i
- We meet Major Dennis Plunkett and his wife, Maud, as they are sipping drinks together at their usual bar. They are silent and seemingly estranged.
- The narrator tells us that they've been married twenty-five years and that they came out to the island after Major Plunkett was wounded in World War II—he raises pigs; she tends orchids.
- Major Plunkett couldn't stand the middle-class Brits that populated his old club because they "put on airs," so he and his wife found themselves another haven.
- He wonders what he suffered a head wound for: Rommel? For taking these islands?
- Major Plunkett recalls his "forgotten" service under Montgomery, and the issues of class that haunted them even in death on the battlefield.
- Maud takes his hand as tears come to his eyes.
ii
- Flashback to World War II and the traumatic incident that injured Major Plunkett: He sees his comrades-in-arms—Tumbly and Scott—maimed and dying just before his company is hit with an explosive device.
- When he wakes up in a hospital, Major Plunkett doesn't remember anything else for months.
- The narrator explains why Major Plunkett has to suffer (it's a theme of the work).
- We return to Major Plunkett, who thinks about his marriage to Maud, and his desire to find a place of innocence for them after the war.
- Apparently, the Plunketts have no son and heir.
iii
- Maud and Dennis see Helen pass by wearing a yellow dress that she stole from Maud.
- Maud worries about what will happen to Helen, but Major Plunkett feels pity toward Helen and wants to help her, perhaps stemming from guilt he feels over the British colonizing her land.
- He thinks back over the span of his marriage to Maud and reflects on the decline of the British Empire that simultaneously took place. Way to bring the romance… not.
- The narrator notes the passage of time in different places around the Empire, and feels that Helen (the island? The girl?) needs a history of her own.
- He continues to play on the mythic associations of Helen's name, and imagines her village as Troy, mapping ancient warfare onto Helen's life.
- Plunkett muses about the two Helens (the girl and the island) as he pays his check, seeing the bill as the treaty signed at the end of the Battle of the Saints to return "Helen" to the British.
- Then his mind goes to the village Olympiad, in which Hector and Achille will compete—but not for a laurel. Once again, the reward is Helen.