Their hard work kept them warm enough. While Florence ploughed the east field, he and Mr Mayhood shovelled dry manure on to the trailer. It was mostly wordless labour, and when either of them spoke, it was an act of courtesy, a way of showing one another they were glad to share the burden. That’s how it was meant to be at Leventree, he understood that now: as long as they were farming, they should never have their minds on architecture. The silence and the toil were meant to give them separation from all that, to cleanse them. And some days it did. On others, it exhausted him to the extent that he could barely hold a pencil or envision anything except the comforts of his bed. He’d never been so worn out since his first few weeks in borstal, which had been so draining that he’d fainted twice on the parade ground and been carried to the nurse, who’d given him a glass of salted water to drink. He’d toughened up quickly after that, but it had taken him a while to lose the nickname Jellylegs.

Part of him was still preoccupied with Joyce as he climbed on to the tractor for his turn at ploughing. Every time he arced around to start another furrow, his first glance was back towards the porch, in the hope that she’d be standing in her workman’s trousers, ready to pitch in. But the hours passed and he and Mr Mayhood – Florence, too, before she went inside to organize their lunch – were left to haul the trailer up and down the field, edging it along the imprints of the tractor’s wheels. They worked in twenty-five-yard patches, Charlie flinging the manure, spade after spade, and the Mayhoods raking it all through. Once or twice, the tractor’s engine sputtered out and, when it did, a holy feeling swelled in him. The noises of the world became much sharper, more alive. The crackle of his ciggie as it burned, the straining stitches round his bootcaps as he flexed his toes, the distant lowing of their neighbour’s cattle in the barn. Then Florence got the tractor going again and all he heard was engine judder, till he got that low tone in his ears like someone blowing in a bottle. And on they went again, another twenty-five or thirty yards, rehearsing the same motions with their rakes and shovels. By the time the job was done, his back was griping and he couldn’t feel his nose.

After he’d washed up and changed, there was a treat for lunch – oxtail and barley stew with carrots, which he mopped up with two rounds of soda bread. Every week, he checked the rota, took note of the days when Florence was marked down for cooking. She always made hot food for them, substantial meals full of flavour; not the scrappy sandwiches with soup, or cheese on toast with pickled onions, that the rest of them would put together. Today, she even set a plate aside for Joyce and left it covered on the range, assuming that his sister would be hungry when she finally returned. She looked towards the mantel clock and said, ‘It’s after half past one. I think I should go down there.’