She is, of course, an accomplished liar but then they all are, aren’t they? (Or aren’t you married?) George is quite clever enough to detect her in her falsehoods but both breeding and common-sense forbid this in him.

Sonia and George have two sons. One of them, very clever, is serving out the last of his stretch at a school called Wellington; Sonia does not mind having a son at school – although she manages to give the impression that he is at prep school – but she is a little cross at the existence of the other son who is what is called grownup. He is marvellously stupid and drives a helicopter for the Army or Navy or some such out-dated nonsense. He is always breaking their valuable aircraft but his superiors never seem to mind, they just buy him a new one. They don’t pay for it themselves, you see. You do.

Now Sam Davenant

And straight away we detect a falsehood, an affectation, for no one has been christened Sam for a hundred years. His real name is Sacheverell, of course. At school he would have died rather than divulge this but nowadays he quite likes one to find out.

He affects to be affected, which he is otherwise not, if you see what I mean, and hopes that his chief fault, congenital idleness or accidie, will pass as an affectation. His infrequent swings to the manic phase, made much of, help him to carry this off.

He would think shame to be seen out of bed before noon – unless he had been up all night – and has eaten no breakfast for twenty years.

He is almost tiresomely well-read. In public he is usually immersed in a trashy paper-back but it is quite certain that in his bedroom he reads Gibbon, Fénelon, Horace and ‘tous ces defunts cockolores’. On the other hand, he stoutly denies that he has ever heard of Marcuse and Borges, whoever they may be. (For my part, I adamantly believe in teaching Fénelon, Racine, Milton and Gibbon to the young as soon as may be; you cannot learn too early in life that most classical literature is both dull and unimportant.)

Sam is absurdly kind, easy-going, tolerant and has a harsh word for no one, but I have long recognized in him an insane iron core which would make him, if ultimately provoked, a very bad enemy indeed. He used to play backgammon uncommonly well until the sparks took it up, whereupon he dropped it; he’s like that. I can sometimes beat him at poker.

He seems to be quite rich in a vague sort of way but no one knows how or whence. He hints naughtily at gun-running or worse in his youth – perhaps white-slaving – but I suspect a string of dry-cleaning shops in Northern Ireland: why else should he be so vexed about the news of bomb-outrages in Belfast?