He started again. “I went out to Lisbon in the summer. We sailed in convoy from Falmouth, were nearly wrecked in the Bay of Biscay, arrived at the mouth of the Tagus on the 29th of August. I don’t think you’ve been anywhere like that. Lisbon, I mean. I know I hadn’t. Lovely from the water but to walk through the middle of it . . . Heat, stink. Most of the buildings are whitewashed so you can hardly look at them in the full light of day. A church on every street corner, their steps covered with beggars, the beggars covered in flies. Feral dogs. Ten thousand cats that look too thin to be alive but somehow are. For a week we loathed the place, then began to see something else in it. I’m not sure what to call it. You rest your hand on a stone at midnight and the stone is warm. You see a street lined with orange trees and imagine all your life you have been waiting to see exactly that.