But all around them there is movement, and their little intimate domestic drama is swamped in waves and ripples, in gestures and jostlings. A new drama is declared, as Hattie Osborne says she will not come to the Reception, she will go straight to the hospital to have her baby. She’s booked in for the evening, but she thinks she will go now. Aaron tries to dissuade her, and succeeds. Well, she will come for five minutes, perhaps, to the party in St John’s Wood.

Simon Grunewald is chatting up the smartly dressed Frenchwoman, who has dashingly opened the conversation by saying that she once pushed Stephen Cox out of a window into a rosebed. The counter-tenor is receiving compliments from Robert Oxenholme. Liz Headleand is being introduced to the Cox brothers. Gabriel Denham is looking for Konstantin Vassiliou, but Konstantin and Rose have already vanished, and are walking arm-in-arm down the Charing Cross Road, their heads bent closely together, as Konstantin tries in ten minutes to account for three years of his life. Will Rose forgive him? Will he be forgiven? And what has been his crime?

The pavement outside the church is slippery from the rain. The sky is clearer now and a bright blue beats above, with high white cumulus blown in towering bundles, but a thin film of grease, water and birdlime coats the surface of the uneven stones. Liz, releasing herself from Stephen’s brothers, hastening towards Charles, his car and her catering responsibilities, slips, and quite heavily, falls. It is her ankle again. She does not think she has broken anything, she assures Charles, as he helps her through the dirty garbage-strewn little back lanes of the rookery behind the church to the building site where the car awaits. She hobbles, in her short skirt. The car has not been clamped or ticketed. Charles opens the door for her, and she clambers in. She sits there, nursing her ankle, rubbing at the marks on her yellow silk jacket. ‘You okay?’ says Charles.

‘Fine, fine,’ says Liz, irritably. ‘Just generally cracking up and losing my grip, that’s all.’

And off they go, weaving their way towards the funeral baked meats and their high priestess, Deirdre Kavanagh née Nora Molloy, who greets them in flowing olive and silver, armed with a tray of straw-sparkling Veuve du Vernay, with a Venetian glass necklace of pale green and yellow roses round her throat, and a spray of hellebore woven into her Titian hair.

Is this the grand finale? Is this the End of History? Or is it all a Godawful mistake?

Those guests who make a quick getaway from the leper church and arrive in St John’s Wood before the traffic of London grinds to a halt are in lenient mood. As far as they are concerned, civilization is doing just fine. They sip and munch and chatter, and some, risking their summer shoes, venture on to the wet grass of the garden and peer with interest into the little lily pond and admire the weighty yellow and crimson roses which drop their curved petals on the lawn. This is a Good Time post-Memorial party, with excellent refreshments, pleasant décor, interesting company. And they are all, after all, still very much alive.