‘There’s old Hortense. And Provost. And Nicholas.’

Hortense was the cook, Provost the butler, while Nicholas, Provost’s teenage son, was learning to be a footman.

Lady Grylls stared at her nephew owlishly. ‘As you say, Hughie, there’s old Hortense, Provost and Nicholas. Precisely my point. Chalfont’s getting more and more uncomfortable and harder to manage – I don’t suppose it’s only me entering a particularly morose and acrid dotage, is it? I find the draughts are getting worse, the hot-water system less reliable, the dogs less clean -’

Major Payne put down his cup. ‘You haven’t had dogs for ages, darling.’

‘Kept chewing the carpets, that’s why I had to get rid of them. Chalfont will be the end of me. We might have been able to pull it round while Rory was alive – there was still money in the kitty then – but he got this apoplectic look whenever I suggested renovation! I might have been saying, what a pity the jacquerie didn’t succeed, or do let’s join the Labour Party, or some such thing. Rory seemed to equate shabbiness with “good form”… You aren’t warm enough, are you?’ She cast a jaundiced glance at the ancient two-bar electric heater that hissed and crackled in front of the fireplace, giving off a slight odour of burning dust. Pointing towards the high ceiling with her forefinger, she observed that that was where all the heat went.

‘No doubt most country house owners are similarly handicapped,’ said Payne soothingly.

‘Don’t I know it! Why d’you think I avoid Adela de Quesne and that old stick Bobo Markham like the plague? All they do when they manage to get hold of me on the blower is moan about damp and dry rot and trespassing ramblers claiming the right to long-forgotten footpaths and how everything is at near-perdition point.’

Trying to catch her husband’s eye and failing, Antonia said they could always leave, if indeed there were going to be a lot of people coming.