No one looked middle aged. The mothers were, save for the few who had borne their children in their late teens, as ancient in appearance as their own parents.

And yet they did not die as might be imagined, any earlier than is normal. On the contrary, from the long line of ancient faces at the three tables nearest the great wall, it might be imagined that their longevity was abnormal.

Only their children’s had radiance, their eyes, the sheen on their hair, and in another way, their movements and their voices. Bright with a kind of unnatural brightness. It was not the wholesome lustre of a free flame, but of the hectic radiance that sheet-lightning gives suddenly to limbs of trees at midnight; of sudden flares in the darkness, of a fragment that is lit by torchlight into a spectre.

Even this unnatural emanation died in these youths and girls when they had reached their nineteenth year; along with the beauty of their features, this radiance vanished too. Only within the bodies of the adult Dwellers was there a kind of light, or if not light, at least hotness – the hotness of creative restlessness. These were the Bright Carvers.

Mrs Slagg hoisted her little claw of a hand very high in the air. The four who were lined in front of her had taken less formal stances, the children peering up at her with their slim, dusty arms around each others’ shoulders.

‘I have come’, she said in a voice which, thin as a curlew, carried along the tables, ‘I have come – although it is so late – to tell you a wonderful thing.’ She readjusted her hat and felt as she did so, with great pleasure, the shining volume of the glass grapes.

The old man turned to the tables and his voice rolled out along them. ‘She has come to tell us a wonderful thing’, and the old woman followed him up like a distorted echo and screamed, ‘A wonderful thing.’

‘Yes, yes, it is wonderful news for you,’ the old nurse continued. ‘You will all be very proud, I am quite sure.’

Mrs Slagg, now she had started was rather enjoying herself. She clasped her gloved hands together more tightly whenever she felt a qualm of nervousness.

‘We are all proud. All of us. The Castle,’ (she said this in a rather vain way) ‘is very very satisfied and when I tell you what has happened, then, you’ll be happy as well; oh yes, I am sure you will. Because I know you are dependent on the castle.’

Mrs Slagg was never very tactful. ‘You have some food thrown down to you from the battlements every morning, don’t you?’ She had pursed her mouth and stopped a moment for breath.

A young man lifted his thick black eyebrows and spat.

‘So you are very much thought of by the Castle. Every day you are thought of, aren’t you? And that’s why you’ll be so happy when I tell you the wonderful thing that I’m going to tell you.’