“Of course, if you come. I have much more land than I want. The small field is mine too. I had to buy it to get the house and it is let out to a neighbouring farmer. You could have some of it if you want more than the bit below the mill.”

It seemed too good to be true. Already in my imagination the dirty, dusty ruin was our house and the chicken run, pigsty and rubbish heap our garden.

“Come in and have a cup of tea,” said Bob.

Yvonne Campbell was seven months pregnant with their fourth child. She was plump and neat, her long dark hair with its centre parting, her full flowing maternity dress and small sandalled feet gave her something of a look of a Madonna. The older boy, about two years older than Gale, was very like his father. The girl was just about Gale’s age and had a mass of curly light brown hair, but was otherwise a bit like her mother. Three year old Dicky, blond, sturdy, and good looking was like neither. They seemed at the time a united Catholic family.

The central door of the long, low red brick house opened into a small square hall from which very steep narrow stairs led straight up ahead. To the left was a charming sitting room, low ceilinged and brick floored with a fireplace at the far end. Although it was still warm outside a fire was burning brightly and the chintz covered armchairs and small cottage sofa made it clearly a grown-ups’ room. To the right, the dining room was its mirror image, also with a brick floor and a fire. What seemed very strange in that functional and under-decorated time was that both rooms were lined with pictures – flower paintings, views of Suffolk, children’s portraits, by both Bob and Yvonne. It was obviously an artists’ house. The mats, curtains, and even the mugs and cups were all more decorative than the plain white utility stuff we had become used to. All along the back, a lean-to contained a long, damp, dark narrow kitchen, still with its disused bread oven; at one end of which, nearest the road, what had been a walk-in larder had been very recently turned into a bathroom and lavatory, when mains water reached past the cottage to Kirton the year before.

We were pleased to see a gas cooker. Mains gas did not come past to Kirton so we would be able, eventually, to cook with it as we were used to – or rather, as I was used to.

Up the ladder-like stairs, too narrow to be comfortable for my large feet, were two small bedrooms and two very small bedrooms. The whole house seemed to us beautiful.