Jomier lies on the king-sized bed in the Palazzo Solaia watching Judith’s legs rise in front of her torso and meet behind her neck as she practises her yoga on the carpeted floor. She is wearing a leotard. The black fabric clings to her body. Jomier finds Judith attractive in her leotard; he feels a faint tingling in his groin; but the Viagra is all used up.
This is their last day in Venice. They have been there a week. Both are looking forward to getting back to normal but both feel that the holiday has been a success. After the psychic turbulence Jomier had encountered while waiting for the antipasti and Asti Spumante at the Christmas lunch, all has been plain sailing. Plain flying. Beyond the turbulence, not above it. They had seen things of great beauty during the day and, during the long evenings, they have been to a concert at the Palazzo Barbarigo-Minotto, Verdi’s Nabucco in the Teatro Malibran, the temporary home of the Fenice Opera Company and, on the Tuesday, seen an English-language movie in the Giorgione Movie d’Essai. In the early evening, before going out, they have rested in their hotel: Judith has done her yoga while Jomier has read his novel or watched BBC World News or entered the day’s expenses on his Palm Treo. They have taken baths and showers and made love and tried different restaurants: both agree that Italian food is the best in the world.
There have been no awkward silences at table: they now find that they can talk about their childhoods, their marriages, their families with ease. The only time they have spent apart was when shopping; Judith said she preferred to shop alone. Jomier went out hunting for a pair of Italian shoes but all he saw were too spivy and expensive. He bought a wallet for Henry, necklaces for Sandra and Sam, and a model Maserati for Ned. Judith has been more successful: she has bought shoes, a skirt and three tops. ‘Italians are so stylish,’ she said.
Judith finishes her yoga. Jomier looks up from his book. Judith comes to lie beside him on the bed. She is not out of breath and the odour of her perspiration has been made fragrant by whatever deodorant she found to replace the confiscated Klorane. ‘Our last day,’ she says.
For a few moments they discuss what they might do with this last day; then Jomier says, without premeditation: ‘You don’t think we should move in together when we get home?’
Judith looks down at her bosom, flattened by the tight leotard, and picks off a piece of white fluff that has come off one of the fluffy white towels. ‘You wouldn’t want to live in Wandsworth.’ Then, as if realising that her considered reaction to his dramatic proposal showed that she had been considering the idea herself, she turns and smiles at him and says: ‘Could you bear it?’
‘We’ve managed well enough in a single room for a week,’ says Jomier.
‘I mean Wandsworth.’
Jomier thinks of the dribbling shower. ‘Does it have to be Wandsworth? Couldn’t we both sell our houses and buy one together?’
Judith pulls herself up: her thinking has not yet gone this far. ‘Pool our resources?’
‘Why not? We should be able to buy something in Notting Hill.’
‘Or Chelsea?’
‘Or Chelsea.’
‘I’m longing to move,’ says Judith; then, as if this confession might be construed as an ulterior motive that detracts from the romance of Jomier’s suggestion, she adds: ‘to start afresh.’
‘With me?’
‘Of course with you.’ She snuggles up, her head on his chest. Jomier likes this. Or he thinks he likes it. Tilly had never snuggled up like this. Not with him. Perhaps with Max. Jomier strokes Judith’s hair. It is thinning but she is far from bald.
‘Could you put up with Ophelia?’ asks Judith.
‘I’m getting quite used to Ophelia,’ says Jomier.
‘And what about Henry and Sandra?’
‘What about them?’
‘Won’t they disapprove?’
‘I don’t think so. Why should they?’ He asks the question and at once comes up with one or two answers. Will this cohabitation lead to marriage? Will Jomier’s equity in the new house pass on his death to Judith? Will that transfer be for her lifetime or outright? Will Henry and Louisa see their inheritance spent on rehab for Judith’s children?
Judith shrugs. ‘I don’t know. They might not like it.’
‘I should think they’ll both be relieved,’ says Jomier, ‘to think there’ll be someone else to push me around Holland Park in a wheelchair.’
‘Or the Chelsea Physic Garden,’ says Judith.
‘Or the Chelsea Physic Garden,’ repeats Jomier.
‘Not quite yet, I hope,’ says Judith.
Jomier squeezes her lycra-clad knee. ‘Not quite yet.’
Jomier returns from Venice a happy man. Even the ghastliness of the return journey on Ryanair – vaporetto to the Piazzale Roma, bus to Treviso Airport, more sheep dip, more sardines – does not pollute the happy feeling that he loves and is loved. As if to prove that their plans are well founded, providence finds them two adjacent seats on the plane. Judith is reading an Ian Rankin thriller that she bought at Treviso Airport: Jomier estimates that she has read six novels since they left London while he is only on page 137 of Senilità. This no longer irritates him. Why should it irritate him? How much better a woman buried in a novel than a woman holding forth. He thinks Judith is perfect or as perfect as he can reasonably expect. Certainly, she is second-hand but then the brand-new Tilly proved unreliable. So too his Golf. That was also new and proved problematic. Jomier sees himself as a man in a car lot suddenly finding a model he has always longed for. A gull-wing Mercedes. One of those big-bonneted old Volvos or a curvy two-stroke Saab.
They part at Liverpool Street Station. A kiss. A hug. Judith goes to wait in line for a taxi – the black money-eating scarabs edging forward to devour their prey. Jomier trundles his suitcase down the escalator to the westbound Central Line platform in the bowels of the earth. The train is crowded. Passengers knock their shins on Jomier’s suitcase. An automated voice warns Jomier that Shepherd’s Bush Station is closed. He alights at Holland Park and waits in the drizzle for the 94 bus. One comes and goes: it is full. Jomier cracks. He hails a taxi which takes him on the last leg of his journey home.
Jomier is happy to be home. Jomier is always happy to be home. Tilly was never happy to be home. To her a holiday was a break from drudgery and routine: after returning from Tuscany or Provence or Crete, she sulked for a week. It exacerbated her disgruntlement to see Jomier’s spirits rise as he sat down at his desk in his study, to open the mail that had arrived in absentia, calculate the cost of the holiday and write up his journal.
Since his divorce Jomier has adjusted his back-to-normal routine. He no longer rushes to open his post or look at his email because he knows it will mostly be computer-generated junk mail and spam. The spreadsheet, too, can wait until the morning – a pleasure held in reserve. Jomier goes to his bedroom to unpack his suitcase. He puts dirty clothes in a pile on the floor; a clean shirt back into his shirt drawer, jerseys into his jersey drawer; clean socks into his sock drawer; suits and trousers onto hangers in his wardrobe. Every item has its allotted place. Jomier takes the pile of dirty clothes to the bathroom and puts them in the laundry basket from which his Brazilian cleaner Maria will remove them when she comes in after the New Year. He takes a thermostatically controlled power shower. Then, cleansed from head to foot, he changes into fresh but familiar old clothes, cooks himself a simple supper, reads The Economist while he eats it at his kitchen table, then moves through to his living room and settles down in front of his Panasonic Viera flat-screen TV.
At ten the next morning, Jomier calls Judith. As a rule, Jomier only makes calls when he has something to say but he knows that lovers are expected to ring to whisper sweet nothings into one another’s ears. He says, ‘I miss you’ and ‘It felt odd going to bed alone’, both of which were sincere expressions of his feelings. Jomier does miss Judith in the sense that, after a week in her company, he is conscious of being alone. It has also felt odd lying in a bed by himself after a week of sleeping alongside Judith. But were the awareness of his solitude or the oddity of going to bed alone altogether unpleasant? There is a certain ease in being alone, and while Judith’s warmth had been agreeable, so too in another way is it agreeable to lie in a bed by oneself. At times when she had faced him on the mattress of the king-sized bed in the Hotel Palazzo Solaia, and he had breathed in the air she had just exhaled, he had felt stifled: moreover, there was borne on that air a faint aroma of stale wine and rotting food. Jomier had turned his face away. He was then out of range of Judith’s exhalations but not out of earshot of the guttural rattle that emanated from her half-open mouth as she fell into an inebriated slumber.
Jomier also snores and no doubt a malodorous miasma is borne by the air from his lungs as he exhales. There had been some mention of snoring, even a purchase of earplugs, but clearly no suggestion that the downside was in the same league as the upside of sharing a bed – the warmth, the hugs, the sex and post-coital oblivion. No suggestion then. And now? Judith says she misses Jomier. She agrees that it seemed odd going to bed alone. But she does not propose getting together that day. Neither does Jomier. They both need space. They both need time alone. Reculer pour mieux sauter. Judith is leaving the next day to spend the New Year with Tim in Devon and Jomier has much to catch up with on the hard disk of his Sky+ Box.
Jomier spends the morning working on the spreadsheet ‘Venice’. It is a Saturday and, since Jomier has always spent Saturday mornings doing his accounts, he can easily discount the inner voice that accuses him of undue haste in calculating Judith’s share of the cost. So too the suggestion that he should forget about her offer to pay for herself. Jomier knows that he has more money than Judith and could afford to pay for the whole thing; he senses that this would be the chivalrous and romantic thing to do. But Judith has said that she wants to pay her share. She is a woman of today. She would surely feel insulted if Jomier were to ignore her offer.
The inner voice persists. Perhaps Judith, on this matter, is not as principled as he supposes. He ignores it. He downloads the spreadsheet from his Palm Treo onto his computer. Most of the calculations are simple: he divides them by two. The costs of the hotels are more complicated. The bill from the Hotel Palazzo Solaia incorporates the €670 per person for the Christmas package which included two nights in a deluxe room, complimentary buffet breakfast, a bottle of prosecco, home-made sweets and biscuits on arrival, a Christmas surprise (what was it? Jomier cannot remember), and the Christmas lunch in the hotel restaurant with the excellent wine. There are also the four extra nights @ €250 (discounted from €285) making the basic cost of the stay at the Hotel Palazzo Solaia €2,340. In fact it had been €3203.18 because of breakfast (not included on the extra nights), some room service, laundry, drinks from the minibar and at the bar, the Herald Tribune, calls by Judith to her children on Christmas Day.
Jomier has promised to pay for the upgrade but what element of the Palazzo Solaia bill constitutes the upgrade? And what expenses would they have incurred if they had they remained at the Albergo Manzoni? If they had stayed at the Albergo for six more nights, Judith’s share of the cost would have been a mere €240 (6 × €80 = €480 divided by two). This makes the four extra nights at the Palazzo Solaia easy to calculate: Jomier pays €760, Judith €240. But what element of the two-night inclusive Christmas package constituted the cost of the room, and what the inclusive breakfasts, Christmas lunch, home-made sweets, Prosecco and so on? Jomier proceeds on the basis that the cost of the room is the same as the ‘special rate’ they paid for the rest of their stay: thus he pays €420 and Judith €80 for the room. This leaves the balance of the special offer (€840) to be divided by two. In retrospect, €420 per person seems a great deal of money to have paid for the welcome pack of prosecco, home-made sweets, etc., buffet breakfasts and a seven-course Christmas dinner; but the wine was excellent and the food superb. Nothing is for nothing. They had a wonderful week in a comfortable hotel in the centre of the most beautiful city in the world.
But this reassurance that the money was well spent does not solve the vexing question of apportionment of expenses on the spreadsheet. Judith could argue, says Jomier’s patient but all the same tiresome inner voice, that if they had remained at the Albergo Manzoni and eaten a simpler Christmas dinner in a local restaurant, it would have been cheaper than the seven-course lunch at the Palazzo Solaia. And they could have found breakfast for less than €40.
The provisional figures for the stay at the Hotel Palazzo Solaia now stand at €2,111.59 for Jomier and €1,091.59 for Judith. Working on the premise that Christmas dinner in a good restaurant would have cost €120 a head at the very least, Jomier knocks €300 off the €420, Judith’s share of the bundled Christmas dinner, welcome pack, etc., but divides the €863.18 for miscellaneous extras by two. This he considers generous because, apart from the Herald Tribune and a couple of Camparis at the bar of the hotel, the extra costs had been incurred by Judith – a massage, telephone calls to her children (he had called Henry and Louisa on his mobile: she had not arranged ‘global roaming’ for hers), laundry (surely she could have taken her dirty knickers back to London) and bottle after bottle of San Pellegrino from the minibar. The final tally for the Albergo Manzoni and Hotel Palazzo Solaia is €2,451.59 for Jomier and a paltry €831.59 for Judith.
Jomier now turns to the other expenses of the trip which he has downloaded from his Palm Treo. The list is long, starting with the Ryanair tickets to Treviso, the taxi to Stansted, the baggage charge, the bus from Treviso, the Albergo Manzoni, supper that first night, coffee at Florian’s, lunch at Harry’s bar, tickets to museums, scuole, the opera; rides on vaporettos; one gondola; more coffees, more lunches, more suppers. All these Jomier divides by two. Finally, with one last click, he comes up with a grand total for the whole trip – €4,243.18 Of this, Jomier’s share is €2,931.59 and Judith’s €1,311.59 or, with the euro at 1.34 to the pound, £978.80 sterling. Surely that will be within her budget. She can hardly have expected to pay less.