Sometimes a hole would appear in the middle of a field. In a single night it would fill up with water that had vanished by the following day.

The turkey chicks were a non-­starter. They contracted a disease, and as we were shooing them from one half of the hangar to the other for their vaccinations, a partition fell down and we lost the overview. So we vaccinated all of them again. I think it was the vaccine they died of, not the disease. Those were not good times.

And then my wife left. That was just how it was. My wife left, and I acted as if I didn’t care, and maybe I didn’t. Now I was alone with my land and my hands and a huge, empty corrugated-­iron hangar that sang at night in the wind.

I was all right with that. I sat on my front doorstep, watching the wind, and had the sense that everything was coming together in me. I was my father, I was my grandfather, I was his father and his father and his father. I was the last and the first in this long line of people, and in the ground beneath my feet the roots were loosening and I was all right with that.

I was tired.

I knew it was all over. No one has the strength to get a ninety-­hectare clay and gravel sponge to prosper. All there was left for me to do was seal the windows and doors to stop the flies getting into the house.

They came one hot summer morning. The mayor and two men in suits. I don’t know who those two were or what they were called. They were just men in grey suits, sweating like the horses in the sun. I’d seen the big black car jolting up the track from a long way off, and when it stopped the blue of the sky was reflected in the windscreen. We went inside and sat at the table. The mayor asked, ‘How long have we known each other now?’

‘As far as I’m aware, we don’t know each other at all,’ I said.

‘It must be thirty years. At least. That’s a long time, isn’t it?’

I stared at the pattern on the tablecloth. It was lots of little overlapping rectangles. The others also seemed to be inspecting the tablecloth. I hadn’t offered them anything to drink, not because I was rude, I just didn’t have any clean glasses. The mayor cleared his throat and leaned towards me. His hair was stuck to his forehead, as if he’d been running in the rain.

‘Let’s talk man to man, Jonas,’ he said. ‘We haven’t come all the way out here to see you just so we can enjoy the nice weather, because this isn’t nice weather at all, am I right?’

‘That depends,’ I said. ‘On how you look at it.’

‘We didn’t come to keep you company all morning, either. As mayor, one ought perhaps to do that sort of thing every now and then, but there just isn’t time, you understand. Time slips away like nobody’s business, and before you know it the day’s over. How much time have you got left, Jonas?’