The only rule

There is only one rule in polite English society, but it is iron clad. Of course, polite English society is a fiction. For one thing, its members are rarely polite. Politeness is for the middle classes rather than those who live off ancestral acres of English soil.

The rule remains, however: never complain, never explain and never apologise. Generations of small boys are sent away from home to have this beaten into them and the girls learn it anyway. Diana Pole had grown up knowing that every morsel of food she ate belonged to her brother, although he was much younger than herself and not as intelligent. As small children, Diana and Henry had been evacuated with their widowed mother to a cottage on their grandfather’s estate in Wiltshire. There was never a moment when they were not conscious of this, or their father’s bad luck in being the second son and a vicar.