Silas served Billy with a huge portion of rare roast beef and went on carving. 'Start eating!' Silas commanded. Dicky's wife, Daphne, passed the plates. She worked in advertising and liked to dress in grandma clothes, complete with black velvet choker, cameo brooch and small metal-rim eyeglasses. She insisted on a very small portion of beef.

Dicky saw my son spill gravy down his shirt and smiled at me pityingly. The Cruyer boys were at boarding school; their parents only saw them at vacation time. It's the only way to stay sane, Dicky had explained to me more than once.

Silas carved into the meat with skilful concentration. There were ooos! and ahhs! from the guests. Dicky Cruyer said it was a 'sumptuous repast' and addressed Silas as 'mine host'. Fiona gave me a blank stare as a warning against provoking Dicky into more such comments.

'Cooking,' said Silas, 'is the an of the possible. The French have been brought up on odds and ends, chopped up and mixed up and disguised with flavoured sauces. I don't want that muck if I can afford some proper food. No one in their right mind would choose it.'

'Try la cuisine nouvelle,' said Daphne Cruyer, who was proud of her French accent. 'Lightweight dishes and each plate of food designed like a picture.'

'I don't want lightweight food,' growled Silas, and brandished the knife at her. 'Cuisine nouvelle!' he said disdainfully. 'Big coloured plates with tiny scraps of food arranged in the centre. When cheap hotel restaurants did it, we called it 'portion control', but get the public-relations boys on the job and it's cuisine nouvelle and they write long articles about it in ladies' magazines. When I pay for good food, I expect the waiter to serve me from a trolley and ask me what I want and how much I want, and I'll tell him where to put the vegetables. I don't want plates of meat and two veg carried from the kitchen by waiters who don't know a herring from a hot-cross bun.'

'This beef is done to perfection, Uncle Silas,' said Fiona, who was relieved that he'd managed to deliver this passionate address without the usual interjected expletives. 'But just a small slice for Sally… well-done meat, if that's possible.'

'Good God, woman,' he said. 'Give your daughter something that will put a little blood into her veins. Well-done meat! No wonder she's looking so damned peaky.' He placed two slices of rare beef on a warmed plate and cut the meat into bite-size pieces. He always did that for the children.

'What's peaky?' said Billy, who liked underdone beef and was admiring Silas's skill with the razor-sharp carving knife.

'Pinched, white, anaemic and ill-looking,' said Silas. He set the rare beef in front of Sally.

'Sally is perfectly fit,' said Fiona. There was no quicker way of upsetting her than to suggest the children were in any way deprived. I suspected it was some sort of guilt she shared with all working mothers. 'Sally's the best swimmer in her class,' said Fiona. 'Aren't you, Sally?'

'I was last term,' said Sally in a whisper.

'Get some rare roast beef into your belly,' Silas told her. 'It will make your hair curly.'

'Yes, Uncle Silas,' she said. He watched her until she took a mouthful and smiled at him.

'You're a tyrant, Uncle Silas,' said my wife, but Silas gave no sign of having heard her. He turned to Daphne. 'Don't tell me you want it well done,' he said ominously.

'Bleu for me,' she said. 'Avec un petit peu de moutarde anglaise.'

'Pass Daphne the mustard,' said Silas. 'And pass her the pommes de terre – she could put a bit more weight on. It'll give you something to get hold of,' he told Cruyer, waving the carving fork at him.

'I say, steady on,' said Cruyer, who didn't like such personal remarks aimed at his wife.

Dicky Cruyer declined the Charlotte Russe, having had 'an elegant sufficiency', so Billy and I shared Dicky's portion. Charlotte Russe was one of Mrs Porter's specialities. When the meal was finished, Silas took the men to the billiards room, telling the ladies, 'Walk down to the river, or sit in the conservatory, or there's a big log fire in the drawing room if you're cold. Mrs Porter will bring you coffee, and brandy too if you fancy it. But men have to swear and belch now and again. And we'll smoke and talk shop and argue about cricket. It will be boring for you. Go and look after the children – that's what nature intended women to do.'

They did not depart graciously, at least Daphne and Fiona didn't. Daphne called old Silas a rude pig and Fiona threatened to let the children play in his study – a sanctum forbidden to virtually everyone – but it made no difference; he ushered the men into the billiards room and closed the ladies out.

The gloomy billiards room with its mahogany panelling was unchanged since being furnished to the taste of a nineteenth-century beer baron. Even the antlers and family portraits remained in position. The windows opened onto the lawn, but the sky outside was dark and the room was lit only by the green light reflected from the tabletop. Dicky Cruyer set up the table and Bret selected a cue for himself while Silas removed his jacket and snapped his bright red braces before passing the drinks and the cigars. 'So Brahms Four is acting the goat?' said Silas as he chose a cigar for himself and picked up the matches. 'Well, are you all struck dumb?' He shook the matchbox so that the wooden matches rattled.

'Well, I say – ' said Cruyer, almost dropping the resin he was applying to the tip of his cue.

'Don't be a bloody fool, Dicky,' Silas told him. 'The D-G is worried sick at the thought of losing the banking figures. He said you're putting Bernard in to sort it out for you.'

Cruyer – who had been very careful not to reveal to me that he'd mentioned me to the Director-General – fiddled with his cue to grant himself an extra moment of thought, then said, 'Bernard? His name was put up but I'm against it. Bernard's done his bit, I told him that.'

'Never mind the double talk, Dicky. Save all that for your committee meetings. The D-G asked me to knock your heads together this weekend and try to come up with a few sensible proposals on Monday… Tuesday at the latest. This damn business could go pop, you know.' He looked at the table and then at his guests. 'Now, how shall we do this? Bernard is no earthly good, so he'd better partner me against you two.'

Bret said nothing. Dick Cruyer looked at Silas with renewed respect. Perhaps until that afternoon he hadn't fully realized the influence the old man still wielded. Or perhaps he hadn't realized that Silas was just the same unscrupulous old swine that he'd been when he was working inside; just the same ruthless manipulator of people that Cruyer tried to be. And Uncle Silas had always emerged from this sort of crisis smelling of roses, and that was something that Dicky Cruyer hadn't always managed.

'I still say Bernard must not go,' insisted Cruyer, but with less conviction now. 'His face is too well known. Their watchers will be onto him immediately. One false move and we'll find ourselves over at the Home Office, trying to figure out who we can swop for him.' Like'Silas, he kept his voice flat, and contrived the casual offhand tone in which Englishmen prefer to discuss matters of life and death. He was leaning over the table by this time, and there was silence while he put down a ball.

'So who will go?' said Silas, tilting his head to look at Cruyer like a schoolmaster asking a backward pupil a very simple question.

'We have short-listed five or six people we deem suitable,' said Cruyer.

'People who know Brahms Four? People he'll trust?'

'Brahms Four will trust no one,' said Cruyer. 'You know how agents become when they start talking of getting out.' He stood back while Bret Rensselaer studied the table, then without fuss potted the chosen ball. Bret was Dicky's senior but he was letting Dicky answer the questions as if he were no more than a bystander. That was Bret Rensselaer's style.