The next day set the pattern for the rest of the days of the tour. We got up at dawn, around five or six o’clock, and gave the horses water. Sea, Snow and the carriage horses got some oats as well; Robert said the ponies were as fat as butter and should make do with the grass in the fields and waysides. He liked early rising. He was always the first to wake, and it was his knock on the side of our wagon which waked Dandy and me. When we tumbled out into the sharp morning air Robert would be stripped to the waist shaving in cold water and when he finished he would ask one of us to tip the bucket over his head and shoulders. He would burst out of the icy deluge puffing and blowing, ruddy with health.

Dandy would get the kettle on the fire and William and I would fetch dry crisp kindling for a quick blaze. We always carried some dry wood slung under the wagons for wet days. Jack never emerged until he heard the clink of the tin cups then he would come out, frowsy-eyed with his blanket huddled around his bare shoulders for his cup of tea – the last in the pot and as strong as it could be.

‘My God you’re an idle whelp,’ Robert would say; and Jack would smile apologetically and dip his face into the wide mug.

Katie was the worst of all. She would stay in her bunk until the last possible moment and not the hiss of the boiling kettle nor the smell of frying bacon was enough to get her out. Not until we were starting to pack up to leave and Robert was hammering on the side of the wagon and threatening to fetch her out would she come. She was a sight in the mornings! Her eyes red-rimmed and puffy, her hair in a straggly plait. Robert was at his most dour when he saw Dandy and Katie before they had combed their hair and washed their faces, and he often glanced over to Jack, convinced that his son could not desire such girls having seen them at their sleep-dazed worst.

But Robert was blind. He missed all the clues. It was some snobbery in him which made him oblivious to what was happening every day on the road. Dandy and Jack collecting kindling, Dandy and Jack fetching water from the stream, Dandy and Jack dropping behind and then running, flushed and sweaty to catch up with the wagons. Robert was looking for something else, he was watching for signs of tenderness, for Jack seeking one of us out. He did not know that Jack was well past the courtship time when he had halloed up the stairs and watched Dandy in the firelight. Now he needed her to slake his thirst, but between the repetitive cycle of lust and sating they did not seek each other out.