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and look! The river's come
back,' he said cheerfully as they sped away again up
towards the valley road to the moor. 'Fantastic!'
    'Only it's not the same river,' she said. 'This is the
River Exe. Our river is the Barle.'
    He laughed at that, as she had meant him to.
'Nice to have your very own river as well as your
very own room,' he commented. 'I rather envy you
Hester as well. My godparents have never shown
much interest in me. I like Hester. She has that
self-contained serenity of the true academic or,
perhaps, a nun.'
    'How odd that you should say that.' Clio sounded
startled. 'Hester wanted to be a nun when she was
young, but somehow it didn't work out.'
    'Really?' He was intrigued. 'I wonder why not.'
    'I've no idea. She has a cousin, Blaise, who is a
chaplain to a convent of contemplative nuns in
the north of England. She adores him and I have
to say he is utter heaven. Anyway, after the war,
when Blaise took Holy Orders, I think that Hester
decided to try the contemplative life for herself but
she gave it all up before she'd finished her novitiate
and went to university instead.'
    'And that worked for her?'
    'Oh, yes. Her father was a Cambridge don and
her brother Edward and Blaise were at Cambridge
so you might say that academia was in the genes.
The whole family had a passion – well, Hester still
does – for the poetry of John Clare. She wrote quite
an important book about him back in the seventies
when he was still very underrated. There's been a
resurgence since, so I understand, but old Hes was
a real mover and shaker of her time.'
    'Was she in love with Blaise?'
    Clio glanced at him, almost shocked. 'I've no
idea. Why do you ask?'
    'I don't know.' He hunched slightly in his seat, as
if thinking something through. 'It's just odd that
she should suddenly want to go into a convent, I
suppose, unless it was because he was unavailable.'
    'She might have had a vocation.' Clio sounded
faintly defensive.
    'But she didn't, did she? Or she'd have stayed.
I'm sorry if I sound inquisitive or rude. It's just that
I'm really hooked by all of it, I don't know why.'
    Clio shook her head. 'I think you can see a play
coming out of it. Or a treatment. Or whatever you
call it.'
    Jonah grinned, seized by the mysterious, magical
excitement of a new creation revealing itself to him.
'You could be right,' he answered, and then leaned
forward in his seat as the car turned off the lane
and into the drive, which wound across the wild
open heath.
    Michaelgarth stood high above them, strong and
invulnerable on the bracken-covered slopes, looking
beyond Porlock Common to the sea.
    'It's wonderful, isn't it?' asked Clio, following his
gaze.
    He nodded. 'We were all rather surprised when
Lizzie decided to move to Exmoor,' he told her. 'A
lot of people split their lives between town and
country, of course, but Lizzie seemed so settled in
her little house in Bristol. I believe she still uses it
when she's working but it came as a shock to hear
that she was going to marry a man who lived and
worked on Exmoor and was planning to spend all
her spare time there. Now I can understand why
she loves it here so much. It's not just the house, is
it? The whole place is just magic.'
    'I quite agree but we mustn't forget that Piers
has something to do with it too,' said Clio mischievously.
    She drove through the archway into the old
garth and parked the car in the open-fronted barn.
Michaelgarth had been built on the ruins of an old
priory. High walls connected the house to the
stables and barns so that the ancient cobbles were
enclosed and the whole was possessed by a sense of
peace and timelessness. Climbing out of the car,
Clio and Jonah crossed the garth and went together
into the house.

CHAPTER FOUR
    As soon as she had deposited Jonah safely with
Lizzie and her other guests, Clio asked if she
could make a telephone call. She knew that Peter
would be at the London flat, his habit being to stop
there for coffee and what he called a 'Russian