small – it must be a letter!’

Vincent jumped up, taking great care not to spill his ginger beer.

Now everyone gathered to watch Phil approaching. Mr Spolding leaned over to Mrs Docherty and said, ‘A letter from Rory – won’t that be nice, after all their waiting?’

But Mrs Docherty was gazing anxiously into his eyes. ‘Didn’t you see, Algernon? It’s yellow,’ she whispered. ‘That’s not a letter. That’s a telegram.’

Mr Spolding went white. He took Mrs Docherty’s hand and together they watched as Phil came up to Mrs Green and the waiting children.

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I can’t be sure quite when Mrs Green and the children realised that the thing Phil was holding was yellow. It was one of those moments when something you don’t want to happen happens and everything slows down. To Vincent, and Megsie, and Norman, it certainly seemed to take Phil a long, long time to reach them. When he did, finally, Vincent just said, very quietly, ‘That’s not for us, is it?’

Phil didn’t speak. He looked awful. He handed Mrs Green the telegram without a word. Mrs Green looked at all the stricken faces and said, ‘It’s not always bad news, my darlings. He might have got a medal!’

But she knew she had to open it. So she did. Almost immediately everyone knew that Mr Green hadn’t won a medal and that it was the worst news ever. Mrs Green didn’t cry or scream or anything. She just said, ‘Oh,’ and sank to her knees. Vincent dropped his ginger beer on the ground and rushed to bury his head in her lap. Norman picked up the telegram, read it and then put it down, walking away from everyone towards the farm. Megsie picked it up and read the words: ‘RORY GREEN. KILLED IN ACTION. DEEPEST CONDOLENCES’. She wrapped herself silently around her mother. Phil bent his head and leant by Mrs Green’s side, tears in his eyes. Very slowly, Mrs Docherty, Mr Spolding and Nanny McPhee started to clear up the picnic things. Celia helped, hardly daring to look at the family. Cyril, having finally found a very good reason to stop sulking, watched it all with a heavy heart and finally decided to follow Norman.

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The Diary 20

We’re on location at Wormsley! The barley field! Thirty acres of it! We’re not allowed to walk on it. Once again, the call-sheet is covered with huge supplications like ‘PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DON’T WALK ON THE BARLEY!!’ and ‘IT TOOK US EIGHT MONTHS TO GROW THE BARLEY. IF YOU STEP ON IT WE CANNOT REPAIR THE DAMAGE!!’ and so forth. It is the most beautiful location I have ever seen – a great rippling field of stalks that change colour as they move and make the most wonderful susurrations. Sometimes it even sounds like it’s sighing to itself. Right in the middle is the pretend bomb, which is huge. Since we all have to go and act in and around the bomb, they have built a walkway to it – so if you stand on the edge of the field and look across it looks as if people are floating over the top of the barley. Magical. The Art Department are going to hand-harvest this crop on Saturday in readiness for the harvest sequences. Eric is on set today, and he and I are trying to persuade them to make beer out of the barley. It seems they are going to sell it on the open market – people make things out of unprocessed barley and it’s used in thatching as well. They think the field is worth about £8,000!! Any money they get will go back into the production. Lindsay thinks beer is a bad idea, but she’s American and I’m sure not how attractive the prospect of home-brew is for her . . .

The children and Maggie Smith, who is playing Mrs Docherty, are running through the barley and it looks wonderful, but is full of sharp FLINTS, and they’ve all got sore knees from falling. It is a wonderful location, but you can’t get in and out of it very easily. So we get to our positions and then have to stay there for most of the day. We do have little boxes to sit on, but Maggie is not in the first flush of youth and nor am I and it’s not easy to sit in a blinking field all day. The ADs yell instructions at us from over the top of yards of unspoilt barley.