Then I begin to get my National Theatre feeling, the one that comes over me at a certain point in the first act, when someone says something, just one thing, and that’s the cue for all the cast to start tearing each other to shreds, and the whole thing remains unremittingly nasty till the curtain comes down, and everyone applauds out of sheer, bladder-racked relief.

Cath smiles, without opening her mouth to show her very white teeth, and raises her eyebrows at me, as if we are both in this together. I get this very strong feeling that there is some primitive initiation ritual underway, and fight this compulsion to give Ralph the tiniest of glances.

I don’t, though; it would have been fatal to semaphore anything at this point. I want to play this one carefully. Cath and Granville are the new king and queen of Honeyborne, so much richer than the old king and queen, the Bryanstons. Money is status now, and it’s not about blood, or birth, but billions.

And on that score we Flemings are bottom of the food chain – 1. new arrivals, 2. who don’t even hunt, or 3. have a helipad, let alone a farm shop, a shoot, a heated pool, a country-house opera company in the summer months, several thousand rolling acres of prime farmland, four children, a home abroad, or even a London house.

And the Cobbs are at the top.

There seems no option, given his declaration, but to allow Granville the honour of filling the silence he has created.

‘If it weren’t for me and the other Jewray Henrys,’ Granville continues, ‘pumping new life and money into the shires, keeping field sports going, buying up crumbling piles from the aristocracy, a lot more of the English countryside would be carpeted with Tescos and low-cost housing. We’re the Consuelo Vanderbilts of the age.’

‘I think it’s a brilliant pun,’ I say, quite wanting to hear who the other Jewray Henrys are but not daring to ask, ‘on the term Hooray Henrys! Brilliant! Wish I’d thought of it! All the best puns are economical like that.’ But I was thinking how different the composition of the English countryside is now compared to ten years ago, before we had million-pound bonuses and hedge funds and private equity. Sitting here in Granville and Cath’s sumptuous drawing room, I feel as if the wall of money, a tsunami of dollars that starts to crest in Wall Street, New York, then breaks in sterling over Holland Park and Notting Hill and the City, with backwashes that course out from West London and sluice through Berkshire, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire, is now pressing on in a westerly direction to drench Dorset and Somerset and Devon in a golden tide of wealth.