Tom Clenaghan at the Groucho Club. They sit down on plush armchairs. Jomier drinks white wine; Tom whisky sour. They catch up. Tom’s daughter by Arabella lives with a recovering drug addict in California. His son by Susie Aschenbach is a Wall Street whizz-kid. Tom asks after Henry and Louisa whom he knew when they were small but this eyes glaze over when Jomier tells him what they are up to. Tom is more interested in their old friends. Have they done well or have they done badly? Some have done well and others have done badly. Some have retired. Some are dead. Most are divorced. They go over bust marriages – Jomier’s one; Tom’s three. Jomier had not known about the third – a Puerto Rican art dealer.

‘She represented Palavi, Boocher, Zatler, Blakeney.’

Jomier has heard of none of these artists but does not let on. And what had gone wrong?

‘Oh, you know . . .’ A roguish grin.

‘She caught you with the receptionist?’

‘That kind of thing.’

The effect of the Blarney stone has not worn off with time. Tom talks about himself. Jomier is happy with this: he would rather listen than talk. Jomier dislikes self-disclosure, particularly when there is little to disclose. He has told Tom about Annie on a previous visit. Tom was amused. Jomier does not want to tell him about Judith. He would not understand about the rekindling of a thwarted love from the past.

Tom tells Jomier about his blog. Jomier recalls receiving an email telling him about Tom’s blog and feels embarrassed that he has not read it. The embarrassment is misplaced. Tom does not see Jomier as his target audience. He regards everything British as old-fashioned and provincial and says so. Jomier thinks that there are aspects of American life which are equally old-fashioned and provincial. Gas-guzzling cars. Slow trains. Groceries packaged in brown paper bags. He does not say so. He acknowledges the contribution to his life made by Microsoft, Apple, Google and Hollywood but believes nonetheless that Americans are inward-looking. They can recite the Gettysburg Address but know next to nothing about Julius Caesar or Napoleon. They converse only with themselves – the liberals with the conservatives, the blacks with the whites, the Jews with the Gentiles, the East Coast with the West Coast, the coasts with the hinterland. They have strong feelings about things that mean little to Europeans. Abortion. Israel. Imposing democracy on nations rich in natural resources.

Tom orders a second whisky sour and, after eating the maraschino cherry, lays into Jomier about the pusillanimity of the Europeans in the face of the threat posed by Islamo-fascism. Jomier has been subject to these attacks before. In the US Tom only mixes with the like-minded. Jomier is a welcome punchbag that he can pummel with neocon invective.