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window. The smell of baking would hail the neighbours at dawn. A queue of some half-dozen buyers would hurry to the door at eight thirty, official opening time. Mrs Tyler, a law unto herself, as she was so fond of saying, would wave a plump hand urging patience. Not until eight thirty-five, or even eight forty, would she at last turn the rusty key very slowly, and let the eager buyers in. There were never enough loaves. There was always an argument, disappointed voices. It was known that Mrs Tyler enjoyed these small dramas played out in her shop once or twice a week: it was her measure of power in an uneventful life.
    From time to time, Mrs Tyler’s annoying ways so incensed the other members of the community that they vowed to boycott her wares. But this plan never worked for more than a day or two. They needed stamps, their pensions, they needed to add a few shillings to their savings accounts. And once in the shop they would be tempted by a surprising cauliflower or cabbage, a punnet of tomatoes or Russet apples from the Tyler garden. These were put out, they knew, by way of a bait. The ploy succeeded. Despite their good intentions, the inhabitants of all the eleven cottages that made up Hinton Half Moon found themselves sneaking back into the post office, greed overcoming principle quite easily, to purchase Mrs Tyler’s trap of the day.
    Ratty Tyler, married to the post mistress for fifty-one years, was party to his wife’s small triumphs, because she described them to him with untiring glee every evening. His reaction was neither to encourage nor to discourage. A dignified neutrality, he had discovered over the years, was the wisest attitude to adopt in matters concerning Edith. In the past, in the heat of youthful loyalty, he had found himself in many a scrape through lending her support. It was due to an unwise act on Edith’s part that he had been forced to give up his thriving butcher’s shop in Dorchester just before the last war. A question of slander, though the exact circumstances had long since evaporated in his mind. Total boycott of customers. Confusion. Shame. Ratty hated ever to remember it, though sometimes the whole horrible business came back to him when Edith was in a particularly tricky mood. He warned her that if she went too far they would be driven from Hinton Half Moon just as they had been from Dorchester. But Edith seemed not to understand the danger. She continued taking her risks.
    When the Great War was over, the Tylers had found the cottage they still lived in today. Their first Sunday, Ratty signed up as a bell ringer, and it was in the cold vestry of the church that he met the young and energetic John Lawrence. In those days, the Lawrences, too, lived in a cottage in Hinton, but they owned a few acres of land on which they kept a small flock of sheep. The two men had a brief conversation in the churchyard. Ratty sensed Mr Lawrence’s ambition: already he had his eye on Hallows Farm, occupied at the time by a senile old woman.
    ‘And your line of country?’ Mr Lawrence had asked.
    ‘We’ve just moved here, sir. Casual labour’s what I’m after. Any farming work, I’d be pleased.’
    ‘We’re beginners ourselves, but I could offer you a few hours a week.’
    ‘Righto, sir.’ The two men shook hands.
    ‘John Lawrence.’
    ‘Ratty Tyler.’
    ‘Ratty?’
    ‘Term of affection, sir, should you suppose otherwise. Adopted at the time of our engagement by my now wife.’
    Ratty allowed himself the lie. The truth was that Edith had chosen the name for him as soon as they had been introduced. Reginald, his real name, she said at once, she could not abide. Ratty had been rather taken by her busy little head of blonde curls and her pretty ankles, and he feared his objection might have blasted the plan that was beginning to form in his mind. So Ratty he was from that day forth, though in the secrecy of his soul he often thought the name was more appropriate to Edith than to him.
    It