Matthew was right about being left out of the lifeboat crew deliberately by the coxswain, Robert Eland. Privately, Esther could well understand why and yet Matthew was a good crew member; whenever the maroons went up throughout that following summer, she would see him start forward as if to race down to the boat-house for the launch. Then angrily he would return to his work but it would unsettle him. He would be watching the lane to see the men return, to catch someone to ask what the shout had been, and had it been successful, and more importantly, had they had a full crew? But no request ever came for Matthew to join them again; no sound of Ernie Harris’s flying feet across their yard to pound on the door shouting for ‘the mester’.

In the evening following a shout, Matthew would go down to the Seagull to try to join in the chatter and the talk of the rescue. But he was on the fringe now, not welcome amongst the crew members. On such nights he would come reeling home drunk, shouting and singing, only serving to exclude himself further from their number.

At harvest time, their neighbours came to Brumbys’ Farm once more to help. Mrs Harris and her brood of children, and workers from Rookery Farm, all came.

This year Robert Eland stayed away.

‘He goes out in his little boat cod-fishing more and more now, missus,’ Ernie Harris told Esther. ‘Mester Eland reckons the land’s not for him. His life’s the sea, he ses.’

Ernie now helped out frequently at Brumbys’ Farm. As Esther’s time approached, he would slip in quietly to have the milking done before she came out in the morning. He would arrive again in the evening, often milking the cows out in the field before she came to herd them to the farmyard. Esther smiled to herself. If her own husband had no thought for her welfare, it seemed that the young boy was doing his best to help her.

Ernie was a thin, wiry lad of fifteen now. His brown hair flopped forward over his eyes and he had the habit of flicking his head back and grinning at Esther from under the unruly lock of hair. His face was thin, almost gaunt, but his hazel eyes were bright and he was a quick, ever-cheerful lad. Esther, as her belly swelled, came to rely on Ernie’s help more and more. At the end of each week she would pay him for the hours she knew he had worked and then she would add a little for good measure, for the boy never asked for payment, and she was for ever finding jobs that had been done when she knew Matthew could not possibly have done them.