Content Warning: This section of the guide depicts characters with colonial, racist, patriarchal, and anti-gay attitudes, and contains references to rape.

The novel opens in an English village on an evening in June 1939; it is the day before the annual pageant, which is a village tradition, is to take place. Bartholomew “Bart” Oliver, an elderly man who is retired from the Indian Civil Service, is at the Olivers’ family estate, Pointz Hall, speaking with Mrs. Haines, a woman who is married to a gentleman farmer. Bart is discussing the village cesspool and the lack of running water, but Mrs. Haines finds the topic inappropriate. Bart’s daughter-in-law, Isabella “Isa” Oliver, enters the room and thinks about how she is in love with Rupert Haines, Mrs. Haines’s husband. Isa knows they cannot be together because they are married to other people. Isa’s husband, Giles Oliver, is a stockbroker who works in London.

The following morning, Bart’s eccentric, widowed sister, Mrs. Lucy Swithin, who is also at Pointz Hall, wakes for breakfast. Mrs. Swithin is a devout Christian. She is reading a book about prehistoric England, which states that Piccadilly was filled with rhododendron forests.