Vito dreams. Mishaps and terrors rage through many of his nights, and early in the mornings, before they can glide from his memory, he tells them to his wife. Beryl. They lie in bed and the soft drone of Vito’s voice seeps into the dawn. Later, when he goes to make the tea. Beryl, who has no dreams of her own, writes his down, before she forgets them, in the little notebook from her bedside drawer.

She wants to keep the dreams. They seem to say so much about him, about his life in Europe many years ago as well as here in Australia. To Beryl, Vito’s dreams are a guide to the landscape of his being. She realises that she never considered that until recently, his being. Now they are retired there is time for such considerations.