At first this addition to his lifestyle didn’t affect his work; it was two years before he experienced his first hangover. But what a hangover it was. Driving to work that morning, he remembered acknowledging the seemingly lethal headache and deciding that he would have to find a way of getting used to it, because this was how it was going to be from now on. He was soon greeting each day with a sandwich, as he called it—a dash of lemonade with a Fuller’s E.S.B. and a Carlsberg Special Brew—both concoctions available only in countries where there is no legal requirement to display ingredients on the container. Publicans all over London were impressed by the constitution of the well-spoken gent who could sink a ‘shandy’ of this type at eleven o’clock in the morning. It was only when an older colleague noticed his shaking hands that he was warned of the error of his ways and pointed in the right direction. Shandy liveners and vodkatinis became a thing of the past; now, Dexedrine pepped him up before surgery, and Demerol and Percodan smoothed him out at night. And Daliudid—the pill that Elvis reputedly loved so—became his weekend treat.

The Rose understood early that life was energy, to be willed as directed. The paradox of his addiction was that his chosen path was fast undermining the force of will that directed it. His system would snap. It was simply a question of when. After a year, the Dems and Percs were jettisoned, and self-administered IV Valium was dripping into his arm before bed. The same nerve ganglia which showed increased sensitivity during intoxication were becoming increasingly lifeless without it. So, lacking the energy or determination to do otherwise, he simply stopped worrying, and concentrated all his remaining energies on planning the next fix.

He took to mixing cocktails in his chambers and taking them with him to surgery. One afternoon, he became so fragmented that he took a break during a three-hour operation to inject himself in the anteroom adjoining the theatre. In his haste he grabbed the wrong ampoule and was found minutes later in a state of complete paralysis. The Rose had not lost consciousness—he knew precisely what he had done. Shortly afterwards, the head of the hospital took him aside.

“It would be a pity if this kind of behaviour continued. I suggest you take a break—a long one. Perhaps a period of convalescence. I believe there are rehab centres that are both good and discreet.”

He was called the Rose—in his early years as a surgeon he had placed a red rose on the life-support machine of a patient in intensive care. The patient had survived. Since then he had always worn a rose in his buttonhole though he never admitted or denied his belief in the healing power of flowers.

He set off for his month in the rehabilitation clinic with half a dozen bottles of chilled Ladoucette. The chauffeur—hired to drive him and return with the car—drove leisurely, as instructed, and the Rose sat in the back with the cooler, sipping the wine as a palliative against the withdrawals he was experiencing.