On the years when it is not Jomier’s turn to spend Christmas with his son Henry, his daughter Louisa invites him to spend it with her in Argentina. His most recent visit was the year before. He had flown to Buenos Aires via Madrid, squeezed like a tinned sardine in the economy class of Iberia Airlines. Like a tinned sardine. Jomier usually eschews similes, particularly hackneyed similes, but as he sat suffering at 35,000 feet he could think of no better comparison for his condition. Peas in a pod? They are fresh and fragrant. Matches in a matchbox? They have space to rattle. Only sardines are squashed and oily and malodorous like Jomier’s fellow passengers in economy class.

Jomier in Argentina. He spends one night with Louisa and Jimmy in their flat in Buenos Aires, then drives with them in their jeep to their estancia in Corrientes. He remains there for two weeks. Also staying are Jimmy’s two brothers, their wives, their children. The brothers are tall and healthy and dull like Jimmy: their wives streaked-blonde, long-legged, chic – lazing like sleek whippets on the leather sofas, gossiping in Spanish, calling to their children as they rush past.

And there is Jimmy’s mother, the terrible Doña Adelina. She is small and dark and old and devout and autocratic. She speaks no English. Jomier no Spanish. She dislikes walking. Her eyesight is failing. Only her peripheral vision is acute. She sits on a wooden rocking chair pointing out crumbs with her stick. Dark-skinned women with Indian physiognomies scuttle to sweep up the crumbs. Jomier is a crumb but not one that could be disposed of by a dustpan and brush. Doña Adelina occasionally addresses him in Spanish: one of her sons translates. ‘You are a Protestant?’

‘My ancestors were Protestants.’

‘Humph.’ Then: ‘Thanks to the Inquisition, there were no wars of religion in Spain.’

‘But a particularly unpleasant civil war with a religious dimension, I seem to recall.’

‘Humph.’

It is midsummer in the southern hemisphere – the weather is hot. Jomier sits on the veranda of the estancia while his three little granddaughters – Lala, Nunci and Ysabel – study him from a distance. Can this grey-skinned old man really be their yayo? The two older boys, Fernando and Roberto, practise their English. They are tall, healthy, tanned, good-looking. Their English is good: less of their father’s Chiquita-banana lilt; a touch of a US drawl. Their English teachers are Irish Christian Brothers. They watch undubbed American films on DVD.

Louisa is enchanting. Louisa is superb. She speaks gently in good Spanish to the servants and teases her mother-in-law, the terrible Doña Adelina. ‘I was once a Protestant, yaya. Can you really trust a converso?’

‘Humph.’

Jomier to Louisa, out of earshot of Doña Adelina: ‘Have you become a Catholic?’