There were also some more letters and diaries from Jacques’s time in America. He had ended up in California, where he seemed to have felt less like the last man alive. A bathing resort called Santa Monica had appealed to him before he went to Pasadena to inspect the cable railway at Mount Lowe.

The ambition of the two men was daunting, as they went through sickness, solitude and danger in America and Africa to satisfy their driving curiosity. Or perhaps they had been in competition with one another. Neither mentioned the other while on his travels; their concerns were with work, their own survival and the love of their wives.

There was a letter from Jacques that Anton had missed on the previous occasion but which he now held up to the light that came through the open shutters.

Thursday, we were in the mountains all day … My heart melts when I think of the men and women and children who had to cross this terrible landscape. Legends of how some never made it, fell ill or died in the mountain passes, starved … Ate one another … Unimaginable – yet familiar.

And I somehow feel I know what it was to be a rider for the Pony Express, going on and on through all weathers, attacks from Indians, sunburned, snow-drenched, over prairie and mountain, terrible pain and lungs burning, but having to do it – no alternative or your wife and child will starve & at last seeing the light ahead of the station where you hand over the mail and fall exhausted into sleep. From coast to coast in nine days!

How do I know so much what it felt like? Is there some sort of universal human memory available to all? Or are our little minds just aspects of one consciousness?

I do not like these thoughts. They make our life seem perpetual, with no escape, even through death …

There was a knock at the door and Martha appeared.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you.’

‘That’s all right. I was just … Wondering about things …’

‘You know you said you would need to buy some new clothes? I wondered if you’d like to go into town with Lena today. It’s her afternoon off and I think she’d enjoy it. She knows all the shops. Joseph could take you.’

‘Lena’s the one who serves the drinks and waits at dinner?’

‘Among other things, yes.’

‘I’m not sure. She might feel awkward with just me.’

‘Well, I can come too, if you prefer. There are always things I need for the house.’

At three o’clock, Anton presented himself at the stables, where Joseph was starting the van with a crank handle. Martha came down the drive from the main house with Lena hanging back a pace or two, looking at the ground.

There was not enough room for four, so Joseph had to stay behind while Martha took the wheel under his disapproving eye. Lena sat in the middle, gripping the edge of the bench seat, trying not to knock into either Martha or Anton when they went round a corner.