Colour suffused his face and his eyes bulged. ‘Christ, you’ve got a bloody cheek, woman! You’d do anything – anything to make me look small, wouldn’t ya? I’ve a good mind to go up there this minute and—’

‘That’s right, mate, you tell ’er. Don’t you hide behind a woman’s skirts,’ a voice from those nearby joined in their quarrel. Neither Matthew nor Esther took any notice.

She put out her hands and took hold of his shoulders. ‘Please, Matthew, don’t do anything foolish, anything rash. You’re needed here, on the farm. You have a family now . . .’

Matthew’s mouth twisted sardonically. ‘Aye, the farm! Always the farm, isn’t it, Esther?’

He brought his arm up and knocked her hands away, twisting out of her grasp at the same time. Then he turned and blundered away through the throng. In a moment he was lost from her view.

‘Oh, Esther,’ mourned Ma Harris. ‘Ya’ve done it now, lass. He’ll join up just to spite ya.’

Twenty

MATTHEW did not join up, but he did not arrive home until the early hours of the following morning, staggering up the stairs to tumble into bed beside her and fall into a state of drunken unconsciousness rather than of sleep.

Talk of the war dominated everyone’s conversation and seemed to rule their lives, even though it was happening hundreds of miles away in another country between peoples whom Esther had only heard of in her days at the village school. Foreign places became part of everyday speech, and when lists of casualties began to appear in the local newspaper, suddenly it was very real and very close.

Ernie Harris came to say goodbye, looking somehow bigger, more filled out already. All at once, he was a young man going off to war.

‘Oh, Ernie!’ In a sudden surge of emotion, Esther put her arms about him and hugged him to her. ‘Do you really have to go?’

The boy wriggled with embarrassment at her unexpected display of sentiment. ‘I want to go, missus. I’m a soldier now.’ His thin face beamed at her as she stood back to look at him. She shook her head sadly and murmured again, ‘Oh, Ernie, I – we shall all miss you.’

‘I’ll be back, missus, when we’ve taught these Germans a thing or two. Besides, everyone says it’ll be over before Christmas.’

As she followed him to the gate, it seemed as if everyone who lived at the Point had turned out to wave Ernie off to war. They shouted after him as he walked proudly down the lane, a slight figure growing smaller and smaller. At the curve in the road, he turned and gave a final wave. Then he was gone. The gathering dispersed, leaving the lonely figure of Ma Harris standing in the road staring at the place where her eldest son had disappeared from view.