Then they were drawing into the station and he was buying his ticket and his copy of The Times, and since they were early they were all of them going onto the platform to say goodbye, as if he was some favourite long-loved great-uncle. She thought how they had spent more time talking of gardens than of what mattered. The other thing. Not only the horror. That she thought she could perhaps imagine. But something else. Whatever it was that Charlie longed for after he had come home. She had seen it, though he had tried to disguise it, some yearning in him. The not wanting to be here, but there, wherever. The same yearning she sensed in Hussey, who seemed anxious again to be gone. She shook his hand again slow and cool in hers, seeing him off back to his blue hills and the boys bringing him tea on the veranda. He was a studious and thoughtful man, Charlie had said, if a little dry and academic, a classicist by training, an ethnographer by inclination. Surely such a man had observed, and could have told her what he and Charlie knew, which he might have explained to her, intelligently and rationally, coolly as a man does who knows Latin and Greek? If she had asked.

He was talking about the Mau Mau, wasn’t he? Richard said on the way home. Richard had watched the news on television.

Jonny asked, What’s maumau?

You wouldn’t understand. It’s politics. In Kenya, where that man came from, where he’s ruling the blacks.

But what is it? You haven’t said what it means.

It’s the terrible things you see, that you never forget. Richard wouldn’t tell him more. He would keep his advantage over his little brother.

Oh, Jonny said. I know what maumau is.

The winter wheat ripened. There had been rain in the spring, heavy showers in May and June, and after the rain the sun came out. The crop had grown thick and tall. This last crop would be the best Charlie had ever planted.

It was to be a fine harvest.

A fine summer.

Fine days broke, morning after morning – and she woke early those mornings, she woke early and watched the light grow and did not go back to sleep – the blue sky bright and empty, as if there was some hollowness there that set off an echo until there was such activity about her that it could no longer be heard.

That man invited us to Africa. Can we go?

Ah, you mean Mr Hussey. Did Mr Hussey tell you things?

No. He talked to Jonny though, about the things that Daddy did in the jungle.

Did he?

Or maybe Jonny made it up. Jonny’s silly, isn’t he?

Well, he’s younger than you are. You have to let him have his stories.

So, can we go?

Who needs to go to Africa? It’s so hot and sunny here.

Let them not go to Africa. Let them not know such things.