Poley said: ‘Got the bottle? Good. Climb aboard.’

He drove along the coast road, westwards, towards the distant enemy. I let him drive in silence, feeling that in that way he would be most likely to get over whatever impulse was riding him. The road ran beside the coast for a time; we bumped over its rough and stony surface and the sea, on our right, dipped and swayed with our motion. The moon had risen just above the horizon, and it was very light. It was a three-quarter moon, gibbous and over-sized.

Eventually I asked: ‘Looking for anything in particular?’

‘Yes. I’ll let you know when I find it.’

I guessed we were thirty or forty miles from the village when he pulled the truck on to the side of the road. The road had come back to the sea; Poley ran the Utility right through to the beach, and we climbed out on to fine white sand. It was a small bay, a well-nigh perfect arc of a circle running to headlands perhaps a quarter of a mile away on either side. The moon being well up, everything was silver – the wasteland behind us, the sand on which we stood, and the crested waves in front.