For her part, although she recognised the merits of work in one’s own back yard, Domenica continued to be attracted by radically different societies and by not-too-prosaic projects. Her last piece of research, which she had then written up in several well-received scholarly articles, had taken place in the Malacca Straits. She had gone there to investigate the domestic life of contemporary pirates, and she still remembered with affection the welcome that the pirate households gave her. Some of the pirate women still wrote to her occasionally, giving her news of their families; and she always responded, sending books to the children and the annual Scotsman calendar to the pirates themselves.

But after that there had been nothing, and she wondered whether it would be more truthful to describe herself as a sometime private scholar. She liked the word sometime, which people still used occasionally to refer to a previous position or status. There remained a few scholars – institutionalised, not private ones – who described themselves on the title pages of their books as sometime Fellow of this or that Oxbridge college. There was nothing wrong with that – if you once were something, then it was understandable to remind people of the fact, if it was relevant. But one should not cling too doggedly to these scraps of past dignity, as was being done, Domenica feared, by a friend of hers whose hall cupboard she had once inadvertently opened, thinking that it was the bathroom. And had seen, hanging on a rail, an old coat belonging to her friend, with, pinned to its lapel, a familiar old badge bearing the legend Captain of Hockey. She had wanted to laugh at the discovery, but had stopped herself. The thought occurred that this was all that her friend had; this was the summit of her achievement, and that life for her thereafter had been a matter of disappointment. Small things may be important to us; to be a sometime anything is sometimes something.

8. Domenica Has Coffee With Dilly

As a private scholar, of course, Domenica’s only motivating factor was the intrinsic interest of her subject. In her position there were no considerations of promotion and the financial advantage it brought; there were no chairs to be won, no colleagues from whom to receive plaudits – her only gain was the satisfaction of finding something out, of shining a light upon some obscure passage in the human tapestry. That was reward enough, of course, and Domenica needed none other – but it did mean that if she wanted to do field work, she had to do it entirely off her own bat. And that was not always easy.