Had he been alone, he might have raised the subject with Aunt Julie who would take almost anything from him even though she called him an enfant terrible. She sometimes said he could twist her round his little finger, which augured well for getting the mulberry leaves. But he wasn’t going to talk about Mirabel in front of Rosamund. Instead, he mentioned it tentatively to his mother immediately Rosamund, protesting, had been sent to bed.

‘Well, darling, Mirabel did go and have a baby without being married. And when Aunt Julie was young that was a terrible thing to do. We can’t imagine, things have changed so much. But Aunt Julie has very strict ideas and she must think of Mirabel as a bad woman.’

‘I see,’ said James, who didn’t quite. ‘And when she dies Mirabel won’t be in her will, is that right?’

‘I don’t think we ought to talk about things like that.’

‘Certainly we shouldn’t,’ said James’s father.

‘No, but I want to know. You’re always saying people shouldn’t keep things secret from children. Has Aunt Julie made a new will, cutting Mirabel out?’

‘She hasn’t made a will at all, that’s the trouble. According to the law, a great niece doesn’t automatically inherit if a person dies intestate – er, that is, dies . . .’

‘I know what intestate means,’ said James.

‘So I suppose Mirabel thought she could get her to make a will. It doesn’t sound very nice put like that but, really, why shouldn’t poor Mirabel have it? If she doesn’t, I don’t believe there’s anyone else near enough and it will just go to the state.’

‘Shall we change the subject now?’ said James’s father.

‘Yes, all right,’ said James. ‘Will you be going to the Women’s Institute the same as usual on Wednesday?’

‘Of course I will, darling. Why on earth do you ask?’

‘I just wondered,’ said James.

James’s father was on holiday while the university was down and on the following day he went out into the fruit garden with a basket and his weeder and uprooted the thornapple plant that was growing between the gooseberry bushes. James, sitting in his bedroom, reading The Natural History of Selborne, watched him from the window. His father put the thornapple on the compost heap and went hunting for its fellows, all of which he found in the space of five minutes. James sighed but took this destruction philosophically. He had enough in the brown paper bag for his needs.

As it happened, he had the house to himself for the making of his newest brew. His father announced at lunch that he would be taking the car into Bury St Edmunds that afternoon and both children could come with him if they wanted to. Rosamund did. Bury, though not London, was at any rate a sizeable town with plenty of what she liked, shops and restaurants and cinemas and crowds. Once alone, James chose an enamel saucepan of the kind which looked as if all traces of datura could easily be removed from it afterwards, put into it about a pint of water and set this to boil. Meanwhile, he cut up the green spiny fruits to reveal the black seeds they contained. When the water boiled he dropped in the fruit pieces and the seeds and leaves and flowers and kept it all simmering for half an hour, occasionally stirring the mixture with a skewer. Very much as he had expected, the bright green colour hadn’t been maintained, but the solid matter and the liquid had all turned a dark khaki brown. James didn’t dare use a sieve to strain it in case he couldn’t get it clean again, so he pressed all the liquor out with his hands until nothing remained but some soggy pulp.