We drove around for a while with our windscreen wipers going at double speed, waiting for the rain to ease. Ros wanted to run out into it, but I was able to dissuade her with the promise that as soon as we found a beach she could behave as unconventionally as she liked. Accordingly I kept driving away from water for as long as I could get away with it. Which was how we came to pass and pause at the Parish Church of St John the Evangelist, the oldest consecrated church in Western Australia, and how I came to notice just beside it the granite war memorial to the gallant sons of Albany killed in World War I. I don’t normally read war memorials but something about this one caught my attention, and then my eyes played a trick upon me and made me believe I read my own name. In fact the Howard part belonged to a T. Howard, and the Jacobson to an F. Jacobson just below him, separated only by an Ingham, on the roll of honour. But the coincidence startled me, as did the fact that there had ever been a Jacobson – not a Jacobsen or a Jackobssenn – in Albany.

Softened by the association of my name with death and bravery, I turned the car around and pointed it towards the sea. The beach we at last found was deserted, the sand bleached white, the prospect over the Sound to Michaelmas and Breaksea Islands sublime. Behind us the wooden beach shacks and the older colonial houses with balconies and verandahs climbed the rocks to secure their views. We took our shoes off and ran into the rain.