The bars were all closed by this time in the roadside hotels, so Paul went to sleep. Maryrose was asleep. Jimmy was asleep. Ted remained awake beside Willi in the front seat, whistling some aria or other. I don’t think he had been listening to Paul — when he whistled bits of music or sang it was always a sign of disapproval.

Long afterwards, I remember thinking that in all those years of endless analytical discussion only once did we come anywhere near the truth (far enough off as it was) and that was when Paul spoke in a spirit of angry parody.

When we reached the hotel it was all dark. A sleepy servant waited on the verandah to take us to our rooms. The bedroom block was built a couple of hundred yards from the dining-room and bar block, on a slope at the back. There were twenty rooms under a single roof, built back to back, verandahs on either side, ten rooms to a verandah. The rooms were cool and pleasant in spite of having no cross ventilation. There were electric fans and large windows. Four rooms had been allotted to us. Jimmy went in with Ted, I with Willi; and Maryrose and Paul had a room each. This arrangement was afterwards confirmed; or rather, since the Boothbys never said anything, Willi and I always shared a room at the Mashopi hotel. We none of us woke until long after breakfast. The bar was open and we drank a little, mostly in silence, and had lunch, almost in silence, remarking from time to time how odd it was we should feel so tired. The lunches at the hotel were always excellent, quantities of cold meats and every imaginable kind of salad and fruit. We all went to sleep again. The sun was already going down when Willi and I woke and had to wake the others. And we were in bed again half an hour after dinner was over. And the next day, Sunday, was almost as bad. That first weekend was, in fact, the most pleasant we spent there. We all were in a tranquillity of extreme fatigue. We hardly drank, and Mr Boothby was disappointed in us. Willi was particularly silent. I think it was that week-end that he decided to withdraw from politics, or at least as far as he could, and devote himself to study. As for Paul, he was being genuinely simple and pleasant with everyone, particularly Mrs Boothby, who had taken a fancy to him.

We drove back to town very late on the Sunday because we did not want to leave the Mashopi hotel. We sat on the verandah drinking beer before we left, the hotel dark behind us. The moonlight was so strong we could see the grains of white sand glittering individually where it had been flung across the tarmac by the ox-wagon wheels. The heavy-hanging, pointed leaves of the gum-trees shone like tiny spears. I remember Ted saying: ‘Look at us all sitting here, with not a word to say. It’s a dangerous place, Mashopi. We’ll come here, weekend after week-end and hibernate in all this beer and moonlight and good food. Where will it all end, I ask you?’