‘Awful bloody place near Virginia Water,’ he said at last. ‘Not the big Virginia Water place but one of the other nursing homes round there which specialize in what they like to call Nervous Disorders. Frightful Victorian barracks in Revived Lombardic Gothic; rather like Manchester Town Hall but with rhododendrons and monkey-puzzle trees all around it. Pink, portly consultants flouncing down the corridors, each with comet’s tail of adoring matrons and sisters and nurses and lavatory attendants trailing behind them, like little boys following a horse with a shovel and bucket for the good of their father’s roses. Foul bitch of a receptionist broke it to me gently that the charges were £60 a day then watched me narrowly to see if I winced. “Payable fortnightly in advance,” she went on. I gave her a cheque for eight hundred and forty pounds and she said that “doctor” would probably see Violet that night. I said that for eight hundred and forty pounds “doctor” would bloody well see her there and then. She looked at me as though I’d farted in church. We had words then, and I won, although I had to apologize for saying “bloody”.’

‘I pity the prawn which pits its feeble wits against you,’ I quoted. His glare told me that flippancy was not suited to the mood of the moment. (I can’t help it you know: some unkind friend once showed me a passage in a Medical Encyclopedia.

‘MORIA:’ it said – ‘A morbid determination to make supposedly witty remarks. Sometimes occurring in people with frontal growths of the brain.’)

‘“Doctor”,’ he went on, ‘proved to be a Viennese Jewess – ’

‘Just like Johanna,’ I reminded him brightly, before he could put his foot in it.

‘Not at all like Johanna. This was Baudelaire’s original “affreuse juive”, she looked like a malevolent sack of potatoes. But surprisingly civilized and clearly on top of her job. She listened to the receptionist’s account of things with her hands folded in her lap, she didn’t look at her once but the receptionist was choking back tears in no time. Amazing old bitch. She had that kind of cheerful callousness you only find in the very best doctors: I’ve no faith in the grave, considerate ones: I knew too many medical students at Oxford. Then she took me up to her office and asked about Violet’s people and of course I had to tell her about “Lucia di Lammermoor”.’