‘I’m hot,’ said Joe and, feeling gently round the back of Nancy ’s neck, ‘you’re hot too. Can you think of any reason why we shouldn’t swim – I mean – is it safe?’

‘Safe?’ said Nancy, breathlessly. ‘Oh, I think so. As high as this it’s very cold and surely safe to drink.’

‘I didn’t mean that,’ said Joe. ‘What about water snakes?’

‘Well, if you get in first and splash about a bit it ought to be safe for me.’

She turned about and stood very close to Joe, her hands on his shoulders. ‘I have never swum alone with a man in my life and, come to think of it, I’ve never undressed in broad daylight with a man either. Perhaps this hasn’t meant much to you – I’ve no idea of your private life – but I’ll tell you, it’s meant a very great deal to me. More I expect than you could conceivably imagine. And we aren’t within miles of the end of our investigation but I can see that there will be an end and then you’ll go back to your London flat and I’ll go back – I’ve never been away – to my life as the Collector’s wife. And happy enough to be that. But something important will have happened to me. Tell me, if you can, will you be sad when we have to say goodbye to each other? Because goodbye is what we’re going to have to say. I shan’t die but I shall be sad and I’d like you to be a bit sad too.’

‘ Nancy, you don’t know the half of it!’ said Joe. ‘The moment hasn’t come but I know it’s coming fast and I shall be very sad. This is the Land of Regrets all right! And I think you’re wonderful… I think you’re very beautiful. But much more than that, I think you’re bright and clever and brave and…’ There was a long pause. ‘I’d trust you with anything. I’d trust you with my life.’

‘That’s a very nice thing to say. I shall treasure it – when it came to the point, you’d trust me with anything. What more could anyone expect to hear? And I’d say exactly the same thing to you.’

For reply, Joe kissed her for a very long time, clumsily trying to unbutton her shirt as he did so.

‘Come on, Joe! For a man with your savoir vivre you’re a terrible unbuttoner! Let me do it. You could be unbuttoning yourself if you like,’ she added and then, in a conversational tone, “These have to be the least erotic clothes we could have chosen! And you haven’t seen it all yet! Not knowing – or rather not being certain – how the day was going to turn out, I’m wearing the most sensible pair of knickers I possess! Just the thing for riding but…’ her voice trailed away while they kissed each other some more, and she finally concluded in a slightly strangled voice, ‘… but not what I’d choose for dalliance.’

‘And I’m not dressed for dalliance either,’ said Joe. ‘In the best of circumstances, it takes me a very long time to get out of these jodhpurs!’

They emerged at last, naked, and hand in hand on the edge of the pool.

‘Swim first?’ said Joe.

‘Yes,’ said Nancy, glancing down at him in some embarrassment, ‘but only if you can contain yourself.’

‘All clear of snakes, are we?’

Nancy stepped off the edge of the rock they were standing on, straight into deep water, and Joe jumped after her. The water was surprisingly cold. Nancy looked down at him once more. ‘Not such a big boy, after all,’ she said. ‘Does that always happen in cold water?’

He looked down with appreciation at Nancy, turned to jade green under the water. ‘You look like a bronze statue,’ he said. ‘Do Indians have Naiads? If so, you will always be the Naiad of this pool and I will always leave a bit of my heart here.’

‘Yes,’ said Nancy, ‘I believe you will.’

They swam the circuit of their pool; they stood for a moment under the waterfall.

‘Bronze, ivory and coral,’ said Joe. ‘Bronze curls, ivory skin…’

‘And coral?’

‘Coral nipples,’ said Joe, stooping to kiss them.

‘The cold water shrinkage system doesn’t seem to be working,’ Nancy said. ‘Time to be ashore.’

Joe made an untidy pile of their clothes and, hand in hand, they sank down on this. Nancy was, to Joe, exotic and familiar; exotic because strange, familiar from their night in Calcutta, tasting as he had remembered and smelling as sweet as he had remembered. They made love with much passion, punctuated by Nancy who squeaked an inconsequential question requiring no answer. At last they fell apart from each other and lay back, each wrapped in silent thought.

After a few minutes Nancy began to stir and abruptly sat up. ‘Tell you something, Joe,’ she said. ‘I’m hungry!’

‘Good Lord! That’s right. So am I! I’d forgotten – we’ve got a perfectly good picnic.’

They settled together to lay out their picnic on a cool flat rock, with appreciative murmurs from Joe as he unpacked sandwiches, two bottles of the inevitable India Pale Ale and a mango each accompanied by a silver fruit knife and fork.

They ate in companionable silence, neither feeling the need to fill the gaps with inconsequential chatter, each lost in thoughts for the moment unsharable.

‘No coffee, I’m afraid,’ said Nancy at last.

‘Who wants coffee?’ said Joe, leaning over to lick an errant drop of mango juice from between her breasts.

‘I do, actually,’ she replied. ‘But there’s something I want more than coffee and that’s you.’ Flushing slightly at her own boldness, she added hurriedly, ‘Look, I’m not sure how men… how you… work. Is this all right?’

‘It depends who you’re with,’ said Joe. ‘I’ll tell you – with you it’s abundantly all right!’

As they rode slowly back together Nancy said, ‘Tell me, Joe – I don’t know anything about you. Where do you come from? What’s your world? What’s your family?’

‘I wondered when you’d get around to checking my pedigree!’ he said easily. ‘I’m from Selkirk, the River Etrick, a place called Drumaulbin on the Borders. My father has a place there. It’s quite big – three farms really – but even so there isn’t enough to support two sons in affluence and I left it to my older brother to take care of and went to read Law in Edinburgh. But then the war came along and I joined the Scots Fusiliers. I and half a dozen lads from Drumaulbin all joined up together and set off south. Blue bonnets over the border, you might say.’

‘But you didn’t go back to the Law after the war?’

‘No. By that time I’d got so identified with the Fusilier Jocks I wanted to do something for them which I didn’t think I could do as a douce Writer for the Signet, called to the Scottish bar, so, after a certain amount of thought, I joined the police.’

‘Now why on earth should you do that? I mean, it’s not the place where you’d expect to find a gentleman, is it?’

‘Well, I thought, in general, boys like the ones I was fighting with have a pretty rotten deal one way or another. I thought I could do more good as a bobby than as a lawyer.’

‘What nonsense! Men don’t join the police to do good!’

‘Don’t judge us all by the example of Bulstrode! But you’re partly right. I had another compulsion. I was wounded in the trenches – shot through the shoulder…’

‘I noticed! Someone did a good repair.’

‘But while I was away from the front recuperating they kept me busy. I was given intelligence work to do. Interrogation of prisoners. I found I was rather good at it and when I came out I wanted to do more. There’s been a big shake-up in the police force since the war. Everyone has a picture of friendly but stern blue-caped bobbies ticking little boys off for stealing apples but it’s not like that at all. There are so many changes, so many developments – fingerprinting, telegraph communication, the flying squad – and I want to be there in the forefront pushing the force in the right direction!’

‘Goodness! I hadn’t realised you were such a missionary!’

‘Missionary?’ Joe laughed. ‘I believe it’s time the police force stopped being a servant of the aristocracy and became the guardian of society and that sounds very pompous so I suppose you’re right. I am a sort of social missionary.’