Ned is four. Jomier is invited to his grandson’s birthday party and feels he must attend. He would rather stay away, and supposes that Henry and Sandra would be relieved if he came up with some convincing reason for declining their invitation, but such an excuse is beyond anyone’s invention. What pressing engagement could Jomier have at four o’clock on a Sunday afternoon? It would seem odd if he did not go – and Henry is embarrassed by any manifestation of oddity. He also knows that Ned would like him to be there. Jomier is loved by Ned. Ned’s face lights up when he sees Jomier. Samantha’s too. Samantha also loves Jomier but she does not relate to him in the same way as Ned. Both Samantha and Ned are acutely aware of gender. Both flirt with good-looking members of the opposite sex. They are aware of the difference between a mother and a father. Samantha’s role model is her mother. Ned’s role model is his father; but Jomier is a secondary, auxiliary role model. The long dull hours spent by the swings and see-saws in the playground bring a return. Trust. Familiarity. Love.
Jomier would rather stay away from his grandchildren’s birthday parties because Tilly also attends. Tilly not only attends but helps with the preparation. Nominally Sandra is in charge but Sandra has other things on her mind – management buyouts, corporate takeovers, private-equity finance. When a misplaced comma in a contract can mean catastrophe, it is difficult to concentrate on egg sandwiches, cocktail sausages, orange jellies, crisps, Hula-Hoops, balloons and the birthday cake. She has switched off her BlackBerry but her mind remains on standby.
Tracey and Alena are on hand but they do not know the ropes. Tactfully, skilfully, Tilly takes command. She is an experienced children’s party-giver: she has arranged many over the years. She never enjoyed it. She did it in the old days because it was expected – by her children, their friends, their friends’ mothers. In particular the other mothers. Tilly wanted to earn the approval of the other mothers. The only constraint on her behaviour was peer-group pressure; the only sins the things Hermione and Alice and Caroline and Mary would think are sins. An affair? Everyone does it. Divorce? With a husband like Jomier, understandable. Pinching Max off Jane? These things happen.
And now? Jomier sits in an armchair in the corner of the room, talking politely to Tessa, mother of Tatty, and other friends of Sandra and Henry. Every now and then he looks at Tilly. He avoids meeting her eyes. She avoids meeting his. She does not talk to the other adults but busies herself with the children. She is the one to pour out the orange juice. She is the one to organise the musical bumps. Why so assiduous? Why does she put herself out for Henry in a way she did for Jomier only in the first years of their married life? Jomier remarked on this phenomenon when they were still married – the gradual shift of loyalty from husband to son. Was it a symptom of her general disenchantment with marriage? He then remarked upon the same phenomenon in other marriages and understood. Women are all over their husbands and boyfriends until they have had children. Once the inseminator has served his purpose, they look to the future. The husband may still provide for the mother and her brood; his substance is eaten like the flesh of the male mate of the praying mantis. But it is the son, not the husband, who will be around when she is old and frail.
All this was a long time ago. When Tilly’s eyes do meet Jomier’s, as they must on occasion, this is what they express: ‘It was all a long time ago.’ The acceptance of this formula is meant to lead to civility, even friendliness, between Jomier, Tilly, Max and Jane. But Jomier does not accept the concept behind the formula – that time heals all. The man who is crippled because his wife pushed him down the stairs remains crippled even if he accepts that she was provoked by his slap of her face. Jomier remains crippled. He still suffers. He cannot look at Tilly’s elegant legs without thinking of them parting for the loins of her hirsute lover.
Jomier looks around at Henry and Sandra’s friends – men beginning to grow paunchy and bald; women starting to look used and tired. Do any of them have lovers? Probably not. They are from a different generation. They married later in life – wild oats scattered, curiosity satisfied, youthful passion spent. They expect fidelity once the commitment is made but feel no jealousy of former boyfriends. Their lovelife is linear. The exes are among their friends. No tormenting visions of fellatio and cunnilingus for Tony as he chats to Ted; no thought that the same tongue that now licks the cream smudged from an oozing eclair onto Ted’s knuckle once slithered between the labia minora and labia majora of Jessica, his wife.
Latin – the language of anatomy and Catholicism. Why, after all these years, is Jomier unable to expunge the anatomical, the gynaecological, the venereal from his mind? He looks across the room at Tilly. She is stooping over Ned to persuade him to pass the parcel now that the music has resumed. Her figure remains slim; she makes the best of herself; she is well preserved – not mutton dressed as lamb but chic mutton in expensive smart-casual clothes. The skin is taut over her cheekbones but loose at her neck. There are wrinkles – no Botox – but the natural silver of her hair is streaked with gold. She is an elegant, handsome woman d’un certain age – dressed no longer to attract the male of the species but to appear as much in place in Kensington and Knightsbridge as she would be out of place on the Goldhawk Road.
Jomier thinks back thirty years to the time when they were giving children’s parties for Henry and Louisa. Tilly had been softer, more easily amused, but always distracted by the toddlers’ harassment and tired after broken nights. Less confident. Easton, the expensive analyst, and Maureen, the cheaper marriage counsellor, had both tentatively suggested that Tilly’s initial attraction to Jomier had been because he was a confident, masterful, slightly older man. Her father’s failings – drunk, depressed – had led her to seek an ersatz father as a mate. But the qualities that had appealed to her psyche as they set sail had grown less appealing as the voyage progressed. Confident became know-all. Masterful became bossy. Jomier’s fastidious compulsion to keep everything shipshape had come up against the laziness of his crew. There had been misunderstandings from the very start. Jomier had assumed that his wife would make his breakfast and straighten the duvet on the marital bed. Tilly had grown up with servants: such things were done by others. She did not see herself as a member of the crew but as a passenger travelling first class. If they had lived together before they had married, these misunderstandings might have been resolved. But would it have meant that they would have chosen not to marry? No. They were in love.
Tilly picks up the paper torn from the parcel by the little fingers of covetous children. Tessa’s Tatty has won the prize – a bejewelled plastic Princess made in China. Tilly takes the paper to the recycling bin. Tilly is no longer lazy. She now has servants in both her homes, and Henry and Sandra have Alena and Tracey; but Tilly has learned that even the grandest women now muck in. There are limits, of course: dusting, vacuum cleaning, cleaning lavatories with bristly brushes – she was not born for that!
Tilly is now confident. Gone is the bashfulness, the easy embarrassment, the timid feminine thing of sheltering behind the masterful man. When they had first married, Tilly had been a reluctant interface with the outside world. She pleaded with Jomier to make the calls – to the utility companies, to their friends. He issued the invitations. He booked the tickets. He made the plans. After the divorce he came to realise that this dominance had been illusory. He had been the front man, the factotum, not the boss. ‘The Tylers love their Volkswagen Golf.’ ‘There’s this villa in Umbria which Susie and John rented last year . . .’ ‘Let’s have the Simpsons to dinner, with the Chalmers . . . and Max and Jane.’
Tilly is going around with a teapot to refill the mugs of Henry and Sandra’s friends. Every now and then she glances at Sandra: her daughter-in-law is her only constraint. In some ways the two women are like-minded: Sandra too does not believe that she was born to dust, hoover or clean lavatories with bristly brushes. But nor was Sandra born to shop and gossip with her friends. Sandra’s destiny is to study spreadsheets, take calls, send emails, hold meetings and fit in, where she can, her husband, her children, her friends. Tilly keeps an eye on her daughter-in-law because it has been known for Sandra to complain to Henry that his mother is ‘taking over’. Their family. Their home. Mournfully, Henry has turned down invitations to Sunday lunch in Phillimore Gardens – roast leg of lamb, fresh mint sauce, glazed carrots, Jersey Royal potatoes – and trudged off to Tesco to buy a chicken to take home and cook himself.
So far Sandra is happy enough to let Tilly busy herself at the party. It leaves Sandra free to talk to the toddlers’ daddies – the high-flying bankers, politicians and journalists who are their friends. Tracey lights the four candles on the birthday cake. It is placed before Ned. Henry takes out his Nikon Coolpix digital camera to catch an image of Ned as he blows out the candles. There is cheering and clapping. Ned becomes overexcited. He wriggles in his chair, catches the paper tablecloth with his foot which overturns a plastic cup filled with orange squash. Alena swoops to clear it up. Tilly steps forward to help Ned cut the cake. It is a step too far. Sandra puts down her mug of tea and comes forward with a large black knife. Tilly backs off. Sandra guides Ned’s hand as he cuts the cake.
Jomier has been talking to Tessa, his friend from the playground, but now, on the pretext that she must see to her daughter Tatty, Tessa gets up and crosses the room. They have run out of conversation. Jomier is happy to be left alone. He is in existential mode. If the human body renews itself every seven years, is the Tilly who is talking to Henry’s friend Tony a different person to the Tilly he married thirty-eight years ago? Has she in fact gone through five metamorphoses so that he should not be labelling her, in his memory, Tilly 1 and Tilly 2 but Tilly 1, 2, 3, 4, 5? Is that what is behind the concept of ‘the seven-year itch’? It is not that a husband and wife have grown restless but they have changed into different people. The synapses that made up the brain of the Tilly who fell in love with Jomier have been replaced by synapses of a brain that falls in love with Max. No, that would have been Tilly 3. Tilly 2 was merely disenchanted because her husband had turned into someone who was not her type – Jomier 2. He had changed from a teasing lover into a routine husband; from a romantic revolutionary into a pedantic barrister who brought his work home – not just briefs in his briefcase but an adversarial manner when talking to his wife. The burned-out motor of the Miele vacuum cleaner was caused by a blocked nozzle: for weeks Rosa, their Galician cleaner, had been hoovering without any air, let alone dust, passing into the Miele’s paper sack. Who was responsible? Rosa. But Rosa was acting as an agent for Tilly, therefore the buck stops with Tilly. Tilly: Machines are a matter for men. Jomier: Keeping house is a matter for women. Tilly: Who says? Jomier: Convention. Tilly: Fuck convention. Jomier: Including the convention that a husband provides for his wife? Tilly: You resent it, don’t you? You fucking miser. You’d like to keep all your money for yourself.
Tears. Jomier remembers the tears. He had never hit Tilly but his sarcastic courtroom manner had on occasions made her cry. ‘You’re just better at arguing.’ Sniff. Tilly would never admit that she was in the wrong. Her tears were not an admission of defeat. They were a symptom of frustration – that after a day dealing with dirty nappies, squabbling children, baby food, something for supper, overflowing washing machines, reproving nursery-school teachers (Henry had bitten Tamsin), and perennial anxieties about meningitis, measles, chickenpox, grommets, inoculations, she is now indicted and prosecuted by the man who promised to cherish her for the Galician cleaner’s failure to notice that the nozzle of the Miele was blocked.
The tears. Jomier remembers them now with shame but then . . . A certain triumph? Easton the analyst had suggested that in incidents such as these Jomier had been driven by unconscious resentment to punish Tilly for the failings of his mother. Perhaps. Jomier does not want to think about his mother. He is still preoccupied with Tilly. He watches her as she talks to Humphrey. He wonders why, if this Tilly 5 is a wholly different person to the Tilly 3 who went off with Max, she still provokes feelings of resentment. Can he in all justice hold Tilly 3 to blame for shifting her affections from a man who bullied her about the blocked nozzle of the Miele to a man to whom Miele was, if anything, Miele Gesellschaft mbH, a company in which he might like to own shares? And Tilly 5 is not even Tilly 3. The svelte woman of a certain age who has now moved away from Tony to readjust the glittering plastic tiara that has gone askew on Samantha’s head bears a certain resemblance to the harassed, downtrodden but still sexy young wife he knew in the 1980s, but she is not the same woman. Her responsibility for cheating on Jomier is less direct, even, than her responsibility in her former incarnation as Tilly 3 for the blocked nozzle of the Miele.
Jomier sums up. The woman who loved him turned into the woman who did not love him either because new configurations were made in replacement synapses or because he himself had changed. For neither of these developments could she be held to blame. She was not the same person she had been seven years before – neither in herself nor in Jomier’s psyche. In his psyche, once she had children, she had become his mother and he reacted with the fury of a three-year-old to her perceived failings in that role. Just as there is justifiable homicide, so there is justifiable adultery and it is unreasonable for Jomier to continue to resent her understandable response to his punishment of her for the crimes of his mother.
Tilly turns and catches his eye. Something in his expression leads her to smile. Should she cross the room to talk to him? As she takes her first step, Jomier notices her pretty long legs. Do they still part to please Max? Do they still have sex? After all those years? The thought is enough. The defence case collapses. Jomier rises from his armchair and, avoiding Tilly, crosses the room to find Henry and Sandra and say goodbye.