Did they know who he was? He felt sure that they did, that even if they had not seen for themselves his arrival on the cow they had heard of it. So be it. He was in no condition to pretend, to present himself as anything other than what they saw. Show up like this in an English village and they’d take you to the lockup, or better still, march you to the parish boundary and put a boot in your arse. Here, presumably, the parish boundary was the sea.

They took it in turns to sing. He wondered if he would have to sing too, if he should, if that would be the correct thing to do. What could he remember? “As I Walked Forth”? “Black-eyed Susan”? He was hunting about for words when there was a shifting on the stool beside him and looking over he saw there was a new man there, a man in a red jacket. Lacroix sat up. The man nodded to him. Sandy hair, pale eyes. Twenty-five—no, thirty-five, at least, the skin around his eyes pinched with crow’s feet. The jacket had a tartan patch on the elbow (tartan at last!). Yellow collar and yellow cuffs. At the ends of the cuffs there were no hands. The man turned away to the fire. Still looking there he said something, but too softly.

“I cannot hear you,” said Lacroix. “My ears . . . ”

The man spoke again, this time with his face to Lacroix and leaning towards him a little.

“Have you come far?”

Such a simple question yet he did not know how to answer it. He did not answer.

“My name is Ranald,” said the man. “I live on the island. I am from the island. Do you have a place to sleep?”

“You were a soldier,” said Lacroix.

“I was. From a boy.”

“And your hands?”

“In Egypt.”

A new song began. The singer was one of the women on the meal chest. She appeared elderly, someone’s grandmother, but her voice piped like a girl’s.

“I have lost my fiddle,” said Lacroix. “My bag. My trousers . . . ”