I was used to arriving here to find a dozen cars scattered in the front drive and – on sunny days – parked in the shade of the three tall elms that marked the limits of the lawn. On such days the house was noisy with appreciative guests. It was not like that today. The front drive was empty except for a muddy Land-Rover from which three young men in faded denim were unloading equipment including, I noticed, three bright red hard-hats and three sets of earmuffs. The rain had stopped but the water dripped from the drenched trees and the lawn squelched underfoot.

As I stepped on the metal grating in the porch it rattled reminding me to scrape the mud from my shoes. I pushed open the front door and went in to the hallway. The house was silent, and like all such farmhouses, dark. The tiny windows, set in the thick stone walls, allowed only small rectangles of daylight to cut coloured rugs out of the oriental carpet. Suddenly from the drawing room, through several closed doors, Lohengrin began singing 'In fernem Land'.

Mrs Porter, his ever-cheerful, ever-dependable cook, house-keeper and general factotum, came from the kitchen to say hello and take my coat. Still holding it she went past me to look out of the front door. She sniffed the air with relish, as a submarine commander might savour the night after a long spell submerged. Over her shoulder I saw that one of the forestry men had donned a red helmet and ear covers and was climbing one of the trees. He was getting very wet.

She came back to me. 'Yes, I thought I heard your car,' she said. 'I'm so pleased you are here, Mr Samson. I was worried… I still am. He becomes so listless when he is ill.'

'Really?' I said. I didn't find it easy to visualize a listless Uncle Silas.

'He got up and dressed when he heard that you were coming. I phoned the doctor about it but he said it would be all right as long as he stayed indoors, rested and kept warm.'

'That sounds like the doctor,' I said.

She smiled uncertainly. Women like Mrs Porter become alarmed if their faith in medicine comes under attack. 'The doctor said that Mr Gaunt could be taken from us any time,' she said in a voice that seemed intended to remind me of the leading role Silas' physician played in a drama where I was no more than a walk-on. I assumed a suitably sober face and she said, 'He's writing his memoirs. Poor soul! He seems to know his time is coming.'

His memoirs! Political careers would be ended; reputations in shreds. It was unthinkable that Silas would ever get permission to write such a book, but I didn't contradict her.

'He puts it away when I go in there. I'm supposed not to know about it but I guessed when he smuggled the little typewriter downstairs. Before the last bad turn I would hear him tapping away in the music room every day. That's where he is now. Go in, I'll bring you tea.'

The 'music room' was the drawing room into which Silas had installed his hi-fi and his record collection. It was where he sat each evening listening to music. He didn't care much for television. I was reluctant to interrupt his opera but Mrs Porter came up to the door and said, 'Do go in,' and added with an almost soundless whisper which her exaggerated lip movement helped me understand, 'He's probably asleep, it's the pills.'

At Mrs Porter's insistence I barged into the room. I didn't see him at first, for his back was to me as he faced the log fire. He wore a dark shirt and a plum-coloured velvet smoking jacket, complete with cream silk handkerchief flopping from the top pocket. It was the sort of outfit an Edwardian actor might have chosen to go to the Café Royal. A tartan car rug was beside him on the floor. It had fallen from his knees or perhaps he'd pushed it aside when he heard me arrive. His feet – in bright red carpet slippers – were resting amongst the fire irons. The music was loud and there was a smell of wood smoke. As if in response to a draught from the doorway the fire burned bright so that yellow shapes ran across the low ceiling. 'Who's that?' he growled. He wasn't asleep.

People who knew Silas Gaunt well, amongst whom my father was certainly numbered, spoke of his exquisite courtesy, old-world manners and compelling charm. My mother had once described him as a boulevardier: it was the first time I'd ever heard the word used. To hear them speak of Gaunt you would have expected to meet one of those English eccentrics in the mould of Henry Fielding's Squire Allworthy. But the Silas Gaunt I knew was a devious old devil who paradoxically demonstrated the skin of a rhino and the sensitivity of a butterfly, according to his long-term plans.

'I hope I'm not intruding,' I said very quietly.

'I'm listening to Lohengrin, damn it!' he said. I was somewhat relieved to find, whatever his corporeal condition, that his bellicose spirit was alive and well. Then as he turned his head to see me, and the fire flickered brighter, he said, 'Oh, it's you, Bernard. I thought it was Mrs Porter again. She keeps pestering me.'

During my childhood Silas had always shown affection for me, but now he was old and he'd withdrawn into his own concerns with ageing, sickness and death. There was less affection in him now. 'She's concerned about you, Silas,' I said.

'She's in league with that damned pill-pusher,' he said. He switched off the record-player in a way that simply lifted the stylus. The record under the transparent lid kept turning.

I found a place to sit. He'd lost a lot of weight. His clothes were loose so that his wrinkled neck craned from his oversized shirt collar. The shadowy room was cluttered with his bric-à-brac, antiquarian curios and mementoes from far places: scarabs, an African carving, a battered toy locomotive, a banderilla, an alpenstock carved with the names of formidable climbs, a tiny ivory Buddha and a broken crucifix. Once

Silas had told me that he didn't want to be buried in the earth. He didn't want to be in a tomb or consecrated ground. He'd like to be put in a museum surrounded by his possessions, just as so many of Egypt 's kings were now to be found.

'We're all concerned about you,' I said. It was a somewhat feeble response and he just glared at me.

'That damned doctor wants my grandfather clock,' said Silas.

'Does he?'

'That's all he comes here for. Never takes his eyes off it when he's here. The other day I told him to go and put his bloody stethoscope on its movement since he was so interested in asking me if it kept good time.'

'Perhaps he just wanted to make polite conversation.'

'That marquetry work is what attracts him but he's got central heating. It would dry out and crack in six months in his place.'

'It's a lovely clock, Silas.'

'Eighteenth-century. It was my father's. The front panel has warped a fraction. Some of the inlay work projects just a shade. It has to be polished very carefully by someone who understands. Mrs Porter doesn't let anyone else touch it. She winds it too.'

'You're fortunate to have her looking after you, Silas.'

'That damned quack wants to have it before I die. I know what he's after: a written statement about the clock's condition and history. That sort of provenance affects the price in auction. He told me that.'

'I'm pleased to see you looking so well,' I said.

'His house is filled with clocks. Skeleton clocks, carriage clocks, balloon clocks, clocks riding on elephants, clocks in eagles' bellies. I don't want my lovely clock added to a collection like that. It would be like sending a child to an orphanage, or Mrs Porter to the workhouse. He's a clock maniac. He should go and see a psychologist, there's something wrong with a man who wants to live in a house filled with clocks. I couldn't hear myself speak for all the ding-donging and carry-on.'

There came a light tap at the door. Silas said, 'Come in!' in the jovial booming tone he used for Mrs Porter. But it proved to be one of the young men. 'All ready to go, Mr Gaunt,' he said, his voice enriched with the local accent.