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other side of the hissing gas fire: “You have some cerebral capacity, Charles. Use it .”
    Ros had cooked a fish pie and set the kitchen table with good china and Reggie’s silver candlesticks. Most of the meal passed in a halting question-and-answer-type conversation, during which Charlie learned rather more about the village historical society than he wanted to know. The weather was mentioned a few times, as an opening gambit and at points thereafter. Gardening, as a topic, failed to get off the ground, since only Marjorie knew anything about it.
    “Marjorie?” said Ros. “May I help you to more?”
    “Thank you, no.” Marjorie folded her napkin beside her plate.“At my age, one’s appetite is not what it was. Would you mind awfully if I smoked?” This was a challenge or a statement in the form of a question.
    “Not at all,” said Charlie, getting up to fetch a saucer. “I’ll join you.”
    “You’ve given up,” said Ros.
    “I still have one from time to time.”
    “That’ll be news to Rachel.”
    “Oh,” said Marjorie, raising her eyebrows. “Shall I go outside? I believe that’s what people do these days.”
    “Of course not,” said Ros. “It’s far too cold. Stay right where you are and I’ll fetch those estate papers I was talking about.” She left the room, her trainers squeaking away down the hall.
    “Have one of mine,” said Marjorie, offering him the packet.
    “Thanks.” He lit up. “How long did you know Reggie?”
    “About fifteen years or so. I met her quite soon after I retired to the village. Your aunt was a remarkable woman. She will be much missed.” Marjorie, nudging ash into the saucer, asked if they planned to carry on their aunt’s charity work.
    Charity work? It would be charity work to take on the house full stop. “I don’t know. Inheriting this place has come as a shock to us both, to be honest.”
    “Why should it have done?” said Marjorie. “Your uncle Hugo and your mother were brother and sister, as I understand it. Traditionally estates do tend to pass to the nearest relatives on the male side.”
    Charlie shrugged. “We didn’t feel so connected to Hugo and Reggie when we were growing up. I mean, we saw them and all that. But they were glamorous and wealthy and we were a pretty ordinary family, really. My mum was what you might call a housewife. She was a nurse in the war, which is when she first met Dad, who was a doctor. We never expected to inherit the house. We always assumed it was going to the National Trust.”
    “You mean that’s what you hoped.”
    “Personally I’d rather not have been saddled with it, if that’s what you’re saying.”
    “One can’t always choose one’s responsibilities in life.”
    Charlie’s head was swimming from the fag. “Isn’t that rather fatalistic?”
    “Not at all.” Marjorie rearranged the scarf at her neck, which was held in place by what could only be described as a woggle. “When you get to my age, it’s always tempting to regard the past in too rosy a light. I do try to resist that. But it seems to me that you are in the fortunate position of being able to preserve something of true excellence. And so little of true excellence remains in this country. I should say it’s a question of duty, if that isn’t too old-fashioned a word.”
    *  *  *
    It was past eleven and Marjorie had gone. The kitchen table, now cleared of dishes, was spread with eighteenth-century architectural plans, nineteenth-century housekeeping books, builders’ estimates, old photographs, and letters that bore the faded, inky, spidery marks of quills and steel-nibbed pens.
    “Was there something wrong with my fish pie?” said Ros. “There’s so much left.”
    “It was fine.”
    Charlie poured himself another glass of wine. His sister’s fish pie had tasted of cod-flavored wallpaper paste and he could feel sludge impacting his digestive tract, floury sediment silting his arteries. He ought really to get back to