He nodded and invited me to wait for his son, Mark, at one of the tables on the terrace. I took a seat and waited, listening to him on the telephone. Then he brought over two beers, sat down next to me and introduced himself. He had lived in Sydney, had had enough of the city, and had moved here seven years ago. He loved the sea, the tranquility, how the sleepy small town awoke in summer, the hustle and bustle of the summer months, the off-peak season, when artists and writers rented more cheaply for a couple of weeks, the return of calm. Everyone came to him: young families, grandparents, teenagers, artists.

“Living where she does wouldn’t be my cup of tea. It’s beautiful, but a lonely beauty…not a single soul, far and wide. What brings you to her?”

“We haven’t seen each other in a long time.”

“I know.” He laughed. “Otherwise you’d have already met me. When did you last see her?”

“Many years ago.”

He didn’t pry further. Mark arrived, took me to an old-fashioned launch, started up the motor, and cast off. He stood in the cabin and steered; I sat on the bench in front of the cabin, facing the sun and wind. The mountains and the coves all looked the same, and the boat rose and fell with a gentle rhythm, slapping the water, as the motor chugged with the same, calm rhythm. I fell asleep.

Part Two

1

I woke up to Mark cutting the engine. The boat drifted into a cove, towards a jetty. Just before we reached it, Mark fired up the engine again, guiding the boat towards the end of the jetty, then moored.

“This evening at six?”

“Yes.” I jumped from the boat. Mark cast off and drove away. I watched him until he rounded the cape and disappeared from view. Then I turned around.

The house on the beach was a one-storey stone house. The roof of the veranda rested on stone columns and was tiled in slate. It looked as if it had stood there a long time and intended to stay there; as if, with this house, civilization had carved a bridgehead in the wilderness that it was prepared to defend.

As I headed down the jetty towards the house, I saw another house, wooden, two-storey, built on the hillside with a view to the sea, that was so tucked into the trees that you couldn’t see it from afar. As solidly as the stone house sat on the beach, the other one hung on the mountain provisionally. The timbers supporting the house tilted at such unlikely angles that they startled the eye. The roof and balcony were bowed, some of the window frames so warped that it must have been impossible to close the windows. They were all open, along with all the doors. A curtain fluttered out of one of the windows.