‘Seb’s on laudanum,’ Josh said. ‘Bungs up the bowels. Tell me, have you ever relieved an impacted bowel?’

‘Turns you into a saint, does it?’

‘I’ve been looking after these people for six, seven years,’ Josh went on. ‘They’re dying, both of them.’

‘I can see that.’

‘They won’t last until summer—’

‘You’re in my light. Move!’

‘—and you come in and try to scoop off the cream.’

Jonathan scanned the high cheekbones and immobile face. ‘It would be more seemly’, he said, ‘for you to wait until they’re dead before you scoop off that cream of yours.’

‘What fine untarnished sentiments you bring, gentle pulpiter. So where have you and your – uh – noble sentiments been hiding all these years?’

Until a week before, the stories Jonathan had read in newspapers about Senator George Stoke had been only text. In Chicago, on his way east to Maine and his interview with Grayberg, Jonathan had bought a Tribune; George stood there on page two, lower left, grainy black and white, smoking a cigar. Jonathan recognized him immediately; he was plump but not yet fat and sodden, not yet the grotesque he was to become; the shiny black eyes and curly mouth still resembled George the boy’s shiny black eyes and curly mouth. You can believe anything you like until you see a photograph. Looking at this one, Jonathan had felt a nausea so abrupt that he’d hardly made it to the car door in time. George, the ‘fighting liberal’, the senator adored by people of good will all over the nation, was campaigning in Washington, DC; he was promoting a plan to dam the waters of the Tennessee River and its tributaries and so develop the whole of the Tennessee Valley basin – a plan that many years later resulted in the Tennessee Valley Authority: a plan that Jonathan, stomach and mind in turmoil, could not stop himself thinking was a first-rate idea, as maddeningly sound as most of what George fought for. Why did he have to take Jonathan’s side of the issues? Why couldn’t he look out for the rich? Why couldn’t he back the gold standard? the eastern bankers? the railroad barons? almost anything Jonathan abominated? Jonathan studied the cigar in the curly mouth. A Corona Corona, he’d decided at last. Expensive. Very expensive.

‘Why haven’t you repaired the barns?’ he said furiously to Josh. ‘Not much of a businessman, are you? You’re going to ruin your own investments.’ He bent down and began to brush Jenny’s forelegs.

‘Well, well, well. I’ll try and make it easy for you, Vicar. Ready?’ Josh followed the movements of the brush on Jenny’s legs. ‘These poor bastards: they’ve just about mastered the art of eking out the little time that’s left to them. One day, then the next, then the next. Never look forward. Never look back. And along comes a reverend gentleman to witter on about hope and future. There isn’t—’

‘The great scholar’s taken on medicine, has he? And psychology?’