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plough. In return for that we give him our protection. We protect him from his enemies, the lions and tigers who want to kill him.’
    â€˜And who protects the lions and the tigers?’
    â€˜No one. Lions and tigers refuse to work for us, so we don’t protect them. They have to protect themselves.’
    â€˜Are there lions and tigers here?’
    â€˜No. Their day is over. Lions and tigers have gone away. Gone into the past. If you want to find lions and tigers, you will have to look in books. Oxen too. The day of the ox is all but over. Nowadays we have machines to do the work for us.’
    â€˜They should invent a machine to pick olives. Then you and Inés wouldn’t have to work.’
    â€˜That’s true. But if they invented a machine to pick olives then olive-pickers like us would have no jobs and therefore no money. It is an old argument. Some people are on the side of the machines, some on the side of the hand-pickers.’
    â€˜I don’t like work. Work is boring.’
    â€˜In that case, you are lucky to have parents who don’t mindworking. Because without us you would starve, and you wouldn’t enjoy that.’
    â€˜I won’t starve. Roberta will give me food.’
    â€˜Yes, no doubt—out of the goodness of her heart she will give you food. But do you really want to live like that: on the charity of others?’
    â€˜What is charity?’
    â€˜Charity is other people’s goodness, other people’s kindness.’
    The boy regards him oddly.
    â€˜You can’t rely endlessly on other people’s kindness,’ he pursues. ‘You have to give as well as take, otherwise there will be no evenness, no justice. Which kind of person do you want to be: the kind who gives or the kind who takes? Which is better?’
    â€˜The kind who takes.’
    â€˜Really? Do you really believe so? Is it not better to give than to take?’
    â€˜Lions don’t give. Tigers don’t give.’
    â€˜And you want to be a tiger?’
    â€˜I don’t want to be a tiger. I am just telling you. Tigers aren’t bad.’
    â€˜Tigers aren’t good either. They aren’t human, so they are outside goodness and badness.’
    â€˜Well, I don’t want to be human either.’
    I don’t want to be human either . He recounts the conversation to Inés. ‘It disturbs me when he talks like that,’ he says. ‘Have we made a big mistake, removing him from school, bringing him up outside society, letting him run around wild with other children?’
    â€˜He is fond of animals,’ says Inés. ‘He doesn’t want to be like us, sitting and worrying about the future. He wants to be free.’
    â€˜I don’t think that is what he means by not wanting to be human,’ he says. But Inés is not interested.
    Roberta arrives bearing a message: they are invited to tea with the sisters, at four o’clock, in the big house. David should come too.
    From her suitcase Inés brings out her best dress and the shoes that go with it. She frets over the state of her hair. ‘I haven’t seen a hairdresser since we left Novilla,’ she says. ‘I look like a madwoman.’ She makes the boy put on his frilled shirt and the shoes with buttons, though he complains they are too small and hurt his feet. She wets his hair and brushes it straight.
    Promptly at four o’clock they present themselves at the front door. Roberta leads them down a long corridor to the rear of the house, to a room cluttered with little tables and stools and knick-knacks. ‘This is the winter parlour,’ says Roberta. ‘It gets afternoon sun. Sit down. The sisters will be along shortly. And please, no mention of the ducks—you remember?—the ducks the other boy killed.’
    â€˜Why?’ says the boy.
    â€˜Because it will upset them. They have soft hearts. They are good people. They want the farm to be