The man facing him appeared to be as outmatched as an elderly spinster climbing into a boxing ring to face the world heavyweight champion. Ronald Stannard was short, skinny and narrow-shouldered. His eyes peered out from a round pair of National Health spectacles. His thinning, reddish-blond hair was covered by a moth-eaten old cricket cap.

Leon and Harriet Courtney were standing in the shade of the verandah that framed the cricket pavilion to one side of the ground.

‘Look, darling. Stannard’s about to get his fifty,’ Harriet said. ‘Mind you, Atkinson doesn’t seem very impressed.’

A short while earlier, as Stannard had walked out to bat, Atkinson had come up to him, a towering mass of muscle and menace and growled, ‘I’m going to knock tha’ bloody block off.’

Stannard had not responded. He was used to dealing with bullies. From his first day at school the rough boys had used him as a human punchbag. At the age of eleven, forced to take part in cricket lessons against his will, he had discovered, to his amazement and everyone else’s, that he had a natural gift for the game: a combination of hand–eye coordination, balance and timing that can’t be taught. That talent put him in the school team and silenced his persecutors. Now he was putting it to good use in adult life.

No matter how fast Atkinson had bowled, Stannard smashed him to every corner of the ground. The least sporting spectators were roused from their refreshments and gossip to pay attention as this unlikely paragon rattled up forty-eight runs, two shy of the landmark score of fifty.

Leon had been glad of the distraction. He visited the Wanjo as seldom as possible. The place held too many memories. He could still feel the pride of watching Saffron, aged seven, compete here in a showjumping event in which she was the youngest competitor and came within a hair’s breadth of victory. But likewise he had never rid himself of the terrible pain of watching his first wife, Eva, suffer a fatal miscarriage. He could see her as she lay in agony on a wooden dining table, her limbs thrashing in a fit brought on by eclampsia, her lifeblood draining away before his eyes. Every time he came back to the Wanjo that image was more vivid than the time before.

There were, however, some events at the club that could not be avoided if one wished to remain part of Kenyan society, and this was one of them. Every major landowner in the region had arrived to see the match, along with wives and children. Many of the most senior men from Government House had come to watch their team. The Chairman of the Wanjohi Country Club, Sir Percival Potter, was hosting a dinner-dance afterwards. Business would be conducted over whiskies, brandies and gin and tonics. The latest political gossip would be spread. The opportunity for Leon to gather intelligence and make his own opinions known was too good to miss.