'In the 1640's there was another big change. One lot of people, called the Roundheads, decided to rebel against the King - '

'Come on, come on! Rank prejudice there! Rebellion! They were defending their rights!'

'Stop it, Charles. Stop showing off and being clever and boring the boys. Richard's telling it all beautifully simply. It makes me think I'd like to get him to write me a textbook - if I were still working in that ratrace, that is. Go on, Richard. Don't mind him.'

'And they chopped off his head, and they hunted down the people who supported him. And these people were also hidden in priestholes in these old houses. And it's even more complicated than that, because, for a short time in the sixteenth century, the old religion came back and the new priests were hunted, so they had to have somewhere to hide, so almost everyone had a reason to have these secret rooms.'

'Gosh,' said Nigel again. He was thinking about secret places where no one could find you, and you could play Pacman all day, and need never go to school.

'My turn now, Richard. You'll like this bit. It's about people. And it's also about houses. I have a theory. With houses like this one, that have a life of their own, it isn't just the people that own the house, the house owns the people.'

'Eh?' said Richard.

'Come on, Charles, explain. You're not usually so enigmatic.'

'All right. What I mean, is that they do things to hang on to the house which you wouldn't expect - in rational terms, that is. These things aren't always obvious, but if you're looking for them in the jumble of recorded facts, then they leap out at you. The family that owned this house for almost all of its recorded existence was called Fitzwarren. Well, sometimes. Sometimes, it would drop the Fitz and pretend it hadn't actually come over with the Conqueror. I have a suspicion, too, that there were some members of the family that called themselves Warner, just to put people off the scent.'

'Are you talking about a house, Charles, or a family?'

'Both, Jessica, and they go together. Other families split up, divided, moved away, died out - this one stayed here, stayed in this house.'

'Is that really so very unusual?'

'It is, when you consider how they did it, Anne. Listen. Richard's told us all about the change of religion. When that happened, the Fitzwarrens were already here. They had - four sons, I think. The minute it became clear that the Catholics were about to be viewed with royal disfavour, they sent their youngest son to study for the priesthood in Flanders - Douai, where the English priests always studied.'

'What do you mean, "sent" ? Aren't you talking about the decision the young man made as an act of free will?'

'He was thirteen - now, I know that was older then than now, and people went to university at that age - but he was definitely sent. As an insurance policy. When Mary Tudor came to the throne, and Catholicism was the state religion, he took over the parish church.'

'Only natural.'

'Only natural. And it meant his parents had no trouble from anyone. Until Elizabeth came to the throne, and Catholicism was persecuted.'

'And then?'

'And then - they turned him in.'

'What?' Even Jeremy had stopped eating, and was staring in amazement.

'Their own flesh and blood?' queried Anne, tears welling in her eyes.

'Needs must, when the devil drives. No priesthole for him, poor lad. Still, he got off relatively lightly. Not very much torture. He recanted quite quickly, was pardoned and sent home.'

'What?' said Jessica. 'He came back to live with the parents who betrayed him to the authorities?'

'Got on very well with them, too, if the letters are any guide. Didn't get on so well with the third brother, who went off to be a Catholic priest in his turn.'

'You're making this up!'

'Wish I were! I don't have that good a gift of invention. The young lad who was a priest recants, the brother above him goes off and is ordained. He drops out of the picture at this point. They didn't need his services again - not as a priest, anyway. This is where the mysterious Mr Warner comes in, who moved into the village towards the end of the century, at the point where it became clear James the First of England and Sixth of Scotland would succeed Elizabeth and the Catholics wouldn't be coming back. The Fitzwarrens effectively gave him a house to live in, and then there was a marriage between his daughter and one of the sons in the next generation that looks like the standard re-unification of property by cousins marrying each other. Even if you persuade me that the thirteen year old suddenly found religion, I can't take the idea that his elder brother was converted by the strength of his younger brother's example.'

'Nor can I!' said Jessica. 'More red wine, anybody?'

Jeremy held out his glass, and when no one was looking Jessica put some more in it.

'How do you know all this?' asked Anne, putting down her knife and fork because she felt a little queasy.

'Never question a historian's sources - just admire his style!' said Richard. 'But how do you know all this?'

'Well, I'm sure this place does have priestholes, probably several, but I've not yet discovered any. When I go knock-knock-knocking round the walls - '

Jeremy started whispering yet another knock-knock joke to Nigel, who kicked him on the shin quite sharply and said, 'Shut up. You're drunk. I want to listen.'

' - what I find are small cavities.'

'I had one of those in a back tooth last month,' said Nigel, 'but they filled it. Without an injection.'

'And in these small cavities, I find documents. It's as if they didn't need to hide people, but they did need to hide papers, perhaps in case something went wrong, and the older members of the family died, and somebody else had to come along and try and understand their intentions - like with Mr Warner. The deed for the house in the village was all made out and dated well before he actually came to live there. And there was a marriage all sorted out in advance for him, even though he was in his sixties - as there was for the re-converted ex-Catholic priest forty years earlier. I have a suspicion that he probably got the girl that the third brother should have married, the one they packed off to Douai as the second insurance policy.'

'He can't have been too pleased about that,' said Jessica, picking bits of crispy turkey skin off the carcasse, and nibbling them.

'Could I have some of that?' whispered Nigel, and she wordlessly turned the parson's nose round to where he could reach it, but Anne couldn't see what he was doing and tell him to stop.

'I suppose not, but I take it he understood. Loyalty to the family.'

'The family,' said Richard, thinking.

'Are you proposing a toast?' said Anne, sliding her empty glass forward. The queasiness had gone, but she still felt incredibly full, and thought that more alcohol would cut through that feeling. Jessica obliged silently, with a certain malevolence. They were into the third bottle of red, which was rather thin Italian stuff. She judged Anne wouldn't notice.

'The family. The clan. The tribe. Could one really feel such unity with all those other people? Sacrifice oneself for future generations? And not expect to have any part in producing those future generations, either. I find that very hard to understand or accept.'

'So do I, Richard, if that gives you any consolation. As you know, I had very little to do with my parents as a child. I suppose I formed other bonds with other people - rather like those ducklings that get fixated on a sheep-dog and follow it around as if it were their mother - but I don't recall them particularly. Schools and colleges try to exploit the same sort of instinct, though, if you think about it. You have the crest and the motto, just like the older families, and the members are initiated into the history of the place and the wonderful achievements of past members, and they're told that they form part of that tradition, and that future generations will be grateful to them - '

'And then they fork out to have the organ repaired, or a new pavilion built, or the car-park re-surfaced. It's not really the same, is it?'

'I think it is,' said Jessica, sloshing the red, with a certain contempt which she felt it deserved, into the men's glasses. 'In principle. It exploits the same kind of emotional blackmail. It tries to give the individual something beyond him or herself that they can identify with - something that will survive the individual's death, and give meaning to the individual's life.'

'Not the meaning of life,' said Anne, quietly to herself, rolling the wine round in her mouth and looking at all the pretty candle flames.

'Perhaps we should ask the young gentlemen,' said Charles, conscious that it had been a while since a priesthole had been mentioned. 'What do you feel about each other? What sort of loyalties do you have?'

Nigel and Jeremy looked at one another, as if they were meeting for the first time. They had never thought about this kind of thing. The brother was there. So was the wallpaper. You didn't complain about it. You didn't rejoice about it. It was just the way things were.

'You should have heard them quarrelling in the back of the car about their computer games,' said Anne, delighted to put down her offspring who seemed to be getting a litle too much of the attention for the moment, with everyone staring at them. She realised that although the wine didn't taste as nice, it was easier to drink, finished off her glass and poured herself another.

'Computer games?' said Jessica with interest. 'When I was still in publishing, I used to play games on the computer in my office - I wasn't supposed to, of course, it was for work, word-processing, consulting catalogues and so on, but it was boring at times, and the interviews I had to do were really boring, so I used to pretend I was looking something up and actually be playing a game. What I forgot, was that there was a mirror behind me, and one day one of my bosses came to see me, and he wasn't into this eye-contact thing, never looked at you when he talked to you - he was much more interested in his own image, so of course he looked into the mirror and saw what I was up to. I persuaded him that I was trying it out with a view to publishing it, but that was the end of the fun.'

'Don't let's get distracted, Jessica, even if you are amusing the boys,' said Charles. 'It's clear that Richard hasn't brought them up with a strong sense of family - '

'Well, let's be fair - it's not as though they're going to be inheriting any sort of patrimony like this place. The links to the soil aren't particularly strong in Eltham Park.'

'I take your point, Richard. The economic prerequisites have gone. I'm glad you're not coming at me with the history of ideas again.'

'They go together, Charles. You can't really divorce the sense of family from the sense of property, and that brings in all kinds of other questions, such as how many children you have or want to have.'

'I see you're getting round to the birds and bees, Richard. Perhaps we should leave that till later. It comes into my story.'

'Are you going to tell us a story?' asked Anne. 'A bedtime story for the boys?'

'I'm telling you a story now. I'm telling you a story all the time. History is a story.'

'With an over-complex plot, and too many characters. I should know. I was a professional editor.'

'All right, Jessica, I take the hint. If you'll trim the wicks of the candles, then I'll trim my story.'

'Will there be priestholes in it?' asked Jeremy, who was beginning to rub his eyes.

'There better had be, if we're ever going to get them to bed,' said Richard.

'We!' said Anne. 'I like that! As if you ever got involved.'

'Priestholes,' said Charles, ignoring the interruption tactfully, 'well, yes, - I mean, I've told you about what there is hidden away in this house: documents. Tap the walls, tap the floors, and if it sounds hollow - well, maybe you've got a bad attack of rot, or a brick's dropped out because the mortar went long since, or maybe you've found some important papers. There are all those gaps between the ceilings and floors. Of course, the noise gets through, even the old builders realised that, so they filled up the space with all kinds of things: ears of barley, sea-shells - mussels and oysters, mostly, because they were eaten a lot. In this house, it's documents in between the other rubbish. But - ' and he looked very sternly at Nigel and Jeremy - 'there is a priesthole. I don't know where, because I haven't found it. But the documents say it exists.'

'Tell us the story, Charles. Get on with it,' said Jessica, who had appeared with a two litre bottle of really rough Italian red.

'I am getting on with it, Jessica. Do we really have to have that? Can't we move on to the white? I feel my fillings have been attacked already.'

'Very sensible, Charles. I'll get out the dessert for the young gentlemen.'

'And for me, please,' said Anne, who found she had a great sourness in her mouth.

'Cavaliers. Roundheads. And of course the Fitzwarrens made sure they had a son on each side. The family, and the house, stayed as neutral as it could - no use having a son on the winning side if the winning side had to burn the house down in order to win. Well, the King was dead, the battle of Worcester had been fought, and the Roundheads were combing the country, rounding up the last Cavaliers. Who appears at the door but the Cavalier son? Somewhat blood- and travel-stained, and asking for sanctuary. The family is not best pleased. They think they've made their peace with the Roundheads - after all, one of their sons is prominent among them, and they don't want to be reminded of their insurance policy.'

'Dad,' whispered Jeremy, 'what is an insurance policy?'

'It's a kind of bet you make, so that if things go wrong - which isn't likely - then you get some money to put them right.'

'So that if things go right, then you've lost your bet?'

'Yes - but you don't lose nearly as much money that way as you would if things went wrong.'

'I think I see.'

'Nevertheless, they took him in, and hid him in the priesthole, wherever it was. The next person who came knocking at the door was a Roundhead officer searching for Cavaliers. Of course, he knew that one of the sons was a loyal Roundhead, but he also knew that one of the sons was a loyal Cavalier, and he knew that family loyalty was actually more important than political loyalty for most people. So, very politely, he asked for permission to search the house. Said that he knew the family wouldn't be hiding their Cavlier son knowingly, but that in these old houses there were all kinds of ways in and out and secret hideyholes, the kind of things that boys playing alone together could discover, and the parents perhaps never know.'

'There's nothing like that in our house,' said Nigel, wiping the cream from his nose and licking it off his finger.

'Now this worried the mother - the father was out at the time - because she was afraid that the Roundhead officer would find some of the family documents, which were very dangerous. The Fitzwarrens had thought of everything, you see. They had letters - genuine or not, it didn't matter - nobody could be sure what was genuine at that time, a bit of suspicion was enough - to prove that the Roundhead son was a Cavalier spy, and to prove that the Cavalier son was a Roundhead spy. They were thinking of ways to get their sons back in good favour, whatever the outcome of the war, because they only had the two sons - that's another thing I'll have to talk about later when the lads are in bed.'

'This all seems terribly complicated to me,' said Anne, as she began to regret the alcohol she had put in the dessert.

'It is,' said Charles, 'but then so is life.'

'Too true,' said Anne, spooning in the cream and thinking What the hell.

'So what was she to do? Come on, lads, what would you do in a similar situation, you've got these documents which are going to cause trouble for you if they're found, and the likelihood is that they will be found - so what do you so?'

'Eat them?' said Jeremy.

'Burn them,' said Nigel, who wasn't as greedy as his brother.

'Well, the mother didn't have such a good appetite as Jeremy, so she decided to burn them. To do it without too much suspicion, she got the maid to light a fire in one of the rooms, even though it was summer, saying that she wanted to air it, in case the nice Roundhead officer decided he had to stay the night. So far, so good. But one of the important things about priestholes is that they need a good supply of air - otherwise they can easily turn into coffins. The air supply makes them easy to find - if you know what you're doing - because there's always a draught from inside the house going up through the priest-hole to the outside. You go round with a candle and watch the flame.'

Charles picked one up, to demonstrate. The flame wavered as he lifted it from the table, and then was still. He moved towards the door with it, and the flame bent over, inwards, into the room. He went towards the window, and the same happened. Then he went and stood by the Aga. Nothing. He bent down. Everyone craned and twisted to follow his movements. He fumbled with the fire-door and turned a small knob on it. A pinhole opened in the draught-controller. In the dark kitchen, lit only by candlelight, with brown shadows in the corners and under the ceiling, in that kitchen filled with the gloom of the past, the pin-point glow of that tiny hole was clearly visible. Clearly visible, too, was the candle-flame, which leant over and tried to join its burning brother.

'Sometimes, the cruder pursuers tried to smoke people out by setting whole houses alight. A little excessive. The subtler ones went round with a candle at noontide, and saw where the flame led them.'

'And what was this Roundhead like?' asked Jessica. 'Crude or subtle?'

'Lucky,' said Charles, 'which is much more important in the long run. Napoleon, remember, said he preferred lucky generals to skilful ones.'

'So what happened?' said Anne. 'I'm getting impatient.'

'You can't get impatient with history,' said Charles, 'it won't go any faster. One day at a time. That's its pace.'

'You're not going to take a whole day to tell this story, are you?' asked Jessica, stealing a bit of Nigel's cream on her finger.

'The cavalier who was hiding smelt the smoke of the fire that had been lit. Maybe the wood was wet - a typical English summer - maybe the chimney hadn't been swept, or a bird had built its nest on the top - he knew he was being pursued - perhaps he'd heard the Roundheads ride up or listened to the conversation - being a noble fellow, he decided to spare his parents the torment of having their house burnt down over their heads, and revealed himself. As ill luck would have it, he collided in the corridor with his mother, who was carrying both lots of incriminating papers to burn them, and with the officer, who had also smelt the smoke and come to investigate - I think the priesthole must have worked like some kind of chimney and carried the smell up to him. General confusion. Fortunately, the mother realises that there is a way out which still preserves the insurance policy. She reveals the son she has with her as a Roundhead spy and blackens the name of the son who is absent as an agent for the Cavaliers. Luckily, the family made a speciality of keeping carrier pigeons to pass urgent messages between them, so the son in London had plenty of time to make good his escape. Slightly disquieting is the fact that when the mother went to the dovecote - did you notice it on your way in? one of the first things that I restored - the school people used it as a garden shed for the cricket-roller - when she went to the dovecote, to get one of her son's birds to send off to London, she found one of her own birds had come home with a message from her son in London, saying that he had found it necessary to reveal his brother's whereabouts. He didn't say why, but at least he did give a warning.'

'This is all very complicated, isn't it boys?' said Anne. 'Are you following? Do you think you'd better draw diagrams? They're very strong on flow-charts at Richard's school.'

'Are you suggesting,' asked Richard, 'that one brother deliberately betrayed the other? For what motive?'

'I have no idea. With Greek pots, as we have already said this evening, you can scrape the inside to find out what they contained. That method doesn't work with human skulls.'

'But where does that leave the great notion of family loyalty?' asked Jessica. 'I mean - if the previous generations could cope with it all, and swap wives and things, and go off and be priests at the drop of a hat, what changed? What went wrong?'

'Interesting that you say "what went wrong?" - You've clearly accepted the idea of family loyalty as being right, even though you feel none of it in your own life.'

'I'm very fond of Auntie Dot, Charles - and she's all the family I have left.'

'You think it was probably over a woman, Charles? What about plain ambition? Brotherly jealousy?'

'Ask your own sons, Richard, about fraternal feelings. I'd have thought you might want to come back at me with the History of Ideas.'

'Not necessarily, Charles. Even I acknowledge the power and importance of the individual human character. I don't believe we're all determined by the impersonal forces of history.'

'Nor do I. Technologies and legal systems are another matter - but I, too, nourish a quaintly old-fashioned faith in the individual's right - nay, duty - to decide. To make choices. Choices which are not necessarily prescribed by tradition, circumstance and situation, but can in fact create all those things.'

'I think you're leaving the lads behind, Charles.'

'Sorry, Jessica. Sorry, Nigel and Jeremy. I'm getting away from the story, which I've actually finished telling now.'

'Is that all?' asked Jeremy. 'One brother did the dirty on the other brother, but it was all right in the end, because the second brother did the dirty back, but told the first brother in time, and all that really happened was they changed places, but the first brother probably wasn't too happy about it, because he had to run away when he'd been expecting to stay around and now it was the second brother who was staying around when he'd been expecting to run away. Is that it?'

'The boy should be writing dust-jackets,' said Jessica, and started a second round of the white wine. Anne half-covered her glass, but then withdrew her hand and nodded enthusiastically. Jessica was a little more generous with her than she might otherwise have been.

'It could well have been cherchez la femme, but it's hard to tell. Passion doesn't leave traces in the same way as politics and money. At the time it seems all important - but a couple of years later you wonder why you didn't go for the arranged match that would have paid off the mortgage and given you some decent claret in the cellar. Passion is all about the moment.'

'Better than an age without a name,' muttered Jessica. 'I'd no idea you were such a cold fish, deep down, Charles.'

'But, Jessica - I believe in passion when I feel it. We all do. It's a modern thing to do so. It's the one piece of irrationality we still permit in our lives. Religion's out. Fox-hunting's out. Fascism, nationalism and racism are out. That only leaves football and passion - and I'm not going to distinguish between sexual desire and love. There are people who quite rationally decide to take an irrational decision because they feel it's unhealthy not to. A kind of sauna for the soul. It isn't masochism when you get whipped with birch-twigs before the cold plunge.'

'Personally,' said Richard, 'I think the cold plunge is the masochism. But Charles, I think it's really time that the boys went to bed, if you don't mind. They've had their story. Say goodnight.'

They didn't protest. Why should they? Being sent to bed meant they could sneak back down and collect their computers and play into the night. But they went with just enough unwillingness to avoid arousing suspicion: don't be so good, that everybody wonders what it is you've done. Anne had sunk into that state of inwardness which normally precedes being sick, so Richard saw them into the hall, watched them begin to climb the stairs and then shut the kitchen door so that the noise of the adults' conversation could not possibly disturb their slumbers. Nigel and Jeremy waited for five minutes on the galleried landing (where what they had thought was armour had turned out to be a dressmaker's dummy) and then crept quietly down. They felt reasonably safe, because they could hear the voices and laughter from the kitchen and they knew that there was a toilet beyond, in the outhouse, so that the adults would have no reason to come out into the hall until they went to bed.

'Of course,' Charles was saying, 'we like to think that passion is significant because it justifies us as individuals. We don't think of it as impersonal, though in some ways it is - just the desire to propagate the species.'

'Propagate!' said Jessica. 'You speak as through it means dipping a cutting in rooting powder and sticking it in a pot of John Innes No. 3!'

'I was intending precisely to be non-romantic. But I acknowledge that it gives us a feeling of intensity almost entirely lacking in our everyday life.'

The light had been left on in the hall. With bated breath and pounding hearts, the boys began to slip the first computer out of its packaging. They had decided not to argue over whose computer should be taken upstairs first. They just took the first one they came to, and let chance decide. They were partners in crime, and neither was likely to betray the other. They put the packaging back carefully in the empty box, and carried the computer to the foot of the stairs, to begin the long and complex journey to their room.

'Well,' said Charles, 'now they've gone, I can tell you the real story that I wanted to tell you.'

'What?' said Richard. 'Do you mean all that was a fraud?'

'Of course not. All genuine. All true. But a little far away in time, I feel, to affect us as it should. A bit like a fairytale. Sons that set out to seek their fortune. Little grey-haired old mothers. Family relations all terribly unreflected.'

'Why on earth do you think they wrote it all down, Charles?' asked Jessica. 'I mean, it's not entirely to their credit.'

'No - but it does help to promote the idea of the family as an organism and a continuity. Look at all the money people are pouring into genealogy nowadays. Scarcely a U.S. president, for instance, that hasn't been back to the little Irish village that his ancestors left - probably under a cloud, though frankly in Ireland it's hard to go anywhere without it being under a cloud, not to say in the pouring rain. It gives you security, knowing where you came from, even if you've no idea where you're going to.'

'But wouldn't they have gone for better stories - ones that provided more of a model for behaviour in the future?'

'Why, Richard? Isn't the cautionary tale as good as the shining example? Look at the Bible - they didn't leave out Cain and Abel in order to encourage brotherly love, did they?'

'I'm sorry to interrupt you,' said Anne, but could I go and sit by an open window? I'm not feeling too well.'

'Of course,' said Jessica, 'you've been sitting with your back to the Aga all evening and the heat builds up without one noticing it. There you are. Glass of water?'

The chill air refreshed them all. It also made the candles gutter. Jessica went round snuffing the ones in the rest of the room before the melting wax could cascade down their sides in shapes that were too grotesque and extravagant. The ones on the table she rescued with tall glass cylinders that stopped the flames dancing and restored them to the fine equilibrium of constant motion in constant stillness. The darker the kitchen was, the older it seemed. The less light, the more it picked out the features of the faces, characterising them more strongly. Anne had a wind-protected candle of her own as she sat at the window, with a shawl round her, since she wanted fresh air and not a chill. The drinkers at the table had forgotten the dessert, only eaten by the boys and now back in the fridge. A cheese-board had magically appeared, a crisp dry white and a strong, dry Normandy cider.

'I'm sure the example of the father is very important,' said Richard, pontificating, 'but nowadays - the father doesn't have the status in the family, so he can't give the example, doesn't want to give the example, isn't expected to give the example, so even if he did, nobody would take any notice - '

'Chicken and egg, eh, Richard?' said Jessica. 'What sort of example have you given as a father?'

'Absent,' said Anne from the window. 'Permissive. He plays games with them. He does the fun things. I do the work. His job's important. Mine's part-time. I get nearly as much money as he does for one-third the hours. But he contributes to society, and I just work for Mammon.' She was looking out into the darkness, her back to the intimate scene at the table, so they found it easy to ignore her, because she expected to be ignored, because she wanted to complain, but didn't imagine that her complaints would change anything. She didn't want to exchange her moral superiority for effectiveness, and the rest were happy to go on with their discussion and pretend they hadn't heard clearly.

'What are homes nowadays?' countered Richard. 'Would you kill for them? Are they really boxes for your deepest memories and feelings? Or just boxes? machines for living in?'

'Don't trespass on my architectural patch, Richard. You're not letting me tell my story.'

'Tell us. Tell us all about it.'

'Let me gloss over two and a half centuries.'

'Primer, undercoat, top-coat, gloss away.'

'They sent a twelve-year-old to be a hanger-on at Monmouth's rebellion. Unfortunately, he was caught and Judge Jeffreys sentenced him to hang.'

'My God!'

'Fortunately, he died of a fever in prison before he could die on the scaffold. That must have salved some consciences. Then they sent a couple of brothers into exile with James II, and they married various cousins who were sent out to them, so that their descendants supplied family representation in both Jacobite rebellions. In addition, the exiles dispatched offspring in their turn to be married back into the main line of the family. All very cosy.'

'And the Napoleonic Wars?'

'They drew the line at becoming French, as far as I can tell. There are limits, you know! And that was more or less the end of the practice of having a Fitz in both camps, because there weren't any significant camps to have feet in by the time you reach the nineteenth-century.'

'So where's your story? Come on, Charles, I've never known you break a promise yet, even if you have bizarre ways of keeping them,' said Jessica.

'Now, Malthus pointed out that population increased geometrically, but food resources only arithmetically - '

'Is there any more Stilton?' asked Richard.

'It's not Stilton, it's Blue Vinny, otherwise you'd be having red wine with it, and yes, there it is,' said Jessica.

' - so, while you needed heirs to make sure of the continuation of the family, you also had to make sure you didn't risk problems because there were too many potential heirs competing. While you had wars and diseases, you could be sure that a fair number would simply drop out, and, as we said, the Warrens had the marriage of cousins as a regular thing to make sure the family stock didn't get too diluted. We all know about the huge Victorian families. Something else which occurs to me, and which isn't irrelevant, is all those bastards the Kings seem to have had in the Middle Ages.'

'Just liked a pretty face, didn't they, Charles?'

'I think it much more likely, Richard, that they were spreading their seed around as far as it could go, in the hope that any of their enemies intent on extinguishing the entire dynasty would miss the odd wayside flower. Then there would be a pretender to the throne to carry on the family.'

'And there was me, thinking it was the victory of passion over class distinctions, bare legs over silken stockings.'

'You're very strong on passion, Jessica. It must be all the red meat.'

'It's more likely to be the red wine, Charles.'

'What about you, Richard?' said Anne, from her seat by the window, speaking into the darkness outside, where there was a quiet and gentle rain falling. 'Did you spread your seed around? I can't say you did it with me particularly.'

'Well - to return to my theme. The calculations about how many children made five became a lot harder. They had to earn some money - land was a problem, agriculture not terribly profitable. If they went abroad and served the Empire, they could easily get finished off by some colourful disease - '

'Yellow fever,' cried Jessica.

'Blackjack,' interjected Richard.

'That's a card-game,' said Anne.

'It's a lethal instrument,' said Jessica, hitting Richard on the head with a half-baguette that showered crumbs down his dinner-jacket.

'Children, children! I was just about to mention the Boer War.'

'Don't be a Boer!' shouted Jessica. 'God, Charles, your introductions are longer than your stories! Thank Christ I only ever edited one of your books. Does this go on for long?'

'And then I was going to allude to the First World War, which was responsible for exterminating a large number of very ancient families. And then I was going to tell the story.'

'Halle-bloody-lujah. Dessert? Liqueur? Coffee? Chocolates? Ices?'

There was movement in the kitchen. Dessert, coffee and liqueurs appeared. Anne had fallen asleep in her chair. Jessica leaned across and gently closed the window without waking her. Charles waved away his dessert, which Jessica shared out between her and Richard, and he continued his tale between alternate sips of black coffee and Armagnac.

'In 1895, Sir Harry Fitzwarren married Lady Violet Beacham-Warner. Here's the newspaper clipping, if you don't believe me, with further material from the Court Circular giving the dirt on the couple. Judging by the letters he wrote to his mother, it was a love match.'

'Do men ever tell the truth to their mothers?' said Jessica. 'Their mothers are all in love with them themselves, and fiendishly jealous. They only go along with the marriage plans to get a bit of vicarious pleasure and put themselves in the place of the bride.'

'I wish you were right, Jessica,' said Charles, ' but my mother was almost as indifferent and distant to me as she was to her husband, my father, and the only reason I have for assuming that she was in any way ever intimately involved with him is the existence of my humble self.'

'Poor Charlie. You didn't have it easy, did you? Even with Richard as your friend.'

'Jessica, you know I don't like diminutives, especially not ones that make me sound like a fool. Have you read the clippings? Good. Then let me have them back, please. Look at these.'

Again, brown and crumbling pieces of newspaper in plastic wallets for safety. The birth of a son to the happy couple. Then, dated ten months after the birth of the son, a birth certificate for an unmarried mother. Also a son. The father's name was given as Sir Harry Fitzwarren.

'She can't have been too pleased about that,' said Richard. 'Randy old bastard. Couldn't he wait for it?'

'For someone who has spoken up for the individual's ability to take decisions, you seem to have a very simplistic view of the relationship between the gonads and the rest of the organism. Do you distinguish carefully between 'they go funny if they don't get it' and 'the red mist of passion' ?'