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scarf around her head. A mass of fine, dark hair tumbled onto her shoulders. She shook it lose, talking all the while about something that had happened on one of the farms nearby. I was thrilled to discover that I could understand most of what she said.
    Then she noticed me and immediately took me over. A few swift questions to her mother elicited the essential facts about me, and she picked up my suitcase and gas mask and showed me upstairs to the room Bernard had recently vacated. At the window, she stood with a hand on my shoulder pointing out chickens and geese and her favorite chestnut mare in the yard. After a bit we sat on the bed and I told her about my father being killed at Dunkirk and my mother doing war work and my Auntie Kit having us to lunch on Sundays. It emerged that Barbara had never been to London, so I talked urbanely about Trafalgar Square and Buckingham Palace. No one had ever listened to me with such attention before.
    That night I didn’t shed a single tear. I remember lying awake for a time, staring at the ceiling in my new bedroom, wondering about Farmer Lockwood and what he would say about having an evacuee. He was harvesting, and that apparently meant that he would not be in till after my bedtime. At one stage I heard a man’s voice talking seriously at some length, but it was the nine-o’clock news on the wireless. I fell asleep soon after.
    Precisely when George Lockwood was told about me, Γm still uncertain. I have a suspicion that his womenfolk kept me under wraps for at least a day. My introduction was stage-managed. At four the following afternoon Mrs. Lock-wood took a large basket containing freshly baked scones and a bowl of cream to the field where the harvesters were at work, and I was given the jug of cider to top up their bottles. Each man had a mug or a wooden bottle like a small tub, with a cork and an air stop. They kept me in heavy demand, excelling each other in pronouncing my name in what passed for plummy, middle-class accents. There were at least nine men and Barbara seated around the basket. Barbara’s smile so beguiled me that I spilled some of the cider I was supplying to the man on her left. He reached up and grasped my arm, momentarily startling me.
    Some of the cider had spilled onto his plate. He was the only man in possession of one. It was pink with a gold rim. This seemed a curious refinement, for he was easily the largest man there—six foot two, I would guess, with a mat of dark hair on his forearms and several gaps in his teeth. One of his eyes was bloodshot and partially closed.
    There was something else about him that presently registered with me: He was wearing a tie. Not a special tie with stripes like Mr. Lillicrap’s, and not elegantly tied. It was black and there were stains on it, but the wearing of it was a mark of distinction, for, I divined not a moment too soon, he was the farmer, my benefactor, Mr. Lockwood.
    Still gripping my arm, he asked me something about the cider that amused the others and that I didn’t understand. Probably he was commenting on my bad aim and suggesting that I’d imbibed from the jug, because when I politely answered yes, there were chuckles all round.
    Mr. Lockwood released me and held up his mug to me. I believe he said, “Have a drop more, boy. Finish it for me.”
    Somerset cider has a notorious kick. Barbara tried to protest, but it was reckless to challenge the farmer’s authority in front of his men and the extra hands hired for the harvest. He silenced her with a growl, still holding the mug with the handle towards me.
    I won’t claim that I felled my Goliath with one shot, but for a nine-year-old, I stood the test reasonably well. I told him I didn’t have much of a thirst. I took a sip, felt the bite of the cider on my tongue, handed back the mug, and asked politely if I could stay and help and drink the rest later.
    This met with general amusement and, more important, a nod from Mr. Lockwood. When work