John had been hoping for tropical rarities and was hard put not to show his disappointment. Sir Henry had poured wealth and labour into making a classic English garden in the most unlikely of circumstances. There was a smooth lawn, as good as the king’s bowling green at Oatlands. There was a perfect knot garden with low hedges of bay enclosing white stones. John, looking a little more closely, saw that they were not stones but the most exquisite white shining shells.

‘Cowries,’ Sir Henry said gloomily. ‘Cost me a fortune. But actually easier to get than proper English gravel.’

There was a flower garden, planted exclusively with English flowers and shaded with a thatched roof suspended from stakes at each corner. ‘Sun’s too hot for them otherwise,’ Sir Henry complained. ‘And the ground’s too dry. I keep three boys watering almost constantly all day, and even then I can never grow more than a dozen daffodils every year.’

There was an orchard. John saw that the sun-loving fruits would do well in such a climate. ‘I can’t grow apples to taste like the ones in Kent.’

They came full circle back to the house. ‘You only plant English plants?’ John asked carefully.

‘Of course,’ the man said briskly. ‘Why would I want these damn ugly savage flowers?’

‘I have a great liking for new plants myself,’ John remarked.

‘You’re a fool,’ the man said. ‘If you lived here you would find you were longing for the sight of a proper English wood and proper English flowers again. I fight and fight and fight against this soil and against the heat to grow a proper garden.’

John nodded neutrally. ‘I see that it takes a very great deal of labour,’ he said.

His host nodded and mounted the terrace again. Without a word he put out his hand. At once the black woman presiding behind a great bowl of punch poured a glass, handed it to another woman who put it on a silver tray and bowed and presented it to Sir Henry. John was reminded of the silent, perfect service of the royal court and accepted a glass of his own with a word of thanks.

‘Don’t thank them,’ Sir Henry corrected him swiftly. ‘Don’t give one word of thanks for service in my house, if you please, sir. It has taken me years to knock some sense of obedience and decorum into them. I don’t want them thinking they’re doing me a favour by working for me.’

Dinner was a miserable affair of lavish food and the best wines but Lady Hants, half-reclining in her chair at one end of the table, said not one word for the whole of the meal, and her husband drank steadily and deeply of rum and water, becoming more gloomy and irascible with every glass.