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was nothing more he could say.
    Mary went ahead of him through the open doorway and called for her brother.
    Mercer followed her out.
    â€˜I’m sorry if I said anything I shouldn’t have done,’ he said to her.
    â€˜If you were really worried about something like that round here, you’d never open your mouth.’
    â€˜I meant about your father.’
    â€˜I know what you meant,’ she said.
    He passed her and walked in the direction of the abandoned Light.
    â€˜Listen,’ she called to him when he was twenty feet away from her.
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Listen,’ she repeated. She cupped a hand to her ear. He turned to face in the same direction. He could hear nothing.
    â€˜You can hear the tide coming up through the shingle.’
    He listened more intently, and finally he heard the rattle of the shingle beach as it was infiltrated by the rising water.
    After that, she returned indoors.
    He continued walking to the Light, and as he did so a group of the younger children marched past him. The boy leading them saluted him, and he returned the gesture without thinking, waiting until the last of them had passed him before dropping his hand and continuing his own journey along the shore.

5
    He next encountered Jacob Haas two days later. He was inspecting foundations laid earlier in the day when the man emerged from the land beyond the diggings and came directly to him. He carried something, and as he came closer, Mercer saw that this was an instrument dial. Far behind him, towards the abandoned hangars and workshops of the airfield, several dozen giant silver bombers still sat on their wings or stood lopsidedly on their collapsed undercarriages. These were the aircraft which had either crashed there or been taken there towards the end of the war, and which had then been discarded, unrepaired and unwanted as the heavy daylight raids drew to an end. All the serviceable aircraft had been flown from the field in March of that final year.
    Jacob held up his prize for Mercer to see. ‘Altimeter,’ he said.
    â€˜What will you do with it?’
    Jacob looked puzzled for a moment and thenshrugged. ‘It just seemed to be something worth saving, something worth having.’
    Mercer guessed then that the man had come to England with considerably less than the shabby clothes on his back.
    They walked together to an iron chest half-hidden in the tall grass. The box was padlocked, and the lock rusted solid to the knotted chain it had once secured.
    â€˜Is this your hidden treasure?’ Mercer asked him, tapping the top of the chest.
    â€˜Flares to signal to the returning aircraft. Any plane without its undercarriage properly lowered, or which looked as though it might crash on landing, was warned off, diverted elsewhere so as not to block the runway for the others. What a decision for someone to have to make.’
    Only then did it occur to Mercer that Jacob could have seen none of this at the time, that he had arrived long after the airfield had been decommissioned. Then, and later, as he learned more of the man, he saw how he put down these shallow roots into this past that was not his own.
    A drain ran nearby, pipes protruding from a clay bank out of which water flowed. They talked about the building work. Jacob told him about the demolition of the runway. There was a gang of men there now, and the noise of their pneumatic drills and steam hammers carried on the still air.
    â€˜Do they mind you taking stuff from the planes?’
    â€˜They don’t see me. I know as well as anyone how the military mind works. You know what would happen. They would rather everything lay there and rotted to rust and dirt than that parts of it should ever be retrieved and put to some use again.’
    Mercer nodded. He could not conceive to whatpossible use the altimeter might now be put.
    â€˜I met the girl’s mother,’ he said.
    â€˜Oh?’
    â€˜The other night. I introduced