‘But I said, “Sure,” and she went to this mini-fridge in the corner of the room and got out two cans, and went back to bed. And then I noticed. As she drank, she had this huge Adam’s apple, bobbing up and down, and up and down. Then I looked at her hands. So I pulled on my clothes, and raced for the door, and all I could think was – ’ and then Henry pauses, so we can all roar the punchline, together

‘–I’d FUCKED a BLOKE.’

After this, Henry will reveal to anyone listening who hasn’t heard this most amusing story many times before that yes, she had asked for money at an earlier point in the evening, and that yes, she had a ‘perfectly tidy front bottom,’ and until the Adam’s apple, he hadn’t the faintest.

‘Cath, Granville… Henry…’ It is Ned Bryanston, trying to make a speech – or possibly a toast to his hosts – and trying to call pray silence. He nods in a courtly way to the guests. ‘If I may just say something that concerns us all – or most of us, anyway.’

But Henry, or should I say the Master, is still in mid-flow on the subject of mating in captivity at one end of the table. ‘Problem is, one doesn’t want to have sex with one’s wife,’ Henry is saying, as Biddy sits illuminated by candles, looking rather pretty in her Spotty Ruffle Blouse from Boden and completely resigned to his disloyalty. ‘It’s not because you’ve been in at the kill, that would never put a real man off,’ he continues. ‘Christ, no! Specially not one born on a farm as I was. No, it’s the bloody boredom of it. The sheer, ruddy tedium. After a while, one can contemplate shagging almost anyone with enthusiasm so long as it’s not the lady wife. Frankly, I even find some of my own ewes damned attractive, and I don’t mind admitting it.’

‘Er, Master,’ says Ned, again trying to have the attention and silence of the room. ‘Much as we always enjoy hearing about your, erm, lusty, erm, animal urges, might I just… erm…’

And then Ned says that he has been approached (which everyone takes to mean he has approached) by the local council with a view to placing an industrial-strength wind turbine. On Hamble Hill.

There is a long silence. And then the long silence lengthens.

‘But that’s where the Clump is!’ cries out Granville, finally. The surprise house guests look alarmed. Maddocks is seamlessly clearing plates. A rather delicious-looking Italianate man who looks as if he has walked out of a Versace ad, wearing a chef’s hat and apron, enters bearing a fillet of charred beef surrounded by baby vegetables – leeks, courgettes, carrots – and tiny weeny little baby cauliflowers, so small and tender it seems almost cruel to eat them.