As bearer of such news, George was made almost welcome. Baxter ordered his wife to pour tea for George and in a musing, gloating way began to talk. The farmhouse was not a traditional cottage but a modern bungalow with large windows giving a spectacular view down the island to the sea. As George listened to the man talking, he looked out and thought that it was a perfect place to fall in love.

“I was against it from the start,” Baxter said. “ She could have done better than that layabout. She was as pretty as a picture. She could have had any man she wanted. She said that he’d been to Oxford, but you would never have known, the way he dressed and talked. They let anyone into the universities now. Degrees are two a penny. He had no job when he first came here, no prospects. He was one of those twitchers, sleeping rough on the beach. He met Barbara in the Tavern. She was working there that summer. She didn’t need to work but she’d just left school, and was feeling bored. You know these young people. He got round her somehow with his smooth talking and his poetry, and his fancy ways.

“He came to see me, respectable enough, to ask if they could get married. I can tell you I was shocked. To be fair, he was willing enough when I said to wait for a year, but she wouldn’t have it. She wanted to be married that summer, and nothing else would do. I should have been firm, told her to wait, but in the end I agreed. She’s our only daughter and maybe we spoil her.

“It never worked out of course, not from the beginning. He was a clown. He couldn’t settle to work. I run a serious business and he never could take it seriously. All the same, I could have put up with all that, Mr. Palmer-Jones, if he’d been good to our Barbara. After they were married he hardly seemed to take any notice of her. He’d got what he wanted—her money and a home on the island here. We put them in the old farmhouse where we lived until we had this place built. It was comfortable enough—Barbara had it done out just as she wanted—but he never appreciated it. There was a garden at the back of the house, and he just let it run wild. I had to send one of my men down to clear it in the end. He took no care of the place.

“He never took Barbara out. He spent all his free time out on the island with his binoculars looking at bloody birds. And in the evenings, when it was too dark to see, he’d have his nose stuck in a bloody book. Barbara used to come round here, just to have someone to talk to. He was mad about those birds. Crazy. Look at the way he behaved when he left here. That wasn’t the work of a sane man. Barbara’s been on tranquilizers ever since that night. She still can’t sleep properly without the tablets. That’s what birdwatching does to a man. It turns his mind, and changes him into a lunatic. I won’t have them on my land now. I can’t bear to see them.”