4.30 P.M. THE IVY

He goes to the bar and calls his favourite cab companies - just to check, just to make sure there are no problems. Details.

Fernando, the evening maître d’hôtel, hurries in, late. A slight, bespectacled fellow, he cranes and spies constantly on the room. He is like some elegant, benign Edwardian mole from a children’s book, always solicitous, constantly trying to polish the evening until it shines. A table which appears not to be having a positively perfect time is a continual reproach to him. If Mitch’s job at lunch is to facilitate and smooth, Fernando’s is to orchestrate. He conducts the long symphony of dinner with exacting delicacy, his great skill never to appear too busy. He can and does lean against the booking counter, his head resting on one hand, and talk about theatre or television, love affairs or traffic to anyone and everyone. His business is not so much food and service as harmony and melody. If everything goes right (and it usually does), the climax comes with a lot of violins and horns in the third and final movement. The after-theatre dinner is, above all, the Ivy’s core business; this is what it does that no other restaurant in the City can do with such panache and drama.