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farm entrance came into view. We swung into the yard with a screech of brakes and startled chickens.
    I made a rapid assessment. Farmer Lock wood kept a small heard of Friesians, but I knew full well that milk was rationed. True, there was something called the black market, only it was against the war effort, and I doubted whether Farmer Lockwood was part of it. He kept a picture of Winston Churchill over the fireplace.
    My luck held, because it was Barbara who came out of the farmhouse, alerted by the noise. She was dressed for riding, in fawn-colored jodhpurs and a white sweater. A look passed between Duke and Harry that she could have jumped her horse over. They got out and introduced themselves and were away across the yard with Barbara before I was out of the jeep.
    She treated it all as a joke, as if asking for milk was a gambit just to come and meet her, and of course they didn’t deny it. She blandly offered to let them take a pint themselves from her high-strung nanny goat, Dinah. The GIs wisely declined. Duke spotted a cider cask and said he wouldn’t mind something stronger, to which Barbara responded that you only got cider if you worked. ‘Okay, sweetheart,” offered Harry, unbuttoning his jacket, “so where’s the work?”
    Barbara laughed and said if they were serious, they could come back on Saturday when the apple harvest started. Some of the village girls were coming to help, and she reckoned her father could use extra hands. The GIs looked at each other and said they’d both be there if they could get a pass. There were some jokes about passes that I didn’t appreciate, and then they got into their jeep and drove off, still without the milk.
    As Barbara crossed the yard with me she told me I was a scamp for bringing the Yanks to the farm. It was a good thing her father hadn’t been around. If they turned up on Saturday, it would be up to me to do the explaining. I felt crushed, until she gave me a nudge and said, “Be fun if they do.”
    The harvesting of the apples, I learned, was a bigger undertaking than the haymaking. Mr. Lockwood grew many of the older varieties with stirring names like Captain Liberty, Royal Somerset, and Kingston Black. More humbly, there was something called a Nurdletop. Scarlet, green, and gold, they all went into the mill together to produce enough high-quality cider to supply several public houses in Frome and Shepton Mallet. Extra labor had to be hired for each stage of the process. So, I reasoned as I lay in bed that night, Farmer Lockwood shouldn’t really object to the GIs. Even so, it was wise to broach the possibility before Saturday.
    I took the opportunity the next evening. He’d finished work early and was smoking his pipe in his favorite Windsor armchair by the range. The smell of St. Julian comes back to me more strongly than our conversation. I stumbled through some kind of explanation, dreading that rural Somerset wasn’t ready for my entrepreneurial efforts, when he cut me off with a comment that anyone prepared to do a day’s work was welcome. As I came out of the kitchen Barbara gave me a large, conspiratorial wink.
    The apple gathering started soon after first light on Saturday. Traditionally, women were hired as casuals and shared in the work, which was how I first met Barbara’s best friend, the publican’s daughter, Sally Shoesmith. Sally was a chunky, bright-eyed redhead with freckles and a wicked smile that may have been quite misleading. At nine I wasn’t able to judge.
    It was also my introduction to Bernard, the Lockwoods’ son, who farmed Lower Gifford. I wasn’t sure whether filial duty had brought him there or the strong turnout of village girls. From my point of view he was pretty unapproachable. My point of view was mainly his hobnailed boots, for his job was to take a ladder to the “keeping apples,” like Tom Putts and Blenheim Oranges, that had to be harvested by hand, rather than shaken down by the polers. Below him, the girls