What happened? Was it sexual attraction? Was she secretly desperate for a child? She was a conventional, even narrow-minded, middle-class woman. Why would she, of all women, fall for an Irish manual laborer, however handsome, however gifted with charm?

And his father, why had he succumbed? Had he had his eye on the proceeds from the sale of his new wife’s little flat, the two thousand pounds that kept his farm solvent for a while? Could he have loved this tight-lipped, humorless woman—or had she been different once, before Rowland was born, before she made the decision to focus all her silent, bitter energy on the rearing of her child?

Christ, Rowland thought, and tried to push the memories down. He stopped abruptly, staring across the windswept hills. He could not recall his father’s face anymore, time had blurred its detail, but he could still hear his voice, and he could still see, almost thirty years later, the precise shape and texture of his father’s large, dirty, callused hands. They were dexterous. Gazing out across an English landscape, Rowland watched a dead man twist wires, assemble snares.

Long gone: he bent, picked up a shard of limestone, then threw it down. For his father’s funeral, there was a wake, that was expected. His mother might be foreign, but she did her duty to the last. When it was over, his mother started packing very fast. Three suitcases. She was wearing black; a black coat, black shoes, black nylons, a new incongruous black and white polka dot scarf. He could feel the room trembling with anticipation, perhaps happiness. She buttoned on his mackintosh, belted it. She said, “Rowland, the ferry’s booked. We’re going back to England. We’re going home.”

Not the stuff of fairy tales. No happy endings. Rowland raised his eyes to the sky. Just for an instant, borne on the wind and a tide of rising unhappiness, he could hear another voice, Esther’s voice: such an ordinary sentence—I’m just going out to the grocery store. We’re out of milk I’ll be back in twenty minutes.

Forty minutes later he’d heard the sirens. One hour later the squad car pulled up outside the door. Two hours later he was in the morgue, making the identification. Six years later a part of him still waited for her return.

“God help me,” Rowland said aloud. The wind touched him, and he swung around. He was alone, of course. He stared into the darkness, and into the wind. Too many graveyard memories. With a gesture of sudden anger he turned, and, increasing his pace, made for the first crest of hills.

Rowland paused, looking back the way he had come. Max’s house and village were now invisible. To his west lay Cheltenham; he could see its city lights staining the sky. To the south was the air base where that man Landis was senior officer; he could see the runways clearly, lit by arc lights; he could make out the shapes of huts and hangars. To his north and east there were no lights, just stone walls, bare fields, clumps of thorn trees bent and twisted by the wind. The isolation, and the absence of human beings, had calmed and revived him. He could still hear the music, but his desire to investigate had left him. He would walk on, he decided, for another few miles, then return to Max’s home.