‘That’ was one of his wife’s voluminous cotton nightgowns. It had been pegged to the line but had fought like a mad thing to get free and was now flapping away across the meadows like some gigantic ghost. Had the ponies not already been panicked by the storm they would most certainly have taken against what must have appeared to them to be a living nightmare. ‘If we can’t quiet the ponies then what should we do?’ Tess shouted against the wind. ‘I don’t think we can collect the hens, they really are at the mercy of the wind. Once it drops we can shut them in the stables, but until then we’ll have to rely on their common sense.’

Jonty was beginning to say that everyone knew hens didn’t have any common sense when, in the way of such things, the rain changed from vicious spears to a more normal downpour and that in turn stopped suddenly and allowed cooler air to take its place. Mr Bell sighed and Jonty put his arm round Tess’s waist. ‘We’d best get back to the house, ’cos there’s nothing we can do here in the dark,’ he said resignedly. ‘With a bit of luck we’ll get some sleep before Ma comes rattling on our doors, reminding us that breakfast will be ready in twenty minutes.’

The three of them crossed the yard and re-entered the kitchen, only to find Mrs Bell setting out a large plate of bacon sandwiches and a jug of cocoa on the big scrubbed table. ‘You’ll need to be up betimes judging from what I’ve seen through the window,’ she said gruffly. ‘You’ll want to get some sleep, though, and most folks sleep better on a full stomach than on an empty one, so get this lot down you or it’ll be breakfast time before you know it.’

As Tess finished her sandwich and drained her cocoa, she wondered what on earth they would do about the wheat. She supposed that some of the crop might be saved but guessed that a good deal of it would have to be ploughed in, since it would be too muddy and broken for cutting. It was an awful shame and would make the Bells’ life, which was a hard one at the best of times, even harder, but though they grumbled and called down curses on the weather farmers were used to catastrophic conditions, and she supposed that they had savings against such happenings. As she made her weary way back to bed, she reflected, not for the first time, that the Bells had done pretty well out of her. She had worked as hard as she could at every task she’d been given and though Jonty, she knew, had implored his mother to pay her at least some of the wage which would have gone to Patty, the land girl, Mrs Bell had been resolute in her refusal. Tess, in the scullery cleaning vegetables for market, had heard her reply to Jonty’s plea. ‘She’s not here to work, she’s here to have a bit of a holiday,’ she assured her son. ‘Many a gal would be grateful for our hospitality. And she eats hearty; almost licked her plate when we had that stew the other night. Oh aye, young Tess should have no complaints about the way she’s treated. And it’s not as though she was a woman grown and capable of doing a woman’s work—’