Camilla threw me a stern look. She wasn’t having any backward glancing possessiveness. ‘What do you think? The men in this village would lie down with dogs; of course they’d have taken me if they’d had the chance. But the fact is I had nothing to do with any of them – apart, that is, from the peck I gave the fisherman and the night I spent in his caravan with the farm boy. And he, don’t forget, was my lawful wedded husband.’

I must have shown some sign of relief or complacency or some other satisfaction that Camilla believed I had no right to feel, because she instantly recalled that what she had just said was not entirely the truth. ‘I suppose I oughtn’t to leave out the black Mormon choir who came to perform down here and stayed in the village one weekend,’ she corrected herself.

‘You … er …?’ I knew I shouldn’t have asked. A hand as big as God’s was trying to clamp my mouth shut. And a booming voice was telling me to get up from the table, take a turn in the evening air, and return with a bottle of champagne. But I’ve never welcomed outside interference in my affairs; and I’ve always been poor at perceiving my own best interests. ‘You … er … went out with one of them?’ I enquired.

Camilla, on the other hand, unlike me, never failed to press home an advantage. ‘Barney,’ she laughed, and I think it was the first time she had addressed me directly by my name, ‘Barney, I fucked every man jack of them. Or rather, they fucked me. I just lay back and sang spirituals.’

[3]

There’s one folly I don’t have to reproach myself for. I never then or at any time subsequently sought to discover from Camilla or from anybody else how many Mormons it takes to make a Mormon choir.

But I am still not able to listen to a rendering of All God’s Child’n with any equanimity.

[4]

If I say that we spent the next two or three months in this fashion – Camilla swilling champagne and me taking in the details of each of her suddenly-remembered lapses from continence – I don’t want it to sound as though that was all we did. We also went out. Took walks. Picked wild flowers. Climbed stiles. Hung over precipices and peered dizzily into waterfalls. Sailed up the coast to look at caves and colonies of Cornish choughs and corncrakes in Lionel Turnbull alias Lance Tourney’s boat. Two pounds an hour it cost us for Lionel’s services, but Camilla considered his expertise was worth every penny. He knew where to take us. Camilla couldn’t believe how little I knew about the creatures with whom I shared the miracle of existence. ‘What’s that?’ she would ask me, grabbing me by the arm and pointing at something twitching in the sky.