We proceeded down the grand staircase to the grand dining room, and were seated at a table by the fireplace, and ordered drinks. Bernard had supposed we would be objects of curiosity in the eyes of the golfing couples, but in fact, these couples were much too busy discussing golf and their children and their work and the weather and how hard it had been to get a line through to wherever they came from, and they could not have been less interested in Bernard and me. So we drank our drinks and looked at the large hunting scene over the fireplace and talked about the weather, and about our friends, and about how much we would miss each other when I went back to New York. I told him about the dog’s eye infection and the drops, and he said that his cousin Gordon’s dog had had a nasty sort of eye infection that had apparently been spreading among dogs in Britain, and that he had recently read a piece about this infection, and that one must be rather careful as it could cause complications. He pointed out that, since Molly was a terrier, she was very dependent on her eyes, not like a hound, who could manage pretty well with just his nose; and I agreed that one could see how much Molly used her eyes, and said I hoped it would all be all right. Molly was getting very old. And of course Nora, Bernard’s cat, was also getting old. So we talked about Molly and Nora and not about golf, and we looked at the menus, and we ordered some things that sounded rather appealing, and we felt that this was a safe and solid and secure sort of weekend to be having after all.

But when we sat down to dinner, I felt slightly queasy. At first I blamed the long ride and the tension, but then I began to recognize the symptoms: I was coming down with a twenty-four-hour stomach virus. I am prone to twenty-four-hour viruses. Dutifully, I ordered the plainest and most boring items on the menu, and watched Bernard tuck into the dressed crab (dressed crab was a bit of a local speciality) and the rack of lamb. I drank ginger ale because it is settling to the stomach. I excused myself from the table at regular intervals to visit the stony loo and consider whether I was going to be sick or not. In the end I felt too ill to stay downstairs through dessert, and Bernard and I went back up to our room early. I lay down on my side of the bed, and Bernard said endless comforting things and remarked that twenty-four-hour viruses did at least go away by the end of twenty-four hours.

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