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The soil she’d been digging in already had a hot, dry crust. A miniature desert with the apple tree quivering at its center no taller than Evelyn herself. She went about watering the sapling with her little plastic watering can. It had a face drawn on it so that the spout looked like a long nose. She stood up and held the watering can in both hands and watched the dark patches around the roots disappearing before her eyes.

She heard the sound of her father hammering at something on the far side of the house.

Mama came down from the other end of the new orchard, through the knuckled ranks of young apple trees that seemed already shrunken in the heat. The sun was directly overhead, and neither she nor the trees cast any shadows at all.

Well done, Evie, Mama said. They look happier in the ground than in the pots, don’t they?

I’ve only done one, said Evelyn.

That’s one more than none. You’re making a darn sight more progress than your sister.

Evelyn saw Lily twirling around in the center of the lawn with an unwound ball of garden twine. She leaped and spun and threw the string into spirals and figures of eight, singing her accompaniment.

Come on, Lily, said their mother. Make yourself useful, please.

Lily looked at her for a moment and then carried on prancing. The lawn a vast green sea and Lily tiny and floundering in the middle of it. Behind her a dozen more men and women on their knees or leaning on forks and shovels. More down by the greenhouse. A figure pushed a wheelbarrow laden with bulbs across the lawn and had to steer erratically to avoid Lily’s performance.

How long are they going to be here? asked Evelyn.

I don’t know. As long as they want. Till things get better.

I wish they weren’t here.

Her mother frowned.

Come on, Evie, don’t say that. I had enough trouble convincing your father.

Don’t they have their own houses?

They did, but they had to leave them.

Why?

Lots of reasons. But sometimes it’s better when people live and work together, instead of struggling on their own.

Are they going to eat all our food?

It’s everyone’s food, Evie. That’s the point. Don’t you like having a few more people around? We could invite some of your friends from school.

Maybe.

What?

They’ll make fun of me for being posh.

Her mother frowned. Is that what they say?

Evelyn nodded.

Are they unkind to you?

Sometimes.

What do they say?

They make fun of Papa. They make fun of me calling him Papa. They think we’re in the royal family.

Her mother looked sad for a moment. She pulled Evelyn to her waist and kissed the top of her head.

Nobody can help the life they’ve been given. They just do their best with it. That’s why this is the right thing to do. We should have done it years ago. Not everybody is as lucky as we are. All this land and this big old house. We can’t just keep it all to ourselves, can we?

Evelyn shrugged.

Her mother took a handkerchief from the pocket of her dungarees and used it to wipe the sweat from Evelyn’s forehead.

Thirsty work, isn’t it? Whoops. You’ve got mud all over you now. Do you want a drink?

Evelyn nodded.

They started back to the house, the other gardeners’ backs rising and falling on either side of them. They were all wearing shorts and T-shirts, some of the men bare-chested. A sweltering day under the sun, and spring barely even started. The man with the wheelbarrow had stopped beside Lily and was trying to start a conversation, but Lily was mostly ignoring him. He was older than the others. His hair was gray and thinning, and he wore a thick plaid shirt that was darkening under the armpits.

Lily, don’t be rude, said their mother.

I was just saying, said the older man, we should get her wassailing. Been watching her twirling around like a dervish. About the right time of year, I think.

Evelyn did not understand what he meant.

What do you think, Lils? their mother said. Do you think you’d make a good wassailing queen?

Lily finally stopped dancing.

What’s that? What’s the wassailing queen?

Oh gosh, said Mama. Well, I think Jamie knows more about it than me.

You’ve got to wake up the apple trees, the older man said. Give them a bit of a song and a dance. Give them something to eat and drink. And in a few years’ time we’ll be up to our necks in cider and applesauce.

Lily looked at them all mutely.

It’s just a bit of fun, the man said. I did it when I was about your age.

Can I do it, too? said Evelyn. She thought that the more people there were to sing, the more quickly and readily the apples would come. A few years seemed too long to wait.

How’s your singing voice? said the man.

Evelyn clutched her mother’s leg and didn’t reply.

She’s a bit more on the shy side, her mother said.

—

They gathered in the orchard in the evening when the air was cooler. The guests and the gardeners and a few of the staff who still worked inside the house. Their father was there, too. Evelyn thought it was not really his sort of thing, but then he was also seduced by any kind of ritual. Everyone carried pots and pans and jugs, and they whooped and banged around the trees. Her father carried a bass drum on a leather strap, the skin of it yellowed and cracking. Evelyn had no idea where he’d got it from. There were so many of these ancient treasures in the house.

At the end they lifted Lily up onto their shoulders and she sang a song that the older man had taught her. Everybody laughed and applauded. Her mother and father smiling so broadly. Evelyn was glad to see it, remembered their faces that way for a long time afterward, but at the same time she could not shake a feeling of discomfort as she looked around the group. Why are they all laughing? she thought. Why aren’t they taking it seriously?