Last morning at Yosemite Rose, home of four generations of soldiers who have fought in foreign wars

Ah’m a simple mountain boy but ah always love you well

We have left the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada and we are in the plains heading east to Santa Cruz. Vast acreages of fruit trees give way to parched and yellowing grassland and distant hills. We pass half-empty giant reservoirs supplying the coastal cities. It’s hot outside and Jane ramps up the air-conditioning. Elefanta gives a squeal of climate-change abandon as we speed smoothly down the dry dusty roads. We have got to appreciate the lumbering ways of Elefanta and her wide-ranging music system with its banjo-picking Bluegrass stations from the smoky mountains and pounding Nashville songs: “Ah’m a red-necked woman, ah’m a tailgate woman. Ah’m sittin’ on the porch and I’ve got my Christmas lights on. Ah’m a red-necked woman, ah’m a tailgate woman . . .”

At a cheese factory that has a retail outlet we stop for a bite. Industrial-size vacuum-packed blocks of Californian Cheddar cheese line a long display cabinet. I decide I shall be a Royal duke being attentive to the natives while on a trade mission to a small outpost of the British Empire. I lean over the counter and put on my Prince Charles voice: “That’s very interesting that you make Cheddar cheese. Why do you call it Cheddar? Shouldn’t Cheddar cheese be made only in England.” But this is lost on the big man in a big white hat behind the counter. He seems baffled by the implied criticism. “Have a good day,” he says.

In the afternoon we stop at Watsonville, just short of our cottage in the Santa Cruz mountains. Despite its name Watsonville is overwhelmingly Mexican. We stock up with provisions at a Mexican grocery, because we shall be cooking for ourselves for the next five days. I buy a garlic bulb the size of a large turnip. We pay $12 for a full shopping basket. Dragonfly Cottage is 20 miles from Santa Cruz and as we climb a long narrow road through redwoods we share a sense of foreboding. We are far from anywhere and are surrounded by forest. Then at a fork in the track there is the sign Vaca del Sol and we drop down to our destination as the sun reappears bathing the whole valley with evening light. In the far distance we see the Pacific. I turn off Blue Grass Junction. Ah love you when you smile, ah love you when you cry, a’m a simple mountain boy but ah always love you well, ah love you when you smile.....

It’s often what you half-glimpse out of the corner of your eye as you look away that changes your view, that makes you realise that things are not as you comfortably assumed they were. That suffering takes place while someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along. . . . . as the poet says. The villagers in the Breugel painting go about their daily lives, leading horses, ploughing the land, sitting down to eat, skating and chasing away a dog and they do not notice the little boy in the corner of the painting falling from the sky. So it was that morning at the House of Flickering Light. We are having our last breakfast in the verandah. Granma has brought us a huge pot of tea that she holds in one hand and she brushes away my offer to take it back to the kitchen. “I’m a big girl now,” she says.

The Brooklyn attorney who speaks too much and his wife, whom I shall call Celeste, are at the next table and she looks expectantly towards us as if she would like us to transport her back to England, away from – well, she can’t quite give a name to what oppresses her.

Henry appears and he is cradling in his arms half a dozen rocks. He tells me to choose one. I ask if they have fallen from the sky in the night. “No,” he says. “They come from an old gold working. They’re quartz and there’s gold in them – not much gold but it’s something a mining company would extract.” I have a sudden illumination. Elinor Brompton-LeFage never introduced Henry as her husband. Henry is not Henry Brompton-LeFage. He is an family friend, an amiable eccentric who potters about the place looking at the stars and giving random rocks to visitors.

Half an hour later as we gather to say our goodbyes in the ample hall with its pianola, military insignia and mementoes of a family of warriors Elinor Brompton-LeFage takes me aside. “You see, Richard is in his seventies now but they still need him. He won’t stop. Most of the satellites up there,” and Mrs Brompton-LeFage gestures vaguely towards the ceiling, “were put up years ago and the young engineers can’t work them. Only Richard knows. That’s why he has to go on. Besides, Richard . . .” And Mrs Brompton-LeFage hesitates as if uncertain how I, rather than any other visitor, would receive such a confidence. “Well, Richard is sometimes ‘politically incorrect’.”