‘Come through, please, everyone,’ cries Cath, her slim form twinkling ahead into the drawing room, ‘lunch in two shakes of a duck’s tail! And do help yourselves to refreshments on the way’ – I see Champagne, wine, spirits and mixers, ginger ale, lemon and a bucket of ice set out on a round table in the hall – ‘then come and defrost by the fire.’

Suffused with a sense of wellbeing, a sense that can only be engendered by several hours in the open air followed by the prospect of a copious, well-cooked meal, we fall into huge sofas with our drinks.

I begin talking to Andrew Lewis, the former editor of a national newspaper and well-known countryman and keen shot. Cath is sitting close to the vulpine Frenchman on a large sofa whose size only serves to emphasize her daintiness, while Esmond’s wife, the defiantly hideous Jacqueline, is sipping a sherry and allowing herself to be amused – but only a very tiny bit – by Ralph.

‘So tell me about shooting,’ I say in the direction of Andrew, who is sitting on the sofa next to me, his long legs ending in a pair of burgundy-coloured stockings. I am glad to be sitting down, glad that normal social intercourse can resume. It’s amazing how tiring simply standing by one’s man in the cold can be. I think shooting might be a safe topic. ‘What is the real point?’

It’s best not to talk about people, to mention names, let alone in any pejorative way, as it is a firm rule that, in the drawing rooms of England, the moment you refer to anyone disobligingly a head will bob up and say, ‘Did you say Ed Blankety-Blank? That’s so funny! He’s married to a cousin of mine.’ When I asked Ralph why it was that this happened, as night followed day, he said, ‘Because in the aristocracy everyone is related to everyone else, you Irish peasant girl.’ I think he also told me –though I can hardly believe this – that when the Queen writes letters to the nobility, she opens correspondence with the words, ‘Dear Cousin’.

‘If you don’t get it, I can’t explain,’ Andrew Lewis answers, to my question about shooting. ‘Though I could give you chapter and verse about the rural economy and field sports, which contribute several billion a year, especially in depressed areas, but I won’t, because the truth is, that’s not the point at all.’ He sips his first drink of the day.

‘Then what is?’ I press. ‘Are grounds maintained, keepers and under-keepers retained, 100,000 pheasant put down, 60,000 partridge put down, reared, then moved around 2,000 acres of land, so that, twenty-one days a year, men can feel macho?’

‘The only point is the fun of the actual shooting,’ replies Andrew, shortly.