The brewery, the furniture making, and the Latin School gave the village an air of success. The Misses du Toit, thoroughly English daughters of the school’s founder, changed their name to Tate on the death of their father, and in 1913 passed charge of the school to a niece, Mrs. Farrell-Smith, a young widow.

By 1900, Eastfield had doubled in population and in 1914 took great pride in furnishing a company of its sons to fight for King and Country in the Great War.

They had received a letter of commendation from the King himself, and the brewery produced a beer it called The Rose of Picardy, which unexpectedly became very popular among soldiers and then ex-soldiers, making the Pierce Brothers Brewery, under its Arrow label, famous throughout Kent, Sussex, and Surrey.

Content with their ordinary lives, the villagers of Eastfield saw no reason why their future shouldn’t be as peaceful as their past.

And then on a Friday night, in July 1920, that illusion was shattered.

William Jeffers had no inkling of his fate when he walked into The Conqueror Pub in a back street of Eastfield.

The sign was swinging gently in the late evening breeze, squeaking a little in its iron frame. On one side of it, a vast, painted armada of Norman ships was shown anchored in an English bay—there was debate as to whether it was intended to portray Hastings or Pevensey—and on the other side, a victorious William raised his painted sword high to celebrate his famous victory over King Harold at Senlac Hill.

The haze of tobacco smoke was already thick as the barkeep hailed the newcomer with a smiling greeting. Jeffers rarely came to drink in the pub. He was a farmer and had little time in the evenings and less money to waste in conviviality. But it had become a regular thing each year for him to mark the anniversary of the wound that had ended his military career and nearly cost him his life.

Jeffers settled himself at a corner table with his first pint, and for the rest of the evening proceeded to drink as much as he could hold.

He left half an hour before closing, making his way toward the church.

The light was fading, and he sat on the low stone wall surrounding the churchyard until he had watched the sun set and the long shadows deepen into night. He was not a praying man, but he found himself saying a prayer for the dead. Most of the dead on his mind weren’t lying here in St. Mary’s, they were in France, but it would do.

At length he stood up and made his way to the outskirts of the village, where Abbey Street met the Hastings Road. He was only slightly tipsy, he told himself. He had to rise at half past four in the morning to milk the cows, but this anniversary was more important than duty. The hole in his chest was just a rough and ugly scar now, but it sometimes ached, as if it hadn’t healed. Four years. The flesh had surely forgot the pain and the terror and the weakness from loss of blood. But the mind hadn’t. The mind never forgot. And so he tried to drink himself into oblivion.