As the car clove the dust Anthea Scudamore drifted through the penetrable houses. She opened drawers and looked inside. Or she settled herself in the chairs, her rather wide hips, her large thighs arranged in that oblique position she adopted for sitting. Only when she was completely composed would she allow the owners of the houses to approach and tell her their closest secrets.

This indulgence was something Anthea would never have admitted to her mother, for whom life was bright and unconcealed. Perhaps it was a vice the daughter had inherited from a father she scarcely knew.

‘I think it’s all fascinating,’ she remarked, turning to Ossie Ryan with an expression of such sincerity he wondered whether it meant anything.

He cleared his throat, and spat over the side, and the spittle was flung into the light in a fine, glistening curve.

‘I reckon people are about the same,’ he said sheepishly, ‘wherever they happen to be.’

But he was pleased at her interest, and would continue to exert himself.

‘Mrs Tulloch’s ordered the turkey. She’s expecting again.’ He laughed. ‘Gil keeps ’er busy.’

Then Anthea Scudamore, large and white, began to tremble, not that she was afraid exactly, or shy, but at the thought of the people she would meet, and in particular those she might learn to know too well. She had never known anyone intimately, at least in the way she imagined people did get to know one another, nobody except her mother, and that was different. In the circumstances, the image of Mummy in her straw from Martin’s, and her substantial shoulders, not unlike Anthea’s own, was comforting. But not comforting enough. The girl’s arms, flushed by the sun, had got the goose-flesh, and it did not leave her.

4

Usually Ossie Ryan slung the mail into the box, and planked down a packing-case of groceries in the sand beside the post, but this morning, as it was an occasion, he ran the car up the stony lane, through the scrub, to Tulloch’s. As the Chev slung them around Ossie was grinning his scar of a grin.

Because they had expected, and finally heard, all, with the exception of the Furfields who had withdrawn somewhere to deal with children, could be seen waiting on the corner of the veranda, against the skyline, preparing officially to proffer friendship – an attitude which can look so hostile.

Mollie Aspinall giggled, stroking her easy, sea-bitten skin. She said: ‘Mummy hasn’t let her come without the hat.’

And Val Tulloch couldn’t resist: ‘She’s probably left the gloves on the plane.’ She felt a beast, however.

Anthea Scudamore had begun to wave, and smile, or grimace at the glare, and extricate her thighs from the car. She was feeling very large and exposed.

‘A regular Juno,’ said Barry Flegg, going over his chin with his fingers.

‘Probably not so explosive. But that’s up to you, Barry.’ Gil Tulloch had given the game away at forty. ‘You may discover a time-bomb.’