he told Geneva Hogg. “I do nothing for them. I don’t go there often enough. I want to get away from the place as soon as I arrive, and when I say I’ll stay two hours longer, they’re in heaven.” “Don’t let it get you down,” Geneva said. “That’s parents for you. Only yours are more helpless than most.” She set down the two coffee cups, slopping into their saucers, stirred them, licked the spoon and sat down opposite him by the gigantic fireplace where Ben, ignorant of the price of coal, had built a huge and incandescent fire. The fireplace was gigantic because everything had been planned on a large scale when this was built as a three-storey house for one family. It was a typical Bayswater house of that period: solid, big-windowed, with cowled chimney-pots set together in rows, a heavy cornice round the unseen roof, and just enough embellishment in the way of a pillared porch and black and white marble steps to give it an air of unpretentious prosperity. The house was plastered on three sides and decorated in the cream colour beloved by London painters because it quickly becomes dingy and needs renewing.
