The heat-wave deepened during the following few days while Jack and I lazed about in the house and yards, wearing ragged shirts and discarded garments, because the more presentable ones were being packed by Mother. She was obviously not strong enough to cycle down to Hampshire, where Father Jack had been one week-end, to see and rent a cottage in Ropley, near Alresford. From this prospective journey Jack had returned with half a dozen photographs taken with a plate-camera which he had made for himself, the aperture being a pinhole. This was only one of his many ingenjous artefacts. I had studied the pictures, which included a church that leaned backwards, in the hope of finding that perpetually teasing certainty which we look for when about to take some adventurous step into the unknown. But Ropley remained unreal.