Or rather not exactly worry about them, but about my own incapacity, my disinclination to interfere. That dreadful word. I thought again that there should be another, better word for it and cast around in my mind. All I could come up with was ‘meddle’, which is worse. There was an old medical phrase about ‘minimal interference’, which concept I had always applauded. I believe it was invented by some doctor as he sweated among the wounded on the battlefield and observed his colleagues enthusiastically hacking off those limbs which had not already been severed but merely damaged; probing, cauterizing, anointing and bandaging. In many cases, it seemed to him, nature, left to herself would have made a better job of it all. I had to make many a conscious effort to return to the plight—if plight there was—of Derek’s new family. Frequently I would assure myself that Derek’s lapse (I clothed the unspeakable in the Sunday clothes of euphemism) was an isolated instance, a moment’s madness, and that he was a harmless, rather pathetic human being, either unjustly accused or unfairly punished by the exaggerated loathing in which Lili and I—if no one else—now held him. I would decide to acquit him, and think about other things such as battlefields, and then, feeling craven and inadequate, would try and force myself to face the facts. It was astonishingly difficult. My mind wandered incorrigibly from the point while I made attempt after attempt to see and think clearly. I made myself consider again the question of interference. If you came across a brute beating a donkey or a dog what did you do? You intervened, I thought to myself. That’s what you did, and it wasn’t called, or regarded as, interference—except by the beater, of course. And then I began imagining this beater of animals, haranguing him and snatching away his whip, soothing the cicatrices of his wounded and abused beasts. I started again. I decided to talk to Lili. She would, I felt instinctively, be of more practical use than the parish priest, who was the only other person I could think of who could be regarded as concerned in the matter. It was, after all, a question of wickedness, and sin was his business, but he was an old man and I didn’t want to worry him. Then I remembered that he was certainly younger than me, and went off to make myself a cup of tea.