“In the last hours of the day the overlookers beat us without pause. They beat us to keep us awake for we would, in truth, have slept on the floor, in the grease there. Sometimes they used a bobbin, sometimes a strap like those that drove the machines. One, name of Ramsden, had a knob-stick he called ‘father.’ Thy lids are drooping, lad. Shall I fetch out fadder? I will tell you this, I have known mill boys in the army, a good number of them. They think it cushy to get ten licks of the cat for coming on parade with dirty boots. What others boast of they don’t even fucking mention.”

The rain, in the stealthy way of dusk rain, had grown heavier. It shone like thread against air the colour of gritstone. They turned up the collars of their coats. Medina asked about the girls, if they were also beaten. Calley shook his head. “They had other things for the girls.”

“And what were those things?” asked Medina, though it seemed to him suddenly that he already knew.

“They were made to stand on a chair,” said Calley, “where all could see them. Then the overlooker took a knife or shears and he cut off their hair. Their hair was what they were proud of. It was what they had.”

He glanced back at Medina. It was hard to say what his expression was. Did he think he had been careless? That he had said too much, this most deliberate of men? For ten yards of fading road they held each other’s gaze, the rain dripping from the brims of their hats. Then Calley straightened himself in the saddle, and with a twitch of the reins, steered his horse into a lane that led them away from the houses.

13

They were on a hill above the sea. The hill was shaped like a sugar-loaf and had a trench, fifteen feet long, cut into the sea-facing slope. It was mid-morning and the day was already hot, the sun beating a scent out of the land. Pine? But it could not be pine. There were no pine trees, few trees of any kind, none at all on the hill. Lacroix wondered if he was remembering Portugal, that month after they landed, when he began to understand what the south and southern heat might mean. He had not expected to meet it again on the islands.

“Now tell me squarely,” said Cornelius, rising, trowel in hand, from the bottom of the trench, “are you with Buffon? On the age of the world, I mean. And putting aside for the time being the whole question of his being French.”