She had laughed and replied in kind, but understood his views. Striding his father’s acres, one day to be his, in a howling gale, with the rain driving into his face and the mud trying to suck his boots off with every step, he was happy and fulfilled. His maths would come in handy when ordering up foodstuffs for the beasts, or checking accounts, but history, geography and English would have been forgotten and unregretted as soon as he left the hallowed premises of the grammar school. For her part, Tess knew her feelings about the farm were ambivalent. She loved it in the summer, but she remembered from her days as an evacuee how she had hated the cold winters. It was all very fine when the ponds and lakes froze, when even the Broad became a solid block of ice, because then you wrapped up well and skated or sledged or snowballed to your heart’s content. But she remembered being told all about the winter of ’47 when the poor little birds had frozen on the trees, and Jonty had seen a water vole frozen into the ice, his little legs stretched in a desperate attempt to swim through water which was becoming more solid with every second that passed. He had told her how they had driven the pigs into the big barn, having to carry some of the piglets because the snow was so deep, and Mrs Bell had sent her cuttings from the Eastern Evening News about the devastating floods which had followed the freeze when warmer weather had melted twelve-foot drifts, as well as the foot-thick ice. It had sounded terrible yet exciting and Tess thought the children had probably enjoyed the whole experience, but she was no longer a child and knew that she would have hated the cold, worried when food ran short, and wept over the devastation of so much that the Bells had worked for with increasing despair.

But they had weathered it – excuse the pun, she told herself – in their usual sturdy fashion. The orchards had borne fruit that summer of ’47 but it was a poor crop compared with previous years, and the sprouts in the five acre had emerged smashed into the mud and stinking of rotting leaves as the flood receded. But the Bells had gritted their teeth, given their workers a raise in wages and continued to spend their money cautiously, for mechanisation was beginning to make itself felt, and Jonty was pushing his father to buy modern machinery, to restock one orchard whose trees had been particularly badly affected, and to sell off stock, which would cost more to feed than they would bring in as full-grown cattle.

Tess sighed and looked up at the string rack above her head, upon which rested her small rucksack. She had packed a pair of slacks, a couple of shirts, some underwear and her pyjamas, but hoped she would be able to borrow wellington boots and oilskins if the weather turned nasty, which, remembering her last visit to the farm, she knew was all too possible, even in summertime.