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and brown and capable, with dirt engrained, and fingernails worn from gardening and peeling potatoes and scraping carrots. She could feel Eustace's eyes upon her. She could not bear him to be sorry for her.
    He said, "What happened?"
    "He was killed in a car accident. He was drowned."
    "Drowned?"
    "We have this river, you see, at Kirkton . . . that's where we live in Scotland. The river runs between the house and the road, you have to go over the bridge. And he was coming home and he skidded, or misjudged the turn, and the car went through the wooden railings and into the river. We'd had a lot of rain, a wet month, and the river was in spate and the car went to the bottom. A diver had to go down . . . with a cable. And the police eventually winched it out ..." Her voice trailed off.
    He said gently, "When?"
    "Three months ago."
    "Not long."
    "No. But there was so much to do, so much to see to. I don't know what's happened to the time. And then I caught this bug—a sort of 'flu, and I couldn't throw it off, so my mother-in-law said that she'd have the children in London and I came down here to stay with Alice."
    "When are you going away again?"
    "I don't know."
    He was silent. After a little he picked up his glass and drained his beer. As he set it down he said, "Have you got a car here?"
    "Yes." She pointed. "The blue Triumph."
    "Then finish that drink and we'll go back to Penfolda." Virginia turned her head and stared at him. "Well, what's so extraordinary about that? It's dinner time. There are pasties in the oven. Do you want to come back and eat one with me?"
    ". . . Yes."
    "Then come. I've got my Land-Rover. You can follow me."
    "All right."
    He stood up. "Come along, then."
    3
    She had been to Penfolda once before, only once, and then in the cool half-light of a spring evening ten years before.
    "We've been invited to a party," Alice had announced over lunch that day.
    Virginia's mother was immediately intrigued. She was immensely social and with a seventeen-year-old daughter to launch into society one only had to mention a party to capture her attention.
    "How very nice! Where? Who with?"
    Alice laughed at her. Alice was one of the few people who could laugh at Rowena Parsons and get away with it, but then Alice had known her for years.
    "Don't get too excited. It's not really your sort of thing."
    "My dear Alice, I don't know what you mean. Explain!"
    "Well, it's a couple called Barnet. Amos and Fenella Barnet. You may have heard of him. He's a sculptor, very modern, very avant-garde. They've taken one of the old studios in Porthkerris, and they have a great number of rather unconventional children."
    Without waiting to hear more Virginia said. "Why don't we go?" They sounded exactly the sort of people she was always longing to meet.
    Mrs. Parsons allowed a small frown to show between her beautifully aligned eyebrows. "Is the party in the studio?" she inquired, obviously suspecting doctored drinks and doped cigarettes.
    "No, it's out at Lanyon at a farm called Penfolda, some sort of a barbecue on the cliffs. A camp fire and fried sausages ..." Alice saw that Virginia was longing to go. "... I think it might be rather fun."
    "I think it sounds terrible," said Mrs. Parsons.
    "I didn't think you'd want to come. But Tom and I might go, and we'll take Virginia with us."
    Mrs. Parsons turned her cool gaze upon her daughter. "Do you want to go to a barbecue?"
    Virginia shrugged. "It might be fun." She had learned, long ago, that it never paid to be too enthusiastic about anything.
    "Very well," said her mother, helping herself to lemon pudding. "If it's your idea of an amusing evening and Alice and Tom don't mind taking you along . . . but for heaven's sake wear something warm. It's bound to be freezing. Far too cold, one would have thought, for a picnic."
    She was right. It was cold. A clear turquoise evening with the shoulder of Carn Edvor silhouetted black against the western sky and a chill inland wind to nip the air.