Other roofs of the house spread below, hints of walls, and then the tawny ground, the trees of the garden and the wood. The sea gaped to one side, green today and restless. A thin drizzle fell.

She crossed the roof, stepped over on to the second.

As she approached the tower, she heard a piano playing, coarse brilliant strokes, a line of angry melody that matched the writhing of the sea, the boom of the foam.

She thought of a radio or record player in the tower. He was like her, he wanted music, and allowed modern machines to bring it to him. In there too the typewriter had clicked.

She reached the window. Following the heavy leading, she saw the shape of a lion standing over not a sheep but a warrior in armour. The dense colours were not to be made out. There was no apparent means of entry.

Rachaela rapped harshly on the window. Then drew back her fist, alarmed at what she had done.

But the piano music continued. Nothing moved in the tower to indicate she had been heard.

Rachaela went back through the rain. The attic window leaned open, Camillo was still rocking.

She climbed in more awkwardly.

‘Yes, I’ll have some wine.’

‘You’re welcome. Help yourself.’

‘I can’t open the bottles.’

‘Then you will have to go without.’

Rachaela said, ‘You have a key to the tower door.’

Camillo said, ‘Was he playing the piano? There’s a way in. Did you knock? Perhaps he didn’t hear you.’

She sat down on a low chest in the dust. Camillo rocked. He said, ‘I’m the oldest of them.’

‘They told me.’

‘Like to hear my age?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can’t. Can’t remember. Giddy-up,’ he said to the chair, and closed his eyes again. Then he said, ‘I know a way down to the beach. Walk by the sea.’

To humour him, she said, ‘All right. I’ll go with you.’

She expected another rebuff. Instead he got instantly out of the chair. He ducked with a skittish agility beneath the ray of light. A pile of armour glinted in the corner, a sword. He had taken the mouse out of the big cat’s mouth.

‘Come along then,’ he said, ‘Rachaela.’

Beyond the place where the path turned back into the wood, bushes overhung and obscured a flight of steps cut into the cliff. They were slippery and dangerous, and Rachaela descended with caution. But Camillo went down them like a ferret, fearless and coordinated. Beneath there was a high stranded beach, a cove, while either side the sea came in and cast itself against the obdurate skirts of the rocks.

‘At low tide,’ said Camillo, with the kind of air of one giving desired information, ‘Carlo catches fish.’

‘I thought the cat caught all the food.’

‘Gulls, rabbits,’ said Camillo. ‘Once it caught a robin and let it go. I saw.’

‘Mice,’ said Rachaela.