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bushes and trees on the right, all shades of heavy, lush green, then at the tops of the trees that showed over the palisade on the left, finally looking straight ahead with approval at the long shapely building, a wing of Kenwood House, once a coach house and servants’ quarters, that was now rapidly filling with people having breakfast, tea and lunch. The open upper windows hinted at the satisfactorily interesting lives going on inside, and on the long, low, roof, birds of all kinds,but mostly sparrows and pigeons, carried on their no less interesting affairs. She regarded with particular appreciation the sparrows who crowded a tree just behind them, watching for what might befall them next. Her husband was already leaning forward to consume his scone in the fussy, urgent way of a man who would always attend to whatever was in front of him, finish it, and then wonder why he had been in such a hurry.
    A sparrow dropped from the tree and sat on the back of the tilted-forward chair next to the woman. She carefully pushed some crumbs towards it.
    ‘Hilda, what are you doing!’ expostulated her husband in a low, urgent, peevish voice. ‘It’s not allowed, is it?’ And he craned his neck around to assure himself the Public Health Notice was still safely there.
    ‘Oh well, but that’s just silly,’ said she serenely, smiling at the sparrow. He glared at her, a piece of scone halfway to his mouth, with the frustrated look of one who did not feel in control of anything. Then, as the sparrow fluttered cheekily towards his hand and the scone, he stuffed it in, swallowed it, and said, ‘They’d steal the food out of your mouth.’
    Hilda gently set the tilted chair upright, and then the one next to it. At once sparrows descended to sit on their backs. She put a crumb quite close to her and sat waiting. A seasoned sparrow, one of many summers, a lean hunting bird, grey blotched with chocolate and black, darted in, snatched it, and flew off to the roof of the coach house, with two others in pursuit.
    On the back of the chair nearest to her three sparrows sat watching, side by side.
    ‘Look, Alfred,’ she said, ‘they are babies: look, they’ve still got a bit of their gape left.’
    The comers of their beaks were yellow. All three wereneat and fresh. New-minted. Their greyish-brown feathers glistened. The man was staring at them with a look of apprehension too strong for the occasion.
    From a distance this man seemed younger than he was, a sprightly middle age, being cleaned and brushed and tidy, but from close you could see fresh crumbs on his cardigan, and a new tea stain on his tie. He had a greyish, drained look. His wife was a large full-fleshed woman who sat up straight there beside him, everything about her showing she was in command, her hands kept and capable, hair neatly waved, clothes just so. If she was not much younger than he was, then that was what she seemed.
    She laid some crumbs close to the three birds and the boldest hesitated, darted in, and flew off with one. The second fought with himself, took off from the chair-back, but halfway to the crumb, his goal, panic overtook him, and with a swirl and a flutter of wings he turned in mid-air and returned to the chair-back.
    ‘Go on, be a brave bird,’ she admonished it. Again the hesitant take-off, the mid-air swerve and whirl of wings when for a few seconds it hovered, then retreated. At last this sparrow managed to overcome its fear and resist the need to turn back halfway, and he reached the crumb and showed he would have a successful future because he picked up several, very fast, and flew off somewhere with a full beak to enjoy them.
    The remaining sparrow sat on there, alone. He was very new, this little one, with remnants of baby fluff showing here and there. The yellow comers of his beak were bright. He had been sitting watching his fellow ex-fledglings with the calm, round-eyed, detached look of a baby in a pram.
    ‘Come on, you do it too,’ she