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counting every pubic hair as it appeared, scrutinizing my chin and armpits. I was a rapt participant in the usual trade of smut and sniggers at school. I once barged into Thompson’s room one morning to find his bed a small thrumming tent, Thompson’s eyes firmly shut, an urgent pout of pleasure on his lips. I knew what he was doing. I had been trying it avidly, vainly, myself. So was it the shadow of the adult that fell between Oonagh and myself? In any event, things were never entirely, unreflectingly the same between us again.
    “Oonagh?”
    “Aye?”
    “Do you know Mr. Verulam?”
    “Aye.”
    “What do you think of him?”
    “Well … I don’t think much of him.”
    “Why not?”
    “He’s English, isn’t he? Do I need another reason? Daft laddie.”
    “Did, ah, did my mother like him?”
    “I haven’t a notion. Now, get out of here, ’fore I dot you.”
    I did not believe her for a moment, and her evasiveness confirmed my now burgeoning suspicions. She disliked him because she knew something had gone on. I was aware too that I would get nothing further from her. I needed another source of information and I had a good idea where I could get it—Mrs. Faye Hobhouse, my mother’s younger sister.
    Faye was two years younger than my mother but had married earlier. Her husband was an Englishman, Vincent Hobhouse, a solicitor and magistrate, who lived and practiced in Charlbury, a small town near Oxford in the Windrush Valley. Faye had a look of my mother, but was taller, with a slightly ungainly pear-shaped figure. She had a pretty, even-featured face, which was given a further louche attractiveness byher heavily shadowed eyes. She always looked as if she had not slept for three days, no matter how bright and alert her demeanor. It seemed to indicate another, covert side to her personality: a latent promise of depravity beneath the veneer of dutiful wife and mother. In due time I came to find almost everything about her—her heavy hips, her small breasts, her dun curly hair—almost overpoweringly attractive.
    We did not see much of her and Vincent Hobhouse, or her three children, my cousins—Peter, Alceste and Gilda. I remember only two visits before this summer of 1912. They came in early August. Vincent Hobhouse had taken a lodge near Fort William for a shooting party. Vincent had one of the fettest faces I have ever seen, a prodigious jowl making his head quite round. From the front you could not see his collar, not even the knot of his tie. I often found myself wondering how he tied it in the morning, imagining him having to lie on his back across a bed, his head lolling over the edge like a corpse’s to allow his fingers unimpeded access to his throat. He was a quiet, charming man, prone to melancholy. He had always been stout but apparently after his wedding he had blown up like an abbot. I could never understand why he ate and drank as much as he did; it seemed quite contrary to his nature. He and Faye were an oddly matched couple but they seemed ideally content.
    Faye took a genuine affectionate interest in my welfare, rather spoiling me in fact, and, unlike the other members of my family, never giving rise to any suspicion that she blamed me for my mother’s death. Indeed, I heard later that she had offered to adopt me, but my father had declined, averring that he and Oonagh could be trusted with my upbringing.
    One evening, while they were staying with us, I showed Faye my camera and some of my photographs.
    “They’re splendid, John. Look at them, Vincent, they’re extraordinary!”
    “Good Lord,” Vincent Hobhouse said, quite astonished. He looked at me with new respect. “Why don’t you take up something like that?” he said to his son, Peter (two years older than me, a perfect snob, I thought). They occupied themselves with the prints. I turned back to Faye, watching closely.
    “I was taught by Donald Verulam,” I said quietly.
    A perceptible flinch.
    “Oh … Donald