‘Job’s yours, if you want it.’

It was then, as Hollis was deliberating on his offer in the shadows of the elms, that he caught sight of someone coming up the track from the direction of the road and said, ‘You know this fella?’

‘Who?’

Hollis jabbed a thumb into the distance. ‘He’s left your gate wide open.’

The figure coming up the track was heavyset and bearded. One side of his shirt was hanging free, leaving a swatch of pale flab exposed above the belt-line. There was a composure to the way he walked, with both hands tucked behind his back, but his shoulders had a forward lean that gave him a mean air, a look of shiftlessness – qualities that Arthur didn’t want around him or his farm. ‘He’s probably just asking after work. There’s been a load of people coming by of late. I’ll tell him to move on. Won’t take a minute.’

‘If he’s short of money,’ Hollis said, ‘his belly’s yet to hear of it.’

‘Well, let’s give him a chance.’ Arthur shielded his eyes and called along the track, ‘Hello there, fella. Can I help you?’

The man didn’t respond until he’d taken ten or twelve more strides towards them. There was a sweaty shine about his forehead, a blotchy dampness to his shirt around the armpits. ‘I was passing by,’ the stranger said, ‘and got to wondering about your place, that’s all.’ His accent wasn’t local and his tone was slightly hostile. ‘What is it that you do here? I can’t tell.’

‘Farming,’ Arthur told him. ‘We’re not hiring at the moment, if that’s what you’re after.’

Hollis cleared his throat.

The stranger stood there, scratching at the little continent of hair remaining at the centre of his scalp. ‘Well, I suppose that’s that, then,’ he said. ‘Pardon the intrusion.’

‘It’s no trouble. Close the gate on your way out, please.’

The man’s face tensed with something like antipathy. ‘It was open when I got here,’ he said, ‘but I’ll shut it. You can watch me and make sure.’ He slung a heavy look at them and turned on his heels.

They let him traipse away along the gravel.

‘You meet all sorts in this game,’ Hollis said. ‘A lot of them are kind and decent, and the rest are more like him.’

The stranger reached the gate and, with a sham dispassion, pulled it closed. He was gone at last, but Arthur could still see his mammoth bootprints in the dirt. There was a chill about the air now in the shaded driveway and he was thirsting for another cup of tea. He couldn’t keep from staring down the track, recalling how the stranger’s shape had passed along it like a tram he’d missed. If it hadn’t been for Hollis slapping a big hand upon his shoulder, saying, ‘I’d better take you up on it, your offer, seeing as beggars can’t be choosers,’ he might’ve stayed there until dusk. ‘First things first, I recommend we plough that field as soon as we’ve dug out those weeds,’ the old man barrelled on, ‘then sow it with a cover crop. Rye’d be the best bet. Plough that when it comes through, harrow it. Sow rapeseed next and turn that under, too. And after …’ They began to walk back to the house again instinctively: no pledges made, no contract, just a mutual direction.