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of an agonized anxiety. Arthur would see her looking at Jake with an expression almost of despair, as if she expected him to vanish at any moment, torn from her arms by some dark force. It didn’t help that Jake was a sickly child, prone to colds and high temperatures. Or maybe he wasn’t really sickly—maybe it was her fear. One cough from the baby and she sent Arthur’s father to fetch the doctor, and the doctor’s old car would come lurching its way down their driveway, windshield wipers battling against the snow.
    “Babies are tougher than they look.” That was what Dr. Christopherson said. He said it many times, patiently, attempting to reassure her. But she was not to be reassured. Each new phase of Jake’s development brought a whole new host of dangers, so many of them that Arthur wondered how he himself had ever survived. Once Jake started crawling, life became more perilous still. “Did I fall down those stairs, ever?” Arthur asked his mother after she had scooped Jake up from the top of the stairs—he had been some yards away, but from his mother’s face Arthur could see that it had been a near thing. But she had her face buried in Jake’s neck and didn’t hear his question.
    But he, Arthur, had probably been a big tough baby. If he had fallen downstairs he’d probably have bounced. Whereas Jake would certainly be killed.
     
     
     
    The day Jake took his first step, Arthur was formally recruited to the battle against the forces of fate. From now on, and Arthur knew this was a long-term assignment, his first and foremost job in life was to protect his little brother. In fact, he didn’t need recruiting. He already knew that his mother’s happiness depended on Jake’s well-being. Adoring her and needing her as Arthur did, what choice did he have?
    Here was another picture: himself and Jake, aged about nine and four, playing in the farmyard. Beside the barn there is a pile of empty boxes, lightweight slatted crates that their father uses for carrying lettuces and tomatoes and other row crops to the market in Struan. Arthur is building himself a castle of crates, an impressive, many-storied structure. Jake has dragged one crate away for his own purposes. Something—a sense of unease—causes Arthur to look up, toward the house. He can see the kitchen window from where he is, and he sees that his mother is standing at it, staring out at something. On her face is an expression of horror. Arthur’s heart leaps in panic. He looks in the direction of her gaze and sees that Jake has pulled the crate over to the water trough and has climbed up on it in order to see what is inside. Arthur scrambles out of his castle and flies, shouting as he goes, “Get down! Jake! Get down!” Still feet away, he launches himself at his brother, knocking him off the box and sending him sprawling and howling in the dust.
    The water in the trough was no more than nine inches deep. A mouse might have drowned in it—in fact, from time to time one did—but surely not a child. That was what Arthur’s father said—or maybe didn’t quite say, maybe just looked a little puzzled at the fuss—when he heard about the incident that evening. To Arthur, still glowing in the warmth of his mother’s gratitude, it was an academic question, since he had acted not to save Jake’s life but to rescue his mother from her fear. But in any case it turned out that his father was wrong to doubt the seriousness of the incident. A child could drown in an inch of water; Arthur’s mother had read it in a magazine. An inch of water. It had happened.
    His father didn’t argue, though Arthur could see that he had some difficulty visualizing it. He frowned to himself and narrowed his eyes. An inch of water? He studied his boots. But he didn’t argue. He bowed to his wife’s superior knowledge. Fatal accidents to children fell within her area of expertise, even Arthur knew that. There were subjects his father knew about, such as the farm, and