Christopher took hold of his father’s hand. They went on with their walk, beneath bare oaks from which water dripped, watched by the deer, turned heads and pointed ears. Then, after a silence, Roe was surprised to be asked if he really thought fairies were people. He said he was not sure. He was told that his son knew they were. He asked why. He was answered that the nanny had met an old man from Wales who had seen one. Roe said if he should see one for himself then he would let Christopher know. The question next put to him was whether he would tell Christopher or Christopher’s mother first. He told the boy he would let him know before anyone. He was then asked why. He said he supposed it would be because he was not sure that Dy would be interested, anyway that he had been talking about fairies to Christopher only, so it would be natural to tell Christopher first.

Christopher said, “Yes.”

They came to the trap for rooks which stood in one corner of the park, a square space with walls of rabbit wire, now rotted. Christopher remembered, he said with satisfaction, how they used to caw in it, beating from side to side against the wire until the keeper came with his gun.

Then, as they turned to come back, going out of their way to climb along a fallen tree, another herd of deer moved off into the veil, heads up, one of them coughing. He wanted to know if it was going to die. Asking this he struck so close to the note this sad day played over and over, with the wet, the silence once broken, flying low over tops of trees, by a warplane which he did not even look up to watch, neither did the deer, and to the note repeated which was this separation that war had forced into their lives, all these sounded the closing phrase of a call to depart, and Roe said the deer would die, that it was sure to.

Roe had to go back that night. He said goodbye in the hall, the front door open on to the darkness and the journey. Standing there, awkwardly shaking hands, he wished, and he wished too late, that he had never made a point of not kissing Christopher. He was upset, at that moment no contact with his son could have been too close. But he did not dare, for he was afraid, if he took Christopher in his arms, that he would break into tears, and then the boy might be frightened.

As he drove away he felt he had lost everything, and in particular the boy. Yet he had to admit that he could, at the time, feel nothing stronger than irritation when, some months earlier, as will appear, Christopher had really been lost in London.