The summer had been wet, the rainfall so heavy at the beginning of August that it had stripped and flattened much of the crop, threshing it before its time. Now, a week from September, the fields were still waterlogged, and the hay that had survived the deluge was rotting where it stood.

'It's all right for the likes of you,' Ken Middleton, who owned the largest acreage of harvestable land in the valley, had remarked to Hugo in the pub tonight. 'You don't have to think about these things like us workin' men.'

'Thinkers are working men, Kenneth,' Hugo had countered. 'We just don't sweat doing it.'

'It's not just the rain,' Matthew Sauls had chimed in. 'It's every bloody thing.' Sauls was Middleton's drinking comrade; a dour pairing at the best of times. 'Even me of Da says things is just coming apart.'

Hugo had been harangued by Matthew's of Da Geoffrey on this very subject earlier in the year when, much against his better judgment, he'd agreed to accompany Adele to the Summer Fayre, where she'd entered her onion pickle in the annual competition. Geoffrey's wife had also entered, and while the two women chatted (with the natural reserve of competitors), Hugo had been left to endure Old Man Sauls. Without the least provocation, the man had launched into a monologue on the subject of murder, the recent killing of a child by another child in Newcastle the particular upon which he hung his grim talk. It's a different world, these days he said over and over. What had once been unthinkable was now commonplace. It's a different world.

'You know what your of Da's problem is, Matthew?' Hugo said.

'He's as crazy as a coot,' Middleton put in.

'Well, that's undoubtedly true,' Hugo replied. 'But that's not what I had in mind.' He emptied his brandy glass and set it down on the bar. 'He's old. And old men like to think everything's coming to an end. It makes it a little easier to let go.'

Matthew didn't reply. He simply stared into his beer. But Middleton said:

'Talking from experience, are you?'

Hugo smiled. 'I think I've got a few more years in me yet,' he said.

'Well, gentlemen. That was my last for the night. See you, tomorrow, maybe.'

It was a lie, of course; he didn't need a few more years to understand of Da's point-of-view. He felt it taking shape in himself. There was a certain grim satisfaction to be had in bad news. What man in his right mind, knowing he was not long for the world, would wish it to burgeon and brighten in his absence? Perhaps he would have read the entrails differently if he'd had grandchildren; found reason for optimism in the midst of murder and deluge. But Nathaniel, who would surely have given him fine grandsons and granddaughters, was thirty years dead, and Will an invert. Why should he hope the best for a world that would have nobody he loved in it once he'd gone?

There was pleasure to be taken in playing the prophet of doom, no doubt of that. As he walked home tonight (he always walked even in the dead of winter; he liked his brandy too much to trust himself behind the wheel) there was a spring in his step that would not have been there had the night's debate been more optimistic. Swinging his stick, which he carried more for effect than support, he strode out of the light of the village into the lampless mile of road that took him to his gate. He felt no anxiety, walking in the dark. There were no thugs here; no thieves out to prey on an inebriated gentleman walking alone. It was very seldom he met anyone at all.

Tonight was an exception, however. About a third of a mile outside the bounds of the village he caught sight of two people, a man and a woman, strolling towards him. Though there was no moon, the starlight was bright, and from twenty yards' distance he was able to tell that he didn't know them. Were they tourists perhaps, out enjoying the night air? Fugitives from the city, for whom the spectacle of dark hills and starscape was enrapturing?

The closer he got to them however, the stronger the impulse became to turn around and head back the way he'd come. He told himself to stop being a silly old fool. All he had to do was wish them a pleasant good evening as they walked past and that would be an end to it. He picked up his pace a little, and was about to speak when the man - a striking fellow in the silvery light - said:

'Hugo? Is it you?'

'Yes, it's me,' Hugo said. 'Do I

'We went to the house,' the woman said, 'looking for you, but you weren't there-'

'So we came looking for you,' the man went on.

'Do we know one another?' Hugo asked.

'It's been a long time,' the man said. He looked perhaps thirty-two or thirty-three, but there was something about his poise that made Hugo think this was a trick of the light.

'You weren't a student of mine, were you?'

'No,' the man said. 'Not remotely.'

'Well then I really can't recall,' Hugo said, faintly uncomfortable now.

'We know your son,' the woman said. 'We know Will.'

'Ah,' said Hugo. 'Well then good luck to you,' he said dryly. 'Have a good night, won't you?' And with that he started on his way.

'Where is he?' the woman enquired as Hugo passed by.

'I don't know,' Hugo replied, not glancing back at her. 'He could be anywhere. He flits around, you know. If you're friends of his, you'll know what a flitter he is.'

'Wait!' the man said, leaving his lady-friend's side to follow Hugo. There was nothing aggressive about his manner, but Hugo took a firmer grip of his stick, just in case he needed to wield it. 'If you could just give me a little help here-'

'Help?' Hugo turned to face the man, preferring to stand his ground and send the fellow on his way than have him following.

'To find will,, the man said, his manner all conviviality.

It was an abomination, Hugo thought, the buttonholing manner people had these days. An American import, no doubt. Thirty seconds of conversation and you were bosom-buddies. Altogether loathsome. 'If you want to get a message to him,' Hugo said, 'may I suggest his publishers?'

'You're his father

'That's my burden,' Hugo snapped. 'But if you're admirers of his-'

'We are,' the woman said.

-then I must warn you he's a terrible disappointment in the flesh.'

'We know what he's like,' the man said. 'We all know what he's like, Hugo. You and I particularly.'

The inference of kinship here was too much for Hugo. He brandished his stick in front of his face. 'We have absolutely nothing to say to one another,' he said. 'Now leave me alone.' He started to back away from the man, half expecting him to give chase. But he simply stood with his hands in his pockets, watching Hugo retreat.

'What are you afraid of?' he said.

'Absolutely nothing,' Hugo replied.

'That I don't believe,' the man said. 'You're a philosopher. You know better than that.'

'I am not a philosopher,' Hugo said, resisting the flattery. 'I am a third-rate teacher of third-rate pupils who have no interest whatsoever in anything I impart to them. That is my lot in life and to the extent that I might have done worse, I'm proud of it. My wife lives in Paris with a man half my age, my best beloved son has been dead and buried thirty years and the other is a self-promoting queer with an opinion of himself out of all proportion to his achievements. There! Are you satisfied? Does that put it plainly enough for you? In short, MAY I GO?'

'Oh,' said the woman softly. 'I'm so sorry.'

'What for?'

'You lost a child,' she said. 'We've lost several, Jacob and I. You never get over it.

'... Jacob?' Hugo murmured, and in that instant knew to whom he was speaking. A wave of feeling passed over him that he could not quite identify.