hand’s gesture made Amy start backwards.
‘I don’t want to read that sort of filth. Hearing about it was enough.’
‘Who told you?’
‘Morton.’
Of course, it would be Morton. He was her father’s country solicitor, a malicious and small-minded little man whom Richard had often cruelly mimicked. Morton would consider it his duty to inform his lordship of what was being vulgarly bruited abroad. Amy could hear the very pompousness of his words and his measured, judgemental cadences. Gerald could hardly have received the news more damagingly.
‘I have read it. Only since I’ve been away. I didn’t know anything about it before. It’s a good book, Papa. It’s very sad, and honest. Richard shouldn’t have done it, for your sake, but for himself I think it was brave. I don’t think he chose to be the way he is. It can’t be … particularly happy for him.’
Gerald’s taut mouth showed his disgust.
‘So it’s not Richard’s fault? Of course, it couldn’t be. I suppose you want to say it’s mine? Or your mother’s. Yours and Isabel’s too, perhaps.’
Perhaps, Amy thought. All our faults. Even Airlie’s.
But she shook her head. ‘No,’ she said sadly.
Gerald screwed up a loose sheet of paper and flung it away from him. ‘I don’t want to see him. Never again, never, in my house. If the estate wasn’t entailed on him I’d will it away today. You and Isabel could have it.’ He put his face in his hands, ‘Poor Chance. When I’m gone your brother will fill it with bum boys and dancing niggers and scum. He’ll cut down my trees to pay their bills.’
Even as he spoke, Amy could hear Richard parodying Gerald in the very same words. It was cruel, and cruelly ironic that her father’s vision of a bleak and corrupt modernity was not so far removed from Richard’s own pessimism. The realization stirred sour laughter in Amy.
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