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Oh, good Lord, I should have known! she said, all I meant was that you must tell Maria to get a grip on herself and tell her to get her house in order. Don’t interfere in the affairs of the workers, Milla! All you do is incur trouble and misery. Listen to what I’m telling you today. What are you looking for here in the pantry, anyway?

You’d opened the bread-tin already and had started cutting thick slices of bread.

What do you think you’re doing, Milla? That’s this morning’s freshly-baked bread, there’s day-before-yesterday’s bread in the chickens’ feed-bag.

You ignored her, took butter out of the fridge and started spreading it on the slices with apricot jam. You took the leftover leg of lamb from lunch-time out of the fridge and started carving slices from it.

You’re just creating trouble here, Milla. Tomorrow we’ll have a string of children in front of my door saying they want bread and they want meat. Where is it to end? The people know their place on this farm and I’m not going to allow your rashness to foul up my affairs here!

You brought the whole leg of lamb to your mouth, thought you wanted to bite into it and spit it out in her face. But you just lifted the joint in both hands and let go of it so that it fell on the floor by her feet.

Keep your meat then, Ma, keep it and guzzle it on your own while the children around you are perishing of hunger!

You were out of there with a basket in which you’d thrown the slices of bread, roughly stuck together, and a few pieces of fruit that you’d grabbed from the fruit platter in the front room.

Around the workers’ cottages everything was quiet. You went in by the front room and found the child there in same position. You placed the basket by her feet.

Here, just look what I brought you! It’s just for you, you hear? Eat it quickly before they take if from you. I’ll tell your mother not to bother you.

Maria? a man’s voice called harshly from the bedroom. You went out quickly and walked round the back where a bickering conversation fell silent as you came round the corner.

You kept your voice even and commanding.

Maria, I’ve brought food for the little one, see to it that she eats it. I want to see you at the house, tomorrow morning, nine o’clock, and you bring her along, d’you hear. We must have a little talk, you and I.

The woman gazed at you.

Have you understood me well, Maria, nine o’clock, not a minute later. And remember to bring back the basket.

I sound like my mother, you thought. You wanted to cry. You turned round quickly and walked home, straight in by the front door to the telephone, and booked a trunk call home through the farm exchange. You wanted to act in terms of the insight of the afternoon, in the spirit of the whirligig, you wouldn’t allow yourself to be put off your resolve, and you didn’t want time to pass over it, because you knew that the power of the everyday, the perspective of those with the whip-hand, could in the blink of an eye make the mere idea seem like the sheerest folly.

Come and fetch me, Jak, I want to come back. And I’m bringing someone with me, somebody who needs care, you announced later that evening when the call came through.

Just not your mother, Jak started.

My mother can care for herself, Jak, it’s the youngest child of Maria of Piet who was, she’s being terribly neglected here in the hovels, she’ll perish if somebody doesn’t intervene.

What nonsense, Milla! If the people want to perish, then they perish, why must I take responsibility for it?

You needn’t do anything, Jak, it’s my child and I’ll raise her.

Between you there was the usual barrage of clicks and beeps of the fellow-listeners on the party line.

When Jak spoke again, his voice was dry.

We’ll talk later, Milla, you obviously have no idea . . .

Never you mind, Jak, all shall be well . . .

I’ll be there at twelve tomorrow, and then I’ll want to leave at once, tell your mother I won’t be eating.

He put down the phone in your ear. You stood there clutching the receiver