Christopher Getting married.

Margaret Richard?

Christopher Next year.

Margaret He’s not!

Christopher Didn’t tell me until you had retired – ‘Not before the staff’ – that old snob thing in him. Edith Something-or-Other. A doctor, too. Went with him to the Outer Hebrides last spring on one of those silly expeditions of his – ethnology? – anthropology? – anthropometry? – whatever. He loves tossing out those big words. I didn’t understand a bit of it, I think. Did you?

Margaret Not at all.

Christopher You kept nodding your head very intelligently all through dinner.

Margaret I was falling asleep.

Christopher Shame on you. If I understand him at all, what the anthropologist does is study a people’s distinctive characteristics and then classify those characteristics according to their race.

Margaret That’s the ethnologist, I think.

Christopher You’re right. The classifying. That’s why he spent three summers on the Aran Islands – just measuring people’s heads, for God’s sake.

Margaret That’s the anthropometrist, I think.

Christopher You’re right. The measuring. He’s trying to prove – isn’t he? – that every race has its own distinctive physical characteristics: distinctive height; colour of eyes; shape of skull; their nigrescence –

Margaret Their what?

Christopher Nigrescence. How black is their hair, their eyes, their complexion. You were asleep!

Margaret You’re making this up, Christopher. And you weren’t altogether sober, either.

Christopher Thank you. Now what the anthropometrist does is make a detailed survey of the physical features of maybe a thousand people; and what emerges is a portrait of a distinctive ethnic group.

Margaret That’s the anthropologist, I think.

Christopher You’re wrong. Physical features. (He raises his face; finger on chin: mock-heroic.) Unmistakably Anglo-Saxon. (Points to her.) And that quite elegant creature? Unmistakably Celt.

Margaret So what – then what?

Christopher Aha! Then we come to the clever part. Because what cousin Richard believes is that behind that physical portrait, beneath that exquisite Celtic appearance, there is a psychological portrait. And if only we could read that, it would tell us how intelligent that tribe is, how stupid, how cunning, how ambitious. How faithful, for heaven’s sake.

Margaret He can’t believe that!

Pause. He considers this.

Christopher Can’t. Can he? Plain silly. (softly) Silly man in many ways, cousin Richard. And you’re right: we weren’t altogether sober. You look so beautiful when you’re mystified.

Margaret I’m trying to imagine Richard married!

Christopher Whatever about his ridiculous theories he did say something very perceptive to me last night. I was carrying the old goat up to bed when he suddenly announced, ‘Edith is a splendid woman. But what an absolutely delicious creature your chatelaine is. I do envy you.’ Meant it, too.

Again he reaches for her hand. Again she eludes him. Pause.

That service was so … so disturbing. I need a drink.

She drifts out to the lawn. He pours a drink. She looks down towards the school. He joins her.

We’re invited to the wedding. Yes, you too. Now that’s a big gesture. But I said we’d be caught up here with the harvest. You don’t want to go all the way to the home place in Kent just to see old Dick and Edith being spliced, would you? But you’re so right: she’ll have her hands full squeezing his old bachelor habits out of him.