‘I did,’ she said. ‘Sounds easy.’

‘Then what are you both waiting for?’

He gave Charlie the go signal and the tractor lumbered forward. Treading his way back towards the porch steps for a smoke, he was happy to let fortune take its course. It was likely that a good pile of their seeds would go to waste – a twinge of guilt skimmed through him at the prospect. But who could tell for certain? Maybe Joyce could concentrate for long enough to get it right.

He watched them every moment of the way, the tractor going up and down and up and down, Joyce riding the corn drill, the harrow making clouds out of the dirt. When they neared the final furrow, he went back to check their work. The field was scuffed and barkish-brown and orderly. He checked the spread of seeds under his feet, the coverage. He eyed the ground for inconsistencies. But strike him down with lightning, it looked good.

‘So,’ said Florence, like a shadow in the space behind him. ‘How’d they do?’

He dusted off his hands. ‘It’s not the worst attempt.’

She gave him that shrewd smile of hers. ‘A thumbs up will do fine.’

‘Today was good, I’ll give them that.’

‘A bit of confidence in people can do wonders, can’t it?’ She was staring now into the distance, at a twist of starlings in the sky. ‘Just like Mr Mayhood has been telling me.’

‘They did all right. For once. Let’s see how they get on next time of asking.’

Florence turned. She nudged his shoulder as she headed back towards the porch. ‘Who said I was talking about them?’

He couldn’t think of what to say to her, so he just scratched his jaw and let her go. The starlings made their senseless patterns overhead. Eventually, the tractor came to rest in the far corner of the field and he heard its engine rumbling out. By the time he reached the corn drill, Joyce and Charlie had a perch at either end, dangling their legs from it like two daft infants on a swing. ‘Job’s not finished yet,’ he told them. ‘We’ve to get all these machines back in the yard and clean them off.’

‘Mr Mayhood wants us in the draughting room by one,’ said Charlie, hopping down.

‘You’d better crank the motor up, then, hadn’t you? Relaxing time is over.’

They looked at one another, mute but sneering. ‘Aye aye, captain,’ Joyce said, giving a salute. So, there it was: her attitude was still the same. The honest-grafter act was for the Mayhoods’ benefit. But when they weren’t around to watch her, it was whinging and sarcasm all the way. He knew that it was going to be like this, week after week, one petty incident after the next. It’d be her word they favoured over his, whenever there were sulks or quarrels. In their minds, she was still young, a work in progress, someone worth their kindness and investment. They’d let her live in their warm house and eat their food and learn their trade, while he’d forever be their hired skivvy. An old man brought in from the outside for low wages. Replaceable and easy to forget. That was how things were for him, and how they’d always be.