‘There’s such a smell of blood I shall be sick,’ said Maryrose.

‘Patience,’ said Paul. ‘Our quota is nearly reached.’

‘Six will be enough,’ said Jimmy. ‘Because none of us will eat this pie. Mr Boothby can have the lot.’

‘I shall certainly eat of it,’ said Paul. ‘And so will you. Do you really imagine that when that toothsome pie, filled with gravy and brown savoury meat is set before you, you will remember the tender songs of these birds so brutally cut short by the crack of doom?’

‘Yes,’ said Maryrose.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Willi?’ asked Paul, making an issue of it.

‘Probably not,’ said Willi, reading.

‘Women are tender,’ said Paul. ‘They will watch us eat, toying the while with Mrs Boothby’s good roast beef, making delicate little mouths of distaste, loving us all the more for our brutality.’

‘Like the Mashona women and the Matabele,’ said Jimmy.

‘I like to think of those days,’ said Paul, settling down with his rifle at the ready, watching the trees. ‘So simple. Simple people killing each other for good reasons, land, women, food. Not like us. Not like us at all. As for us - do you know what is going to happen? I will tell you. As a result of the work of fine comrades like Willi, ever-ready to devote themselves to others, or people like me, concerned only with profits, I predict that in fifty years all this fine empty country we see stretching before us filled only with butterflies and grasshoppers will be covered by semi-detached houses filled by well-clothed black workers.’

‘And what is the matter with that?’ enquired Willi.

‘It is progress,’ said Paul.

‘Yes, it is,’ said Willi.

‘Why should they be semi-detached houses?’ enquired Jimmy, very seriously. He had moments of being serious about the socialist future. ‘Under a socialist government there’ll be beautiful houses in their own gardens or big flats.’

‘My dear Jimmy!’ said Paul. ‘What a pity you are so bored by economics. Socialist or capitalist - in either case, all this fine ground, suitable for development, will be developed at a rate possible for seriously undercapitalized countries - are you listening, Comrade Willi?’

‘I am listening.’

‘And because a government faced with the necessity of housing a lot of unhoused people fast, whether socialist or capitalist, will choose the cheapest available houses, the best being the enemy of the better, this fair scene will be one of factories smoking into the fair blue sky, and masses of cheap identical housing. Am I right, Comrade Willi?’