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that way, his desire for Fern becomes ridiculous. But her company, he argues with himself—that’s reasonable to want, simply that. He will start with that.
    Abruptly, the hail stops. Gradually, the boat slows its feverish tilting. Jack climbs to the deck. He comes back down in a moment and stands over Paul and Fern, grinning. “You still alive there, girl?”
    She gives him an impatient look. “I’m going up. I don’t care what the captain says.”
    “All clear is what he says,” says Jack, and follows her up the steep stairs.
    Paul sits alone a long time, perhaps fifteen minutes. He waits for his stomach to settle. He breathes deeply. He takes out a comb and runs it through his salt-stiffened hair.
    When at last he goes up, he is surprised by the brightness. He shades his eyes and sighs with relief. The air is like a drug, fresh as new leaves. The deck shines, and a few unmelted hailstones lie about like jewels from a broken necklace. Several passengers, none from Paul’s group, are gathered at the bow, taking pictures of Paros against the retreating storm. One by one, they take turns standing in front of this view, posing. Paul does not see Fern. Heading back toward the captain’s cabin, he recognizes her laughter. He hears her say, “You’re an octopus,” and then sees her, behind the cabin, kissing Jack like a prodigal lover she thought she had lost for all time.
    THE YEAR THE TWINS followed their brother to boarding school, Flora placed first at an important trial in Ayrshire. Colin Swift’s foreman was her handler. Maureen took a younger dog to show, and Colin drove her up. They left at dawn and did not return until midnight. Maureen woke Paul to come downstairs and drink brandy. She and Colin had been celebrating already, out with their competitors. Paul could smell the cigarettes and whisky on her breath; in the mossy dark, he saw the shape of her lips after she kissed him and tasted fresh lipstick, its familiar mixture of talcum and fruit.
    In the kitchen, they were heady with conceit, tripping over each other’s words to tell how the day had gone.
    “The outrun was wretched, wretched—”
    “A crooked course like a closed elbow, with two steep dips—”
    “She came around fast as a cheetah.” Colin lifted his glass.
    “But then the sheep closed up in a blinking knot.” Maureen squeezed one hand into a fist and brought it in toward her chest like a punch. “Made for the gate like they could taste it.”
    “Taste it!” Colin exclaimed; the two of them laughed at this absurdity.
    Maureen brought out another cigarette, to which Colin instantly offered a light. “A sight you can’t describe.”
    Paul listened to the deft volley of their narrative—brilliant to them, silly and hopelessly confusing to him. He was glad for Maureen, proud of her. But he also saw, with the distance of his confusion, something new in her, new but old, something he might have seen years before had he chosen to see it. He saw her as he had first noticed her, tending bar at the Globe, so at home among all those men: men’s work, men’s words, men’s vanities like a sea she could navigate in any vessel, any season.
    All that summer, the house was filled with noise and activity. There were more sheepdog trials, and the boys were underfoot again. Fenno was to start his first year at Cambridge. He read obsessively, huddled in corners, or brooded from room to room, complaining when his brothers invaded the house with their friends, raiding the larder before they went out to find whatever bathing hole or playing field they’d chosen as that day’s destination. When Fenno could no longer stand the close quarters with others, he would walk to the village, taking a book and one of the dogs. On a scorching afternoon late in August, Fenno went down with Silas. Silas, bounding ahead, found Flora, and with her the foreman from Conkers. Casually, in the kitchen as Maureen served dinner, Fenno mentioned the news from town.