Jean moves to a riverside cottage in an effort to escape her violent husband. There she meets Redfern, a married stonemason, with whom she forms a relationship.

They were a top team - five miners who together had mined a million tons of coal but now they must face up to redundancy.

Francis Ashby, a senior Oxford don on holiday alone in the Alps, meets holidaying American Caroline and her companion Elinor, the blossoming Irish-American girl she adopted many years before. Ashby finds he enjoys their company, particularly that of Elinor, and both the women are drawn to him. Back at Oxford he is nevertheless taken aback when they arrive unannounced. Women are not allowed in the College grounds, let alone the rooms. Indeed any liaison, however innocent, is frowned on by the upstanding Fellows.