Doomsday by Warwick Deeping

The work on a farm goes on. Beasts have to be fed and watered, cows milked, the fields ploughed, roots pulled and clamped. The orchard was full of apples, and Rose had had her eyes upon those apples. She had meant to gather most of them herself and to store the best keepers in one of the attics so that they should fetch a better price towards Christmas. So Furze got up before dawn, and added apple gathering to the sorrowful heaviness of the day, for Rose would have picked those apples, and he would pick them for her.

In the dusk--at the end of a long day--he would hear apples falling in the orchard, with an occasional soft thud upon the grass. It was like a blow struck upon his heart. He would go on gathering fruit until he could not see. What did it matter? He could not sleep as he had slept beside his wife.