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tie. Though he seldom talked about God or the universe, he held an unshakeable belief in the transmigration of souls. He was fairly certain that, three centuries ago, he had been a lutenist at the court of the Danish King, Christian IV. In this incarnation, he had been persecuted in a way that he found both absurd andreprehensible. The story of this persecution he would tell only to people he trusted to understand its significance.
    His cricket bats were works of sculpture. He fancifully thought of them as shrouded figures or again sometimes as musical instruments. No two were precisely the same, yet the Harker stamp was on them all. Brand new, they seemed already subtly moulded by usage and time. Their sounds against the ball had a gratifying, recognisable sweetness. An industry of one, the name of Harker was known around the cricketing counties. Players came from as far away as Yorkshire to be measured for a Harker bat.
    Married once and long ago divorced, Harker had reached a plateau in his life, what he called ‘level ground’, from which he could see both forwards and behind. He did not expect to be dislodged from this place. Any significant interruption to his routine was unimaginable to him. He told his few friends that the only event of any importance awaiting him was his death and rebirth. He had an affinity with hunted creatures, with dying breeds. He loved woodland. He wondered whether he might not return as a fox.
    And then, in the autumn of 1954, something began to happen to him. Down in the cellar, apparently absorbed at his workbench, among the solid shadows, he noticed in himself a little worm of inattention, minuscule at first, but growing fatter, squirming more uncomfortably inside him with each succeeding day. His mind, his hands, the row of lamps, the wood, the toolbench, the tins of oil – for years these had been as one, a still life. Now, his mind was, almost imperceptibly, leaving the picture, departing upwards and lodging in the rooms above. With Irene.
    He was shocked. He reviled himself. He rose earlier and began his work sooner so that he wouldn’t see her when she arrived at nine. He locked the cellar door. He turned out all his lamps except one. He got out his calligraphy books and redesigned the Harker trademark. He sat very still at his desk. Being motionless was his way of pretending to Irene and to himself that he wasn’t there at all. Only when he heard Irenevacuuming would he allow himself to make a little deliberate noise. He would hum snatches of Bach: ‘Pom. Tiddly-tiddly-tiddly pom. Tiddly-tiddly-tiddly-tiddly-tiddly-tiddly pom pom pom …’ Bach was orderliness and calm. Irene’s hoover was anarchy roaring over his carpets.
    As winter came on and the skies were draped in the flat, grey blanket he so detested, he decided he would go abroad for a month, to Marseilles, and take a room with a balcony in a quiet hotel. He would sit on this balcony and sip Pernod and in the sunshine cure himself of his wandering thoughts. He telephoned Thomas Cook & Son. He booked himself a ferry passage and a wagon-lit from Boulogne to Marseilles. He bought a panama hat.
    Irene came gradually to believe that it was Pearl who was alienating Mr Harker. A man with no children, living like a bachelor, you could understand that he didn’t want a three-year-old in his house: the noise of her feet, the things she sang to herself, her fingermarks on the furniture. And yet there was nothing Irene could do. The school would not take Pearl until she was four and she refused to leave her at home by herself. Both her neighbours were elderly and disapproved of Pearl’s very existence. Estelle might have cared for her, but the farm was a long way from Swaithey and, besides, Estelle had told Irene she was ‘retreating’. She wouldn’t say more. She was retreating into the shade was all she’d say. And she said it brightly, in a sing-song voice, as if she were announcing a new malted beverage on the