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would do. He just
smiled but didn’t say anything.’
    ‘Is he dumb or something that he doesn’t speak?’ Lorna asked.
    ‘Not at all,’ said Dougie. ‘He’s not at all dumb. He just doesn’t want to speak at all.’
    ‘That’s really odd, isn’t it, Edward,’ said Lorna. One couldn’t imagine her not speaking.
    ‘It is,’ said Edward.
    ‘Still,’ said Dougie, ‘if he’s got the money I’m not going to refuse him his provisions.’
    ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I suppose you’re right.’
    ‘How do you mean?’ said Dougie, as if he had detected some hint of argumentativeness in my voice.
    ‘It’s just,’ I said, ‘that he doesn’t seem to care for the village. He belongs to it and he doesn’t belong to it. He’s a villager and he
isn’t.’
    ‘Well,’ Dougie answered, ‘he’s a man anyway. He’s a human being.’
    ‘I suppose,’ I said, ‘it depends on how you define a man.’
    ‘I don’t understand,’ said Dougie again.
    ‘Well,’ I persisted, as if driven by an inner compulsion, ‘a man is someone who lives in society. He can’t be said to live in society.’
    ‘That’s true in a way,’ said Lorna as if thinking deeply and trying to follow what we were saying. Her husband was taking it all in, his hand round his glass which had still
quite a lot of whisky in it.
    ‘Yes,’ said Dougie, ‘but you’re not going to say that because he doesn’t bother with the village I shouldn’t sell him provisions.’
    ‘And there’s another thing,’ I said. And I told them about Kenneth John and what the Clamhan had told me.
    Lorna looked at me in astonishment or pretended astonishment. ‘Well, there seems to be goings on without doubt. And where is he now?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ I said and then speaking to Edward, ‘He used to be in the Merchant Navy, you know, in his youth. He was all over the world. Hong Kong, Valparaiso, the
lot. He’s well over seventy now and he just went and left his wife like that. He took the bus and he wouldn’t speak to anyone and he went off to town and no one’s heard of him
since.’
    ‘Isn’t that extraordinary?’ said Lorna, finishing her vodka. ‘Isn’t that quite extraordinary?’ Her husband agreed that it was.
    ‘You say he was over seventy?’ he said.
    ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and he left his wife. He had apparently been saying that he should be like the hermit, fancy free. Of course he never really settled down.’
    ‘More of us should do that,’ said Dougie jokingly as he refilled the glasses again, including mine. ‘More of us should do that. Leave our wives, I mean. A lot of people want to
do that.’
    ‘Do you want to do that?’ said Lorna to her husband.
    ‘No, I’m quite happy. In any case, I’m in the Navy already.’
    ‘I’ll tell you something though,’ said Dougie whose voice was becoming even more slurred and his face redder. ‘It’s a question of principle, isn’t it? I mean
if the hermit – whoever he is – wants provisions from me I’m bound to sell them to him. Else why was I fighting the Germans, tell me that.’
    ‘That’s a point,’ said Lorna brightly, looking from me to him as if she were watching a tennis match.
    Dougie repeated what he had said.
    ‘After all, we’re living in a democracy, aren’t we? At least, that’s what they call it.’
    Democracy, I thought. Is cancer a democracy? Cancer is what destroys the unity of the cells, the Greek polis. Maybe the hermit was a cancer. Was that what he was?
    ‘Still,’ I said, ‘if a lot of people start to leave their wives because of him that will be something else again. You won’t find the women talking about
democracy.’
    Dougie was about to say something, I felt sure, about women not being democratic anyway but then looking at Lorna he stopped himself in time and merely remarked, ‘Well, all I can say is
what did I fight the Germans for? I’ll tell you,’ he went on forcefully, ‘I fought the Germans so that hermits can buy their