It is the second Friday of the new year. Jomier is sitting with Judith in the Taj Mahal Indian restaurant in Wandsworth. This is the first time the two have seen one another since they parted at Liverpool Street Station. They meet and kiss and cling to one another in a prolonged embrace. Only the intoxicating smell of curry and a sense of decorum leads them to put the demands of their stomachs before that of their loins. A predictable but perfect evening lies ahead. Poppadoms. Chicken jalfrezi. Bhindi bhaji. Fried rice. Naans. Raita. One pint and one half-pint of Tiger beer. A new pack of Viagra in Jomier’s pocket. Judith’s house and bed nearby.
They catch up. Judith laughingly describes the hippy discomfort of Tim’s farmhouse in Devon, and the grungy neighbours who gave a party to celebrate the New Year. ‘They smoked joints and drank cider. I promise you! Home-made cider to toast the New Year!’ Jomier describes the equally ghastly party given by his friends the Hamilton-Russells. ‘Everyone still hung-over from Christmas. And all that forced bonhomie.’
Their stomachs satisfied but not bloated, Jomier and Judith return to her house. They kiss in the kitchen and then, while Judith goes up to her bedroom, Jomier fills a glass with water to wash down the capsule of Viagra. He goes upstairs. They make love. They lie back contented.
‘Are we going to start house-hunting?’ asks Jomier.
She raises her head and looks into his eyes ‘Do you really want to?’
‘Of course. Why not?’
‘Why not . . .’ She repeats his words as if there are a number of reasons why not. Has she been here before? With Alfredo? With Giles? Jomier grows drowsy. Judith switches off the light. They fall asleep.
Breakfast. Jomier’s breakfast during the week consists of muesli, toast, orange juice, and tea with a coffee chaser. Judith is puzzled why he needs to take caffeine in two different forms. She makes it clear that she would rather he took no caffeine at all. She thinks a lemon and ginger infusion would be enough. But she does not insist and on Thursday morning, after their midweek dates, Jomier has been able to eat his habitual breakfast in Judith’s kitchen. Weekends have proved to be trickier because Jomier, on Saturday and Sunday mornings, likes a traditional English breakfast of grilled bacon, tomato and fried, poached or scrambled egg. This has posed a problem for Judith. The smell of burning pig-flesh first thing in the morning makes her feel nauseous. Until now she has put up with it: grubs on hooks are also unsavoury but they are effective as bait when catching fish. But once the fish is caught? Jettison the bait. Jomier comes down on this second Saturday of the new year to a breakfast of muesli, toast, tea, coffee, a poached egg, grilled tomato and two slices of Waitrose’s best honey-roast ham.
Jomier is disappointed. There is something about a crisp rasher of smoked bacon which nothing can replace. Is it because it is forbidden to Muslims and Jews? A perk for Christians like keeping one’s foreskin? Or is it just the fatty, salty taste? Jomier puts a brave face on it. Love demands compromises, particularly at their age. What do things like bacon or a dribbly shower or guttural snuffling or mildly mauvaise haleine matter when one is in love? Moreover, Jomier does not want to raise peripheral issues like bacon when there are more important matters to be dealt with: settling up after the holiday in Venice and finding a house in Notting Hill.
Jomier goes up to Judith’s bathroom, shaves, takes a dribbly shower and gets dressed. He comes down wearing Hackett cords, a Boden check shirt and a heather-coloured jumper from Browns – clothes he bought before Christmas under Judith’s direction. Judith has dressed before him: jeans, shirt and Jomier’s Christmas-gift jumper which has miraculously changed colour from racing green to powder blue. It is a crisp, cold day. The sun is shining. Judith has cleared up the kitchen. The dishwasher gurgles. She smiles at Jomier. They are ready to set out.
‘Before we go,’ says Jomier, ‘shall we just deal with this?’ He has in his hand the folded sheet of white A4 paper upon which is printed the Excel spreadsheet ‘Venice’.
‘What is it?’ asks Judith.
‘The costs of our trip.’
Jomier places his actuarial masterpiece on the table.
‘It’s been quite complicated to work out because of the upgrade to the Hotel Palazzo Solaia which of course I will pay as I said I would, and the cost of the extras. If you look here –’ Jomier points to a column – ‘you’ll see that I have paid the extra cost of the upgrade less your share of the notional costs we would have incurred had we remained at the Albergo Manzoni.’
Judith does not look. She opens her handbag and takes out her chequebook. ‘How much do you want?’ Her voice is tight. Abrupt.
‘Your share is . . .’ Jomier begins, running his finger along the figures at the bottom of the spreadsheet; then, with a delayed awareness of Judith’s changed tone of voice, asks: ‘Are you sure you want to pay your share?’
‘Of course. Just tell me how much.’
‘Well, with an exchange of pounds to euros of around 1.34 . . .’
Judith sits down at the table and opens the chequebook. ‘How much?’
‘£978.80.’
Judith fumbles in the bottom of her bag for a pen. She finds one, uncaps it and holds it poised over the chequebook. ‘Say that again,’ she snaps.
‘Call it nine hundred pounds.’
She ignores his munificent offer.
‘Nine hundred and what?’
‘Really, that’s fine.’
‘Seventy-nine pounds?’
‘Seventy-eight.’
‘Sixty pence?’
‘Eighty pence.’
She fills in the cheque, tears it out, hands it to Jomier.
‘You are sure?’ says Jomier.
‘Of course I’m sure.’
‘You don’t want to look at the spreadsheet?’
Her jaw clenches. ‘Shall we go?’
They drive north over the River Thames, through the flatlands of Fulham and up the Aussie corridor of Earls Court into Kensington; then north from Kensington to Notting Hill. They are silent. Jomier senses that the settling up has put Judith into a bad mood. He cannot understand why. His own feelings have been hurt by her refusal to look at his spreadsheet. The ingenuity of the calculations and the generous presumption in her favour in the allocations will now never be appreciated: neither by Judith nor anyone else.
They find a meter on Ladbroke Square, park the Golf and walk to an estate agent on Kensington Park Road. They look through the window at the display of houses posted for sale – photographs of elegant terrace houses with ‘details’ beneath. The prices are stupendous. They are expressed in millions with a simple decimal point. £2.3 million. £3.75 million. Each decimal point is one hundred thousand pounds. No need to spell it out as ‘three million, seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling’ or even show the zeros: £3,750,000.
‘Ridiculous,’ says Judith.
‘Absurd,’ says Jomier.
Both realise that, even if they were able to sell their present houses for £1 million apiece, they would then only be able to afford the meanest of dwellings in Notting Hill. Jomier thinks of his former home on Blenheim Crescent. £3 million? £4 million? And the house Tilly shares with Max on Phillimore Gardens? £8 million? £10 million?
Perhaps they should look in North Kensington? Jomier makes the suggestion. Judith accepts it. Jomier further suggests leaving the car where it is and taking a 52 bus from outside the Pentecostal church opposite the estate agent: but Judith has seen from the corner of her eye the human stream that has erupted like volcanic lava from the Notting Hill Gate Tube station and is pouring down Pembridge Road. ‘Let’s go by the Portobello Road,’ she suggests. Jomier agrees – relieved that a note of gaiety has come back into her voice.
The lava moves slowly. It is composed largely of Continental Europeans – French, Germans, Italians – shopping for bric-a-brac in the Portobello Market, Britain’s marché aux puces. Judith too, it seems, is on the lookout for a bric-a-brac bargain. She pushes through a loden-green wall formed by the backs of German tourists to look at . . . God knows what. Jomier remains behind the wall, waiting patiently while Judith looks, fingers, questions, considers, rejects. They move on. Progress is slow. Somewhere, on one of the many stalls, is something that Judith covets – or would covet if she knew it was there. A silver sugar bowl, perhaps, or an amethyst brooch. Jomier masters his exasperation. Are they looking for houses or trinkets? He recalls the ornamented surfaces in the drawing room of Judith’s house in Wandsworth and compares them in his mind’s eye with the clear clean shelves of his house in Hammersmith. Cosy clutter versus anal minimalism. In their shared dwelling in North Kensington, which will prevail?
Judith buys a bowl. It has an oriental look. She shows it to Jomier.
‘What is it for?’
‘Don’t you like it?’
‘Yes, it’s lovely.’
‘I might give it to Tim.’
‘Wouldn’t that be coals to Newcastle?’
‘You’re right. I’ll keep it.’
‘And use it for what?’
‘Dried rose petals.’
‘They gather dust.’
She takes his arm and squeezes it. ‘You’re so philistine.’
They leave the Portobello Road and join Ladbroke Grove just before it passes under the Westway – the motorway on stilts that carries BMWs from Beaconsfield into central London. In the dark area beneath the viaduct, tramps lean against the concrete struts clutching cans of Special Brew. An aroma of urine mingles with that of diesel on the crisp morning air. They are now in North Kensington, that part of London that has been up-and-coming for the past fifty years. They walk along Oxford Gardens, Bassett Road, Chesterton Road – streets that have defied gentrification. They pause by houses flagged with estate agents’ boards. ‘We’d be no better off here than in Hammersmith,’ says Jomier.
‘Or Wandsworth,’ says Judith.