There was so much time that marvellous summer. Day after day, mist rose from the meadow as the sky lightened and hedges, barns and woods took shape until, at last, the long curving back of the hills lifted away from the Plain. It was a sort of stage-magic – ‘Now you don’t see; indeed, there is nothing to see. Now look!’ Day after day it was like that and each morning I leaned on the yard gate dragging at my first fag and (I’d like to think) marvelling at this splendid backcloth. But it can’t have been so; I’m not the marvelling kind. Or was I then? But one thing is sure – I had a feeling of immense content and, if I thought at all, it was that I’d like this to go on and on, no-one going, no-one coming, autumn and winter always loitering around the corner, summer’s ripeness lasting for ever, nothing disturbing the even tenor of my way (as I think someone may have said before me).

And, at such a time, for a few of us there will always be a tugging at the heart – knowing a precious moment gone and we not there. We can ask and ask but we can’t have again what once seemed ours for ever – the way things looked, that church alone in the fields, a bed on a belfry floor, a remembered voice, the touch of a hand, a loved face. They’ve gone and you can only wait for the pain to pass.

Ah, those days … for many years afterwards their happiness haunted me. Sometimes, listening to music, I drift back and nothing has changed. The long end of summer. Day after day of warm weather, voices calling as night came on and lighted windows pricked the darkness and, at day-break, the murmur of corn and the warm smell of fields ripe for harvest. And being young. If I’d stayed there, would I always have been happy? No, I suppose not. People move away, grow older, die, and the bright belief that there will be another marvellous thing around each corner fades. It is now or never; we must snatch at happiness as it flies.

The death of the spirit is to lose confidence in one’s own independence and to do only what we are expected to do. At the same time, it is a mistake to expect anything specific from life. Life will not conform.

‘Oh, alright,’ he said irritably. ‘I suppose you can use it if you say you must.’ Then, like all people who give in too easily, he began to grub up a few restrictive clauses to recover face.

I never exchanged a word with the Colonel. He has no significance at all in what happened during my stay in Oxgodby. As far as I’m concerned he might just as well have gone round the corner and died. But that goes for most of us, doesn’t it? We look blankly at each other. Here I am, here you are. What are we doing here? What do you suppose it’s all about? Let’s dream on. Yes, that’s my Dad and Mum over there on the piano top. My eldest boy is on the mantelpiece. That cushion cover was embroidered by my cousin Sarah only a month before she passed on. I go to work at eight and come home at five-thirty. When I retire they’ll give me a clock – with my name engraved on the back. Now you know all about me. Go away: I’ve forgotten you already.

Here I was, face to face with a nameless painter reaching from the dark to show me what he could do, saying to me as clear as any words, ‘If any part of me survives from time’s corruption, let it be this. For this was the sort of man I was.’

Oddly enough, he didn’t seem at all put out by his wife’s hysterical commentary on their domestic hardship: instead, he listened carefully as though he too was hearing this for the first time, so that it struck me that perhaps they bottled up their trouble until some stranger turned up to have it all poured over him.

And then they came, the morning sun gleaming on their chestnut and black backs, glinting from martingales medalled like generals. Their manes were plaited with patriotic ribbons, their harness glowed – those great magical creatures soon to disappear from highways and turning furrow. Did I know it even then? I suppose not, nor anyone else in Oxgodby. From childhood, they had always known the sound of hooves fitfully beating stable floors in the night hours and the bitter smell of burning horn at the smithy. How could they foresee that, in a few brief years, their fellow sharers of field and road would be gone for ever?

We didn’t really know each other when we married. Who does? For that matter, who knows all that much about anyone even after twenty years in the same house? We only show what we care to and so it’s a bit of a guessing game, isn’t it? And if the other person doesn’t care to answer “Right” or “Wrong”, guessing it stays.’