Jim snorts, then chuckles. ‘Ah, that’s about right.’ He skewers Jack with his pale blue stare. ‘So how about it?’

‘I don’t know much about farming.’

‘You willing to learn?’

‘I am.’ Jack steadies his breath. ‘I am.’

‘I can’t put you up in the house, but I’ve had men stay in the tack room here before now,’ Jim tips his head towards the door he’s just come through. ‘There’s a camp bed and stove …

‘It’ll do me fine.’

‘Wages will reflect your bed and board – you’ll take all your meals with us up at the house. I’m a fair employer, I’m not looking to diddle you in any way.’

‘I don’t doubt it.’

Jim’s firm mouth finally relents with a smile. He claps his broad hands together in satisfaction. ‘Right then.’

Jack wipes his palm on his trouser leg to rid himself of the grease from the horse’s coat, then he holds his hand out to the man before him.

‘I’m grateful to you.’

Jim’s grip is strong and though his bruised flesh protests, Jack is careful not to show his discomfort. The farmer’s subtle application of pressure conveys all he needs to know.

‘Don’t give me cause to regret it, lad,’ Jim says, his voice gruff.

‘I won’t, sir.’

‘Good.’ Jim releases his hand with a final warning squeeze. ‘Well, we’d better show you around, hadn’t we?’

They walk the farm with the dog at their heels, all one hundred and twenty acres of arable and pasture. Jack crosses fields of dairy cows, ruddy brown with white dapples on their rumps, their heads lifting in curiosity. He is walked through a field of sheep, the bleats of frolicking lambs drifting on the breeze. They lean over five-bar gates to study cropped hayfields backed by woods of beech and fir, and they walk along tramlines through barley, the hairs on the heads slicing their skin, before crossing a lane to enter acres of chest-high corn, waiting to be burnished gold by the sun, until at last they return via a farm track to the paddock behind the yard, where two Clydesdales graze peaceably as chickens strut between them, pecking at ground bearing the indented smiles of the horses’ hooves.

Back in the yard itself, Jim shows him the milking parlour, then – bypassing the stables and the tack room – the barn with its clay-tiled pitched roof and beside it the rickyard where already four hayricks stand, protected from the rain by their thatched conical hats. Finally, they arrive at the open-fronted shed where the implements – the plough share, the harrow, the potato riddle and seed drill – are neatly stored amongst yellow dandelions and tangled mayweed.