Yet Paul continued, and now he began by parodying Stalin: ‘It is self-evident, it goes without saying - and in fact there is no need at all to say it, so why should I go to the trouble? - However, whether there is any need to say a thing or not is clearly beside the point. As is well known, I say, nature is prodigal. Before many hours are out, these insects will have killed each other by fighting, biting, deliberate homicide, suicide or by clumsy copulation. Or they will have been eaten by birds which even at this moment are waiting for us to remove ourselves so that they can begin their feast. When we return to this delightful pleasure resort next week-end, or, if our political duties forbid, the week-end after, we shall take our well-regulated walks along this road and see perhaps one or two of these delightful red and green insects at their sport in the grass, and think, how pretty they are! And little will we reck of the million corpses that even then will be sinking into their last resting place all about us. I do not even mention the butterflies who, being incomparably more beautiful, though probably not more useful, we will actively, even assiduously miss - if we are not more occupied with our more usual decadent diversions.’

We were wondering why he was deliberately twisting the knife in the wound of Maryrose’s brother’s death. She was smiling painfully. And Jimmy, tormented continuously by fear that he would crash and be killed, had the same small wry smile as Maryrose.

‘The point I am trying to make, comrades…’

‘We know what point you are trying to make,’ said Willi, roughly and angrily. Perhaps it was for moments like these that he was the ‘father-figure’ of the group, as Paul said he was. ‘Enough,’ said Willi. ‘Let’s go and get the pigeons.’

‘It goes without saying, it is self-evident,’ said Paul, returning to Stalin’s favourite opening phrases just so as to hold his own against Willi, ‘that mine host Boothby’s pigeon pie will never get made, if we go on in this irresponsible fashion.’

We proceeded along the track, among the grasshoppers. About half a mile further on there was a small kopje, or tumbling heap of granite boulders; and beyond it, as if a line had been drawn, the grasshoppers ceased. They were simply not there, they did not exist, they were an extinct species. The butterflies, however, continued everywhere, like white petals dancing.

I think it must have been October or November. Not because of the insects, I’m too ignorant to date the time of the year from them, but because of the quality of the heat that day. It was a sucking, splendid, menacing heat. Late in a rainy season there would have been a champagne tang in the air, a warning of winter. But that day I remember the heat was striking our cheeks, our arms, our legs, even through our clothing. Yes, of course it must have been early in the season, the grass was short, tufts of clear sharp green in white sand. So that week-end was four or five months before the final one, which was just before Paul was killed. And the track we strolled along that morning was where Paul and I ran hand in hand that night months later through a fine seeping mist to fall together in the damp grass. Where? Perhaps near where we sat to shoot pigeons for the pie.