That's it, laddy," Ashley said, holding my arm as we went to the door. "You put that key in yer sporran."

"At least I know down there it's safe from interference," I told her. She smiled. I locked the study door too.

"By the way, by the way," Ash muttered into my ear as we headed along the landing for the stairs, "got a gramme of the old Bogota talcum powder about my person. Fancy a toot, later?"

"What, the real thing?" I grinned. "I thought speed was your poison."

"Normally," she nodded. "But this is a special occasion; I splashed out."

"You wee tyke," I said. I pulled her closer as we walked, held her tight. "You just stick with me, kid, all right?"

"Whatever you say, ma man."

We did kick-steps down the stairs. Risky, when you're wearing a kilt as it is meant to be worn, but invigorating.

I danced with Ashley, and with Verity, and with Helen Urvill, and with mum, cutting in on Lewis after he'd persuaded her onto the floor. Most of the time though she just sat, surrounded by family and friends, watching us all with an expression that, to me at least, spoke of a kind of stricken joy; a surprise that such pleasure could still exist — and she feel even remotely a part of it — when dad was not here to share in it all.

I am not a natural dancer but I made an exception for Verity's wedding. I grooved and sweated and drank and made a point of doing the old red blood cell impression, circulating; bathing in, soaking up and transmitting onwards the oxygen of family news and gossip from cell to cell…

"Where are you off to next, Aunt Ilsa?" I asked the lady in question, during our waltz. Aunt Ilsa — even larger than I remembered her, and dressed in something which looked like a cross between a Persian rug and a multi-occupancy poncho — moved with the determined grace of an elephant, and a curious stiffness that made the experience a little like dancing with a garden shed.

"Canada, I think, Prentice. Churchill, on Hudson's Bay. To observe the arctic bear."

I confess I had to re-process that sentence a couple of times as we danced, before working out that she did not intend to study the region naked (an image I found rather alarming), but was merely using a more pedantically accurate term for a polar bear.

"Super." I smiled.

Uncle Hamish sat at the table with the rest of the family and got slowly drunk. I danced with Aunt Tone, and asked after her husband's health.

"Oh, he's getting better all the time," Aunt Tone said, glancing at him. "He hasn't had the nightmares for weeks now. I think going back to work helped him. Fergus was very understanding. And he's had a lot of long chats with the minister. People have been very kind, altogether. You haven't talked to him?" Aunt Tone looked at me critically.

"Not for a bit." I gave her a big smile. "I will, though."

Uncle Hamish watched the dancing. He lifted his whisky to his lips, sipped at it, then shook his head with such slow deliberation I caught myself listening for the creak. "No, Prentice. I have been foolish, and even vain. I did not pay sufficient heed to the scriptures. I thought that I knew better." He sipped his whisky, shook his head. "It was vanity; my theories, my beliefs about the hereafter; vanity. I have renounced them."

Oh," I said, disappointed. "No more anti-creates?" He shook, as though a chill had passed through him. "No, that was my mistake." He looked at me straight for the first time. "He Punished both of us, Prentice." Uncle Hamish flicked his gaze towards the roof of the marquee. "Both of us," he repeated. He looked away again. "God knows we are all his children, but he is a strict father, sometimes. Terribly, terribly strict."

I put my head on my hand and looked at my uncle as I considered this idea of God as child-abuser. Hamish started to shake his head again before he'd sipped his whisky, and I experienced a brief feeling of excited horror, waiting for the resulting catastrophe; but he just stopped in mid-shake, sipped, then shook his head slowly again. "Aye; a strict father."

I patted his arm. "Never mind." I said, helpfully.

I danced with Aunt Charlotte, Verity's still-handsome and determinedly superstitious mother, who told me that the newly-weds would surely be happy, because their stars were well-matched.

Exhibiting a generosity of spirit I rather surprised myself with, I agreed that certainly the stars in their eyes seemed to augur well.

I bumped into the smaller than life-size Mr Gibbon near the bar at one point; I was in such a gregarious, clubbable mood I actually enjoyed talking to him. We agreed Aunt Ilsa was a wonderful woman, but that she had itchy feet. Mr Gibbon looked over at Aunt Ilsa, who had — I could only imagine by force — got Uncle Hamish up for a dance. Together they were having the same effect on the dance floor as a loose cannon manned by hippos.

"Yes," Mr Gibbon said, sighing, his eyelids fluttering. "I am her kentledge." He smiled at me with a sort of apologetic self-satisfaction, as though he was the luckiest man alive, and tip-toed off through the crowds with his two glasses of sherry.

"Kentledge?" I said to myself. I'd have scratched my head but my hands were full of glasses.

"Prentice. Taking a breather too, eh?"

I had stepped outside the marquee for a breather, late on, after the hoochter-choochter music started and the place got even warmer. I looked round in the shadows and saw Fergus Urvill, Scottishly resplendent in his Urvill dress tartan. Fergus came into the light spilling from the open flap of the marquee. He was smoking a cigar. The rain had ceased at last and the garden smelled of earth and wet leaves.

Fergus glittered; crystal buttons sparkled on his jacket; black pearls of obsidian decorated his sporran, and the skean dhu stuck into the top of his right sock — a rather more impressive and business-like example of the traditional Highland-dress knife than mine, which looked like a glorified letter opener — was crowned with a large ruby, glinting in the light against the hairs of his leg like some grotesquely faceted bulb of blood.

"Yes," I said. "Yes, getting my breath back."

Fergus looked into the marquee. "They're a handsome couple, eh?"

I glanced in, to see Lewis and Verity, hand in hand, talking to some of Verity's relations. Lewis had changed into a dark suit and a bootlace tie; Verity wore a dark skirt and long, gold-coloured jacket.

I nodded. "Yes," I said. I cleared my throat.

"Cigar?" Fergus said, digging an aluminium tube from one pocket of his jacket. I shook my head. "No," Fergus said, looking at me tolerantly. "Of course you don't, do you."

"No," I said. I grinned inanely.

I was surprised at just how uncomfortable I felt in his presence, and how hard it was both to work out precisely why I felt that way, and to disguise the fact. We talked for a little while. About my studies; going better now, thank you. And about flying. Fergus was learning to fly; up at Connel, the air field a few miles north of Oban. Oh, really? Yes. Hoped to be going solo by the end of the year, if all went according to plan. He asked me what I thought of the Gulf crisis and I, quailing, said it all kind of depended how you looked at it.

I think I made him feel as awkward eventually as I had from the start of the conversation, and I took the opportunity of a new reel beginning to head back into the marquee, to join in another swirling, riotous dance.

Ashley, Dean and I retired to my room in the house during the supper interval, while people got their breath back and the band — four oldish guys mysteriously called the Dougie McTee Trio — tried to get drunk.