"I picked up a woman in the port," he began, and I sat back, since, much as I looked forward to its telling, this kind of story was inevitable. At first everything was in order, in its own disjointed way - there was another woman; the husband came back. Then in the tavern she recognised a cap; he’d had no reason beyond caprice to have put it on that day … But then things started to get confused. She had a baby with one arm; we used to do circus tricks together. And then he died.

"Who did?"

"I did."

It didn't matter; it took more than that to stop it. Like a lame road lost in the valleys, his story could not move straight; it was forever turning back and wandering about, searching for the way through, which must have been why it could never leave the hills alone. It caressed them and folded itself about them, and though occasionally it also reared its head and with sudden energy plunged headlong away, it was at those very moments that you invariably lost faith in it.