THE EIGHTEENTH
‘Once I have my own room…’
‘When you get married, that is.’ With these words Martin’s father settled the question.
‘But I’m thinking, for instance, if we should move into a larger flat, then once I have my own room, I…’
‘A flat big enough for each young man to have his own room — we’ll probably never get. So, really, when you get married.’
Martin plummeted into despair. Not so much because they had a tiny flat, like everybody else, but because he was being prohibited from expressing the amazing thing that had just occurred to him. Why couldn’t his father let himself be carried away for once? Why can’t he play along a bit, fantasise a tad, just supposing that, what if everybody had his own room? But his father never ‘what-ifed.’ His father must derive some sort of pleasu
