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  ‘Thank you,’ she said, slightly surprised.

  Toby shrugged off her thanks. ‘You’ve got enough to do. I want to see this problem with the old lady solved before I go to work. Call Mr Miles now, I can help him move her.’

  Louise gave Toby a long level scrutinising look. ‘Thank you,’ she said again. She dialled the number on the kitchen telephone. It rang for a long time and when Andrew Miles picked it up he was breathless from running from the yard.

  ‘It’s Louise Case. I’m sorry to trouble you but I have a problem here.’

  ‘Oh aye,’ Mr Miles said cautiously. Louise had telephoned him when her septic tank overflowed, when her rainwater drains had blocked and flooded her study, when her water-pipes froze, and when the coal merchant had failed to deliver her coal. To all these minor crises Mr Miles had responded as a good neighbour, and graciously received Louise’s envelopes containing excessive amounts of cash. But he had learned that Louise’s charm – to which he was deeply susceptible – generally indicated work which needed doing at once, often in the middle of lambing.

  ‘I have this old woman camping in my orchard,’ Louise said.

  ‘Well, you would,’ Mr Miles replied. ‘It’s May.’

  ‘Is that her name?’

  ‘The month. She always camps in your orchard in May. June she goes on to Cothering Farm. Every year.’

  Louise exhaled her rising irritation. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  Mr Miles seemed to think the call had ended. He was about to put down the telephone.

  ‘Wait!’ Louise said urgently. ‘I want her moved.’

  There was a shocked silence.

  ‘She can’t stay here, there are no … facilities. She has a dog, and she needs wood for her stove. She’s right at the bottom of my garden!’

  Mr Miles sighed.

  ‘Surely you have a corner of a field or somewhere she could go?’ Louise asked plaintively. ‘All those fields of yours are empty.’

  ‘Hay,’ Andrew Miles said succinctly. ‘Those empty fields are hay meadows. They are not empty. They are growing hay. You can’t put a van on a hay crop.’

  ‘Somewhere there must be a corner for her?’

  ‘She can come if she likes. But she’s always stayed in your orchard before. She was born there.’

  ‘Will you come down and tell her?’

  ‘I’ll come down just before dinner,’ Andrew Miles said grudgingly. ‘But I doubt she’ll listen to me.’

  ‘Not until tonight?’

  ‘Dinner midday.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Louise said. But he had already hung up.

  Andrew Miles’s Land-Rover pulled up behind Toby’s clean white Ford Escort and coughed to a standstill. Louise came out of the front door, Toby behind her. Louise introduced the two men. Andrew looked over Toby with one brief, encompassing glance. Toby in his turn saw a man in his middle forties, weathered into a broken-veined tan. A tall man, all bone and muscle with beaky hard features and a pair of hard blue eyes. His thinning fair hair was crushed down by a flat cloth cap with the shine of age on the peak. He was wearing working trousers very unlike Toby’s well-cut chinos, and a brushed cotton coloured shirt with the nap worn away at the collar.

  ‘Well, then,’ he said.

  Louise led the way down the garden to the orchard gate. ‘Hello!’ she called.

  The old woman poked her head out of the van door and looked at the three of them. She nodded to Andrew Miles with a small knowing smile, but she said nothing.

  ‘Mr Miles here has a field where you could park your van,’ Louise began. Unconsciously she had raised her voice to the determinedly bright tone that is appropriate for the disabled and old and those too weak to protest. ‘A lovely big field where you’d be more comfortable.’

  The old woman looked at Andrew. ‘The bottom field where your dad kept the pigs?’ she asked. ‘I told your grandad and I told your dad I’d not stop there.’

  ‘Any field you like. You’re in the way for Miss Case, here,’ he said gruffly.

  The old woman looked quickly at Louise. ‘How am I in your way?’

  ‘You’re not!’ Louise said quickly. ‘But it is my orchard, and you are trespassing, actually.’ She felt her voice weaken. ‘It is my land, you know, and there isn’t really room for you here.’

  ‘He said I could stay.’ The old woman jerked a dirty thumb at Toby. ‘Your fancy-man. He said I could stay.’

  Toby flushed under Andrew Miles’s look of interested inquiry. ‘Well, I was just thinking …’

  ‘I can’t move anyway,’ the old woman said. ‘The gears are gone. I couldn’t get up that hill. I’ve got no first or second gear. I was going to ask you to fix it for me.’

  Andrew nodded. ‘Not today I can’t,’ he cautioned. ‘Later I will.’

  The old lady nodded as if the problem were solved. ‘When the engine’s fixed I’ll move on,’ she said. ‘Not to the pig field. I go on to Cothering next. I’ll go when the engine is fixed.’

  Louise would have been happier with an undertaking as to when the engine would be fixed but both men had nodded and turned away. The old woman spoke to Louise in a conspiratorial undertone. ‘He’s a handsome man. Any woman would be proud to have him in her bed. I can see why you like him.’

  ‘Toby?’

  ‘Andrew Miles,’ the woman said, her voice loving every syllable of his name. ‘And such a pretty farm, and owned freehold, you know. You’ve been wasting your time with that girl’s blouse Toby. If I were your age I’d be tucked up in the big feather bed in the farmhouse b’now and a couple of babies in the cot, too.’

  Louise turned away and followed the men back to the house. They were standing in the drive beside Andrew’s Land-Rover. Louise felt extraordinarily uncomfortable.

  ‘I’ll need to look round,’ Mr Miles said. ‘I’ll have to find a reconditioned gear box. It’s a big job. I can come down and do it later in the week.’

  ‘That’ll be great,’ Toby agreed eagerly. He was heavier than Andrew Miles, better dressed, rounder-faced, richer all over with the smooth glossiness of a well-serviced urban man. But beside the beaky farmer he looked strangely insubstantial. ‘Louise can’t really work with the van there.’

  ‘I thought she worked in the dining room?’

  ‘It overlooks the orchard.’

  Andrew Miles looked at Louise as if he would ask her what work took place in the dining room but needed a clear view of the orchard. ‘Landscape painting?’

  ‘No, I’m trying to write an essay on Lawrence,’ Louise said. ‘But I can’t concentrate on anything when I keep seeing the van.’

  ‘Oh, writing. I thought you were a teacher.’

  ‘I teach at the university and I write as well.’

  He opened the door of the Land-Rover. It creaked loudly and a few flakes of paint fell like dark green snow. ‘Got to get home,’ he said. ‘Pigs want feeding.’

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ Louise said. ‘I really do appreciate it. You’re such a good neighbour!’

  Andrew Miles nodded without smiling. Louise, feeling that she had been gushing, retreated to the front door. Toby stood by his car, to ensure that Mr Miles crashed his Land-Rover into reverse gear and backed safely away from its shiny whiteness.

  They went back into the house. ‘Coffee?’ Louise offered. ‘Or do you have to go?’

  ‘Actually, I think I’ll pop down and have another word with your old lady. She was talking to me last night about her childhood. I was thinking, I might do a bit of oral history research on her. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do. If she’s going to be here for a few days I could take the opportunity.’

  ‘You hate oral history,’ Louise pointed out. ‘You said it was worse than local history in encouraging people to be egotistical about their boring past, trying to pass tedious personal gossip off as interesting facts.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Toby said with an easy laugh. ‘But if she really was born here and adopted in