Then, in an incoherent stream of words, she pleaded with him to visit her and Mr. Franks at home. They were desperate, and the problem was too difficult, she said, too personal, to discuss on the telephone. It was midsummer, a quiet time for work and for birding, and George agreed to go to see them.

They found the house on a long and busy road in a soulless Bristol suburb close to the Rolls-Royce factory. George’s wife, Molly, was driving. It was a dual carriageway, with a motorway roundabout at one end and a bus station at the other. The house was mock Tudor, semidetached, with leaded windows and black beams on the gables. In a quiet cul-de-sac it might have been considered a desirable place to live, but with the lorries thundering past the wrought iron gates, it seemed desolate, stranded in a treeless no-man’s land.

The Franks must have been waiting for them, because the door opened immediately. Molly reached the house first because the driver’s seat was next to the pavement, and George had to wait for a break in the traffic before he dared leave the car; yet the man inside looked past her, as if she were invisible or not worth speaking to.

“Mr. Palmer-Jones,” he said. The Bristol accent was unusually hard and rather high-pitched. “ It was good of you to come.”

He had to shout against the traffic noise. He gestured for them to enter the house, then shut the door firmly behind them. They stood uncertainly in a dark hall. He was a small, solid, vigourous man. Despite the heat he wore a long cardigan over a sticky nylon shirt. In the background Mrs. Franks hovered fussily. Dennis Franks did not introduce her.

“Come into the lounge,” he said, still directing his words to George. “I expect you’d like some tea.” He turned to his wife. “Tea!” he said, and she disappeared through the kitchen door.

The living room was square, with a bay window which looked out over the main road. As they talked, the roar of the traffic outside filled the silences in their conversation. It was late August and hot, but none of the windows were open. The bright sunshine was filtered through net curtains, so everything seemed rather overcast and dusty. Every available surface was covered with china and glass ornaments, vases of silk flowers, framed photographs, so it seemed to George that there was hardly room to move.

“It was good of you to come,” Dennis Franks repeated. “My wife thought you might not understand over the telephone. I decided it would be better to ask you to come here.”

George felt stifled and trapped. There were better places to be in the last week of August. In the valleys of south-west Cornwall the first autumn migrants would be arriving. He should be planning his usual bank holiday birding weekend in Norfolk.