He grins, stretches his arms out. “Pre-ee-pare ye the way of the Lord,” he sings, a line from a new musical about the life of Jesus. Along with the mass of hair—complete with sideburns—and the general rangy demeanor, there’s a new fine line under each eye. That touches me the most.

—

We drive north out of the city. Tom map-reads. A thing from when he was very young, his yen for navigation. Marsh, railway, church with a tower, church with a spire. Youth hostel, footpath. Comfortingly distinct shapes and colors, each one endowed with a single unequivocal meaning. Balm to an orphaned young male mind.

“So,” I say, “are you looking forward to your second year? Will you miss your cell in the Swedish prison?” Rumor has it that the university’s famous architecture is modeled on one such establishment, and Tom spent his first year living on campus.

He smiles. “Yes I am, and no I won’t. This year’s going to be out of sight. The house is a dump but we don’t care . . .”

So it’s not university that is the source of this slight reticence, this clouded mood that I’ve detected since we’ve been on the road.

“Tell me about Florence,” I venture.

“She went back to France yesterday.” His voice is tight with misery.

“Oh, dear.”

He tells me how they met in a vineyard in the vicinity of Bordeaux, how her father managed the place—“massive great bloke, never off his tractor”—and how she ran away with Tom to England. “I wanted to smuggle her into number twenty-three with us. The bedroom’s big enough.” He sighs.

I try not to smile. “But she wouldn’t be smuggled?”

“Too sensible,” he says in despair. “She rang her mum, all is forgiven. She’s back doing political science at Bordeaux.”

“Clever girl, then. Are you writing to her?”

“Every day. We’re really, really sold on each other. Actually I’m hitching down in the holidays.” It is almost comical, the way his mood rises again so quickly. “She’s just beautiful, Dad. Turn left here.”

I do as he says, swing off the main road too fast, the brakes are spongy. The road dives between embankments dark with wet foliage, pulls its shoulders in to duck under a railway bridge and doesn’t widen again afterward. Any minute I expect to find grass growing in the middle. I’ve driven a lorry this size before but I was younger then, and the visibility is poor, and the hire company’s damage deposit is enormous.

“Tom, I didn’t come this way last time . . .”

“Stay calm,” he intones. “This is the shortcut to Waltham. Beyond Waltham lies our destination, the Parish of Upton and Barrow End.”

“In the land of Mordor.”

It was meant as a joke, but I sound too apprehensive.

“Courage, mon vieux,” says my son.

—