So he returned to the cottage and tried.

He had his group of characters. He knew how to involve them, one with the other, but so far he didn’t know where to put them: they hovered, they floated. He found himself moved to introduce among them a woman with a white magnolia face, black hair and eyes, and a spluttering laugh.

Mrs. Ferrant gave him his evening meal on a tray in the parlor. He asked her about the painter and she replied in an offhand, slighting manner that he was called Sydney Jones and had a “terrible old place up to back of Fishermen’s Steps.”

“He lives here, then?” said Ricky.

“He’s a foreigner,” she said, dismissing him, “but he’s been in the Cove a while.”

“Do you like his paintings?”

“My Louis can do better.” Her Louis was a threatening child of about ten.

As she walked out with his tray she said: “That’s a queer old sweater you’re wearing.”

“I think it’s a jolly good one,” he called after her. He heard her give a little grunt and thought she added something in French.

Visited by a sense of well-being, he lit his pipe and strolled down to the Cod-and-Bottle.

iii

Nobody had ever tried to tart up the Cod-and-Bottle. It was unadulterated pub. In the bar the only decor was a series of faded photographs of local worthies and a map of the island. A heavily pocked dartboard hung on the wall and there was a shove-ha’penny at the far end of the bar. In an enormous fireplace, a pile of driftwood blazed a good-smelling welcome.

The bar was full of men, tobacco smoke, and the fumes of beer. A conglomerate of male voices, with their overtones of local dialect, engulfed Ricky as he walked in. Ferrant was there, his back propped against the bar, one elbow resting on it, his body curved in a classic pose that was sexually explicit and, Ricky felt, deliberately contrived. When he saw Ricky he raised his pint-pot and gave him that sidelong wag of his head. He had a coterie of friends about him.