I explained to him kindly that he was not a proper manservant, trained to gentlemen’s service, but only a mere thug and that I had noticed lately that he was getting notions above his station in life.

His answer was in the plural – and they bounce.

Shaking with rage at having nursed such a viper in my bosom, I huddled on some clothes and drove off to get dinner in St Helier, my tyres cutting up the gravel savagely and spraying it on to the lawn. (The gardener had, in any case, been making grumbling noises for weeks and I would be well shot of him: his snail-like working pace had earned him the sobriquet ‘Flash’ from Johanna.)

In St Helier, the restaurant I had readied my gastric juices for was, of course, closed. It wasn’t just Easter Bunny time, it was That Kind of Day, too. That did it. Stomach churning with chagrin and thwarted peptins, I went to the Club, determined to spite myself with cold steak-and-kidney pie and spurious new potatoes forced into pallid maturity in Cyprus with doses of chicken-crut and peasants’ pee.

On the steps I met George, coming down.

‘Eaten already?’ I asked.

‘No. Looked at the menu. A shop-girl would eat any quantity of it. I’m off. Come back with me and play backgammon. There’s half a duck in the fridge if the maid hasn’t swiped it. And you could make one of your potato salads. And I’d open a bottle of that Fleurie you like so much.’

It was a deal. Off we sped, he in his Rover, I in my absurd Mini GT which I bought because I can never resist a contradiction in terms.

As we swung into the courtyard and George killed the engine I heard the screams. He didn’t hear them until he’d opened the door of his better-insulated car, so I was first at the door, which was locked. He stabbed it with his key and was through the hall and up the stairs before I had recovered from the mighty shove he had given me.

In the bedroom was his wife, quite bare, legs spread wide and shrieking as though she were approaching a grade on the Atcheson, Topeka and Santa Fé Railroad, Inc.

I couldn’t help noticing that her bush, contrary to the usual practice, was of a lighter shade than the hair of her head. The window was open wide and a warm wind stirred the curtains but the room was fragrant with sex. George was already out of the window and taking a grip of the creeper on the wall outside. It ripped loose under his weight and he landed on the gravel below with what I suppose I may as well call a sickening thud and an oath more suitable to the Sergeants’ Mess than to his own station in life.