“Did I make a fool of myself?” he asks Ralph. Finally he had come and put a hand on Harry’s shoulder.

“You’re not even on the scale. People howl, people rave. We’ve had families pulling up the crosses and trying to dig their boys out. We’ve had wives and mothers arrive with secreted spades and plans to smuggle them back across the Channel. You’d be staggered at what we see.”

“I was here, though. I’ve stood by his grave before. I wasn’t expecting it to hit me like that.”

“I have a theory: there’s only so much that the human brain and heart can process. We were all emotionally switched on to the minimum ticking-over setting then. We had to be, just to get from day to day. Now, when we don’t have to subdue ourselves to all-around ghastliness, when we don’t have to be constantly clenched against it, small things can trigger a man and all of that pent-up emotion floods out. I’ve seen some chaps flood terribly, downpours and tidal waves of tears.” He clinks his glass against Harry’s. “I’d barely rate you a light shower.”

“Ralph told me. I am sorry,” says Cassie Fielding, stepping out onto the terrace. Like her husband, Cassie is tall, but she is narrow, with a head full of curls, reminding Harry of a Corinthian column. She squeezes his arm, flops into a wicker chair, and closes her eyes. He notices that, in the interval since she opened the door, Cassie has put on lipstick and a string of glass beads. She winds them through her fingers which are flashed with white paint.

“Cassie is painting window frames,” says Ralph.

“We have windows!” Her eyes flick open and she grins. “I must apologize for our informality. Our house is full of holes and our hospitality somewhat likewise. The glazier has just finished. You’ve no idea how exciting it is to finally have windows.”

There is something of the pioneer about Cassie. It struck Harry immediately. She makes him recall those newspaper stories about women who go off to Egypt to manage archaeological excavations, or who decide that they’re going to get a pilot’s license and learn to loop the loop.

“This place was just walls when we bought it,” says Ralph, looking up at the house. “Alfred said that I was a fool to lumber myself with it: four walls, two chimney stacks, and an awful lot of rubbish in between. The farmer who owned it before is building himself a house of bright red new bricks. Mercifully, it’s just on the other side of the hill.”

“Ralph put the roof on himself. He gives every spare hour to it. The boys helped him with the timbers, but really everything else is the work of his own hands.”