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could do it still, even with dummy feet. I did about a hundred hours in all. But I don't want to carry on with it, unless there was some object. Which there isn't now.'
    He smiled. 'What was it like when you got into the machine for the first time?' he asked with interest. 'Were you scared?'
    'A bit' I said. 'About as much as on my first solo. But of course, one knew it was dead safe in a pipsqueak thing like that.'
    We left the pools of the trout hatchery and walked slowly back to the Land Rover. 'Your mother's been concocting an exceptional dinner for you all day,' my father said. 'Do you want to change?'
    'She'd like it, wouldn't she?' I asked. 'What do you usually do?'
    'I generally put on a dinner jacket in the winter, when it's dark' my father said. 'In summer when one may want to go out afterwards I usually change into a suit'
    'I've got a dinner jacket in my bag' I said. The shirt's probably a bit tatty after travelling round the world. Let's change. Mother 'd like it.'
    At the house we found my mother in the drawing-room seated before the log fire, wearing a long black evening dress with a shawl round her shoulders. We stood warming ourselves, for the evening was turning chilly, and drinking a pink gin while we chatted about London and about Helen; then I went up to my room to change. In my bedroom somebody had lit a fire and left a huge basket of gum-tree logs, scenting the air with the fragrance of the burning eucalypt. Somebody, perhaps old Annie, had unpacked one suitcase and had laid out my evening clothes upon the bed.
    It struck me as I unpacked my other suitcase in my old, familiar room, savouring all my old belongings, that I would
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    be the only person sleeping on the upper floor of the main house that night. My father and mother, who had had the bedroom, dressing-room, and bathroom next to mine, now slept on the ground floor and their bedroom was now the billiard room. On the other side of the corridor to their room was the corner room that had been Helen's and was now a spare room, and next to that and separated by the second bathroom was the guest bedroom, empty tonight, of course. Beside my room there was another bathroom, and opening from that was Bill's room, very seldom used now. Bill had been killed in Normandy in the spring of 1944; by the time I got back to Coombargana my father and mother had taken all Bill's possessions and pictures out and had refurnished and redecorated the room as a second guest room, thinking perhaps that too intimate a reminder of Bill and the war in Europe would have been bad for me. Nothing of Bill remained there now, but they had forgotten the bathroom. Since 1946 I had never sat in that bath without glancing at the door into Bill's room with the thought that it would open and he would come striding in, seventeen or eighteen years old, with little or no clothes on.
    That happened to me again that evening as I bathed before dressing for dinner. Bill was still a very real person in my life, though ten years had gone by since I had met him last, at Lymington in Hampshire, and sixteen years since we had shared that bathroom. One does not easily forget one's only brother.
    As I sat in the bath thinking of these things and enjoying the benison of hot water after days spent in the aeroplane and in the Sydney hotel, I felt a little lonely up there on the first floor by myself. I was not quite alone, of course. Beyond the stairs and the gallery that overlooked the big central hall of the house lay the servants' wing over the kitchen quarters, their bedrooms separated from those of the main house by a swing door. There were four servants' bedrooms there, relic of the days of more plentiful domestic service, and in one of these Annie, our old cook, would be sleeping that night. In another, the house parlourmaid would be sleeping now.
    I had not drawn the curtains, and there was still a little
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    light outside as I dressed before the fire. I stood for a few minutes looking out in