Pop Larkin and Mr Charlton's father-in-law and son-in-law relationship

Pop Larkin’s relationship with his son-in-law, Mr Charlton, begins not with a wedding but with a tax form: the young inspector arrives to ask why Pop has not declared his income, and Pop answers the official intrusion with hospitality so abundant that it becomes the first instrument of inclusion. Over time, the man Pop initially treats as a representative of the tax system becomes Charley, a member of the family whose usefulness, steadiness, and affection are measured in meals shared, work undertaken, and plans made for Mariette’s future.

From Official Visitor to Guest

When Mr Charlton tells Pop that the records show no income return for the previous year, Pop acts as though the obligation is a misunderstanding: nobody had asked him, he says, and he does not recognize the form. As the inspector tries to return to the paperwork, Pop redirects him toward dinner and offers tea, coffee, beer, Guinness, and cider. The exchange establishes their central comic opposition: Mr Charlton brings official procedure into the house, while Pop answers it with an irrepressible abundance that makes business difficult to sustain.

At the crowded table, the hospitality becomes tangible. Mr Charlton sits among nine faces with a cup of tea, surrounded by pineapples, fish and chips, ice cream, jam, sauces, biscuits, and iced buns. Pop even proposes sardines to accompany the tea, an offer that leaves his guest bemused. The meal is more than a diversion from the inspection: it places the visitor inside the noisy, plentiful domestic world that will eventually become his own.

Pop keeps converting attempted departures into reasons to stay. When Mr Charlton says he must catch the eight o’clock bus, Montgomery explains that the service was discontinued after petrol rationing began. Pop then invites him to spend the night, with Ma agreeing that the more the merrier; the proposed bed is on the billiard table. Later, when Mr Charlton suggests going to the pub for a cold Sunday meal, Ma is shocked at the prospect, and Pop again makes room at the family table. These repeated invitations establish the relationship through gestures of welcome that steadily outlast the inspector’s professional visit.

The Tax Inspector Drawn into Family Life

Pop’s influence is not limited to meals and lodging. He encourages Mr Charlton to take advantage of what he calls the National Elf lark, arguing that the state has already received substantial weekly contributions and that going on sick leave would let him enjoy the service he has paid for. Pop’s advice is self-interested and mischievous, but it also marks a shift: he is no longer merely distracting a tax inspector from a form. He is advising a guest about how to live, in Pop’s own irreverent terms.

The invitation to stay is reinforced by the household’s other claims on Mr Charlton. Mariette’s kisses and declarations that he could stay a week, and then through the following weekend, leave him in emotional turmoil. Pop’s practical welcome and Mariette’s growing intimacy converge around the same outcome: Mr Charlton remains at the farm. Their relationship thus develops within the larger movement by which an official visitor is absorbed into the family, rather than through a single formal declaration of closeness.

The strawberry field gives the new belonging a practical form. At the weighing tent, Pop introduces him to the foreman as Charley, a friend of theirs and an office fellow from the tax lark. The foreman offers him work weighing and recording baskets, and Mr Charlton’s former occupation suddenly makes him useful in a different setting. Pop’s introduction bridges the two worlds that had first put them at odds: the tax office remains part of Charley’s identity, but the farm gives him a place and a job among the Larkins.

A Family Bond Built on Advice and Work

By the time Pop and Ma announce that they plan to marry and that Ma is expecting another baby, Mr Charlton is sufficiently at home to respond without the astonishment he would have shown only a month earlier. His immediate concern is that the announcement needs thinking through, which Pop treats as confirmation that he has been right to urge Charley to use his loaf. The episode presents their closeness as settled enough for Pop to draw him into family deliberations, while Charley is able to answer Pop rather than merely receive his hospitality.

Pop’s counsel then turns toward Charley’s future. When asked whether he will return to the tax office, Charley worries that leaving will cost him his pension. Pop mocks the prospect of working forty years for a pension that would buy less by then, and proposes a concrete alternative: after a demolition job on a mansion, he will use the best materials to build Mariette and Charley a bungalow in the meadow near Bluebell Wood. Mariette responds with delighted kisses, and Charley understands that there is nothing more to add. The promise is both a practical offer and a declaration that Pop sees the couple as part of his household’s future, even though the planned demolition and house have not yet been completed.

Kinship, Trust, and Continuing Difference

The relationship’s later form is visible in the routines of the household. Nearly a year after marrying Mariette, Charley reads The Times while waiting for breakfast; Pop greets him with the customary open-handed clout in the middle of the back, and Charley takes it without flinching. The familiar physical greeting signals how far the former inspector has moved from wary visitor to son-in-law at ease in the family’s exuberant domestic life.

Trust also becomes administrative and economic. In the last six months, Pop has left Charley to handle paperwork, forms, returns, and what he calls the dodgy stuff. Pop approves of his son-in-law’s decision to leave the tax inspector’s office, which he regards as an unacceptable family connection to the tax system. In recognition, he gives the couple five hundred laying pullets, establishing them in the egg business. Within less than a year they have earned enough to buy another five hundred hens and are doing well. Pop’s gift therefore turns approval into material opportunity, helping Mariette and Charley build an independent livelihood.

That independence does not erase their differences. Charley insists on making proper income-tax returns for the egg business, a habit Pop considers a serious mistake, even while praising Charley as a great fixer of figures, discounts, bills, and paperwork. The son-in-law whom Pop once tried to divert from an income form now manages the family’s forms and finances, but does so according to standards Pop rejects. The comic tension preserves both sides of the bond: Pop trusts Charley enough to hand him the paperwork, and Charley remains conscientious enough not to handle it as Pop would.

The relationship is consequently defined less by agreement than by a durable exchange of inclusion and competence. Pop offers food, shelter, work, a business opportunity, and the promise of a home; Charley contributes practical skill and becomes a reliable participant in the household’s affairs. Their connection transforms an encounter over undeclared income into kinship, while its recurring clash over taxation keeps the original difference between them alive inside the family rather than allowing it to disappear.