Winifred Belair is one of the returnees who gossip over drinks on the verandahs of the Caribbean island of St Caesare. Fred is good-looking still and eligible, but her friends warn her about the visit from Barbados of the Rev Alex Taylor - 'looking for a soul-mate to help him with the Good Works. And save the world.' Her other two suitors, typically for Markham, are figments of Pewter Stapleton's elaborately imagined fantasy. Readers of E. A. Markham's inimitable stories will not be surprised that this linked collection encompasses cricket, boxing and world politics as well as matrimony in later life; or that Pewter's travels take him to Boston, Massachussetts; Trinity College, Dublin; London, Sheffield; and the atmospheric streets of Paris. They will be pleased to be reminded of the warmth, wit and wisdom of a much-missed unclassifiable writer.