Closing ranks

"There have been Grayles at Hartleap since Canute. They know this and are proud of the fact." "Now they stand in a semi-circle round the bed of the very last of their nannies, who is quietly slipping away. Ada Stephens - known as Nanny Grayle, and well into her nineties - is saying farewell. There they stand, the old, the young, all of them at one time or another 'her' children. In the strange clarity which comes with the last remission, she looks at the saddened faces about her and surprises them all. She says that the most adored of her charges, Rufus, is 'tainted' and that his father, the…