Tom and Beatrice are having an illicit affair and travel separately to Dorset for a passionate weekend alone. Once there they meet a disturbingly bedraggled but well-educated man whose son, Giles, will figure powerfully in their future life and the lives of people they have yet to meet. In desperately searching for the truth of their own relationship they become part of the equally desperate search for truth of the people they meet and hear about. They never know the beautiful but hopeless Ursula, yet mysteriously learn about her dependence on the brutish skipper of The Hamburg and her failed...