‘Perhaps,’ sighed Timothy. ‘I think I know what he’ll say, though. He’ll say I have to be a soldier.’

‘Well, that’s not true, is it?’ Joan interrupted, her voice sharp. ‘There are lots of things you could do. You don’t have to be a soldier.’

‘I don’t have to be a soldier.’ Tim rose to his feet, nodding. ‘Good. Thank you.’ He turned and wandered off again, vanishing back into the forest. Smith stared after him, impotently raising a hand with a half-formed intention of telling him to go back to school. Finally, he turned back to Joan. She was still avoiding his gaze.

‘That might have been the wrong thing to say.’

‘Oh, might it?’ There came a distant rumble. Then another, a moment later. ‘That sounds like thunder. Perhaps we should pack up and go, Dr Smith.’

‘There aren’t any clouds. Perhaps it’s Rocastle playing soldiers.’

‘Playing soldiers?’ Joan hadn’t yet made any move to begin packing. ‘Well, that is a fine turn of phrase from somebody who seems so fond of the military. Or perhaps you have one word for me and another for the rest of the world?’

‘What? No…’ Smith bit his lip in frustration. ‘What else could I tell him?’

‘The truth? That being a soldier is all about being killed and being afraid of being killed? It seems that you and Arthur share some of the same illusions.’

‘No! I mean⁠ —’ Smith knelt up, gesturing frantically. ‘I don’t know anything about the army. I learnt all this from other people. I wouldn’t know what to do with a gun. I used to lose every fight in the playground. There was a boy with an early beard, and you know how bad they are. He used to put me in a headlock and upset my experiments. But Tim’s in my class. When he asks his teacher a question, he has to tell him something or… or the world breaks down; the art and the science and the society have no meaning.’ He gazed around him, as if seeing the countryside for the first time. ‘We’d be so alone, without the thoughts of past people. Making the world. Making this place for us to inhabit. We’d be… meaningless.’

Suddenly he stood up, turning away from Joan. He clutched his wounded fist with his other hand and stared at it. ‘No. That’s wrong,’ he whispered. ‘Those aren’t my lines. What am I missing?’

‘John?’ Joan had got to her feet also. ‘John, please don’t be so upset. Are you all right?’

Smith stared at her, clutching his hand as if it were the last plank of the ship he’d been wrecked with. ‘If you said “fly”, I’d grow wings.’

‘I know. I’m sorry. Would you have me change my ideals?’