One arched loom of desert light, when he speaks, and then back to the comfortable, sound-deadening dimness of the pub. We’re at a corner table in the Black Horse, coming up to midday. Only a half for me: I’m starting to think of my drive home.

“It’s fairly hard to convey.”

“And your friend Alastair . . . I never thought about any of it, not really. All these people your age. My age. You went screaming through the air plugging Germans with machine-gun bullets—”

“Italians too. Don’t forget the Italians.”

“And then you came home and, I don’t know, got to be vicars, or sold cars like Uncle Peter. Played Ping-Pong with your kids. Ate plowman’s lunches. I don’t know how you did it.” A flurry of blinking. “I could do with a plowman’s right now.”

It’s been a bare two hours since his breakfast of egg and beans on toast. “I’ll get you one as long as we change the subject. Have you heard from Florence?”

Happiness breaks out over his face. “I’m going to Bordeaux at Christmas. Florence can’t wait. Me neither.”

It must be costing him a fortune. I bet he’s saving money on food. I buy him a plowman’s and write him a check, to be spent on groceries.

—

“I don’t want to let go of Catherine yet. I’ve only just found her.”

We’re back on his street, coming up to the house. My things are in my car, ready for me to leave.

“We wouldn’t do it before the spring, Tom. Doesn’t even have to be this spring.”

“I suppose not . . . I feel sorry for Mum, though. She’s waited awhile.”

I ponder saying: Time doesn’t exist where she is. Decide against it.

“Mum wouldn’t want you to rush.”

Tom nods to himself, loping along beside me. Hair falling forward. I can’t see his face. “So anyway, Dad,” he says, in his invisibility. “Catherine.”

I thrust my hands deep into my pockets, search the sky. It’s low, gray, a reliable refuge, useful to plunge into, to shake off a pursuer. If only I was up there, jinking every three seconds. I’d soon leave him behind.

“What about her, particularly?”

“Why couldn’t you see her?”

The lightest drizzle is breathing over us, condensing in beads on Tom’s hair. He stands back, arms across his body, the closed fingers of one hand against his mouth. Scared of what he might say? Of what he might hear? He has endurance but it’s so different from mine. Mine is a fueled engine, it powers onward. His is more of a bending, incompressible entity, like water. No point throwing up defenses. He’ll just go around.