Then there had been her clothes. During school holidays Tess always wore her oldest and shabbiest skirts and blouses, but Gran had shaken her head. ‘You’ll not get a job looking like a ragbag,’ she had commented. ‘Furthermore, when you go to visit the Bells I want to be proud of you. I agree you can take old clothes and boots to wear when you’re working on the farm, but when you go to meet old friends, and when you arrive at the farm itself, you must look your best.’ She had bought Tess a navy blue cotton dress, which she said was suitable for a train journey since navy was less likely than paler colours to show the smuts which were an inevitable part of rail travel, and a pair of navy court shoes. So now she felt self-confident and grinned cheekily at her companion. ‘Why? What’s different about me? I’m sure I’m no taller or fatter than I was when we said goodbye last September.’

Jonty shrugged. ‘I dunno. Maybe it’s the clothes.’ He chuckled. ‘Wait till Ma sees you, gal. She’s already planning how best you can help out; did she tell you when she wrote that our land girl has been demobbed? And Maggie doesn’t want to work on the farm – my sister has got herself a job with the Milk Marketing Board, if you please – so if you intend to swan around looking beautiful you’ve got no chance. It’ll be up at six, in the milking parlour, mucking out the cows, feeding the pigs and doing all sorts. You’ll be all right for clothing, because Ma hung on to Patty’s overalls. She said she wouldn’t be needing them, her being a city girl.’ He jerked his head at an empty table for two against the wall. ‘Go and bag that table whilst I go to the counter, ’cos it’s not waitress service. What do you fancy?’

‘The biggest cup of tea they’ve got on offer, a cheese sandwich, if they’ve got one, and a currant bun,’ Tess said at once. ‘I’m perishin’ well starving. I suppose they don’t do chips?’

Jonty gave a derisive snort. ‘Chips? At three in the afternoon? Course not. But are you sure you want a sandwich and a bun? Ma’s made a grand sausage meat pie and she’ll do mashed spuds to go with it, and a feed of runner beans. Will your appetite be up to it?’

‘Yes,’ Tess said baldly. ‘But if you can’t afford it . . .’

Jonty had been about to head for the counter but turned back to give her a friendly punch on the shoulder. ‘Course I can afford it; I’m a rich young farmer, aren’t I? Or I shall be once all this austerity business is behind us. I’m tellin’ you, I’m bloody glad I live on a farm! I reckon folk in towns and cities are hard pressed to feed themselves, unless they’ve got good gardens, that is.’

Tess murmured something appropriate and watched as he joined the queue at the counter and came back balancing their order on a small tray. She thought he had taken a great leap away from her, but then remembered the difference in their ages, which hadn’t been so noticeable when she lived here since thanks to the shortage of teachers, most of whom had joined the forces, she and Jonty had been in the same class at school. In her last year in the village it had included children from the ages of nine to fourteen. She and Jonty had both managed the work easily, though Jonty had been blatantly uninterested and had very little self-confidence where school work was concerned. Indeed he had sometimes copied Tess’s answers, saying that schoolwork was boring and of little use if one intended to work on the land. He seldom read a book, though she recalled he was hot stuff at mathematics. When she left the farm he had been about to start at the grammar school to work for his School Certificate and this, she imagined, had given him the self-confidence which he was now showing.