THIS VILLAGE IS undoubtedly a good place to enjoy jealousy in. I will go further, and venture to affirm that there cannot be many settlements, outside of a fortified Sicilian mountain shtetl or a mixed monastery in the Andes, better situated than Castle Boterel for the cultivation of that most morbid of all manifestations of fidelity. (Fidelity? Why yes. Did I ever love Camilla more single-mindedly than when I wept for her amid the megaliths?) And when I speak of its ideal situation I am not merely referring to its distance from major centres of distraction and refreshment; I am thinking also of its climate, its terrain, the deeply engrained genius of its people for the propagation of hearsay, and the abundant natural provision of vantage points, confluences, o’erhanging crags, freakish accoustical phenomena and the like, all offering unparallelled opportunities for the great devotional vigils of jealousy – for espials, rencounters, speleology, ornithology, and for eavesdropping on an epic scale. Many was the time I lay flat on my belly in the gorse, silent upon a peak, waiting for the wind to carry up a tinkle of laughter or an exhalation of endearment from a thousand feet below me, to hurl it against the opposite cliff face and to bear it thence on a zephyr into the amplifying chamber of my ear. And many a time, too, have I hung like a cormorant from the rocks, careless of the dizzying crash of foam beneath, consumed by the need to know whose tiny fishing boat Camilla was out in, what he was recommending that she use for bait, and what she was telling him about me.

Yes, Camilla was out fishing again, once more doling out dinner to the gulls like a goddess. She was back drinking too, back singing sentimental songs in The Strangled Stranger and The Broken Vow And Sacrament, roaring in her old piratical manner at jokes and anecdotes she’d heard a thousand times before, to all intents and purposes the Camilla that was, restored to herself as though I’d never been. But older – and therefore sadder. Restorations to an older self always entail bitterness. I could have told her that. It can only mean that the intervening period has been a proof of the impossibility of change or a confirmation that change was never necessary – either way a murderous waste of years. The responsibility for that carnage was settled firmly on my shoulders. Camilla hardly looked at me now, but when she did it was to accuse me wordlessly of the worst of crimes.