‘You ought to try and get something down you, Mr Charlie, you look a bit rotten. Eyes like piss-holes in snow, if you’ll pardon the expression.’

I turned my face to the wall, feeling like a collection of passages deleted from the Book of Job.

Even the Job’s comforters were not wanting, for, half an hour later, some traitor downstairs allowed my kindly extrovert landlord to invade my death-chamber.

‘Hullo hullo hullo!’ he boomed. ‘What, still slugging abed? You’re missing the best part of the day!’

‘I’m poorly,’ I muttered.

‘Rubbish!’ he bellowed. ‘Nothing a breath of fresh air wouldn’t drive away in a trice. It’s a splendid morning!’

Now, the first thing to remember about landlords is that you cannot tell them to fuck off.

‘It’s raining,’ I said sullenly.

‘Certainly not. Not a bit. A fine, brisk morning; clear and cold. Not a spot of rain.’

‘It is raining in my heart,’ I said coldly. ‘Il pleut dans mon coeur comme il pleut sur la ville.’

‘Ah, well, yes, I daresay, but mark my words …’

‘When you go down,’ I said, ‘would you be kind enough to ask someone to bring me up a basin to be sick in?’

‘Right, well, that’s me, I’m off; lots to do. Look after yourself, won’t you.’

‘Thank you,’ I said.

There was nothing for it but to get up, so up was what I got. My symptoms started to sagashuate again but Jock blocked my every move to slink back into bed and, as a reward for shaving myself, he allowed me one of his Salvation Specials, which have been known to twitch a man back from the very brink of the grave. No Jeevesian Worcester sauce and raw eggs for Jock: his potion is simply a dexedrin dissolved in gin and tonic to which he adds a spoonful of Mr Andrew’s noted Liver Salts, two effervescing vitamin C tablets and two ditto Alka-Seltzer. I have little time for foreigners but I must say that Drs Alka and Seltzer should have won the Nobel Prize years ago; my only quarrel with their brain-child is its noise.

I was just in time for luncheon, where Eric’s shining morning face was much to the fore and Johanna … well, smiled at me politely. In the ordinary way I can do great damage to a plate of Jersey Pais de Mai, which is a sort of bubble-and-squeak made of potatoes, French beans and onions, fried into a cake and served with little pork sausages, but today the gastric juices simply would not flow and I could only wincingly watch the others eating great store of it while I worked out problems in topology with a hot roll.

Eric took me aside afterwards.

‘If you should be feeling a little effete,’ he said carefully, ‘after our sing-song last night …?’

‘You have a gift for words, Eric. I have never felt effeter. Say on.’