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before—and more knowledge, more truth by way of science, was never so available to us all? When tender sympathies—for children, animals, alien religions, unknown, distant foreigners—swell daily? When hundreds of millions have been raised from wretched subsistence? When, in the West, even the middling poor recline in armchairs, charmed by music as they steer themselves down smooth highways at four times the speed of a galloping horse? When smallpox, polio, cholera, measles, high infant mortality, illiteracy, public executions and routine state torture have been banished from so many countries? Not so long ago, all these curses were everywhere. When solar panels and wind farms and nuclear energy and inventions not yet known will deliver us from the sewage of carbon dioxide, and GM crops will save us from the ravages of chemical farming and the poorest from starvation? When the worldwide migration to the cities will return vast tracts of land to wilderness, will lower birth rates, and rescue women from ignorant village patriarchs? What of the commonplace miracles that would make a manual labourer the envy of Caesar Augustus: pain-free dentistry, electric light, instant contact with people we love, with the best music the world has known, with the cuisine of a dozen cultures? We’re bloated with privileges and delights, as well as complaints, and the rest who are not will be soon. As for the Russians, the same was said of Catholic Spain. We expected their armies on our beaches. Like most things, it didn’t happen. The matter was settled by some fireships and a useful storm that drove their fleet round the top of Scotland. We’ll always be troubled by how things are—that’s how it stands with the difficult gift of consciousness.
    Just one hymn to the golden world I’m about to possess. In my confinement I’ve become a connoisseur of collective dreams. Who knows what’s true? I can hardly collect the evidence for myself. Every proposition is matched or cancelled by another. Like everyone else, I’ll take what I want, whatever suits me.
    But these reflections have been distracting me and I’ve missed the first words of the exchange I’ve stayed awake to hear. The aubade. The alarm was minutes from sounding, Claude murmured something, my mother replied, then he spoke again. I come round, I press my ear to the wall. I feel a disturbance in the mattress. The night has been warm. Claude must be sitting up, pulling off the T-shirt he wears to bed. I hear him say he’s meeting his brother this afternoon. He’s mentioned this brother before. I should have paid more attention. But the context has generally bored me—money, accounts, taxes, debts.
    Claude says, “All his hopes are on this poet he’s signing up.”
    Poet? Very few people in the world sign up a poet. I only know of one. His
brother
?
    My mother says, “Ah yes, this woman. Forgotten her name. Writes about owls.”
    “Owls! A hot topic is owls! But I should see him tonight.”
    She says slowly, “I don’t think you should. Not now.”
    “Or he’ll come round here again. I don’t want him bothering you. But.”
    My mother says, “Nor do I. But this has to be done my way. Slowly.”
    There’s a silence. Claude takes his phone from the bedside table and pre-emptively turns off the alarm.
    Finally he says, “If I lend my brother money it’ll be good cover.”
    “But not too much. We won’t exactly be getting it back.”
    They laugh. Then Claude and his whistling make for the bathroom, my mother turns on her side and goes back to sleep, and I’m left in the dark to confront the outrageous fact and consider my stupidity.

FOUR
    When I hear the friendly drone of passing cars and a slight breeze stirs what I believe are horse chestnut leaves, when a portable radio below me tinnily rasps and a penumbral coral glow, a prolonged tropical dusk, dully illuminates my inland sea and its trillion drifting fragments, then I know that my mother is sunbathing