‘Why pick me out to have overwhelming ambitions? What about yourself?’ She smiled. ‘What about John?’

‘John’s ambitions are on the surface. He isn’t as complex as you are, darling.’

Frank took up the oars again; they had drifted to within a dozen feet of the north bank. There was a sound of sheep bleating, and of aeroplanes, as somnolent. Peace in the heart of a war.

‘I can’t accept that,’ he said. ‘Even if it were true, you could not know it. For one thing, you see us in different ways. John’s your brother, while I’m …’

‘Mm? I’d like to hear you describe yourself, in your personal capacity. Seducer? Lover? Suitor? Boy friend, perhaps?’

‘Perhaps. It makes a difference, anyway. Any one of those would seem more complex than a brother does.’

‘I suppose so. But I was thinking of what you said – about not wanting to look back – about my having changed … the implication being that you hadn’t. Your eye always was on what might be going to happen, even in the old lake pavilion. So in a way you were grown up then, when the rest of us were children. I don’t imagine you’ve stopped growing up – people don’t, do they? So I think you must be more complex than the rest of us.’

‘The still deep-running waters,’ he said. ‘ Concealing what?’

She was not smiling now. ‘I don’t know.’

‘If you don’t, no one does. No one else has been as near.’

He pulled back towards the bridge. She sat watching him from the bows and did not speak.