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separate the appalling from the merely worn for the church jumble sale had made Daisy strong and stubborn. Two qualities that would not have saved her had the world not suddenly been thrown into chaos. Daisy consciously saw herself as one of the cards tossed into the air and was fairly sure that wherever she landed she would prefer it to the life she watched her mother lead.
    Daisy was grateful to belong to the Land Army. Unlike Valerie who, had her mother been a fraction less alert, would be driving senior officers around London, provocatively dressed in an ATS uniform, Daisy had sacrificed the possibility of a wartime romance for the countryside, the unlikelihood of being shouted at, long periods of silence, and her own room with a warm bed and the window open.
    Her uniform still had a certain novelty value. She did not wear it for everyday work, depending rather on practical gumboots with two pairs of socks, corduroy trousers, and a couple of heavy sweaters. Daisy was excited to be traveling to a dance and what was, she supposed, a house party; but a little out of her depth, she was very glad to arrive in uniform.
    She had brought
Lorna Doone
with her for the long journey. Although she was happy looking out the window at the unfamiliar countryside or occasionally sleeping, she was grateful to have a half-remembered novel with lots of story and not too many characters, in the chilly railway station waiting rooms when she twice changed trains.
    Daisy could see that people tended to read what gave them comfort. Since the outbreak of war, her mother had upped her intake of Smollett, drawing on the hardmindedness, the energetic sense of life, the bawdy lack of sentimentality, to help her get through days which had had, even before the war, an element of restriction, rationing, regimentation. Daisy, too, avoided sentimentality in any form; as a child firmly avoiding novels whose heroes were orphans or animals.
Lorna Doone
was perfect: the heroic aspect of farming, the masculinity of the farmer, enough familiar references to the history of the late seventeenth century to fix the story in a time and a place, and a certain timely suspicion of high life; Daisy felt it all. She regretted only that the train took her through Crewe and Lancaster to Windermere, and not by way of Exmoor.
    Mrs. Thomas had packed sandwiches for Daisy. The train, full leaving Crewe, emptied out at the next two stations, the first a market town, the next an insignificant stop that seemed to serve a military camp. There remained only one other traveler in the railway carriage: a middle-aged, gray-haired, gray-faced woman knitting a ribbed sock on four fine needles. She looked like one of Daisy’s father’s parishioners. Daisy was sorry not to be alone; she had hoped for a stretch of the journey by herself, and would have liked to put her feet up on the seat, lean back, and eat her sandwiches while she read or looked out the window.
    They sat, on opposite sides of the railway carriage, in silence. Although she never looked at Daisy, the woman managed, using only her expression and the occasional sniff, to convey her disapproval. It was an attitude with which Daisy was familiar, the assumption that youth and healthy beauty were the innocent exterior that covered rampant animal sexuality. This woman perceived Daisy as the enemy. Less threatening than Hitler, of course, but geographically more imminent.
    When Daisy finished her chapter—John Ridd’s harrowing quest into Monmouth’s battlefield—she got up and took her sandwiches from her bag on the overhead rack. She was aware that every move she made was being watched. Daisy unwrapped her generous wax paper package of sandwiches and offered one to the woman opposite. She watched her hesitate and then take one.
    â€œThank you,” the woman said. “I’m much obliged.”
    Daisy saw her look at the sandwich. Homemade bread, freshly churned butter, farm-cured ham, and plenty of