The big shed was flexing slightly in the nor’wester, dust and fragments of desiccated leaves falling through the high cobwebs from the tin roof and catching momentarily in the sunlight from the doorway and windows. The floor, the pens, everything of wood was deeply stained with oil from the fleeces, shit from frightened animals and sweat from men who had worked there. Years and years of all three, so that the smell was cumulative and evocative, faint outlines of working figures seeming to flicker in the dim recesses of the shed. There was noise, too, the squeaks and rattles of loose things borne on the background surge of the wind’s voice. As the brothers talked of the likelihood of rain, of prices for lamb and hogget and for wool, Pearly could see his father, a series of snapshots in the shadows, with his black singlet, sack slippers — dragging from the pen, fleece tossing, straining at the long lever on the old wool press where now stood an electrically operated replacement. In such fleeting and imposed apparitions his father lived on and would do so until those who loved and remembered him were themselves merely shades.

‘You’re lucky having Matt come back to the place for good,’ Pearly said again. ‘When he marries you’ll be close to his family too.’

‘We certainly hope so. We’ve always got along, but it isn’t always easy to still be involved but not interfere. In time I’ll have to let him run the place in his own fashion. We’ve agreed a couple of years’ trial, and then he’ll make up his mind.’

Pearly was envious but not in a hostile way. He wished he got on better with his own son, that Leanne and her family weren’t so far away. He knew his grandsons in Wales mainly through Skype and had been with them physically only once — able to reach out and hold their small hands or kiss their round faces. Leanne said they could well come home eventually, but even if they did it would be to a main city where her skills could be best employed.

‘You’ll be pretty busy with council stuff as well as the 125th,’ said Richie. As he talked he checked a flap door on one of the pens, noticing that it scraped the floor.

‘There’s always something,’ said Pearly, ‘but I’m used to it by now. It’s a matter of sorting priorities and sticking to them. And delegation, that’s a key thing. Getting good people and letting them do their job. There’s been some bloody nutter lately who’s been ringing up and mouthing off. Pretty ugly, abusive stuff. I don’t take it personally, but it pisses me off that Helen might be exposed to it.’

‘Can’t the phone people track him down?’