The house was plain to see. He wasn’t going into the house. The Land Rover was in the yard. The keys hung on a hook in the barn. He got into it and drove. He drove past his fields, bare stubble open to that sky, out from the farm to the village, and through the village, and on, until he was on some road that he did not know – or perhaps he knew it but no longer recognised it because so much in him had changed – driving through land that was strange to him though the look of it was the same as the land he had left: wide flat land, acres of stubble interspersed with fields of glossy green beet. It was other men’s land, and it meant nothing to him. On some farms they were so far ahead that they were already burning the straw. On one he saw a tractor beginning to plough. There were others – and these were more – where there was still wheat left standing, or where the rain had hit particularly hard, harder than at home, and swathes of crop had been flattened to the ground. He thought these things automatically, and the thoughts dulled him. The Land Rover was slow, heavy to drive, its interior bare, nothing to muffle the noise of the diesel engine. It smelled of diesel. He wound down the window and rested his elbow on the edge of it as he drove. A low green car passed him, too fast and dangerously on the narrow road. A Sprite, but he barely noticed it. He wanted a cigarette. He didn’t have any cigarettes on him or money to buy them. Then he saw that the tank was low. If there was no money for cigarettes then there was no money for diesel. He stopped in a lay-by, scrabbled about the vehicle, amongst the clutter in the shelf beside the dashboard, on the floor and between the seats, for loose notes and coins, and found what amounted to a couple of pounds. The next petrol station he came to, he put in a meagre gallon, watching the dial. That’s all I’ve got, he said to the girl on the forecourt, counting the change out into her hand. He had held back enough for a packet of fags. He didn’t pass any shops after that, not until he got to the village. He stopped outside the post office and bought a packet of ten. Then he broke it open and sat in the stationary vehicle and smoked, looking down the street at the houses, the Green, the church beyond it, the few cars passing.