Martha blushes.

‘The Marabar Caves,’ Jacob says.

‘That’s not fair.’ Martha is angry. ‘I never thought you were forcing yourself on her. I saw. I saw that you weren’t. I thought it was her way of not going under. I understood.’ The back of her neck is hot. She breathes in, looks down, composes herself. ‘Besides,’ she says, shocked that he could think otherwise, ‘I’ve never told anyone. Not one person.’

‘That’s what I tell Rika.’

‘Does she think …?’

‘She doesn’t know. But the whole time is a very bad memory. She feels exposed by it.’

‘She sees you.’

‘That’s different.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I was never one of the good ones. Like all of you were, on the side of everything good. Sometimes those people are hard for those of us who are not always so good. Who live in the world as it is.’

Martha’s face is scalding. ‘Is that why she hates me? Because I’m good?’

‘Martha, Martha. She doesn’t hate you. I told you, she just doesn’t want to be reminded.’

‘Don’t you remind her?’

‘She can talk to me.’

‘She could talk to me once.’

‘She was young. She thinks she talked too freely.’

‘Are you lovers?’

Jacob leans back in his chair and laughs. Calls the waiter. ‘You’re the one who reads the novels.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Martha.’ The waiter pours her another glass of wine. She is unaccountably close to tears. For all these years, the successful Rika has been like a character from a different film. Martha has followed her from afar, but mostly she exists in some other reality. It’s not a comfortable solution, but she’s used to it.

‘Tell me about Jericho,’ Jacob says. His voice is kind. ‘I’ve told him he should have lunch with me.’

‘He’s well. I think it’s been good, this return. Not easy, but on the whole good. You know Leonard is here?’

Jacob nods.

‘Well, they’re about to go to the mountain. There’s talk of a bisnis with the bark-cloth.’

‘So I hear.’

‘How?’ she asks. ‘You seem to know everything.’

He bows his head, an ironic modesty. ‘They should be careful,’ he says.

‘Why?’

‘Many’s the white man I’ve seen go in with good intentions, but, as you know, Martha, you put money into the villages and it sets off a chain reaction. I’ve seen it go wrong too often.’

‘It worked in the fjords. Those villages are looking good. Wilkie’s guesthouse. It’s gorgeous. All the kids are at school. And he even told me they have introduced gender equity. That’s what he said.’

Jacob laughs. ‘He’s another who reads too much. But it’s true, those villages are good. Very good. So they should be, the work I’ve put in. But there are others not so far away where the situation isn’t good. I wonder sometimes if I got it right. I can’t do it for every village. I tried with seed funding for vanilla, but without me there supervising, some of the villages spent the money and didn’t plant. They’re a mess. The young men go. The elders lose authority. The usual story.’