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off again,’ moaned Balfour.
    ‘His name is Edgar Balfour,’ said George. ‘I think he ought to go to bed. He’s been ill for a long time.’
    ‘Ill?’ Dotty regarded the flushed Balfour. ‘What’s wrong with him?’
    ‘Just ill.’
    Balfour tried to concentrate. Joseph was saying something, something about the people due to arrive tomorrow. He must attend.
There might, who knows, be a message.
    ‘She’s a blonde,’ said Joseph, ‘and he’s in some sort of business. He used to be in the army. Had his buttock shot off in
Italy.’
    George said without reproach, listening to an owl hoot somewhere behind the long barn, ‘You didn’t say there was a woman coming.’
    ‘Didn’t I? Oh well, they’re married, George. It’s not too bad.’
    Dear God, thought Balfour, practically sobered with shock. Not two men but a man and wife – a woman with yellow hair and a
man with a mutilated arse, in his hut, sleeping in the same room as himself. He removed his hands from his face and gazed
at Joseph hopelessly.
    ‘Bed.’ Joseph yawned, gripping the edges of his chair to lever his body upright. ‘Tomorrow, Mr Whatsit, we really must have
a long talk about your social work, old chap.’
    I must try to be cheerful and off-hand, thought Dotty, her fingers still clasping her empty glass. Either that or I must pretend
to be asleep.
    Order and growth, thought George, staring out into the dark field, thinking of his remembrance trees, his thousand memorials,
each one named in memory of a Jew who had never reached the Promised Land.
    They moved in several directions to bed. Kidney was dispatched to the barn, taken to the door by lamplight and thrust inside.
‘Don’t wake Roland,’ hissed Joseph fiercely, shutting him away for the night.
    ‘Good night – good night,’ they told each other, close now that they were about to separate.
    George lit a candle for Dotty and Joseph because he needed the lamp to guide the unsteady Balfour down the slope and across
the stream to Hut 2. ‘You can have carpets you can afford at Cyril Lord,’ sang the stumbling Balfour in the darkness.

3
    Willie came across the fields from Calfin shortly after seven o’clock the following morning. He took his time, not on account
of his years but because there was no need to hurry and because, since his retirement from the mines, he had begun to suffer
increasingly from shortness of breath. While the wife still slept he had struggled into his clothes and gone down the narrow
stairs into the kitchen to make himself a cup of tea. He hadn’t bothered to eat. He found he had three Woodbines left from
the night before, and the visitors over at Nant MacFarley might possibly tip him for cleaning out the toilet. He would buy
some bacon at the corner shop for breakfast on his way back from the Glen. He let himself out quietly, treading gently down
the path so as not to disturb the wife. She would probably want to know why he was going and where and what for, and he didn’t
want to discuss it. He had married late, after the death of his mother, and mostly he confused the two women in his mind.
    At the crossroads his footsteps faltered as if, by rights, by habit, his boots should go left towards the pit. He spat frequently
into the grass as he went, walking with legs well-bent at the knee, eyes darting from side to side under the colourless brim
of his cap, seeing little pictures – a brown bottle, unbroken, upright in a patch of thistle, a line of sheep two meadows
distant, pouring like grey milk through a gap in the hedge, the mountain humped behind a scroll of mist. His lips moved as
he climbed, telling himself it was a good morning, over and over like a prayer, letting his body go with the flow of the hill
so as to conserve his energy.
    The cows in the top field were still lying down across the daisies. He didn’t see the daisies, but he saw the cows out of
the corner of one pale blue eye: seven cows in a lump under an elm tree.
    He rested a moment