‘Right at the Red Fox, you said?’

Wever did not answer him. ‘We’ve got them in proper batteries now. Factory farming they call it; over two thousand of them, that’s nearly five thousand eggs a week. Then we’ve got a bit of barley. It’s hardly worth the price we get, but it’s insurance. You can be ruined overnight by one of these diseases that the hens get.’

Stuart turned off after the Red Fox, a dilapidated old pub with a broken billboard depicting girls in swimsuits drinking Martini. The countryside was more rolling now: a promise of the sort of landscape that Constable and Cotman found here.

‘A hard life,’ said Stuart after another long silence. He wanted to keep him talking.

‘We have milk from a cow and vegetables from the garden, while a pig provides us with the only meat we get.’ Wever’s English, although imperfect, was precise and sometimes pedantic.

‘He goes to the butcher?’

Wever snorted. ‘Why should I share my meat with a butcher? I kill them myself. I kill all the pigs hereabouts. With four children and only a few acres from which to scratch a living, you cannot be squeamish about killing pigs, mister.’

The Wevers lived in an isolated timber-frame house separated from the road by a quarter of a mile of muddy cart track. The bottom half of the building was of flint rubble construction; the upstairs part was covered in stained and broken weatherboarding. At the back some new brickwork showed where two extra rooms had been added but the toilet was an outdoor shack; there was no mains sewer.

Boyd Stuart parked his car on a gravel patch just off the lane, and they walked up the muddy path between some stunted apple trees and a line of freshly erected beanpoles. Chicken wire was nailed to the front wall so that sweet peas could climb it; their bright pinks and reds made the only colour in the drab landscape. Just outside the front door, there was a collection of rubber boots and a large toy tractor with its front wheels missing. A dog barked at the sound of their footsteps. Wever shouted to it but the barking continued.

Mrs Wever was already at home. She was a muscular woman; ruddy cheeked and bucolic, she was about ten years younger than her husband. Her dark hair was drawn tightly back into a bun, and her eyes were quick and clear. She was making pastry on the kitchen table, measuring flour and chopping butter with the speed that comes with boredom and impatience.

‘This is Mr Stuart,’ said Wever. ‘He’s come down from London to talk to me.’ The grey, overcast sky and the tiny windows made it dark inside the kitchen. Wever pulled up a chair for Stuart and it screeched on the lino. The woman reached for the kettle. It made a loud roaring noise as she filled it from the brass tap. She placed it on the solid-fuel cooking range, lifting the stove lid so that the hot coals let a red glow strike the ceiling. She set three mugs down on the fresh newspaper which covered the big table, and dumped an almost empty bag of sugar alongside.

‘Take off your coat and sit down, Mr Stuart,’ said Wever. His voice was soft, as if he were embarrassed at the silent hostility which filled the room. The only other sound was the tick-tock of an old long-case clock.

‘Where are your children then?’ said Stuart. It was an attempt to be friendly. He took off his blue anorak and put it over the back of the chair.

‘The eldest is the second engineer on a super-tanker,’ said Wever. ‘Two daughters are married and live locally. Only the youngest is still here with us.’

‘He must have seen young Johnny’s tractor,’ said the woman, as if the visitor were not present. Her voice was hard and marked with a strong local accent.

‘My grandson,’ explained Wever. ‘He spends the day with us sometimes.’ In another voice, ‘You delivered the eggs to the Rendezvous des Gourmets, did you?’

‘They want to pay by the month. I said they would have to talk to you about it.’ She smiled. ‘They’ll never make a go of that place. They’ll be the third owners it’s had in three years. Trying to make it fancy,’ she said spitefully. ‘Trying to call it French names and serve wine. They’ll run up a bill with us and leave us without a penny if we’re not careful, Franz.’

‘They paid you?’ Wever leaned forward, loosened the laces in his heavy boots and then twisted each foot to make more space for his toes.

‘I said I’d take the eggs back if they didn’t.’ She smiled. ‘They knew I meant it. And the chickens too.’ She opened the purse which was on the table in front of her and selected some pound notes. She folded them into a tight packet and put them on the dresser, ‘That will be for the last payment on the rotovator,’ she said.

The kettle began to sing. She put water into the brown teapot, cradled it to feel its warmth and then tossed the water into the sink. The tea was measured into the pot: three people, three level spoons of tea. The boiling water sizzled as it passed over the hot metal of the kettle spout. She put a knitted cover on the teapot and reached for a jug of milk from the pantry. ‘Would you like a piece of toast, Mr Stuart?’ she said. The anticipation of the tea seemed to put her in a better mood. ‘We don’t have biscuits or any fancy cake in this house.’

‘Just tea,’ said Stuart.

The woman tipped some water into the bowl of flour and fat, and pummelled it fiercely. Then she sprinkled flour over the clean newspaper and tipped the soft pastry on to it with a loud plop. She reached for a rolling pin and began rolling the pastry. Her movements were energetic and determined, like someone completing physical exercises that she didn’t enjoy. She pursed her lips and stared down at the ever expanding sheet of cream-coloured pastry.

‘I never heard a shot fired in anger,’ said Franz Wever suddenly. ‘I wore a uniform and saluted my superiors and drew my rations, but most of the work I did in the army could have been done by a civilian.’

‘And what was that?’

‘I am a Berliner,’ said Wever. ‘I left school when I was fifteen. I learned shorthand and typing and worked in the Berlin office of the Hamburg-Amerika shipping line until I was drafted into the army. After basic training I went to the army signals school in Halle and became a teleprinter operator with Army Group 6 HQ in Hanover. I worked in that communications room for about a year. I was the only professional operator in the place-most of those kids had never even seen a teleprinter until they went to the signals school; they had to use me for anything important. Naturally I wanted to be near my parents and eventually I got a posting to the signals company of Wehrkreis III (Berlin-Brandenburg). Then I went to Zossen… ’ He raised his eyes quizzically, to see if Stuart had heard of Zossen.

‘The general staff headquarters. Its communications room handled every order the German army ever got.’

Wever nodded. ‘It was a boring job. Everything was in code… meaningless jumbles of letters and numbers. Even working for the Hamburg-Amerika line was more interesting than that.’ Wever spooned three large spoons of sugar into his empty cup. ‘Pour out the tea, Lucy. It’s brewed.’

The woman finished rolling out the pastry. Briskly she rubbed the flour from her red-knuckled hands. Then she slapped the pastry onto a dish of cooked rhubarb, cutting the overhanging edges away with deft movements of the knife. ‘Why can’t you men pour out your own tea?’ she muttered, but she did it for them. Stuart realized that what he had at first thought was hostility to him was really her response to their talk of war. It was a part of her husband she could never share-like the happy moments of some previous marriage.

‘I’ll do the milking,’ said the woman accusingly. She put the teapot back onto the warm stove. ‘Someone will have to do it before it gets dark, and you’ll be talking about the war.’ Wever did not reply. The woman climbed into a battered sheepskin coat, her movements jerky and violent as if to demonstrate her anger. She turned up her collar before facing the bad weather, and banged the door after her.