my struwwely self. For the last half-hour of the barrage it’d all felt curiously personal — each bomb with Der Kins painted on it. In the coal hole he regretted his behaviour — if he hadn’t overstepped the mark he might still be up in the top-floor flat of the Nash Terrace which Annette shared with her pal Doreen. When the raid began, he fed the girls Sirbert’s hard data, before extinguishing the electric and opening the curtains. He’d watched scarcely able to contain his excitement, as a stick of incendiaries falling somewhere to the north of the Mappin Terraces lit up the freshly dug allotments on Primrose Hill. Doreen had hurried off down to the basement — but Annette, Kins was persuaded, shared his exultation in these. . the trumpets of Jericho, and when she buried her face in his chest. . I pawed her breasts. — At Collow Abbey Farm, Feydeau, an old contemptible of the movement, arrives to speak to the trainees. Squinting at Kins through the lamp smoke, he says, De’Ath, eh — putting heavy emphasis on the second syllable. I knew a very fine young fellow by the name of Stanley Death, who was killed in the last war, any relation of yours? And Kins, repelled by the pubic protuberance of the old proselytiser’s wagging beard, bridles: No, not that I know of. . and hopes it’ll end there — but Feydeau’s not to be so easily subdued. Earlier he’d made some rather pointed comments about how community living appeals to a certain sort of person, usually comfortably reared, as an Elysium in which, without having to do anything in particular about it, he feels the burden of existence will be lifted from his shoulders. . and now he prates on: Death is a good old English peasant name that in my experience is frequently left behind — as if it were a smock, hung on a lowly peg — when the family begins its social ascent, very often under a new and Frenchified covering —. If you’re implying, Kins breaks in, that my old man has cut his cloth to suit his position, then, I’m afraid you nothing at all about him! — And on this peevish, rather than Napoleonic, note, Kins struggles up from the broken rattan chair with a good deal of squeaking, then endures the further humiliation of. . a Hardyesque interlude as he grapples with the two halves of the door, before eventually finding himself in the yard, breathing heavily and trying. . to take the long view between the barns and over the lime woods, to where in the distance the soft light of the new moon silvers the Wolds’ grassy haunches. Picking his way gingerly over the well-manured cobbles, Kins draws closer to a long low byre and its. . beautiful pong — By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house. Kins fights to maintain his footing in the present — had it been days or weeks before, when, by way of being more useful, he’d taken on the task of doing the farm’s accounts? And also begun acting as. . a rum sort of scribe, filling out forms and penning personal letters for the unlettered labourers in the neighbourhood. Time — at least of the readily divisible species — had. . dissolved. He wore no wristwatch, no calendar hung in the farm’s kitchen, and the clock on the mantel was only intermittently wound. There was no wireless, while his weekly bike expeditions into Market Rasen — where he took communion from the vicar of St Thomas’s, a man acquainted with the Reverend Dick, who evinced. . at least some sympathy — became less frequent as the summer wore on, before ceasing entirely. Kins wrote no letters of his own — he’d given his address only to his people, and so received tersely loving postcards from Bumbly in response to his own tersely loving ones. There seemed to be an unstated agreement between all four De’Aths that, as their consciences took them in different directions, so it was better for all concerned if. . we became heirs of the righteousness that comes by faith. Saving that there is faith no more — not for Kins. Brockleby, whose beloved Friesians jostle and fart in the byre, has a faith that rises up strong from the furrows. Shortly after Kins’s arrival. . the singing-bloody-farmer, in old-fashioned high gaiters, corduroy breeches and a mismatched double-breasted jacket, took him out to the Glebe field, together with Jack Clarke and Bill Smedley, the latter having cycled all the way there from Coventry wearing his window cleaner’s overalls. That’s faith! Brockleby hosannaed when Bill turned up — and, as they all squatted down to goggle at the furrows, he intoned, This is white gold, my soulful boys. . The trio followed his fanatic eyes along the row of little plants groping into the grey May daylight. Looking from the farmer’s breeches to the corduroy field . . Kins had realised that the beets interested him. . not a bit. These clutches of tiny leaves on spiky stalks might as well’ve been. . docks, lettuces or ruddy opium so far as he was concerned. Our role, Brockleby preached on, as pacifists in a time of war such as this, is to plant the seed of a new civilisation within the barbarism of a world hell-bent on destruction. These. . these are the seedlings of that civilisation, my soulful boys — and when we take our hoes like this — he delved down as his cigarette holder stuck up, and Kins thought that for a pious man Brockleby relied rather a lot on. . these Craven “A” crutches — we remove the weeds choking the little saviours. The men who work the land hereabouts will tell you there’s na frim folk as can manage singling, it’s too arrud t’make it natty, but I tell you, my soulful boys, we’ll make proper clod-hoppers of you all, for, when you untangle these seedlings here. . gently does it. . and when you pluck out the weak ones and leave only the single strong shoot. . thus, you’re making it possible for the one true God to grow with vigour in your hearts, same as the one true beet grows in the earth. — Jack Clarke singled well enough, Bill Smedley better still, but Kins, who’d to coil himself down to the ground, found the work back-breaking. . and soul destroying. He wished the beastly beets would fly at him at a decent height, and he were equipped with a fives glove instead of this. . bally hoe! — May handed off to June, June held fast to July. Kins’s hands blistered and burst — his neck burnt and he walked with a permanent stoop, as. . With what rapture, With what rapture, With what bally rapture, Gaze we on those glorious scars . . The attic room he shared with Jack stank of his cheesy feet, and the thin mattress on the iron cot was stuffed with horsehair, so draught animal that I am, I sleep on others of my kind. He poured the tepid water from the earthenware ewer over his aching, crusty head and it dribbled down into the earthenware bowl. A corn dolly had been nailed high up on the wall, and when Kins touched it, it crumbled to. . chaff. — Had this been days or weeks before? Kins cannot decide — any more than he comprehends how they all manage to regard the aircraft roaring up from the aerodrome at Goltho with such studied indifference. . the thunderbolts of a Babylonian marduk we worship not. Instead, every evening the gramophone is wound for recitals, and there’s Evelyn Dall, or Flanagan and Allen, or Myra Hess playing Jesu, joy of man’s desiring to the conchies, together with one or two clod-hoppers who creep in to sit, transfixed as much by the oddity of their fellow listeners. . in our grass-stained cricketing pullovers and torn Oxford bags. . as by the music’s wistfulness. As he cranked the handle, then watched the shellac sheening go round