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it to come later in life. Not so late that he has too little time to appreciate it. But not so soon that he has too little experience to appreciate it. It was not the first time he had thought this, but it was the first time today and that, he considered, was a sort of progress.
    Stanton worked. As he had no curtains he woke with the sun and instead of turning the sheets up over his head he rose and went to the table. The days lengthened. Soon it seemed that he had hardly got to bed before the sun came calling. Still he rose and would not be beaten. In the afternoons he reviewed what he had written and held despair at bay with savage cuts and a bottle of the local brandy. Dieter learned to stay away until after five. Sometimes they drank on the terrace, more often they went to the village. Dieter found a woman. Dutch, big-boned, with a disappointed face. ‘It is ridiculous,’ she would say. ‘These Portuguese.’ Tapping two fingers on the table, Dieter nodding along. Stanton’s silence, he supposed, appeared as affirmation but he did not care. All their complaining was a tonic, an inoculation against this estrangeiro malaise.
    The Potts girl haunted the village. She was always on her own. Even when she was with people she was by herself. Stanton saw her in the bar next door to the Casa do Povo, sitting on a table, feet on a chair, pretending not to notice the local lads looking up her skirt. She wore tie-dye skirts with tasselled fringes wrapped low on her darkening belly, a charm bracelet on each wrist and always the sunglasses. She never looked too clean. Stanton saw her in the pharmacy buying plasters and when he heard her speak it took a few seconds before he understood that it was not only her accent that thickened the words. She turned round and stepped right up to him. She smelled of earth. The sunglasses hid her eyes. There was a little mole right beneath her nose. She spoke to him in English. ‘You seen enough now?’ Congested vowels and macerated diction. She must lip-read, thought Stanton. ‘Yes,’ he said, without making a sound.
    For a while Jay seemed to live in the woods. Stanton had to walk the other way if he wanted to be alone. Then school finished for the summer and the boy started dropping round to the house. ‘I’m working,’ Stanton said. ‘I know,’ said Jay. ‘I’ll just be in the garden.’ Stanton did not want him in his garden. ‘I’ll do some work for you,’ Jay said. ‘Clear some weeds or something.’ They looked down into the garden, the small orchard of lemons and oranges and peaches choked with brambles, the oleander collapsing under its own weight, the rest of the ground rubbed red and brown in the heat. ‘Or I can get your shopping for you. I’m good at shopping.’
    Sometimes he hung around, climbing the fruit trees or bouncing a ball on the terrace. Other days Stanton sat with him and talked about football or Spiderman or animals. ‘When I grow up,’ said Jay with doomed earnestness, ‘I want to work with animals.’
    ‘Vet?’ said Stanton, being unkind.
    ‘No,’ said Jay. ‘I don’t think I’ll get all them exams.’
    Stanton was sorry. ‘Ah, well. There’s lots of ways of working with animals. I bet you’re good with animals.’
    ‘I’ve got a puppy. Do you want to come and see it? I take the goats out sometimes, you know, graze them and I feed the pigs. Me mum feeds the chickens. Don’t ask me why.’
    ‘Why?’ said Stanton.
    ‘I don’t know,’ said Jay, creasing his toasted freckled face. ‘Don’t ask me.’
    He always left before Stanton said it was time to go, as if he could see the clouds gathering. And he said little about his family. It was pleasant, Stanton guessed, to take a break from being the Potts boy.
    Chrissie came looking for him one day. Stanton watched the Renault 4 splutter over the gravel and knew it would be her. ‘I’m Chrissie,’ she said, ‘Jay’s mum.’
    ‘Yes. Harry Stanton.’
    They stood there. Chrissie held