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him. ‘And Harriet shall take you for lunch in Market Swanford afterwards.’ In her own mind she did not mean this to be a bribe, but Joseph took it to be one.
    â€˜Vesey, your mother writes to say you are to buy new shoes,’ Caroline said. ‘I will give you the money. She says you are to spend at least a guinea on them.’ Harriet looked with respect at Vesey, but Caroline with doubt, considering this strange extravagance. ‘Well, it will be a little expedition for you,’ Caroline went on, ‘and when Harriet has done the letters, you can all be off.’
    Harriet began to wonder if she could bear the strain of a whole day-out with Vesey. Anxieties mingled with her delight: anxieties about ordering food, controlling the children, expense, and how to find the ladies’ lavatory.
    Vesey walked up and down the shop in the grey suede shoes. Harriet and the children sat in a row watching. The shop with its shelves of white boxes was cool and dark. Beyond the open door the street was another world, but that panel of shifting colours in the sunlight emphasised the sombre interior.
    Harriet, not much used to shopping, still experienced a feeling of crisis when she stepped off the busy pavement into a shop, where she seemed awaited and was to be judged. Her stammer increased. Shop-assistants looked blankly patient listening to her, waiting for her to be done. Just now, at the grocer’s, with Vesey standing by, she had been in a panic to know how to seem off-hand enough; had rehearsed in her mind the giving of the order, but they still had to say ‘pardon?’, they still brought Bisto instead of Rinso, and when she had asked for petit-beurre biscuits in French, as she thought she should, they had not known what she had meant. Almost showing the list, as if she were a child, she had blushed, dreading to try again; but Vesey had laughed very much. He had said ‘Petty burr, dearie’ in a loud voice. It had saved her; but she had not wanted to be saved by him. Her shame in the eyes of the shop-assistant was not so painful as Vesey’s having witnessed it.
    She was glad now to be only a spectator. No more was demanded of her than to take Vesey’s side against the shop-assistant and this she did spontaneously and whole-heartedly. All three of them were united in their praise of Vesey’s choice and as the shoes were only eighteen and elevenpence there would be two shillings left which Vesey said he could quite justifiably spend on ice-cream.
    Harriet admired the way in which he took his time, discussed his plans, and had shoes lying about all over the floor. The assistant, who had begun with tan Oxfords, now withdrew from the discussion, wearing the look of aloof distaste Vesey had grown so used to seeing on the faces of schoolmasters.
    At the confectioners’, Deirdre suddenly remembered that she would get infantile-paralysis if she ate ice-cream that had not been made in her own home. She pushed the dish stubbornly on one side and was only appeased when it was shared out among the others. Smug and relieved, she nibbled at a limp wafer and watched them taking their great risk.
    Joseph, with his bony temples now bared, the tendons of his neck shaved close, looked a different child. What hair was left showed the furrows of a comb drawn through the thick brilliantine.
    Carrying the box of shoes and the basket of groceries, Vesey led them round the market-place, in one entrance of Woolworths (where they were told not to touch) and out of the other, examining the graves in the churchyard, reading the menus outside cafés and public-houses. The pavement burnt through their thin sandals; they felt the warmth of brick walls as they went lingeringly down the street. Deirdre tagged along behind Vesey; Joseph held Harriet’s hand. They felt the complete identity with their surroundings which children know, especially in summertime when, relaxed and opened out like flowers, they