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ever met, but when she became intense, there was a passion in her that, he had learned from experience, had to be handled carefully. He was no ladies’ man, but he was a sensible husband, which is more difficult. “Darling, the kids are my home. You and them—not the house. That’s just the shell. When I married you I wasn’t marrying a pig in a poke—”
    â€œJust a pig in plainclothes.” He could have bitten his tongue. Jokes, especially feeble ones, should never be fired on a battlefield as dangerous as a domestic.
    â€œDon’t joke!” She slammed the table with her fist.
    He reached across and put his hand on her wrist; he could feel the tension quivering in her. “I’m sorry, darl. That slipped out—I’m as on edge as you are—”
    She turned her arm, unclenched her fist and took his hand in hers, “I know. What I was trying to say was, I knew what I was getting into when I married you. I’ve worried myself sick a dozen times since then, wondering if you were all right. All I’ve had to hang on to, my rock, if you like, has been this— She waved her free hand about her, but without taking her gaze from his face. “This house, the children. I can’t explain it, maybe only a woman would understand—”
    â€œNo, I understand.” And he did; this was his rock, too. “But if you won’t leave here, let the kids go. Your parents won’t mind having them—” But he could already imagine what his own mother would feel at not being able to take them into the small, narrow house in Erskineville. It was the house in which he had been born and brought up, but it was dark, permeated with the smells of a hundred or more years of bad cooking, sibilant with the sounds of a cistern that never worked properly. It could not be compared with the large house in Vaucluse with the pool and the lush garden and the three guest bedrooms that were always ready for the children’s visits. And there would be the Pretoriuses’ two cars, ready to bring the children across to school at Randwick each morning. But even as he posed the sensible alternative, he felt he was losing his independence, that somehow he was failing his kids. “It’ll only be for a few days at the most—”
    â€œThen if it’s only going to be for a few days, we’ll stay together.” She took away her hand. “We’ll have the police protection.”
    He knew there was no use in further argument. “Righto. But I don’t want the kids walking to school. Borrow your mother’s car and drive them there. One of the uniformed men can go with you.”
    â€œI’ve already borrowed it, it’s outside.”
    He might have known. If she were still at home in Holland, she would inspect the dykes daily, never relying on anyone else’s word.
    III
    As he was backing his Commodore out into the street, Keith Cayburn came out of his front gate and approached him. “We had a meeting of Neighbourhood Watch last night, Scobie. If there’s anything we can do . . .”
    Form a circle of wagons around my house . . . “I think everything’s under control, Keith. I’m asking for police surveillance for a few days, it’s standard procedure.”
    Cayburn looked dubiously at the police car at the kerb. He was a lean, tall man with thinning yellow hair and bright blue eyes, that, though not furtive, had a tendency never to be still; perhaps, Malone sometimes thought, it came from his occupation. He was a high-school principal, who looked upon all teenagers as potential evil-doers and so ran a good, tight school. Decency ran through him like a water-mark, but he had no illusions that it ran unbroken through society at large. He warned his students of the worst, yet he had been shocked by what had happened next door in the Malones’.
    â€œ It’s a bit unsettling, Scobie. Cops camped on your