Sitting beside Daddy in his car, a rather smart Star 11.9 which isn’t sporty enough for Daddy and which he complains about incessantly, Tom watches the wipers clack across the windshield, spreading rain like butter on hot toast. The car smells of leather polish and damp clothes, and the sharp rubber scent of Daddy’s mackintosh mixed with his shaving soap: sandalwood and birch tar. Tom shifts uncomfortably. He is wearing a tweed suit – Norfolk jacket and plus fours – and it is horribly itchy. Mummy has tucked a scarf around his neck – a scarf in May! – but still he feels as if someone is going at him with sandpaper. He is holding Daddy’s brown felt hat in his lap; holding Daddy’s hat is supposed to be an honour. At least it is keeping his knees warm. The car bumps and jolts along a lane between grey granite walls. Tom looks out at miserable sheep and dejected cattle. They plunge down into a valley and through an oak wood, twisted branches trailing rags of greyish lichen. Daddy turns the car in through a gate next to a thatched lodge. The wood gives way to rough fields the colour of faded army uniforms, in which more dejected cattle stare at them, chewing stoically as the water trickles off their woolly black coats. A house comes into view, long and white, with a lot of peaked gables and tall chimneys.

‘What a big house,’ Tom says, to break the silence.

‘It’s a hunting box,’ Daddy corrects him.

‘Oh.’

Daddy steers the car onto a crescent of gravel in front of the house, stops, pulls up the handbrake, turns off the engine, lights another cigarette. The front door opens and a man appears, hand raised in greeting. ‘Hat, Tommy.’ Tom gives it to him. Daddy gets out of the car, adjusts the hat on his head, waves back to the man. Tom gets out as well, reluctantly. He notes that what had been actual rain higher up the valley is now a fine wet mist, what the people in the village call mizzle. Still, this is a distinct improvement.

‘This is Mr Symington, Tom,’ Daddy says. Tommy stands up straight and puts out his hand, the way he has been taught.

‘Hello, young fellow,’ says the man. He has a small nose and a carefully trimmed moustache. ‘Come for some riding?’

‘Yes, sir,’ says Tommy.

‘Jolly good.’

The two men set off around the house and Daddy signals with a perfunctory wave of his hand for Tom to follow. He does, trotting at their heels while they talk, ignoring him completely. Behind the house is a walled garden, which they skirt, and a patchwork of small fields divided by more granite walls. Further away, the thickly wooded hillside rises up into the mist.