The brandy was beginning to tell on Max. He looked about to see if there were some attack upon him hidden in Camilla’s remarks. I confess I did the same. ‘We’re taking the side of wives tonight, are we?’ he finally thought of saying.

Camilla didn’t move a muscle. ‘I take the side of wives against husbands every night,’ she said.

Max’s eyes were bloodshot. ‘But does that make art?’ he challenged her.

I couldn’t see to the bottom of that one. But Camilla could. She was ready for bed. ‘In this particular case we’ll never know,’ she said, rising. ‘Emma Hardy’s “What I think of my Husband” diaries never got to see the light of day. He destroyed them. Burned them. He wouldn’t let them be in the world. So we’ll never know whether they made art or not. But I’ll tell you what, Max, I wouldn’t mind making art out of them. I’ve often thought I’d like to reconstruct them. God knows it wouldn’t be difficult, imagining what she thought of him.’

Max fell towards her and poked her in the shoulder. ‘Do it then, my girl,’ he told her. ‘Do it.’

Camilla was miles away, already launched into Emma’s thwarted prose. ‘That business of installing Florence in the house, getting it to look to Emma as though Florence were her friend, is typical of the man,’ she said. ‘There was a persisting surreptitiousness in him. Or are all men like that? Are all men furtive in their moral lives?’

I looked at Max Loveday. Max Loveday looked at me. We both needed time to think about this.

‘Don’t bother,’ said Camilla. ‘I know the answer.’

Max collected his coat, made his usual farewells, once more told Camilla that she should ‘Do it’, and made off in the direction of his cliff-top cottage where everything he thought he’d ever wanted waited for him. ‘But is it art?’ I heard him repeating to himself in the pitch black. Only the Trevose lighthouse to the south and the Lundy lighthouse to the north made any impression on the darkness. ‘But is it art?’ he was still asking, long after he’d vanished from my view.

‘Why don’t you?’ I asked Camilla when we were in bed.

‘Why don’t I what?’

‘Why don’t you reconstruct Emma Hardy’s diaries?’ I sat up and turned to face her, a lesson in loyalty, comradeship, enthusiasm, and support. If there was anywhere in the West Country a man less surreptitious and morally furtive than I was I would have liked to meet him. ‘Do it,’ I said. ‘It sounds a terrific idea.’

‘Don’t offer me encouragement, Barney. I’ll do it if I want to do it.’

Bitch. A bit of furtiveness wouldn’t have done her any harm.

[3]