The situation amongst the domestic staff at Sturford Mead had naturally been destabilized by the war; and for the additional reason that Daphne herself was impatient with employees if they happened to irritate her. Kate, the elderly Polish refugee with a perpetual mutter, and dubbed by Daphne with the name of `Dreary Draws', had been replaced by a Cockney lady called Kitty, who was currently her personal maid; but she was always complaining, and nobody really supposed that she would last for very long. And the cook was the grumpy- faced Miss Parker, who probably didn't think much of any of us - although she prepared nice dishes. At the same time Daphne's warmth of personality inspired loyalty in those who did manage to survive the course. Mrs Sims the housekeeper was still with us when the years of peace returned, sharing with Mummy their guilty memories of midnight revelries while Daddy had been away at the battle front. `Simbags' might say malicious things about each and every one of us, when it came to gossip down at the local pub; but she knew where her basic loyalties lay, and she did recognise that she was Daphne's confederate in household misbehaviour.

There was some manner of governmental ruling, at the end of the war, that employers should (where possible) take all former employees back into the same positions they held before the war started. And with regard to the domestic staff at Sturford Mead, this involved the reemployment of Donald Marks, who had formerly been the footman, but who now returned as our butler, and Harold Mather who came back once again as the chauffeur.

There had been some misgivings in the case of Donald (who was no relation of Nanny Marks incidentally), in that he had got on very badly with my father during the year they were out in North Africa together - with Donald serving in Henry's squadron as his batman. After the relationship had deteriorated to the point of embarrassment, Henry had initiated a discussion on the subject - with himself firing the first shots in a clear statement of all, as he saw it, that had gone wrong between them. But having expended his ammunition, he had little further to say when Donald had counterattacked - on the angle that before the war, he had thought the world of him and her Ladyship, but that out here in Africa, he saw him as no more than a bullshitting parade ground officer, who would be the first casualty when they finally went into battle - shot in the back by his own troops.

Well that was all in the past. The two of them hadn't seen any more of each other after the battle of El Alemein, when Henry had been shipped back to Britain with a shrapnel wound - in the front of his chest incidentally. But there had been some uncertainty when Donald and Mr Mather made a joint approach to my father, asking for their old jobs back. The upshot was that they both came down to Sturford to have a talk with him, and it was agreed that they would let bygones be bygones, and endeavour to recreate the atmosphere which had existed prior to the war.

But Donald's role in the household was now rather different than it had been before. For there was now some manner of feeling that they had been comrades in arms, who had returned to find the world they had known disrupted - by socialism, by uxorial infidelity, by the indiscipline of children, and whatever. Daphne's status within the household was now just marginally uncertain, and it was as if Donald had been enlisted as Henry's lieutenant in his determination to reconstruct life as it once had been. And as far as we boys were concerned, we'd just have to learn to toe the line.

There was of course the enduring figure of Nanny: not a strong personality, but eternally selfless and of limitless loyalty to the entire inner family. No one could say a word of criticism about any of us without her taking up her cudgel in our defence: even when there was no valid defence to be offered. Now that Valentine had joined Christopher at Ludgrove however, she was partially retired: which is to say that she was housed in a semi-detached cottage, just across the road from Sturford, with the other half of it inhabited by Donald and his family. (Not always the best of neighbours, from a mutual point of view.) And she was employed doing various odd jobs - like sewing and mending; but she still catered for our special needs during the holidays.

Anny invariably accompanied us on our Summer holidays as well, to release our parents from any responsibility for our welfare. It was an established tradition by now, that we went down to Cornwall. Initially it had been to visit Daphne's father George, Lord Vivian, at Glyn. Then it was to houses that we rented on Trearnon Bay. And the Summer before I went to Eton was spent at a hotel in Mulleon Cove. But Henry had now decided that it was time for us to acquire a holiday house of our own in Cornwall: the one that he eventually acquired being at Plaidy, near Looe. He had bought it as a retreat for all of us; or perhaps just slightly with the idea that, if marital infidelity was to be accepted on either side, then Daphne should be furnished with her own potential stomping ground.

This twentieth century house had originally been called Gradna, meaning `steps' in Cornish (which is to say a series of terraced steps down the cliff face, to what might almost be described as a private shingle beach down below.) Curiously in the light of her fervent sense of identity with Cornwall, Daphne chose to change its name to Cowrie: her favourite amongst sea shells. It was to be the setting for quite a substantial portion of our lives, over the next few years. And we acquired as our cook, down there, a highly eccentric Polish lady, with coy little eyes peeking out from fat ripples of flesh, and with her own individualistic (and at times almost incomprehensible) rendering of the English language.

This was Miss Prokinar. Her previous employer, a professor, had flattered her unlimited vanity by declaring facetiously that the name obviously came from the Latin, pro caverna. This proved, as she now saw fit to claim, that her family roots were really ancient - coming as she did from no less than caveman stock. There were stories she told about how good a British citizen she had been in the war years, alerting the authorities to the presence of suspected German spies, and reporting parachutists which no one else had managed to see. And her current concern was that she had recently advertised for a husband in the Marital Times: entailing that men did occasionally ring the doorbell with a request to examine her. But they never seemed to come back a second time. She was the butt of everyone's jokes of course, but she was entertaining in small doses - and a good cook to boot.

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