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    Luncheon was a rigid and protracted affair, in a dining-room furnished with mahogany sideboards of immense size and Gothic grandeur. There were drapes at the windows of almost impenetrable lace, and glass domes containing dried-flower arrangements, and clocks, and a stuffed eagle. It was Victoriana in excelsis; and Effie would only have to catch the smell of boiled cabbage or mashed neeps in the years to come – she would only have to sniff the suggestion of that musty sourness which haunts the inside of cutlery drawers – and she would be back at 14 Charlotte Square, in 1901, at the Sunday luncheon table, with her father sharpening the bone-handled carving-knife on the bone-handled steel, and her mother coughing hopelessly into her handkerchief.
    Effie was late coming down to luncheon this Sunday, because her father had required her to change her cornelian brooch for a brooch of jet, as a gesture of mourning for Her recently-late Majesty. ‘The cornelian,’ he had asserted, ‘carries associations of levity.’ She was halfway down the stairs when Mrs McNab appeared from the kitchen, bearing in front of her the Sunday gigot of mutton, girdled with boiled potatoes and Brussels sprouts.
    Even though Mrs McNab was a robust woman, whose reddened right hand was feared by idle scullery-maids and cheeky coal-heavers alike, the huge silver carving dish was as much as she could manage. As a rule, it was carried in each Sunday by Crawford, their butler, but Crawford was on two days’ (unpaid) leave in Motherwell, to bury his emphy-semic father.
    Effie heard Mrs McNab cry, ‘Lord of Hosts!’ and then the whole roasted leg of mutton tumbled off the carving-plate, hit the floor with a thud, and rolled off across the Indian rug, until it came to rest under the console table where the Bibleand the visiting-cards were kept. The mutton was hotly pursued by the boiled potatoes and sprouts, which rumbled on to the floor with a sound like distant thunder.
    There was an expression on Mrs McNab’s face of utter horror. Inside the dining-room, even now, Thomas Watson would be completing his ritual of sharpening the carving-knife, and passing a few regretful remarks about the late Queen. Even now, Mrs Watson would be worriedly crumpling up her napkin and waiting for the joint to arrive – anything to avert her husband’s pale and uncompromising stare.
    Effie gasped; and Mrs McNab, who had thought that she was alone, looked up at her in surprise and terror. Together, they surveyed the hallway, strewn with vegetable, and their heads turned in unison towards the steaming joint which lay under the console table.
    â€˜Oh, jings,’ said Mrs McNab.
    There was a moment of stricken silence, and then Effie suddenly let out an explosive burst of hilarity. Mrs McNab blinked at her in disbelief, but then she started to laugh, too; until both of them, gripped by uncontrollable hysteria, could do nothing but sit on the stairs and cling to each other and laugh until they were shrieking for breath.
    â€˜Oh, Lord,’ gasped Mrs McNab, ‘when I saw yon meat rolling off across the rug …’
    Together, still laughing, they went around the hallway on hands and knees, gathering up the potatoes and the sprouts. Then Mrs McNab hefted up the leg of mutton in her serving-cloth, and restored it to the carving-plate.
    â€˜Will you wait,’ said Effie, and dusted off the joint with the ivory-backed brush which was usually kept for perking up the nap on her father’s tall business hat.
    â€˜Och, don’t,’ wept Mrs McNab. ‘Oh, Effie, don’t! You know what’s going to happen when your father goes to the bank tomorrow. That Mr Campsie’s going to be sniffing the air, and saying, “Fegs, Mr Watson, I do believe I can smell roast mutton!”’
    This almost finished them. Mrs McNab was wheezing for air, and had to set the carving-plate down on the floor in