Wolf was listening to his mother at this juncture very much as an unmusical person listens to music, making use of it as a raft whereon his thoughts are free to cross far horizons. It was when he heard her say “your father” that this voyaging stopped abruptly.

“Your father never once,” she said, striking a match with so sweeping a stroke to light one of her favourite “Three Castles” cigarettes that he felt as if she’d struck it on that skull itself, “never once stood on his own feet! He clung to me. He clung to the Monster. He clung to Lorna.”

Wolf might have interrupted this invective, if a portion of his mind had not slipped off again to Gerda’s kitchen. What did she mean by what she said at the end?