Feeling their tension, the dog had got down from the safety of the chair and sat between them, managing to press her bony ribs against each of them. She shivered a little, eyeing Gus, but more fearful of losing Hugh and Matilda.

‘It’s all right.’ Hugh stroked the dog’s head. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

‘Sorry to be nervy.’ Matilda was apologetic. ‘It’s Mr Hicks. There’s something very unpleasant about that man. Maybe Anabel wasn’t lying.’

‘About what?’

‘She said he groped up her skirts years ago. We couldn’t believe her, but I don’t know. He frightened the children. Today he made me uneasy. He pries through pebble glasses.’ Matilda shivered. ‘A goose walking over my grave. Not you, Gus, not you.’ She looked at Gus, folded compactly in sleep. ‘Horrible Mr Hicks was one of the first on Louise and Anabel’s list.’

‘What list?’

‘They took a great interest when they were about fifteen and eleven in the population explosion. It was about then Louise joined the Conservative Party. They hung a sheet of foolscap on the wall by the clock and listed people they would eliminate. Mr Hicks was high on the list. They ran out of actual people rather soon or changed their minds and reinstated them, but Mr Hicks and Charles Manson were constants. It became a little macabre. I objected.’

‘Little girls?’

‘Little girls, yes, but I found Tom often agreed with them. They switched from actual people to kinds of people. The list included spastics, lepers, brain-damaged people. Claud wrote in brain-washed, and Louise started it again – the very old, all the handicapped, all Communists. Then Anabel decided Berlinguer was rather dishy and stopped playing. Louise took the list up to her room and carried on alone. A world without weak or imperfect people is, she thinks, she still thinks, a better world. She’s a Fascist, my child.’

‘And your Tom’s.’

‘Yes, of course. Oh well.’ Matilda shook herself. ‘Louise is one of the reasons I was picnicking. It would be intolerable to be looked after by Louise, however right she may be about Mr Hicks.’

‘Have you a terminal illness?’ Mention of the picnic suggested this reason to Hugh.

‘Haven’t we all?’ He could see by the set of her jaw he would get no other answer.

10

THAT EVENING THERE was a thunderstorm which solved the problem of watering the garden. Clouds gathered about six o’clock while Hugh and Matilda watched the news on television.

The pound was down – the Bank of England had intervened.

The meeting in Brussels –

The E.E.C. –

Unrest in Spain, Ethiopia, the Middle East, Africa – Cambodia –

China –

Students –

The earthquake in Central Asia –

The C.I.A. –

Our correspondent in Beirut reports that the Moslems and Christians –

Mr X, the honeymoon husband of Perranporth told the police that –