She raised the matter with the cattle-trader’s widow, but she seemed unwilling to talk about it, and pointedly changed the subject. Then, at bridge one evening, the Captain suddenly produced a letter that he said had come from the boy. He fished it out of his pocket and read a few lines. The boy sent his regards to all of them.

The judge’s wife noticed the stamp, and saw, she thought, that it had been posted in Lusaka. But she could not be sure.

‘I’m relieved that he seems to be so happy,’ she said. The Captain nodded, and put the letter back in his pocket. 60

The next day, she was driving past the Captain’s house and called in on impulse. He offered her tea, which they drank on the veranda.

‘The cricket team must miss him,’ said the judge’s wife. ‘It is a bit odd that he should leave before their important match. I thought it was very strange, didn’t you?’

The Captain lifted his teacup. ‘At that age, you do that sort of thing,’ he said. ‘At least, I did.’

‘But it seems so odd,’ she said. ‘Going off like that. Was everything all right between you and him? Sometimes I felt that, well, it was almost as if he was calling the shots.’

The Captain did not answer.

8

The judge telephoned the Captain the following day and asked him to come round to the house. He was distraught, and the Captain went straight away.

‘My wife has gone,’ said the judge. ‘She’s left me.’

‘But …’ said the Captain. 61

‘She left a letter,’ said the judge, picking up an envelope and taking out a single sheet of paper. ‘Look, here it is. She tells me that she’s had enough of living here, and needs to start a new life. She asks me not to try to contact her.’

‘Just like my wife,’ said the Captain. ‘I’m so sorry. It happened to me, too.’

The judge was staring at the Captain. ‘It’s very strange, though,’ he said. ‘This is a typed letter. My wife never typed. She couldn’t.’

The Captain looked down at the floor, and then out of the window, past the trees on the judge’s lawn, and the beds of Namaqualand daisies, to the mountains beyond. They were blue, impossibly blue, like islands in the sea.

Music Helps

1

La lived in a small town near the Suffolk coast. It was not Aldeburgh, but it was close enough, a town which had had a market, once, but which now had none of the bustle a market town has. It had an old church, built in Norman times, a thousand years or so ago, and several other beautiful buildings, including an old wool house which attracted visitors. There were farms nearby, some of which were rich ones, some of which barely scratched a living.

La came there in 1938, and started an orchestra. She was at that time in her mid-thirties, a tall, not unattractive woman, with a careful, measured way of talking. She had married young, barely into her twenties, and then had been widowed when she was thirty-two. Her husband had left her well provided for, but nothing could make up for her grief. I loved him so much, so much, she thought. I can never love another man; no man will ever be his equal. None.