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the farm, and he manages to challenge his son’s virility sufficiently to force him to join him.
    My daughter peers at me closely as if examining me for skin disease. “Well, your complexion is okay. And you’ve lost some excess baggage, that’s good. Still smoking, though. You haven’t had any dizzy spells?”
    I explain to this keeper of my health that I am in excellent shape and will soon be subsisting on my own garden greens, and then I stumble my way onto a topic less comfortable. “And how is your mother?”
    â€œYou saw her the last time I did. So she hasn’t come out to see you once?”
    â€œShe has phoned a few times. She sounds well.”
    A long, desperate silence.
    â€œI think . . . I’m going to say it — you should let her go, Dad.” “Perhaps we ought to find another topic —”
    â€œStop doing it to yourself.”
    â€œDeborah —”
    But she suddenly lets flow a torrent. “I suppose she loves you in a way. It’s a form of possession, though, isn’t it, keeping you flapping on the line. It flatters the shit out of her to have you down there kissing her boots before she kicks you in the face another time.”
    â€œDeborah!”
    â€œI’m sorry, the venom is leaking.” A pause. “I care for you, Dad. Really. I love you. It’s just that I wish you’d stop being such a —” “Masochist.”
    It is one of her favourite terms of loving abuse towards her father.
    â€œOh, my God, I’m just being rotten and cranky. It’s a beautiful day, I’m in a beautiful place, and I’m happy and you’re happy, and I’m sorry.”
    â€œAh, yes. Did you bring the onion sets?”
    â€œThey’re in my bag.”
    â€œThat’s all that matters.”
    The weekend with my kin must draw mixed reviews. Deborah, I feel, enjoys herself, but her husband spends most of his time practising golf strokes with an imaginary club. He is disgruntled to learn I am not on-line; I have neither fax nor computer. But he makes do, spending many hours on long-distance calls to the bourses of exotic capitals of finance: Tokyo, Hong Kong, Paris. He is handsomely off, but has earned his money the hard way, the Canadian way, a life of unrelenting worry, fear, and pain.
    Little Nick surprises himself by finding things to do: trees to be climbed, stones to be hurled into the bay, the neighbour’s stray chickens and sheep to be chased. After he is finally led exhausted to bed, his parents and I chat near the fire over our evening tea.
    â€œHow goes the work?” I ask Deborah. “With those young . . . What is the acceptable term of the day? Clearly not mentally handicapped.”
    â€œJust call them challenged, Dad. Exhausting. I can hardly wait for summer break. Two months in Europe, right, dear?”
    Nicholas lifts a golf ball, sending it down the fairway of my living room. “Busman’s holiday. Tax-free.”
    I regale them through the evening with tales of Garibaldi and its oddball cast of characters. As we are about to depart for bed, Nicholas asks if I’ll be handling Professor O’Donnell’s case.
    â€œWhy would you ask such a question?”
    â€œJust that I heard your name mentioned. Happen to know one of the characters involved in the case.”
    â€œIndeed.”
    â€œThat girl, what’s her name . . . Kimberley Martin?”
    â€œThe complainant.”
    â€œMet her fiancé. Clarence de Remy Brown. Brown Group of Companies? Owns some gold mines in South America I’m thinkingof taking a flyer on. Hard-nosed chap, temperamental. Brought the subject up over lunch at the club. Knows your reputation, of course. Asked me if you were taking the trial. All sort of awkward.”
    â€œNo, I shall not be involved in that case.”
    Today’s visitor is our island trustee, the twitchy Kurt Zoller, who is again, for some enigmatic