‘Know who was where on Easter Monday. Know who is the sort of chap who would climb up a perilous wistaria to slake his lawless lust; know who still takes part in very old-fashioned and naughty revels – and know, perhaps, who keeps a china toad on his, ah, mantelpiece.’

He thought for a minute or two, or at any rate, he frowned and chewed his lip as he has seen other people do when they were thinking.

‘I can’t ask these Jerseys that sort of stuff. They’d shut up like bloody clams.’

‘Don’t ask them. Tell them. Tell them what you think it’s all about. Talk rubbish while you fill their ale-pots. Then watch: see who smiles. Listen: and see who calls you an idiot. Do not hit them; play the mug, let them pull your plonker. Someone will walk into the trap.’

‘You mean, do a Les Kellet?’

‘Exactly.’

(Les Kellet is a superb wrestler and consummate clown: he seems to stumble about in a happy daze but his stumbles usually occur just when his opponent leaps on him for the coup de grâce. He is puzzled and sorry when the opponent shoots through the ropes and lands on his bonce outside the ring. Sometimes he helps the other chap back into the ring, dusts him down, then administers a fearsome forearm smash and the winning pinfall. Sometimes, too, he picks up the referee absent-mindedly and hits the other chap with him. He is very brave and strong and amusing.)

I briefed Jock a little more from the depths of my ignorance and waved him away in the general direction of the tavern doors.

Soon I heard his great motor-bike start up and burble down the lane. I say ‘burble’ because it’s one of those lovely old prewar Ariel 1,000c.c. machines with four cylinders and Brooklands fishtail exhausts. It is Jock’s pride and joy and I find it utterly terrifying.

The pubs would be open and thronged already, they never seem to close in Jersey. (There are frequent flights from Heathrow; book now to avoid disappointment.) I went back to sleep, secure in the knowledge that the matter of liquoring-up the peasantry was in the hands of a mastercraftsman. Going back to sleep is infinitely sweeter than going to sleep in the first place.

I had scarcely closed my eyes, it seemed, before Johanna aroused me – and I use the word ‘aroused’ with precision. I opened an eye.

‘Have you brought tea?’ I asked.

‘Of course not. You are funny, Charlie.’

‘In that case, NO, and let me remind you of Uncle Fred and Auntie Mabel who fainted at the breakfast-table.’

‘Charlie, it is not the morning, it is past one o’clock. And you don’t eat breakfast, you know you don’t.’