‘Oh God, Moorcus, give it a rest will you,’ said Stunly, and I blessed him a little for it. ‘Let the monstrosity go. Can we not have a little peace?’

‘One thing more, Clodfreak, there’s something else the Little Uncle told me, something for me to pass on,’ said Moorcus, grinning. ‘Just a small thing, barely worth the mention: it’s your Sitting tomorrow.’

‘My Sitting!’ I cried. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, dishcloth, it is announced.’

‘You’re not just saying that to be cruel?’

‘Get out.’

‘Really, Moorcus, are you telling the truth?’

‘Get out.’

‘Run along, Clod,’ said Stunly, sighing, ‘and think of Pinalippy.’

‘No!’ I cried, because of the Sitting and because Moorcus had just kicked me hard in the rump.

‘I shall murder you one day, Clod,’ said Moorcus, ‘and I shall enjoy it. Yes, I really think I shall.’

Oh, Our Cousins on the Other Side

I ran from the common room as fast as I could, round the corner and far from the silent medal, spitting and cursing and wiping my hands on the wallpaper, on anything, not satisfied until I was at a sink and with a jug of water and scrubbing my hands until they hurt. But that shouldn’t wash the memory of it away. And worse even than that was the thought of my Sitting. Of the Iremonger cousin called Pinalippy.

Cousin Pinalippy was much taller than me. She had a little dark hair on her top lip. There was a voice that came out from Cousin Pinalippy’s pocket which said ‘Gloria Emma Smart’ but I had no idea what Gloria Emma looked like. Cousin Pinalippy could thump and pinch. She had a particular entertainment which was to go up to some young Iremonger and, opening his black jacket, seize a pinch-hold of shirt exactly where the nipple was, and twist it; this was uncommonly painful. It was this person, this tweaker of boys’ breasts, who I was to wed on the unhappy birthday when I moved from corduroy shorts to full-length black trousers. It was this same Pinalippy who I was to be shut up in a room with the next day, for my Sitting. It was family law that, some months before a marriage, sometime during the male Iremonger’s sixteenth year, the betrothed were to be left in a room together, no one else would be there, only him, only her. Me and my James Henry, Pinalippy and her Gloria Emma.