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just left her, but about that ridiculous war. It must be over.
    The clouds became so full of the nonsense babble of good wishes and hopes that the insights she was hoping to glean about the vanishing of the man or the arrival of the baby were totally obliterated. Through the hawthorn hedge she occasionally spied on her daughter, still lying on the lawn, screaming and punching at imaginary foes. The sounds of marsh, the creeks, the guns in Blakeney and the terrified birds had not stilled the child.
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    Goose looked again at the glimpse of the open sea and knew the man was not coming back. Hands had stuck his dumb smile out from the mud and politely welcomed that mud-creature uprooting herself towards him; he’d fixed a few things, rubbed his stomach, won a few tricks in the Map and Sail, stitched a quilt, caulked and pitched a clinker boat, then sailed off into the sunset. Gone for good. But long tongues have the way of whipping up clean farewells into all sorts of complicated fictions. Norfolk claims all and confuses all issues. In the Map and Sail the men argued furiously about the stranger who used to fleece them every Friday night: - A poker whiz, yeah, sharp-shooter, reckon he come from Lou-ee-siana on one o’ them paddle yachts an’ all them furs an’ blokes with thin moustaches an’ gold teeth - He ain’t never been outta Norfolk, you prat! - So where’s he gone then, the Seagull? - Don’t you mention that place hair, you hair? - He got you too, Arthur, got you good an’ proper, hain’t he? - Don’t you come near me now, he got my watch on his wrist remember, I ain’t singin’ his praises, juss hope Annie don’t never stop believin’ that watch got dropped in the creek . . .
    As the years passed Hands became everything in turn from a conchy to a chappie sent down from Whitehall to check out Blakeney’s fighting spirit, to an agent from the brewery with a sensitive palate for tasting the water Arthur Quail added out back - Din’t you never think o’ that, Arthur? - On the run, came the answer from the publican. Learned his cards in the nick, din’t he. Kept his head down an’ din’t get pissed an’ din’t say nothin’ to no one, in case we’d blow the whistle on him. Bloke on the run from the MP. I seen his type in 1917. Hour square-bashin’ up at Catterick, two days hitchin’ rides to get away. You go on the run, where you gonna end up? - Blakeney being the obvious answer - And they’d not be let off the hook yet - you get a train till it come to the end of the line, bury yourself in a load of spuds and get a lift in a lorry, flag down a haycart an’ bum a lift in that a while, nick a bike, end up walking you name it till you get to the coast an’ can’t get no further without gettin’ wet. Thass right here. They listen to him, nursing their pints, thinking of the world’s cutthroats planning cosy evenings in the Map and Sail. We gotta be on our guard now, you lissen, ’cause I heard ’em talk, I have. I heard ’em in places you ain’t been an’ they all say this is a good place to hang low. I seen blokes sew ’emselves up in mailbags with a label got Blakeney Quay writ on it. I heard ’em up Norwich, I tell you. Go to Blakeney, they say, you get you a map an’ go to Blakeney. Bloke up there named Sammy Craske got a good watch on his wrist an’ he play a lousy hand o’ cards. Eye starts twitchin’ the moment he got him an ace . . .
    And causing a stir there’s a voice from the back of the room, a voice rising out of his drink like that of some half-drowned mariner. It’s the longshoreman, man of the marsh, folded into a pub chair and unafraid of the man behind the bar.
    â€˜He got your map, Arthur Quail, don’t you forget he got your map.’
    It silences the pub.
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    On 9 March 1945, two months before Hands vanished, Arthur