‘Oh, yes. Yes,’ he said loudly, and backed away from her. ‘Well, thank you, thank you, thank you.’

‘I’m calling in at Hammer. Perhaps you won’t mind my trespassing. There’s a footpath down to the right-of-way, isn’t there?’

‘Of course. Please do. Allow me.’

He thrust his medicine into a pocket of his coat, took hold of her bicycle and laid his bow along the saddle and handlebars.

‘Now I’m being a nuisance,’ said Nurse Kettle cheerfully. ‘Shall I carry your bow?’

He shied away from her and began to wheel the bicycle round the end of the house. She followed him, carrying the bow and talking in the comfortable voice she used for nervous patients. They came out on the archery lawn and upon a surprising and lovely view over the little valley of the Chyne. The trout stream shone like pewter in the evening light, meadows lay as rich as velvet on either side, the trees looked like pincushions, and a sort of heraldic glow turned the whole landscape into the semblance of an illuminated illustration to some forgotten romance. There was Major Cartarette winding in his line below Bottom Bridge and there up the hill on the Nunspardon golf course were old Lady Lacklander and her elderly son George, taking a post-prandial stroll.

‘What a clear evening,’ Nurse Kettle exclaimed with pleasure. ‘And how close everything looks. Do tell me, Commander,’ she went on, noticing that he seemed to flinch at this form of address, ‘with this bow of yours could you shoot an arrow into Lady Lacklander?’

Syce darted a look at the almost square figure across the little valley. He muttered something about a clout at two hundred and forty yards and limped on. Nurse Kettle, chagrined by his manner, thought: ‘What you need, my dear, is a bit of gingering up.’

He pushed her bicycle down an untidy path through an overgrown shrubbery and she stumped after him.

‘I have been told,’ she said, ‘that once upon a time you hit a mark you didn’t bargain for, down there.’

Syce stopped dead. She saw that beads of sweat had formed on the back of his neck. ‘Alcoholic,’ she thought. ‘Flabby. Shame. He must have been a fine man when he looked after himself.’

‘Great grief!’ Syce cried out, thumping his fist on the seat of her bicycle, ‘you mean the bloody cat!’

‘Well!’

‘Great grief, it was an accident. I’ve told the old perisher! An accident! I like cats.’

He swung round and faced her. His eyes were misted and his lips trembled. ‘I like cats,’ he repeated.

‘We all make mistakes,’ said Nurse Kettle, comfortably.

He held his hand out for the bow and pointed to a little gate at the end of the path.