When the soil warmed in April and the daffodils came out in the orchard and the grass started growing and the boughs of the Tradescant trees were filled with birds singing, courting and nestbuilding, John strode round the brick chip paths in his new Papist boots and learned to love his garden again. He made a special corner for his Virginian plants and watched as the dried roots put up tiny green shoots and the unpromising dry seeds sprouted in their pots and could be transplanted.

‘Will they do well here?’ Johnnie asked. ‘Is it not too cold for them?’

John leaned on his spade and shook his head. ‘Virginia is a place of far greater extremes than here,’ he said. ‘Colder by far in winter, hotter in summer, and damp as a poultice for month after month in summer. I should think they will thrive here.’

‘And what will sell the best, d’you think?’ Johnnie asked eagerly. ‘And what is the finest?’

‘This.’ John leaned forwards and touched the opening leaves of a tiny plant. ‘This little aster.’

‘Such a small thing?’

‘It’s going to be a great joy for gardeners, this one.’

‘Why?’ Johnnie asked. ‘What’s it like?’

‘It stands tall, almost up to your waist, and white like a daisy against thick, dark leaves, a woody stem, and it grows in profusion. It’s a kind of shrubby starwort, like the aster from Holland. In Virginia I have seen a whole forest glade filled with them, like the whiteness of snow. And I once saw a woman plait the flowers into her black hair and I thought then it was the most beautiful little flower I had ever seen, like a brooch, like a jewel. I might name it for us, it’s just the sort of little beauty that your grandfather would have liked, and it will grow for anyone. He liked that in a plant. He always said that it was the hardy plants that gave the greatest joy.’

‘And trees?’ Johnnie prompted.

‘If it grows,’ John cautioned him. ‘This may be our finest tree from Virginia. It’s a maple tree, a Virginian maple. You can tap it for sugar, you put a cut in the trunk in springtime, when the sap starts rising, and the sap oozes a juice. You collect it and boil it down and it makes a coarse sugar. It’s a great delight, to set a little fire in the woods and boil down the syrup, all the children lick up the spills and run around with sticky faces and …’ He broke off, he couldn’t bear to tell his boy about the other – Suckahanna’s boy. ‘The leaves turn the deepest, finest scarlet in the autumn,’ he concluded.