‘Mm . . .’ said Patrick. ‘It depends what you find impressive. Some people don’t like uninterrupted rudeness, or so I’m told.’

‘Who are these people?’ asked Tom, looking around the room with mock alarm.

‘It is true,’ said George, ‘that I once or twice had to tell him to stop being quite so argumentative.’

‘And what did he do?’ asked Ballantine, thrusting his chin forward to get more of his neck out of its tight collar.

‘Told me to bugger off,’ replied George tersely.

‘Hell,’ said Ballantine, seeing an opportunity for wisdom and diplomacy. ‘You know, people argue about the darnedest things. Why, I spent an entire weekend trying to persuade my wife to dine in Mortimer’s the evening we got back to New York. “I’m all Mortimered out,” she kept saying, “can’t we go someplace else?” Of course she couldn’t say where.’

‘Of course she couldn’t,’ said Tom, ‘she hasn’t seen the inside of another restaurant in fifteen years.’

‘All Mortimered out,’ repeated Ballantine, his indignation tinged with a certain pride at having married such an original woman.

A lobster, some smoked salmon, a crab salad, and a Bullshot arrived. Patrick lifted the drink greedily to his lips and then froze, hearing the hysterical bellowing of a cow, loud as an abattoir in the muddy liquid of his glass.

‘Fuck it,’ he murmured, taking a large gulp.

His defiance was soon rewarded with the vivid fantasy that a hoof was trying to kick its way out of his stomach. He remembered, when he was eighteen, writing to his father from a psychiatric ward, trying to explain his reasons for being there, and receiving a short note in reply. Written in Italian, which his father knew he could not understand, it turned out, after some research, to be a quotation from Dante’s Inferno: ‘Consider your descent / You were not made to live among beasts / But to pursue virtue and knowledge.’ What had seemed a frustratingly sublime response at the time, struck him with a fresh sense of relevance now that he was listening to the sound of howling, snuffling cattle and felt, or thought he felt, another blow on the inner wall of his stomach.

As his heart rate increased again and a new wave of sweat prickled his skin, Patrick realized that he was going to be sick.

‘Excuse me,’ he said, getting up abruptly.

‘Are you all right, my dear?’ said George.

‘I feel rather sick.’

‘Perhaps we should get you a doctor.’

‘I have the best doctor in New York,’ said Ballantine. ‘Just mention my name and . . .’

Patrick tasted a bitter surge of bile from his stomach. He swallowed stubbornly and, without time to thank Ballantine for his kind offer, hurried out of the dining room.