It is Christmas Eve. Jomier and Judith, well wrapped in overcoats and scarves, walk out into the street. Elegant decorations hang from the palazzos; bright shop windows display their wares festooned with glitter and tinsel. They dawdle at a Christmas fair – little stalls vividly lit selling biscuits, panettone, sugared fruit, glazed chestnuts, orange segments coated in dark chocolate. They walk on. They choose a restaurant at random. It is warm. The waiters are friendly. They eat well. They come out of the restaurant into the crowded street. They follow the flow of people and find themselves in St Mark’s Square. People are making for the basilica.
‘Midnight Mass,’ says Judith. ‘Shall we take a look?’
‘Why not,’ says Jomier. A folkloric experience. Fine music, perhaps. A free concert.
The basilica is dark and filled with people. Banks of candles and the dim bulbs of huge chandeliers cast a faint trembling light on the arches and domes. The smell of candlewax and incense thickens the air. The Mass has started. A booming chant comes from the darkness. The vestments of the patriarch and his acolytes sparkle at the high altar. Judith peers over shoulders. She is entranced by the spectacle. Jomier too is impressed: here is something that transcends tourism. Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, Vivaldi, Casanova – all would have seen what he is seeing if they had stood where he stands now. Little has changed in a thousand years. He looks at the faces of the Venetians around him. Have they been drawn by the spectacle? By tradition? Or do some of them, like his friend Theodor, believe?
More singing. More scuttling around the altar. Chanting in Latin. Readings in Italian. Jomier starts to feel claustrophobic – suffocated by the smoky air. He leans down and whispers into Judith’s ear: ‘Shall we go?’ She hesitates, her eyes still fixed on the glittering figures at the altar. Then, as if with an effort of will, she turns away and says: ‘OK.’
They push through the crowd to reach the door of the basilica. Out on St Mark’s Square, Judith takes Jomier’s arm. ‘Wasn’t it beautiful?’
‘Yes, but . . .’
‘I know. The incense. It makes one dizzy. I had the feeling that the whole thing was genuine.’
‘Yes, though . . .’
‘What?’
‘I wonder how many in that crowd actually believe?’
Judith squeezes his arm. ‘You’re so literal. I mean, one can believe in the sense of accepting that an ancient and touching myth about a child born in a manger is true because it is beautiful like a painting or a poem or a sonata.’
‘Born of a virgin?’
‘Yes, well, that’s perhaps not so beautiful if it is taken to demean sex. But Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus, not his conception – immaculate or otherwise.’
‘The Immaculate Conception . . .’ Jomier begins, meaning to tell Judith that the Catholic dogma refers to the conception of Mary, not of Jesus, but he has resolved not to be a know-all and so leaves the sentence unfinished.
Judith does not seem to notice. She squeezes his arm again and gives a little shiver. ‘God, it’s cold.’
Christmas Day. Breakfast is brought to their room. They open the presents that each has brought for the other: a racing-green cashmere jersey for Judith from Jomier; a blue check shirt and speckled red tie for Jomier from Judith. And smaller parcels: Floris bath essence for Judith from Jomier; a pair of fleece-lined leather gloves for Jomier from Judith. Each unwrapping is followed by an expression of delight and a kiss. However, they are adults and understand that the expressions of delight may be pro forma. Judith has retained the receipts for the shirt from Kilgour and the tie from Paul Smith. Jomier has retained the receipt for the cashmere jersey from Harrods.
They laze around. Judith is reading Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin, Jomier Italo Svevo’s Senilità – or, in this English translation, As a Man Grows Older. Jomier chose the novel because it was written just across the lagoon in Trieste. Jomier likes to read books that pertain to the place he is visiting: The Leopard in Sicily, Dubliners in Dublin, Portrait of a Lady in Florence; I Promessi Sposi in Milan; The Bridge on the Drina in Mostar; Anna Karenina in Moscow; A Sentimental Education in Paris. By entering into the lives of characters created by an author who knew the city, you get behind the flat two-dimensional surfaces of palazzos and paintings. What were they like, those Doges with the funny bumps on their hats? What went on in the minds of Carpaccio’s two old whores? What were those Venetians thinking in St Mark’s Cathedral during midnight Mass? As Jomier grows older he feels increasingly frustrated by the limits of tourism – looking at churches, castles, palaces, paintings, statues, the constructs of the dead; and only interacting with living humanity when presenting his credit card or taking euros out of his wallet.
There is Death in Venice but Jomier has read it and anyway the novella is about Germans and Poles, not Venetians; he thinks he is more likely to get under the skin of Italians living on the Gulf of Venice by reading Svevo rather than Thomas Mann. Jomier had also been attracted to Senilità by its title but is disconcerted to discover that the hero Emilio is only forty. Is forty the old sixty just as sixty is the new forty? Jomier reads on to find out but is only on page 32 when Judith finishes The Blind Assassin and suggests walking out into the city. Jomier is now used to the speed with which Judith reads novels. He is both impressed and dismayed by the way she finishes one and starts another without pause for breath. Jomier sees this as a kind of promiscuity: surely a reader who has been moved or stimulated by a work of literature should reflect for a while on what she has just read? However, he agrees about a walk. It is foolish to be in Venice and spend the few hours of daylight reading novels in a hotel. They dress. They step out. There is a pale wintry sun. They stroll towards the Rialto Bridge.
‘How was the novel?’ Jomier asks Judith.
‘Not one of her best.’ Judith takes his arm. She likes taking his arm and squeezing it. Jomier likes his arm to be taken and squeezed. Mostly. Sometimes he feels the gesture is proprietorial rather than loving. More a clipping of a leash on to a collar than a caress.
‘It’s about relationships within a family . . .’ Judith is talking about the novel by Margaret Atwood.
‘Often problematic,’ says Jomier.
‘You’ve told me very little about your family,’ says Judith.
‘There’s not much to say,’ says Jomier.
‘I don’t believe that,’ says Judith. ‘There’s always something to say.’
‘Well,’ says Jomier, ‘I had a father who was a civil servant who never made the grade he felt he deserved so became embittered and deliberately dull.’
‘What does that mean – deliberately dull?’
‘He read a great deal and loved music but talked only about the trivia of domestic life.’
‘Was he happy with your mother?’
Jomier shrugs. ‘Hard to tell. They never quarrelled. It might have been better if they did. I sometimes think he felt . . .’ Jomier hesitates.
Judith prompts him: ‘Felt what?’
‘That he had let her down . . . by not making the grade.’
‘She would like to have been Lady Jomier?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was she nice to you?’
‘In her fashion.’
‘What was her fashion?’
‘I was her project. She wanted me to succeed where my father had failed.’
‘Was she affectionate?’
Again, Jomier hesitates. He feels uncomfortable talking about his parents. ‘Not as such. She thought any overt expression of feeling was vulgar.’
‘You didn’t feel loved?’
‘She regarded love as something given. You did not need to show it.’
‘No hugs?’
‘No. A wintry smile if she was pleased. A pained look if she was displeased.’
‘How sad,’ says Judith.
‘She had been brought up in an old-fashioned upper-class household. Nannies. Governesses. She saw her parents only for half an hour before bedtime.’
‘No loving role model,’ says Judith.
‘No one is taught parenting,’ says Jomier. ‘You can take courses in almost anything, and almost everything is subject to regulation and control, except the one thing that has a greater bearing on human happiness than anything else – how to bring up a child. As a result, we make mistakes which are handed down from generation to generation.’
‘But your children sound fine,’ says Judith.
Jomier reflects; then: ‘Tilly was good with the children.’
They have reached the Rialto Bridge. Jomier is about to tell Judith how, thirty years before, he and Tilly had come to the Rialto Bridge from the same direction and after crossing it had got lost in the narrow streets looking for the Museum of Modern Art. He changes his mind. This recollection of a happy moment with another woman might not be something that Judith would want to hear. Jomier stops the words from leaving his mouth but the memory remains in his head. An impromptu winter holiday. He had finished a long trial and felt rich. They had left the children with Tilly’s parents, flown to Turin, hired a car and driven across the Po valley, staying in Parma, Ferrara and Padua before arriving in Venice. There were no tourists. They were almost alone in the restaurants and hotels. Tilly had been so fresh and pretty and happy. There was no Max, only Jomier: love brimmed over from her eyes when she smiled.
The memory now makes Jomier feel sad. He fights this sadness: he struggles to prevent his mood spiralling down into a pit. The past is past. The Tilly who loved him is dead. The Jomier who loved Tilly is dead. He is in love with someone else – an attractive woman, albeit a yoga teacher and no spring chicken, but healthy, cultured, companionable and accomplished in bed. Judith does not notice the struggle going on in his mind: she has let go of his arm and is examining a bead necklace displayed on a stall on the Rialto Bridge. She asks its price, then shakes her head. She wants the necklace but feels she is being taken for a sucker. She haggles. She is an experienced haggler from the souks of Morocco, the casbahs of Damascus, the markets of Kerala and Rangoon. Tilly had never haggled. She was too much the grande dame. Jomier does not haggle either. He puts himself in the shoes of the Venetian. Tourists are there to be fleeced.
Judith strikes a deal. She buys the necklace. ‘Don’t you think it’s pretty?’ Bright blue glass beads linked together by a delicate silver chain.
‘Is it for Ophelia?’
‘No, it’s for me.’ Jomier has said the wrong thing. Judith’s tone turns sharp. ‘I spent a fortune on her Christmas present.’
‘What did you give her?’
‘A pair of Camper boots.’
Jomier is prepared to believe that Camper boots are expensive and so says: ‘That’s very generous.’
‘What did you give your children?’
‘CDs. I gave Henry Parsifal and Louisa Don Carlos.’ Jomier wishes he had not raised the question of Christmas presents. He is wearing his fleece-lined gloves but notes that Judith is not wearing the racing-green cashmere jersey. It remains, carefully folded and half rewrapped, in their hotel bedroom.
A clock strikes midday. It is time to return to the hotel for the inclusive Christmas lunch. They have wandered further than they realised and are the last to enter the hotel restaurant. They are shown to their table – far from the window looking out on to the canal, close to the swinging doors into the kitchen. Tinsel and glitter decorate the table; crackers lie parallel to the knives and forks. There are other couples of a certain age sitting at tables for two but there are also tables for six or eight – families with grannies and in-laws and children and friends. Next to Jomier and Judith sits a party who are talking German: they are either Germans or Austrians or Swiss. Bottles of wine uncorked on the table are already half empty: they have got off to a flying start. A thickset freckled fifty-year-old with cropped orange hair sits facing Jomier. ‘Prost.’ He raises his glass. Jomier nods and smiles. His wine glass has not yet been filled: he raises it all the same. ‘Prost.’ A woman and a man with their backs to Judith and Jomier now turn and raise their glasses. ‘Prost.’ Again, Jomier and now also Judith raise their yet-to-be-filled glasses. The man who has turned – heavy, genial, bald – notices that their glasses are empty. ‘Ja, das geht nicht.’ He grabs hold of a half-full bottle of sparkling wine and stretches over to fill their glasses. He cannot reach their table. He stands. ‘No, no . . .’ Jomier tries to fend off this impulsive generosity. Impossible. Fizzy wine splashes into their glasses. Now the whole table of friendly Teutons turns towards them. ‘Fröhliche Weihnachten! Prosit Weihnachten!’ Jomier and Judith raise their half-filled glasses. ‘Thank you. Happy Christmas!’ They drink.
‘Did you know Brian?’
Jomier searches his memory in an effort to remember who Brian might be.
‘Ruth’s husband, Brian. Did you know him?’
‘Yes. Not well. He seemed nice enough. I don’t know what went wrong.’
‘He was under-sexed. They hardly ever made love.’
Jomier thinks of Ruth’s large behind. ‘Perhaps he didn’t fancy her?’
‘Then why did he marry her?’
Jomier thinks of his social-climbing friend Adrian Richards. ‘Was she smart? Or rich?’
‘Both. But she’s got through most of her money. And Ralph doesn’t bring in much.’
‘Ralph?’
‘You know. Her present man. The one who worked for the BBC.’
Jomier does not want to talk about Ruth’s love life. He is also uncomfortable discussing what constitutes being over- or under-sexed. What are a wife’s reasonable expectations? What are a husband’s? What are the reasonable expectations of an older woman with an older lover? Does she have memories of non-stop sex on her last visit to Venice? With Beresford? With Alfredo? Jomier assumes that Judith had been there with Beresford. Judith must realise that he had been there with Tilly. That is only to be expected. It is Alfredo, the Chilean painter, who is beginning to irk Jomier. Was it from him that Judith learned about Titian and Tiepolo?
Judith is telling Jomier how Ralph had come with Ruth on one of her yoga retreats in Andalusia. It had been like having a disruptive pupil in class. He had said that he preferred the exercise regime of the Royal Canadian Mountain Police; and as to the spiritual aspects of yoga, both the Yama and the Niyama were found in all religions, and there was not much to choose between a yogi and a Christian monk. He had skipped the morning sessions to go into Seville to buy the New York Herald Tribune.
Judith’s account of Ralph’s resistance to yogic detachment is amusingly told. She makes it quite clear to Jomier that she takes the mystical dimension of yoga with a pinch of salt. Yet proselytism is not wholly absent. ‘You should try it one day,’ she says to Jomier.
‘To improve my posture?’
‘To achieve detachment.’
‘Some might say that I was already quite detached enough.’
‘It’s a different sort of detachment.’
‘In what way?’
Judith hesitates. ‘Avoiding issues isn’t the same as being detached.’
‘Don’t we all avoid issues?’
‘They fester.’
‘We’ve both avoided talking about our previous visits to Venice.’
‘I don’t mind talking about them.’
‘Were you here with Alfredo?’
‘Alfredo? Good heavens, no. I came here with Beresford, twice, and once with Giles.’
‘Who is Giles?’
‘Someone I went out with.’ Judith is speaking gently, like a nurse with a patient.
‘Before or after Alfredo?’
‘After. Two or three years ago.’
‘And what happened to Giles?’
‘We weren’t really suited. It didn’t last long.’ She leans across and touches Jomier’s hand. ‘At our age one can’t really mind, can one? After all, you must have been here with Tilly.’
At long last two waiters appear at their table, one with the antipasti – first of the seven courses – the other to fill their glasses with the half-bottle of Asti Spumate that is included in the price. Jomier is grateful for the distraction. He has thrown down the gauntlet – ‘we are avoiding talking about our previous visits to Venice’ – and now Judith has picked it up; but is he ready for a duel of competitive reminiscences? He does not want to tell her about the holiday with Tilly. He is not detached. He feels wretched. He grieves for his lovely young bride. He mourns over the death of his marriage. He longs for his children and grandchildren. What is he doing celebrating Christmas with vulgar Germans or Austrians or Swiss and the discarded fuck-bag of Beresford and Alfredo and Giles and God knows who else? He should be in Hammersmith watching Sam and Ned unwrap their presents; or at the estancia with Louisa and little Nunci and Ysabel listening to Fernando’s talk about rugby and feeling Jimmy’s clap on his back.
Jomier enjoys life in retrospect more than he does at the time. In this, he is the opposite of a Guarani Indian, who lives in the present. Jomier knows this. One day he will savour happy memories of this Christmas lunch at the Hotel Palazzo Solaia with a woman who loves him. She sits opposite him talking gaily about this and that, certainly aware of the psychic turbulence in the head of the man she is with but quite confident, as a frequent flyer, that resistance to the stress and strain of such turbulence is factored into the design and tolerances of the aluminium struts and rivets of the wings of their affair.
She is also confident that if she were to be permitted to take over the controls of the Jomier 737 she could fly it above the turbulence to a calmer karma at 38,000 feet. She can show Jomier how to detach himself from his feelings of anger, frustration, regret. None of this is put into words but her very serenity is a sales pitch for one of her retreats in Andalusia. This in itself is an annoyance. More than an annoyance, Jomier feels that it is a threat to his identity. What is he if not a nexus of anger, frustration, regret? What would he write in his journal if he had no anxieties, no complaints? Jomier feels wary of this soothing femininity matched to the contemplative mysticism of the East. He sees Judith as a huge, soft, smiling yin waiting to envelop and absorb a puny, muddled yang.
The antipasti is good – Parma ham, Milano salami, mozzarella cheese, artichoke hearts, stuffed eggs, small slabs of foie gras. The pasta is superb – soft, plump raviolis stuffed with lobster with a lobster bisque sauce. The half-bottle of Asti Spumante – too sweet but tolerable because cold – had been replaced by a 75-centilitre bottle of 2005 Canaletto Montepulciano d’Abruzzo which Jomier finds as good as any Italian wine he had ever tasted – indeed, better than most wines from anywhere else. Judith agrees. The food and the wine improve Jomier’s mood. He regains his confidence that the inclusive Christmas offer by the Hotel Palazzo Solaia is good value after all. He even manages to talk about Tilly and their trip to Venice without feeling tearful; indeed, it dovetails into a discussion about love and marriage and maturity or the lack of it or what one means by maturity. How can a man and a woman at the age at which Judith and Beresford and Jomier and Tilly first married expect to remain compatible with an immature choice? Was it not inevitable that the choice would be made for the wrong reasons – to satisfy the unconsciously absorbed ambitions of parents perhaps, or to escape from an unhappy home? Is it not likely that those couples who do remain married for forty or fifty years, do so at the cost of an arrested or perhaps distorted development? It was one thing for the Victorians and Edwardians, where wives were not expected to develop in any meaningful way, but even these marriages, as we now know, were not what they seemed, with men like Dickens having second families and women, at least among the Edwardian upper classes, having children by their lovers.
The turkey, which the chef at the Palazzo Solaia must have felt he should prepare for the English and American guests at the hotel, is less bland and more delicious than the traditional English Christmas turkey – with fresh herbs in the stuffing, a spice-impregnated bread sauce, brittle fried potatoes, fresh spinach and a sauce too noble to be designated gravy. The dolci, too, are up to the same standard: Jomier eats both a rum baba and, in place of Judith who declines a dessert, a slice of semifreddo ice-cream cake. Espressi. More San Pellegrino for Judith. A glass of Marsala for Jomier. Then they are drawn into a chain of cracker-pulling by the Germans, who are, it turns out, Bavarians, not Austrians or Swiss.