Sure enough, at the feet of the two knights was an extraordinary scene. In the background a castle stood on a hill; to the right a lady kneeled with her arms beseechingly outstretched and, on the left-hand side, a knight was mounted on a rearing white horse. He was holding a very long stick striped like a barber’s pole and seemed to be attempting to poke out the eye of a vast, bright-green and very vicious-looking crocodile, with a malevolent eye and rows of pointy teeth – nothing like the friendly dragon character I’d imagined for my story. Dangling from its lips were two thin, pale legs, apparently still alive and waving, even though the rest of the body had been fully consumed.

It was a scene so graphic that it was almost comical, and I actually laughed. ‘That’s a bit gory, isn’t it?’

‘Melissa Blackman says the crocodile – or should we call it a dragon? – terrorised the villages of St Mary’s and Wormley for years and years, until they persuaded a knight to come and kill it.’

‘What do you think, Pa?’

He pondered for a moment. ‘I’m not entirely sure, my darling. We’ll have to run the design past the diocese first, in any case.’ He rolled up the scrolls of paper, put them to the side of his desk and gave a deep sigh. ‘To be honest, I could do without another ruddy problem right now.’

10

In May and June the evenings grew longer and the trees and hedgerows bloomed even more abundantly. To Jimmy and me, used only to whatever nature the city could provide – plane trees, wild buddleia blooming on bomb sites and neat planting in the parks – the sight was astonishing. White borders of delicate cow parsley laced every verge, and with the help of the colour illustrations in Mrs Diamond’s Wild Flowers of the British Isles I could soon tell the difference between dandelions, daisies, primroses and cowslips. The country names stirred my imagination, each one so descriptive and evocative: cranesbill, loosestrife, meadowsweet, foxglove, stitchwort and willow herb.

Jimmy was never happier than when we were out in the woods and fields, exploring new routes and discovering wonderful, secret places. One Saturday we took a picnic up to the copse of Scots pines that topped the hill overlooking the valley. Local folk knew it simply as The Pines. It consisted, back then, of just a dozen or more ancient trees, but in their position at the very pinnacle of the hill they could be seen for miles around.

‘Go to see Eli now?’ Jimmy said, as I packed up the picnic.

‘We can check whether he’s at home. I don’t see any smoke,’ I said.

We took the path downwards to the junction, then followed the whitewashed stones. There was no one there, the hut was locked. But a few seconds later we heard whistling.