Sir Randolph emerged first and walked towards Mr Glass. Passing Tom, he stopped to ask him how he was keeping.

‘Can’t complain,’ was the answer and then with a roll of his eyes heavenwards; ‘His mercies are manifold.’

‘Indeed they are. That was a fine piece of work you did on that roof at Hamlingham. I was over there the other day.’

‘Oh yes?’ Tom’s smile, perhaps because it appeared too infrequently, was surprisingly diffident; it gave his stern features quite another aspect. ‘It was in a terrible state.’

‘They’re in a poor way, some of those cottages. I’m glad to see they’ve started to do something about them. We’ve got a couple in the village here we want to do this year. Did Mr Dawkes mention them to you?’

‘He did.’

Sir Randolph nodded, exchanged another word or two about the prospects for the afternoon’s sport and moved on to talk to Glass to whom, after confirming the arrangements for the next drive, he said amusedly, ‘I see you’ve got one of your favourite characters out beating today,’ moving his head slightly to indicate Tom Harker.

Glass did not smile.

‘Against my better judgement, Sir Randolph, against my better judgement. The last thing I want is him nosing around seeing where the best game’s lying. But Page has hurt his back and there was no one else I could call on at short notice.’

‘I like him,’ said Sir Randolph truthfully, though he privately thought no one would ever stop the man poaching.

The other shooters were ready. Olivia, Cicely and Aline, who were to walk with them for a few drives, were with them. The beaters moved off first, the others followed. It’s like an army, Olivia thought, we have bivouacked and are moving off now to the front line. War might be like this, casual, friendly and frightening. Like before a cricket match (at home in Norfolk where she had been brought up they had been great cricketers). Olivia was excited. She was not sure why, though she knew it was something to do with the sunlight through the trees, and the groups of men moving through the trees and converging on to the wide green ride by the river, and the whining of Glass’s dog Bess, and the click of Marcus’s gun as he made sure yet again that it was not loaded (not for nothing had he been trained by his grandfather). It was even, although she did not much like her, to do with Aline’s hat which was a dark velvet thing with a sweeping feather on it and above her tense acutely beautiful face looked romantic, and with the keen expectation shining in Cicely’s eyes as she walked beside Tibor Rakassyi, and with Tibor’s own dark eyes for that matter, and his neat rather too tight jacket and his beautiful leather boots, and with Sir Randolph’s distinctive large-brimmed hat and his dog a shadow at his heels and with those fine broad-shouldered sportsmen whom she followed, and with their air of assurance, their common assumptions, their absolute authority. Are we really all so beautiful and brave, she thought, or do we just think we are?