But if they went, what would become of Frank, to whom he and his wife had become as attached as if he were their own son? While James might be have been happy enough to allow Frank to stay with them in Yorkshire, would he agree to their removing him from the country altogether and taking him to Western Australia, which was about as far away from anywhere as one could get – far away, even, from Melbourne and Sydney, let alone England?

For days the Churchills debated with themselves as to what they should do. Eventually they plucked up the courage to approach James, who listened gravely to their description of the estate and their enumeration of the attractions of Western Australia. Mr Churchill came to an end and glanced at his wife. Their fate, they knew, was in James’s hands. If he said no, and refused to allow Frank to go with them, they would probably stay in Ripon.

‘But of course you must go,’ said James. ‘Imagine how young Frank will love it. What a wonderful start for any boy.’

They could hardly believe his generosity. ‘It’s an awful long way away,’ said Mr Churchill. ‘I can’t imagine that we shall be back in England every year.’

‘No, I doubt if you would,’ said James. ‘But then I might come out to see Frank one of these days – who knows? He’ll have the time of his life out there. The Australians are such a positive and cheerful people. He’ll become an Australian, no doubt, which is a fate that I would gladly wish on anyone.’

‘So we should go?’

‘Of course you should. Of course.’

They left a few months later. Frank was brought to James to say goodbye, and they spent a long time talking about Western Australia and what the boy might expect there. Then, when it was time to go, James embraced his son briefly and stiffly. He was in tears, and did not wish the boy to see him cry. So he turned away, and the boy looked at him reproachfully, thinking that he was being rebuffed.

‘Your daddy is very sad,’ whispered Mr Churchill. ‘Australia is a long way away.’

Although relatively few people in Highbury had actually seen the young Frank Churchill, this did not mean that people in the village and its surroundings did not know all about him. James Weston had spent his youth in Highbury and his later prowess on the rugby field had been a source of local pride. Nobody from the area had achieved prominence in anything very much – if one discounted Mr Woodhouse, of course, and his obscure invention – so to have somebody almost picked for the English rugby side was something of a distinction. James was popular, too, for his genial, friendly nature, and for the fact that he never appeared to make any uncharitable remarks. In the country, where memories of ancient insult can be long, this was something sufficiently unusual to be a matter of remark. ‘Dislikes nobody, he does,’ said one local, adding helpfully, ‘Nor he don’t.’ No disentanglement of double negatives was required to understand this sentiment: James’s amiable smile and courteous nod of the head to those he met in the street was enough to make that meaning quite clear.

People were aware at the time of the handing over of the young Frank to the Churchills, but nobody disapproved, or, if they did, nobody voiced any criticism of the sorrowing widower. It was a tragedy, people felt, that the young and popular Mrs Weston should die so suddenly, and how could her husband – how could any man – cope with a two-year-old, particularly a two-year-old who was sickly with some food issue? It made complete sense, everyone agreed, for the late wife’s sister-in-law to step in and take over, particularly since the Churchills were known to be so wealthy. In the country one of the most important measures of worth is simple acreage, uncomplicated by any other issue, and even if their land was in distant Yorkshire, they were said to possess over seven hundred acres of good arable fields and two thousand of grazing. For a young boy to be taken in by such a family was, in country eyes, good fortune on a major scale, and for a father to allow such a thing was not an indication of lack of care for a child but indeed the complete opposite.

It was not that James Weston was penniless, but at that time there was not a great deal of spare cash. His own father had been an army officer who had purchased one of the village houses when he left his regiment, the Royal Signals, extended it by the addition of a large conservatory, and had then led a reasonably comfortable life on a combination of his army pension and a small income from the sale of a family catering concern in Norwich. James had been something of an afterthought in that marriage – there were three much older brothers – and he had lost both parents by the time he was nineteen. His older brothers were by that time working in London, and doing rather well in a distribution business they had set up together. They put James through the remainder of his university course in business studies, and made him their junior partner when he was ready to join them a few years later. They were enthusiastic in support of his rugby career, giving him plenty of time off for training and touring and always attending any game in which he played. They were generous, too, in making over to him the house in Highbury – he was the only one keen to keep links with the village; when he went there for weekends, as he often did, none of them ever joined him. After his marriage, James took up permanent residence in the Highbury house, commuting to London during the week for work – a lengthy journey that he was prepared to undertake in order to allow his wife and, in due course, young son to live a more comfortable country existence.

The death of his wife ended this rural idyll, and although he kept the house in the village after Frank had gone to the Churchills, he now moved to London, to a small flat in Maida Vale. In his misery, he threw himself into his work, and into the task of coaching a boys’ rugby team in Wimbledon. He emerged from his grief, of course, but loss had left its mark and it was more than five years before he felt capable of entering into a new relationship. This was with a woman who worked for a medium-sized London legal firm. She was an expert in bankruptcy law and had just become a partner. They began to live together in her flat, and were happy enough for ten years before she suddenly disclosed to him that she wanted to live by herself again. He suspected initially that there was somebody else involved – a fact that she vigorously denied, and truthfully, as it turned out; she had simply fallen out of love with him.

James reverted to his bachelor existence. He was now a senior figure in rugby-training circles, and this took up much of his spare time. He was generous, too, with his donations to a training programme he had set up to foster interest in the sport among young offenders. As one of his brothers later remarked, ‘OK, some of them played a bit too rough, but he saved goodness knows how many boys from prison. Ten? Twenty? Who knows? Better to assault somebody on the rugby field than on the street. Far better.’

At the age of forty-seven, James was able to achieve an ambition that he had nursed for over ten years. Randalls, a small estate – not much more than two hundred acres – had come on the market after its owner, a successful commodities trader, had lost interest in it. The trader had bought it to impress his friends, but had discovered that he had the wrong sort of friends for this purpose. To begin with, they had been happy to leave London for the weekends and enjoy his hospitality, but he found that after one visit they did not accept further invitations. ‘Very quiet,’ one of them had said. ‘And very flat.’ The remark about flatness was passed without irony, and without any nod in the direction of Noel Coward; it summed up, though, the view in those particular circles that there was not much to be seen in that part of the country – the flatness of the topography saw to that – and certainly not much to do.

Randalls came on to the market at exactly the right time for James. The distribution firm that he owned with brothers was facing take-over by a rival, and they had received a remarkably large offer for a controlling share in the company. They hesitated, but only for a short time: the offer allowed them all to remain active in the firm for five years, although none of them would need to do so. With his share of the sale, James could purchase Randalls, spend as much as he needed to improve the house and outbuildings, and have enough to live on very comfortably for the rest of his life.

The purchase made, he withdrew from the firm altogether and returned to Highbury. He was not one to retire early, and Randalls kept him busy. The previous owner had neglected the land, and it was not in good condition. James went on a fencing course and began to tackle the task of replacing the fences. Once the paddocks were secure, he purchased a flock of Suffolk sheep and a small number of cattle. He used help from the village, taking on a man called Sid, who was in due course also to work for Mr Woodhouse, dividing his time between the two places. They got on well together and gradually began to get Randalls back into shape. ‘You can’t ignore the land,’ said Sid, reflecting on the commodity trader’s bad husbandry. ‘You ignore the land and you know what happens? The land ignores you. That’s what it does, I tell you.’

‘You know something?’ said Sid to his wife. ‘You know that James Weston has a son? Did you ever hear that?’

‘I heard something,’ she replied. ‘They say that when his wife died he went to pieces. Couldn’t do anything, and couldn’t look after the baby. Who can blame him? Poor man.’

‘Well, that baby was a boy,’ said Sid. ‘He went off up Yorkshire way somewhere and then off to Australia. He came back when he was sixteen – visited his father, but went back to Australia.’

‘Where did you hear all that, Sid? Gossip down at the pub?’

Sid shook his head. ‘He told me himself. We were sitting in the Land Rover – finished some fencing and having a spot of lunch. He had a couple of Melton Mowbray pies – delicious they were – and he started talking about this son of his, Frank. He said that he’s twenty-four now and that he thought he might be coming over to see him again. Then he went all quiet for a while. He sat there. So I just ate my Melton Mowbray pie and let him get on with his thinking.’

‘Guilt, maybe.’

‘Odd, that’s exactly what he said. He said to me, “Sid, I feel bad that I let that boy go.” I said to him, “But, Mr Weston, you couldn’t have brought him up, you being by yourself. Far better for a boy to have a stepmother.” He listened to me all right, and I think he was pleased that I said that, but then he said, “I feel that I let him down. When I saw him after he went up to Yorkshire he seemed so settled and content that I didn’t have the heart to take him away from them. But I think maybe I should have.” ’

Sid’s words to James were comforting; the reassurance of those around us that we have done the right thing almost always helps, although it may not, as in this case, remove the underlying anxiety that we have acted selfishly or foolishly, or even perversely. It was not the first time that James had discussed his feelings for having abandoned – the word that kept cropping up in his mind – his infant son. Shortly after the Churchills had left for Australia, his brother, Edward, had come across him at his desk in their London office, sitting staring into the distance as if he were a man in a trance. Edward had assumed that it was daydreaming, and had smiled at the thought that his younger brother was mentally re-enacting some triumph on the rugby field. But when he looked more closely, he noticed the tears in James’s eyes. Pride, he thought, or perhaps regret at a missed try – so much could be invested in that heroic sprint towards the touchline, and yet it could all go wrong as a last-ditch tackle brought one to the ground in an undignified heap of limbs and torsos.

He had approached him, and that was when he realised that expression on his brother’s face was one of sorrow; that the tears were ones of pain rather than of pride. In the ensuing conversation there came to the surface emotions that had been concealed for too long. Edward was understanding, and at the end had suggested his brother see somebody who had helped him with a flying phobia that had made business trips a nightmare.

‘She’s a psychotherapist,’ he said. ‘Not a psychiatrist. I’m not saying you need a shrink. She sits and listens and then she explains it all.’ He paused. ‘I’ll take you. It’s sometimes hard to go on your own. I’ll do it.’

Edward had accompanied his brother to make the introduction. Then he had left him, and James found himself seated on the other side of the psychotherapist’s desk, embarrassed at where he was, unable to bring himself to speak.