I had thought to call this story ‘Navigational Error’. As you will see from the date at the end, our return from New Zealand came when we were all having to understand the word ‘Covid.’   Here is Kaiteriteri with its sandy beaches and coves all the way to Totaranui. They let you sit on the upper deck if you like, if there is room, for that is where most people like to sit in the hot weather. Sometimes, even  on a day with clear blue skies, it can become too cool as the boat heads north and the breeze blows hats and hair all awry. Inside on the lower deck, a few of us are content to drink t...

When I began this, I called it ‘BETTER FORGOTTEN.’   Moncayo leant idly in the doorway of the hut with both hands on the studded cartridge belt which he wore low about his hips. The brim of his sombrero was pulled down making his eyes - already heavy-lidded and menacing - seem even more formidable. A cigarette smouldered away between his lips, the ash half an inch long and threatening to fall off at any minute. No one seeing him that day could have taken Moncayo for anything else but a desperado, a criminal who had seen the inside of several prisons, a thief and a killer who had somehow co...

“First kiss, my foot! You can take yourself where I’ll never see you again!” The party that Easter was a disaster for Nicole and with these words she stormed out before what was left of the world fell in. She scarcely noticed the little boy in the doorway. His luck was out too, since she hurled past him and knocked him aside. She felt so lousy that, if the door itself had been closed, she might have left a hole as she passed through. As it was the little boy she had inadvertently clouted was left sitting in a heap by the door tears already gathering in his eyes. Apart from the bump, he felt ...

Edward Lockyer sat with his back against a tree somewhere in the forest. He had his camera with him. It was a warm day in the middle of summer and he was pleased to have put himself out of range. He wanted nothing to remind him that there were people in the world. There was much in the forest that day to appeal to the eye of the photographer. The play of light where the sun dappled the grass and the leaves suggested a scene by Renoir; there was, too, a timelessness about the place. No one could have put the beauty of the woodland that day into any given year. Any moment a wild boar might ch...

I first saw the boy on the day of the funeral. I had travelled down by car after an early start and meant to go back again before dark, for I had no desire to stay the night. I had only been to the house once before but it was all much as I remembered it; the thatched roof  and the sunken walls; the ancient, dark timbers and the low ceilings; the casement windows looking (as it all did) like something out of an official, glossy guide to a famous building; and then there was the decorative garden with its fountain and rose beds. Certainly they had never wanted for money - and never would from...