dear Mr Singer having been taken away from us , and now you , Mr Singer , sitting in his place!
    But eventually we got down to brass tacks, and he showed me various large books full of figures and lists. Mr Rundle appeared to know everything there was to know about the figures and the lists, and as he flipped through the pages, greasy with use, he remarked several times that poor dear Mr Singer, rest his soul, had left most of this day-to-day operation to him, Rundle, for it was purely of a mechanical nature and not necessary for a gentleman to waste his time on.
    Listening to Mr Rundle I began to make out that Father had somewhat misrepresented his function in the business. It was borne in on me that Father had footled along, making money from a business he did not think it quite gentlemanly to understand. He had, I supposed, planned my gradual absorption into Singer & Son. Master Singer would have learned the names of his employees, as Father had been proud of doing; Master Singer would have had another mahogany desk like his father’s, and learned to purse his lips and nod with an appearance of knowingness while Rundle explained: so that at last there could be a seamless and unremarkable transition from the rule of Mr Singer Senior to the rule of Mr Singer Junior.
    But I was no blotter: to absorb was not my way. Listening to Mr Rundle I grew larger within my spirit, for I knew that I could easily follow the intricacies of the business, which was nothing but facts when you boiled it down. ‘And unlike Father, I did not think there was anything vulgar in coming to grips with pounds, shillings and pence.
    I did not distrust Rundle: Rundle would have no more robbed his employer than a rug would sit up and bite its owner’s leg. But a man had a certain duty to make the most of his opportunities—even the Bible agreed on that—and I was pretty sure that Singer & Son could do better.
    When Rundle had taken his ledgers away, some person in a black dress, with eyes red from weeping and an unpleasantly adenoidal way of talking through her tears, brought me a cup of tea—‘Your dear father’s cup and saucer, Master Singer, Mister Singer I should say, and do you have your tea as your father did, with two lumps?’ The tongs were already poised, but I said, ‘No,’ rather clearly, so that she looked up in a fright and dropped the sugar lump. ‘No sugar at all, thank you, and that cup is too small for my taste, I will provide you with another.’ In fact, I had always had two lumps until this moment, and had never before so much as noticed the cup it came in, but she might