"But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep ," I recited.

"I think you'll find it's years to go ," he said softly.

Then, acutely embarrassed, he minutely deconstructed the quintessence of a piece of dust on the underside of his shoe.

"Whatever's the matter?" I said: "I don't know if it's years or miles. What does it matter? It doesn't matter to me."

"That's true," he said, as if my enthusiasm gave him new conviction: "It never matters to you, that's good. It doesn't need to matter, because you're the one who always gets the girl, while look at what I'm left with? Some day I'll show you your mother in a new and singular light, make no mistake. Yes, yes, I admire you intensely. You waltz, you strut through life, you're nobody's puppet. Every day you wake up feeling refreshed; you part just the one curtain to watch the world, and even then with a soft smile, just turning a little at its edges. Each time you open your mouth the words ring true, and, on street corners, people you've never seen before - I've seen them, I’ve absolutely seen them - ", he insisted, waving his arms - "watch with such respect as you pass by ..."

He paused, overcome by emotion; I was looking at him keenly, struggling to identify with anything I had heard, wondering from what place he had conjured this phantasm, wondering, indeed, if he were even my father at all, or had somehow mislaid himself along the way. Then abruptly I understood that, by way of false attribution, he was in fact painting the opposite picture, crediting me with everything I wasn't and didn't have. As if sensing the change, he started again, this time praising me for actual things that I had done and knew I had done. But, such was his genius, he still succeeded in belittling everything he discovered, rampaging after butterflies, always heading the wrong way, too fast or too slow, tiring both of us out, never bringing back anything substantial. As time passed, there seemed less and less to celebrate, and even the small achievements I cherished as absolutes started to stiffen and lose their shine as he repeated them again and again from different corners of the room, heaping them up one on top of the other, as if to subdue them with their own weight and make a mockery of them so that everything would be impossible. My triumphs were grey triumphs, I noted mirthlessly, my victories all of them empty, and even the tightly-wound handfuls of memory that governed them both and set them apart were like knots fraying at their edges, things to which it would be unwise to trust one’s weight, things on the point of collapsing outward with a sickening fall. I had got the things I wanted; but now they were the things I didn’t really want anyway, and I bowed my head as he chastised me for not caring for them better. And, then again, I had paid over the odds for what I wanted, except that all I really had now, it was true, was the bitter taste of my own folly. There was though the one account that irked him, refusing to be undermined, and each time he came back with his heavy feet he seemed unable to make an end of it. This was the account of the actual, small things I had worked hard to achieve, and which I wanted to feel proud of, except that no one else seemed to recognise that these things were hard or worth fighting for. We spent some time debating this, watching the crowds disperse, pretending we didn’t care that as we crossed the finishing line the women were adjusting their sunhats and the men, like a height of water, were forcing their way along the stalls to place their bets for other races. Finally he picked up the fire irons and with a grunt he started pushing the logs about in the grate, smearing them round in the soot, making a mess of things, and when at last he uncovered just the one pair of embers still glowing a little beneath their mantle, he whacked them to pieces so the sparks spat back in his beard like a blasphemy. I knew his summation was nearby, although the sum would come to nothing, or even less than nothing, and the inexorable way in which he subtracted the very substance of my life from itself seemed the very algebra of heartbreak. But I could not wait; I could not put up with it a moment longer; I turned aside, even if there was no place left to go.

"Relax," he said sharply: "Sit down. Don't you know you're my son? Don’t you know how hard it is to get close to you? If I don't have the right to upset you, then who does?"