Simon prompted him again.

‘Yes, yes,’ he went on, ‘she held all the corn and all the flour and all the peas and beans not needed for sowing, and she had it all in sacks and barrels here, on a board out of the damp and she measured it all out with a wooden scoop, smallish like, and she counted the people and the days till we thought we’d get another harvest. She was a great reckoner, marvellous how she had it all in her head. Every Sunday after Mass we all came to the Hall, the women with their bags and baskets, and she scooped out so much barley or beans according to family size. She wouldn’t give it to the men. She said wives were more like to deal it out fair in families and make it go furthest. It was very little my mother got, I remember, and after our Sukey died that winter we got even less, but we could all see it was fair. And the lady, she didn’t take no more for herself than she gave us, though we could see she was getting big-bellied as the autumn went on. The Hall had but five cows that summer, all with calves and with all the spring rain the grass was good and there was a good hay crop. The milk was good and she ran the dairy here, saw to it every day, and more cheese was made from those cows as ever I saw. The whey she gave to all the women, herself too, as was with child, to keep the babies steady, she said, and she watched everything to see it was done proper. If it wasn’t for her doing all that I reckon the village would have starved. You boys – you got everything you could want. You don’t – you don’t … ’

Simon again drew his father’s mind off the boys present and back to the past.

‘It was a bad winter, that winter, fog and ice, not much snow, but frost as never seemed to melt. We had our fires and we had our cheese, and a chicken now and then, but not much to a chicken that’s had no corn. There was no ale to warm us and many of the old ones died, of course, more’n usual. The earth got so frozen hard as no graves could be dug, and the men just put the bodies one on top of another in one grave and put a board over the top with a stone on it to keep the foxes off and waited for the next death. Wasn’t Christian burying but Old Holy said prayers for each so we thought it’d be all right.

‘We were getting pretty hungry that spring. The lady had her baby and a good fine little boy it was and that all gave us a bit of hope. How the mothers had milk for their babies I don’t know. Terrible thin, she was. I remember her scooping up our little bit of beans – that was like the first day of spring – all warm and sunny and the bees in the orchard buzzing away, and I saw how thin her arms were, she had been on the plump side, comely girl like I said, but not then. The brats in the village couldn’t do a thing, sat about weak like and cried to their mams for bread and the mothers weeping to look at them. Many died, of course. Only some strong ones lived.’