One afternoon as I was rummaging through the reclamation yard in Wells I came across a bowsprit maiden, faded and unloved in the corner of a shed. She had wild, slightly crossed eyes and the pale blue cloak falling from her shoulders revealed, sadly, only one breast, reminding me of Ellen. But she was ? maiden and she deserved better than to be tossed in a corner and forgotten. I took her home, sanded her down and arranged to have her vacuum-treated. Then I repainted her cloak and face, although nothing, it seemed, could correct her squint. I repaired the deep crack that ran through her navel and painted her with layer after layer of yacht varnish. I even tried to fashion a new breast for her having found a round of Caribbean purple heart among my off-cuts that was approximately the right size. I’d turn it on the lathe in my basement workshop then run upstairs to feel Sonja’s breast, running back down to the lathe while the feeling was still hot in my hand. Sonja might be sitting at a desk doing her accounts, or standing by the Aga cooking, or watching TV, and when she heard my steps thundering up the stairs she’d lift her blouse or T-shirt and carry on cooking, or reading, or whatever. But the maiden’s breast was never convincing. It simply didn’t work. And long-drawn-out and enjoyable though the project was I had to abandon it. The reason, of course, was that Sonja’s breast was full and ripe, made of flesh, while the maiden’s was a Michelangelene attempt at a breast — unaccountable to gravity, a half tennis ball stuck near her shoulder. Now that one-breasted bowsprit maiden stands proud on the prow of the deck behind the old sailor’s house, looking out over the river rising and falling. Which may not have the marine drama of the Straits of Molucca or the fury of Cape Horn but at least it’s something for her crazy eyes to watch.

A few months ago Sonja knelt before me as I was reading and touched my cheek.

‘You’re not talking enough,’ she said, her eyes scanning my face in the same way as they scanned the morsels in the refrigerated displays in her shop. Doubtfully.

‘What?’

‘You’re not talking enough. You’re retreating.’ She squatted down, in what I think of as her Indian pose, and said, ‘Tell me a story.’

‘Which one?’

‘Urn …’ she bounced on her haunches ‘… the one about the picnic and the lemonade.’

I smiled, despite myself, despite the fact I have told this story a million times, despite the fact I’m the victim. ‘OK. So, I’m nine years old and my mother and I are in the cottage in Noss Mayo. We wake up one Sunday morning and the sky is blue, the sun is shining, the Yealm is running high. It is an Indian summer.’ For a moment I wondered if Sonja understood more of Indian summers than I ever shall. ‘Anyway, Mother takes it into her head that we’re going to have a picnic. She boils eggs, cuts slices of ham and chicken, washes lettuce and tomatoes. We’re all packed up with loads of little plastic containers and flasks and she’s like a dynamo, thinking that’s the way normal people live. As we’re leaving the house I remember there’s a bottle of Corona lemonade in the fridge. I ask if we can take it and she says we can but only if I carry it. So I go and get it. You don’t know the bottles but when I was a kid Corona lemonade was the thing. More than Coke or Pepsi. It came in a heavy, dimpled glass bottle with a striped white and yellow label. And the bottle had deposit paid — you had to give one in every time you bought a new one or you didn’t get a discount.