‘I can’t accept it!’ Mrs Mortlock nobly cried.

‘But it is all yours,’ her mother almost shouted, ‘the whole quarter of a million – less what the probate people grab.’

In the circumstances it was useless to argue. Mrs Mortlock enjoyed her silence. There was also the melancholy image of that old man, stumbling as he pushed a barrow-load of horse manure up the damp and darkening hillside. Or again, the more horrifying one of his same, but different face, choking now on words and blood, looking skyward, at the foot of the telegraph pole.

Two days after Mr Simpson’s important announcement Mrs Mortlock received a second: Miss Mortlock, his client’s sister, proposed to contest the will.

Mrs Mortlock rose from her bed.

‘But surely you won’t let the wretched creature get away with it?’ All considered, Mrs Scudamore might permit herself a vulgarism.

Her daughter went on dressing.

‘After all,’ Mrs Scudamore said.

‘I am too tired, Mummy,’ Mrs Mortlock answered. ‘I shall go to the Island. It was so kind and thoughtful of Val Tulloch to suggest it. After that, perhaps, I shall feel strong enough to work things out.’

She really looked quite ill and tragic.

18

Ossie Ryan drove her as before. He had not exactly aged, but dried out. This time as he crouched over the wheel he seemed to take her for granted. He was silenter, as though the narrative of life had slackened in his grasp.

At one stage she asked feebly: ‘What has become of the baby-farmer?’

‘The what?’ he asked. ‘Oh!’ Er.’

But he did not answer her question. Only later, he smiled and said: ‘You remembered, then!’

It was enough really. She was grateful for it.

And for the shabby, rambling house, the ochre of its now conventual walls rubbed and scored by the leaning tea-trees. On letting herself in she sat a while, in her hat and gloves, her knees slewed obliquely, her suitcase standing on the floor beside her. She could simply have lacked further strength, or else she feared the inevitable order to resume some mission she had left unfinished.

Days slipped easily away for Mrs Mortlock. Her island, balanced in its bubble, floated between seasons in an air which was neither hot nor cold. She clumped like an animal through the scrub. Or stalked birdlike over the sand. So deserted was her desert beach that she took off all her clothes once, without even looking over her shoulder, and walked into the milky sea. Exquisite skirts of foam clung to her ankles, and began to soothe her thighs. It was so gently perfect in the healing water that she closed her eyes and almost understood which direction was the right one. But it floated out of her grasp, together with the capsules of weed, as though almost is the most.

At least she did not expect complete enlightenment, and rose, content enough to re-enter the solid sculpture of her body. To put on the clothes she found. To notice the remote rocks which hid the wrestling-match of her girlhood. What she had regarded then as ugly, monstrous, frightening, she now saw as merely undesirable, or absurd. And went away along the hard sand, thoughtfully combing out her hair with her fingers, to let it dry.