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main road again, she took not the road to Porthkerris, but the other way, and she drove the short mile to Lanyon village, up the narrow main street, and finally came to a halt in the cobbled square that was flanked on one side by the porch of the square-towered church and on the other by a small whitewashed pub called The Mermaid's Arms.
    Because of the fine weather, there were tables and chairs set up outside the pub, along with brightly coloured sun-umbrellas and tubs of orange nasturtiums. A man and a woman in holiday clothes sat and drank their beer, their little boy played with a puppy. As Virginia approached, they looked up to smile good morning, and she smiled back and went past them in through the door, instinctively ducking her head beneath the blackened lintel.
    Inside it was dark-panelled, low-ceilinged, dimly illuminated by tiny windows veiled in lace curtains; there was a pleasant smell, cool and musty. A few figures, scarcely visible in the gloom, sat along the wall, or around small wobbly tables, and behind the bar, framed by rows of hanging beer-mugs, the barman, in shirtsleeves and a checkered pullover, was polishing glasses with a dishcloth.
    "... I don't know ow it is, William," he was saying to a customer who sat at the other end of the bar, perched disconsolately on a tall stool, with a long cigarette ash and hall a pint of bitter, "... but you put the litter bins up and nobody puts nothing into them ..."
    "Ur ..." said William, nodding in sad agreement and sprinkling cigarette ash into the beer.
    "Stuff blows all over the road, and the County Council don't even come and empty them. Ugly old things they are, too, we'd be better without them. Managed all right without them before, we did . . ." He finished polishing the glass, set it down with a thump and turned to attend to Virginia.
    "Yes, madam?"
    He was very Cornish, in voice, in looks, in colouring. A red and wind-burned face, blue eyes, black hair.
    Virginia asked for cigarettes.
    "Only got packets of twenty. That all right?" He turned to take them from the shelf and slit the wrapper with a practised thumbnail. "Lovely day, isn't it? On holiday, are you?"
    "Yes." It was years since she had been into a pub. In Scotland women were never taken into pubs. She had forgotten the atmosphere, the snug companionship. She said, "Do you have any Coke?"
    He looked surprised. "Yes, I've got Coke. Keep it for the children. Want some, do you?"
    "Please."
    He reached for a bottle, opened it neatly, poured it into a glass and pushed it across the counter towards her.
    "I was just saying to William, here, that road to Porthkerris is a disgrace . . Virginia pulled up a stool and settled down to listen. ". . . All that rubbish lying around. Visitors don't seem to know what to do with their litter. You'd think coming to a lovely part like this they'd have the sense they was born with and take all them old bits of paper home with them, in the car, not leave them lying around on the roadside. They talk about conservation and ecology, but, my God . . ."
    He was off on what was obviously his favourite hobby-horse, judging by the well-timed grunts of assent that came from all corners of the room. Virginia lit a cigarette. Outside, in the sunny square, a car drew up, the engine stopped, a door slammed. She heard a man's voice say good morning, and then footsteps came through the doorway and into the bar behind her.
    "... I wrote to the MP about it, said who was going to get the place cleaned up, he said it was the responsibility of the County Council, but I said ..." Over Virginia's head he caught sight of the new customer. " 'Allo, there! You're a stranger."
    "Still at the litter bins, Joe?"
    "You know me, boy, worry a subject to death, like a terrier killing a rat. What 11 you have?"
    "A pint of bitter."
    Joe turned to draw the beer, and the newcomer moved in to stand between Virginia and lugubrious William, and she had recognized his voice at once, as soon as he spoke, just