She asked if he loved her.
God, thought Geoffrey. He couldn’t bear another conversation
like this — there had been so many. They always ended
with her in tears and him hunched over a brandy glass.

The girl parted Geoffrey’s clenched fingers so she could see
his eyes. Putting her mouth against his hand, she kissed the
opening.

Geoffrey sat up and the girl squirmed onto his knees. She
took his arms and arranged them around her waist. Her hair,
caught in a rough chignon, brushed Geoffrey’s chin as she
snuggled against his shoulder. He looked down at her dark head
and thought of the black pools of water in the peat bogs he knew
as a boy in Ireland. It was her hair that had impressed him that
first time he saw her. Magnificent, full hair, falling almost to her
waist, incongruously topped, on that occasion, with the peaked
cap of the Canterbury Yeoman Cavalry.

Geoffrey remembered the scene. At the time it had seemed
like a greeting-card picture. One moment he was riding through
the solemn darkness of bush and forest; the next he was in a
clearing overwhelmed by light. There was a small house surrounded
by burnt tree stumps, and a muddy path to the edge of the
trees. Hens pecked at scraps thrown by a barefoot girl from a
black iron pot. She wore a striped shirt, its sleeves rolled to the
elbow, and a short, full skirt over what appeared to be a pair of
men’s trousers. On her head was a soldier’s cap.