Courage is finite, as Lord Moran, famous physician and medical teacher, also Churchill’s doctor, said about soldiers in battle. Everybody has their breaking point. As with courage in facing the vicissitudes of war – the shelling, the bullets, the deprivation and discomfort – so with stress. Even the most detached, even emotionally blunted, will, if the load is too great, crumble beneath it. As to be expected, when cracks start to appear in someone’s behaviour or health, where they show will not be by chance. Some people, brought up in a free-and-easy dysfunctional household might take another divorce in a family riven by divorces with no lore than a shrug of the shoulders, and possibly a couple of stiff whiskies to settle the nerves.

Just such a family were the Jameses. Peter James was a successful businessman, so successful that he had bought a late Georgian house surrounded by parkland. He lavished money on its interior so that every room looked like a film set for a 1950s’ library. No antique dealer missed a call from Mr James. As with the decorating, so with the staff. Charles, a traditional English butler, was installed. Mr James became an important local figure. Since he was prepared to contribute heavily to the political party he had predicted would win and was as good at assessing political odds as he was predicting City prices, Mr James became Sir Peter James.

All was going well, except that Lady James was rather bored. Lady James, tiring of the view from the terrace and of watching the farmers’ cattle grazing in the parkland, spent an increasing amount of time in their London flat.

One Saturday afternoon, after the Jameses had settled down to tea, the telephone rang. Charles came in as silently and respectfully as he always did. ‘Sir Peter,’ he said, ‘it is a call from Chattock and Wiley’ Sir Peter left, came back into the room and said ‘Amaryllis, it’s really for you.’ His wife went off to the telephone, came back and said, ‘Old Wiley tells me you’re divorcing me.’ ‘Yes’, said Sir Peter, ‘i thought it was for the best.’ No more was said. They finished their tea, went out for dinner and the matter wasn’t discussed again until after the weekend.

They had several more months of a superficially happy marriage, but separated before the grouse season. They thought the situation might be too difficult for guests they didn’t know well, although at home in Dorset, where everyone knew them, life continued as before. Once separated, Amaryllis became happily ensconced with her lover in London. Later, Peter’s friends found out that he had had a girlfriend for years. Despite the efforts of Chattock and Wiley (or perhaps because of them), cracks later appeared in their relationship and within a couple of years they were only on Christmas-card terms.

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