The man who basically runs it, Martin Icke, emerges now from the one of the clubhouse’s unisex bathrooms, having noticed there that the toilet paper was almost empty and so found the high cupboard where the spares were kept—this is the kind of person he is now—and stood on tiptoe to get a replacement and fit it in. He is thrifty and clean-shaven, with pale skin, a little veiny as if his blood were making sure to get noticed. He looks a little like a man who has fallen short, and indeed he dropped out of architecture school and was let go, quietly but firmly, from two corporate hotels despite a genuine interest in genuine hospitality. This bar is the thing he’s making a run at. The other barman, Stanford Bell, is black and younger—Martin’s thirty as of today—and muscly in a white shirt and narrow tie, setting up the special cocktail, made from high-end tequila and some rosewater, steeped in oak barrels. The barrels—there are supposed to be eight of them—are lined up behind the thick wooden bar, each one about the small size of a picnic basket, to be spigoted into glasses for Martin and Stanford to add flourish and fizz. The cocktail is called the Happy Couple, and Ben Nickels, who is definitely happy, has just plugged in the music, which comes, too loud and then OK, from speakers in the rafters. Reynard, in a corner, frowns. The music, customized, is part of a new personalized network, a small piece in a large and very ravenous company perpetrated by a tycoon so famous that the first syllable of his first name is enough to identify him: Vic, or more properly, the Vic.