‘What’s up then, James? Why aren’t you downstairs?’

No answer.

‘Come on, lad, what is it? Are you ill?’

James shook his head.

‘Well, if you aren’t, there’s work to be done. Sid’s brought the Venetian glass down from the store room, but I’m not trusting anyone but you to set it out.’

Again that wretched shake of the head. ‘What’s the use?’ said James tonelessly. ‘What’s the blinkin’ use? All this stuff—’ he waved his hands. ‘I might just as well throw it in the sea. I’m fifty inches round the chest, Mr Proom, and that’s not bad going seeing I was thirty-six when I began. But there’s not a darn thing I can do about my height. I can flog my guts out and I’ll still be five foot eight, and will be till the day I die.’

‘Well? I myself am only five foot nine. I cannot see the relevance of your remark.’

James turned. ‘Didn’t she tell you? She’s going to bring in matched footmen.’

‘Miss Hardwicke did mention it. She’s going to bring back powdering too. It’s old-fashioned but you never minded it, if I recall.’

‘No, I don’t mind. I’m all for a bit of class. But I’m not going to be a footman. They’ve got to be over six feet. Six foot two she wants them, if possible.’

Mr Proom shrugged. ‘It never seemed to me wise to employ servants for their size or the shape of their calves, but that is neither here nor there. Whatever happens, you’ll still be first footman in this house.’

‘No, I won’t,’ said James tonelessly. ‘She’s not going to sack me, you understand. “His Lordship speaks so highly of my work.”’ James’s parody of Muriel’s genteel tones was devastating in its accuracy. ‘There’ll always be some odd jobs I can do about the place. “Mr Proom will find you something useful to do, I’m sure.”’

The butler was silent. No one more than he, who had trained James from the age of twelve, knew the blow Muriel had aimed at James. James’s skill with the silver, the unobtrusive bravura of his work at the sideboard, his knowledge of wines, all had been instilled by him. The little Cockney lad had turned himself from a scruffy lamp boy into one of the most highly trained servants in the land — and now this!

‘You’re ready for promotion, anyway,’ said Proom at last. ‘I’d hoped you’d stay and take over from me. I know her ladyship intended it. But… well, we’ll have to do it different. It’s no use speaking to Lady Byrne because Hawkins’s got his own team, but there’ll be a vacancy somewhere. When they hear you’re on the market, offers’ll come flooding in, you’ll see.’

‘I’d like not to go too far away. I reckon I’ve got used to it here,’ said James, coming as close as he could to expressing his sense of desolation at leaving the companions of a lifetime and the man who’d made him what he was. ‘Do you think her ladyship might take me on at the Mill House?’

Proom frowned. The dowager’s departure from Mersham, the restricted circumstances in which she would find herself, were a hard cross for him to bear. ‘I doubt if she’ll be taking more than a gardener-handyman. But something’ll turn up. Let’s just get this wedding behind us, shall we? You’ll stay for that?’

‘Aye, I’ll stay for that.’

Mr Proom returned to his cottage at dinner time with a heavy heart. Mrs Bassenthwaite was gone, James was going; he doubted if Mrs Park would last much longer with Win away. Miss Hardwicke had promised him an increased staff to train, but it was already clear that her ideas would not accord with those of Mersham.

He opened the door of his mother’s room. The bed was perfectly tidy, the flowerpots intact, even the appendix floated quietly in its bottle, but Proom was at once aware that something was wrong. He went over to the bed. Mrs Proom was cowering back against the pillows, shrunken and tiny as a child, and she was crying.

‘What is it? What’s the matter, Mother?’

The suffused blue eyes stared wretchedly up at him, the tears continued to flow silently down the raddled cheeks.

Mr Proom was appalled. His mother furious, unreasonable, mad, he could cope with. His mother unhappy and pitiful was more than he could bear.

‘I know… I’m… a nuisance to you, Cyril.’ The tears continued to well up, spill over. ‘But I’ll try to be better, Cyril… You’ll see, Cyril, I’ll be better.’ She stretched out a hand, clawed desperately at his arm.

‘Mother, what is all this about?’

Another spate of those heartrending and silent tears…

‘I won’t do nothing bad no more, Cyril, I won’t throw nothing. Only don’t send me away. Don’t send me to the workhouse.’

‘The workhouse? Are you mad, Mother?’

‘She said… as ’ow I must be lonely. But I’m not, Cyril.’ The little speckled claw dug deeper into his arm. ‘I’m not lonely, I’m used to it here.’

‘Who said this?’ asked Mr Proom but already, sickeningly, he knew.

‘’er that’s going to marry ’is lordship. ’er with the eyes that don’t blink. She said… ’as ’ow I’d be happier with people like myself. But I wouldn’t, Cyril. I wouldn’t…’

‘I’m quite sure you wouldn’t, Mother,’ said Mr Proom, trying for a little joke.

But the terrified old woman was beyond his reach. The sobbing was building up now, she was beginning to gasp and choke — she’d make herself ill.

He began to pat her hand, to soothe her, but as she gradually became calmer Proom’s own fears increased. Had anyone asked Proom what he thought about his mother, he would have said that the old lady was a nuisance the like of which had probably never been equalled. If Mrs Proom’s Maker had seen fit to take her to his bosom one night as she slept, Proom, after giving her a fitting funeral, would have regarded himself as the most fortunate of men.

An honourable release through death was one thing. Putting the old lady into a home for deranged old people was another. Proom knew he could have gone straight to the earl and been listened to, but making trouble between a man and his intended wife was not something he cared to do. No, it looked as though he too would have to leave Mersham. Only where, with a burden such as this, could he possibly go?

The problem of what to wear at the fancy dress ball at Heslop did not concern the Herrings, for they had not been invited. Indeed, the Herrings had expressly been bidden not to arrive until the day before the wedding, and had been informed precisely from which train it would be possible to collect them. Even so, nothing could damp the pleasure of that family of layabouts and spongers at the thought of being taken up again by their posh relations.

For the Herrings’ star, which had never been conspicuously high, had of late plummeted catastrophically. The Herrings owed rent to their landlord, their grocer had forbidden them his shop and they had been turned out of their local pub. The supply of suckers on which Melvyn relied to keep body and soul together seemed, in the weeks before his noble cousin’s wedding, to have mysteriously dried up and, in the proposed visit to Mersham, Melvyn saw a clear sign that Fate was about to smile on the Herrings once again.

‘Don’t worry, Myrtle,’ he said now. ‘Aunt Mary’s a soft touch, really. She’ll see us all right.’

‘Maybe, maybe not,’ said Myrtle, who was standing by the stove in a mauve satin peignoir liberally sprinkled with grease, mixing the lethal concoction of peroxide and vinegar with which she dyed her hair. ‘But ’ow the dickens are we goin’ to get there? There isn’t a hope in hell of raising the rail fare for the four of us.’

‘I’ll think of something,’ said Melvyn.

‘Well, not that locking us in the lavatory one while the guard comes round, because that’s got whiskers on it,’ said Myrtle. ‘And what about clothes? I ain’t got a stitch to wear and the twins’ll have to have new trousers.’

Melvyn sighed and looked at his obese and pallid offspring sitting on either side of the sticky kitchen table reading comics. Donald was methodically sucking a long black stick of liquorice into his mouth. Dennis was licking at a dribbling bar of toffee. Like certain caterpillars whose short lives are dedicated to achieving simply the maximum possible increase in size, the twins seemed to have done nothing but eat and burst out of their clothes since they were born. Watching them, Melvyn had to abandon another of his half-formed schemes — that of smuggling them to Mersham in a cello case in the guard’s van. Even a doublebass case would not take more than half of either of his sons…

‘Don’t worry, Myrtle,’ he said again, giving her shoulder a squeeze. ‘I’ll think of something. You’ll see.’

Dr Lightbody, on the other hand, was one of the favoured ones who, at Muriel’s request, had been invited for all the festivities and therefore faced the problem not only of morning clothes for the wedding, but of acquiring a suitable costume for the ball. A hot afternoon just a week before his departure for Mersham accordingly found him standing in front of the long, fly-stained mirror in the dim, dusty shop of Nathaniel and Gumsbody, the theatrical costumiers in Drury Lane. An enormous tricorne hat with a cockade lurched over his left eye, he wore a blue military coat heavily braided in gold and his arm was folded in a characteristic gesture across his chest. Unmistakably, he was the Emperor Napoleon as immortalized in the famous portrait by David.

‘What do you think?’ he asked the pale young man in charge of rentals.

‘It suits you, sir. It suits you very well.’

‘I don’t like it,’ pronounced Dr Lightbody. ‘It’s the hat, I think.’ He removed it to reveal his high and intellectual forehead.

‘What about Admiral Nelson, sir? We do a very nice line in him. He comes in three sizes and the eye-patch is free.’

The doctor shook his head. To go as a person in any way injured or defiled, even in battle, was against his principles.

He allowed the young man to divest him of his uniform and, clad only in trousers and braces, began to walk along the rows of ermine-lined mantles and sumptuous velvet cloaks.

‘You don’t fancy a nice cavalier, sir? Those hats with the big feathers always go down very well with the ladies.’

Dr Lightbody shook his head. Though the ringleted Jacobean wigs were very flattering one never knew what went on underneath.

It was all so annoying, he reflected, pausing now by the leather jerkin and feathered head-dress of an Indian brave, Doreen still being in hospital. Doreen was a good needlewoman, he had to give her that — she’d always made his shirts. It would have been no trouble to her to have run something up for him. Instead of which she just lay there in that awful ward full of disgusting, wheezing old women and yellow people with tubes in them, staring at him with those big, grey eyes of hers as though he could help her. The sister had given him an odd look when he’d asked if it would hurt Doreen to do a bit of sewing while she was in there, so he supposed it was no good pursuing the subject. As a matter of fact, the hospital visits were an embarrassment altogether — the staff who talked to him about Doreen’s condition seemed to think that his title of ‘Doctor’ would make him understand their jargon. Whereas in fact his title was a courtesy one, the courtesy being one that he had, so to speak, bestowed on himself when, in the drudgery of his last year at the catering college, he had first glimpsed his vision of the perfectibility of man.

‘These are nice, we always think,’ said the assistant, holding up a Viking helmet and breastplate. ‘With a red beard, perhaps — and thongs?’

Again Dr Lightbody shook his head. He wanted something which would suggest what he saw as his threefold role: of teacher, of healer, of leader of men. Something in white and gold, possibly? A High Priest? A Zoroastrian?

Suddenly he had an idea. ‘What about the Egyptians? Akhnaton, the Sun King — do you have him?’

‘I don’t know if we have him specifically, sir, but our Egyptian section is very well stocked. If you’d just come through here…’

Ten minutes later, in the many-layered, pleated linen skirts, the curved sandals and golden, cap-shaped crown, Dr Lightbody stood before the mirror again.

It was closer, much closer — but there was something a little bit effeminate about the whole ensemble. Not surprising, really — when all was said and done there was a touch of the tarbrush about the Egyptians.

Then, with the inner certainty of all visions, inspiration came.

Why go as a mere Sun King? Why not a Sun God?

‘I’ve changed my mind,’ he said to the weary assistant. ‘I’d like to see the Greek costumes, please.’