At home, the basket-maker’s daughter made a variety of small baskets, which she took to market. She taught the skills to Chappy, and that was how he earned his keep. While the daughter was away during the day, he stayed hidden and kept her supplied with goods. He lived there for half a year, and one night was taken aboard a cargo boat where he would work his passage to San Francisco. He had a little money given to him by the basket-maker, and an address of people who would help him once at his destination.

Chappy never reached the address. In San Francisco he was beaten and robbed and thrown into the harbour where, because of injuries, it was all he could do to keep himself afloat. About him, in the dark, were the steep shapes of large ships. The tide brought him up against one of these, and though he was too exhausted to swim any further, he managed to climb the anchor chain, enter the ship through the hawsehole and make his way into the chain locker, where he was found after the ship had left port. He was given a meal and put to work.

We sat in silence. I thought through all that Chappy had told me. As far as marriage to Oriwia was concerned, none of what he feared mattered except perhaps his being ‘without papers’. If caught, he could be jailed and deported, a risk he had been prepared to take as a single man. Filling out documents could incriminate him.

‘We’ll think of something,’ I said, though I didn’t know what. In former times a marriage was made in the eyes of the people; now only the eyes of God and the state were good enough.

The other thing he said, which he seemed to think was another reason he couldn’t marry Oriwia, was that she was thunder and lightning and large. I think he meant high above him socially, and fiery. It was all nothing. He was in love.

[High above and fiery? I’ve never known Aki to be tactful before. He really meant uppity and bossy – but I suppose he’s chosen words carefully for a change because he knew Chappy didn’t mean it that way. Large? Well, I was quite a normal size then, but I’m not butter. Strong, not small. Girls like me, in books I read, were called ‘strapping’. That’s a word I’ve never heard spoken in that context. Anyway it’s ridiculous. Girls like my sister were ‘petite’ and ‘dainty’, silly words. But maybe Chappy was thinking of those pikelets I made when Aki first brought him into the shop – the size of bread plates. I don’t like mean baking, or mean anything. I had a surplus of eggs and milk. Anyway that’s enough interruption. Leave all this out when you type it up. Sometimes I get hostile with that Aki. O.S.]