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breeze blew up and this signalled the end of their socializing. The same breeze camemost evenings, and with it the sky over the sea quickly darkened.
    He waited with Mary and Elizabeth Lynch until the last of the others had returned to their homes.
    â€˜Are the men out?’ he asked the woman.
    â€˜Somewhere,’ she said. She looked around her.
    It had become apparent to him upon his arrival that two societies existed here, that the men and women formed naturally separate groups, even when they congregated together. Until the war there had been a manned Light and a small fleet of inshore boats at the place, but now the Light had been replaced by the automatic beacon, and the few small boats that remained, though used occasionally, were largely in a state of disrepair, and no longer provided even the precarious living upon which the men had once depended. The channel through the shingle upon which these vessels were launched was filling with silt and the boats were pulled out of the water and left where they lay on the beach. He looked now and counted four of them there. Beside them lay a sand-filled tangle of broken and discarded crab- and lobster-pots.
    Elizabeth Lynch indicated to him that it was time for them to return indoors.
    Mary picked up the package from the wall, but as she did so she caught a metal rod which protruded from the brick and the box tore, spilling the tins to the ground. One of these fractured along its seam and a pale green liquid began to bubble out.
    â€˜I’ll give you a hand to carry them,’ Mercer said. He sensed the woman’s reluctance to accept, and rather than be rejected by her, he started gathering the cans into his folded arm. Mary copied him, until between them they held them all.
    Elizabeth Lynch led the way to the house. Once inside, she cleared a space on the table for the cans.
    He was surprised by the cramped, sparse nature of the room, but was careful to give no indication of this. A threadbare carpet covered only half the floor, and a pile of driftwood and broken casing lay piled on either side of the hearth. The latter had been scavenged from the workings. A wireless set played softly on a sideboard. And beside it stood a photograph of a man in uniform.
    Still sensing the woman’s unease at finding him so suddenly in her home, he picked up the photograph and said, ‘Your husband? Mary told me he was still in the Army.’
    The woman looked immediately at the girl, who looked away.
    â€˜He wanted to know,’ Mary said. ‘He asked me. I didn’t just tell him.’
    Mercer was at a loss to understand this sudden alarm. The woman looked hard at the photograph he held, willing him to return it to the sideboard, which he did.
    â€˜I didn’t mean to appear—’
    â€˜Nosy?’ she said. ‘As though you were any different from any of the others they sent to see us?’ She stopped abruptly. Her eyes moved all around him.
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ he said. He imagined that the man expected shortly to return was not in fact coming home, that something had happened between the two of them during his absence, and that the talk of his return was now a fiction maintained only for the sake of his children or the others.
    He could think of nothing to say to her that would not upset her further.
    â€˜I’ll leave,’ he said.
    Mary, who had been standing between him and the open door during all this, stepped aside. It seemed suddenly much cooler inside the small room. A scratchy violin played on the wireless; a woman sang in a deep and melancholic foreign language. The last light of the falling sun in the doorway blinded him.
    He made a final gesture towards the woman.
    â€˜She told me only that he was still away in the Army and that he was soon to return,’ he said.
    â€˜In twenty-four days,’ Elizabeth Lynch said, surprising him by this concision, and convincing him even further that it was a fiction.
    There