The snake in paradise

It was to Paradise that Bruno, a student teacher from Johnny's school, was invited to stay. No lack of clues as to what is going to happen. They take the visitor sailing. 'Bruno and Johnny talked softly to each other in a mixture of German and English as if I were not there. They laughed a lot and leaned towards each other É and once Bruno put out a hand and touched Johnny's face.' From the start, Dr Bailey is hostile to the stranger. As Imogen later reads in his diaries, 'I do not like this German fellow. I don't know why I have written this down, but I feel I must.' But his wife finds Bruno sympathetic. She takes his arm, smiles charmingly. Imogen inevitably falls in love with him. We never see through Bruno's devious eyes the motive for the emotional chaos he causes three members of the Bailey family, all of whom he beguiles. They seem to him no more than useful playthings.

Long after those searing days, Imogen discovers from her great-grandmother's melancholy diaries, their period language beautifully conveyed, incidents in the far past that have curious, disturbing echoes in the present. Dr Bailey's secrets, too, she uncovers in his diaries. There is a liquidity in the telling of all this. But in the whirligig of past and present there remain two gloriously described constants: the sea, and Mathilde, the housekeeper from Prague who lives in the basement. She provides warmth of embrace, chocolate cake and 'a great capacity of listening' invaluable to Imogen. Mathilde, too, has her instincts about Bruno. 'Her lips would become thin and tight when he was around.' The denouement is no surprise. Clues copiously placed rob it of that, but well-signalled doom still leaves the reader in page-turning dread of the final showdown.

One of Johnston's many fortes is the back-lighting of memory. She has a knack of gilding past events akin to memory itself. For example, when Imogen returns from the nursing home, on the first night at dinner with her parents the future is discussed. She recalls the scene that accompanied the agonising: the red flock wallpaper of the dining-room

and one of those brass lamps that you could raise or lower at will: it hung permanently at head level, so our food and the table settings were brightly illuminated and our bodies were in shadow: our hands, like disembodied creatures, moved in and out of the light, cutting, buttering, scooping and generally manipulating.

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