Jomier goes to bed at four in the morning. He sleeps through the alarm set for eight and is woken by the telephone at ten past nine. It is Jimmy. Louisa is being moved to Chad’s later that morning. Perhaps Jomier would be able to visit her that afternoon?
Jomier gets dressed and goes down to the kitchen. He is hungry after eating so little the night before. He eats his usual weekday breakfast of orange juice, coffee, muesli, wholemeal toast. He reads The Times. He has recovered his appetite. He has recovered his interest in the outside world. He ascribes this to the deal he struck in the early hours of the morning. He now sees that there is some point to prayer. Whether or not one believes in a God, let alone a God who intervenes in the lives of human beings, praying is a way of doing something when nothing else can be done. He is also pleased that, should Louisa ask whether he has prayed for her as she requested, he will be able to tell the truth. Not only has he prayed to God, he has negotiated with him – like Abraham at Sodom, or a character in a novel by G. K. Chesterton or Graham Greene.
Step one in the quid pro quo. He goes to his study and calls Judith. He would prefer to send her an email but feels that voice-to-voice contact is necessary if forgiveness is to be 100 per cent. Jesus of Nazareth makes it quite clear: formulaic forgiveness is not enough. There can be no conditions or caveats or restrictive clauses. Must I forgive my brother seven times? asks Peter. No, replies Jesus. Seventy-seven times. And it has to be ‘from the heart’.
Judith answers with a little cry – of joy or surprise or relief. Jomier apologises for not ringing before. He tells Judith that Louisa is gravely ill and possibly dying, but not from Creutzfeldt–Jakob’s disease. She has a rare blood disorder that has flummoxed the doctors in Buenos Aires. She is now in the hands of a Professor Adams at Chad’s.
Jomier can hear sniffing: Judith is sobbing. ‘I am so sorry for what I said. I really . . . it just came out.’
‘Please don’t feel sorry. I said some beastly things about Ophelia. We were both on edge because of our daughters.’ Jomier is delighted with the sincerity and warmth in his tone of voice.
‘Do you still love me?’ she sniffs.
‘Of course I still love you,’ he says. No need to pause to ask himself whether Jomier means what he says: loving everyone is part of the deal.
Jomier’s satnav guides him across London to Chad’s Hospital. It takes twenty minutes to find somewhere to park. He goes to reception and is directed to the private wing. A melancholy black woman with a bottom larger than Ruth’s cleans the linoleum floors of the corridors with slow token swipes of her mop. Louisa has a room in a gloomy 1960s block. Jimmy is with her. She looks better.
‘You look better,’ says Jomier as he kisses her.
‘I’ve had a blood transfusion,’ says Louisa. ‘It won’t last.’
Jimmy offers Jomier the one chair and sits on the end of Louisa’s bed.
‘I brought you some chocolate,’ says Jomier. He hands her a small box of Bendicks Bittermints.
Louisa takes it and places it on her bedside table next to a flamboyant bunch of lilies and cellophane sackful of Maison Blanc chocolate truffles. ‘I love Bittermints,’ she says to Jomier and then, following his glance to the bunch of flowers: ‘They’re from Mum. A little over the top, don’t you think?’
Jimmy takes advantage of Jomier’s presence to run some errands. ‘Poor Jimmy,’ says Louisa. ‘He’s always been so protective. He finds it hard now that there’s nothing more he can do.’
‘But pray.’
Louisa laughs. ‘Did you say pay or pray?’
‘Pray.’
‘He subcontracts that to his mother and the children. They’ve been praying novenas to Our Lady of Guadalupe for months.’
‘And it hasn’t worked?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Perhaps Doña Adelina’s prayers aren’t sincere.’
‘I think they are. She’s very family-minded.’
‘Well, I prayed too,’ says Jomier.
‘Thanks. It can’t have been easy.’
‘Because I don’t believe?’
‘Do you?’
‘No. But you can pray hypothetically. What if, outside the space–time continuum, there is a God? What if he hears prayers? What if he sometimes answers prayers?’
‘I’m sure a hypothetical prayer is as good as any other,’ says Louisa. ‘Perhaps better.’
‘I was reading the New Testament last night. Jesus says that his yoke is easy and his burden light, but then makes demands that are hard.’
‘What kind of demands?’
‘Repentance. Faith. Love. Forgiveness. It’s hard simply to decide to feel sorry and believe and love and forgive. Either you do or you don’t.’
Louisa frowns. ‘Surely everyone believes in something, and loves someone and feels sorry for something.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Can’t one build on that? If you know in your heart that some things are right and others wrong, that means you believe in good and evil. And if you love someone other than yourself . . .’
Jomier takes her hand. ‘I love someone much more than myself.’
‘There, you see. And you love Henry and Sam and Ned, and my children, and perhaps Sandra up to a point, and your new friend Judith . . .’
‘Up to a point.’
‘But it means that you know what it is to love.’
‘But loving you and Henry and Sam and Ned is instinctive. I love you because you are my children and grandchildren.’
‘Would you stop loving us if we weren’t?’
‘I can’t imagine not loving you.’
‘There you are.’
She lifts herself up in bed, and leans back on the pillows. ‘If you go step by step . . . If you see another little boy like Ned and think how much he is loved by his grandfather, and the little boy’s mother, and think how much she is loved by her son and her husband; and there’s the young man straightening his tie before going to an interview for his first job and it might be Henry fifteen years ago, or the girl at Heathrow setting off on her gap-year journey round the world which might have been me, then you begin to see how you can love others simply because they are fellow human beings, who love and suffer and get things wrong . . .’ Her voice tails off.
‘Like me and your mother?’
‘And others. You aren’t the only ones.’
Both are silent. Then Louisa says: ‘I asked Father Xavier . . .’
‘Who is Father Xavier?’
‘He’s a Jesuit in BA. A nice man, a little pleased with himself, but nice all the same . . . He was talking about the different kinds of love in ancient Greece – eros, the sexual love of a man and a woman; agape, a general love of humanity; and philia, the love of friends; and how within a marriage eros should develop into agape and if possible philia. So I asked him whether the Greeks had a word for love of parents and children and he said there was but it was used less which seems strange because when I think about dying I realise that I’ve been so lucky to have loved and been loved by you and Mum and Henry and all the children, and of course Jimmy; and though I would like to have lived longer, to see the children grow up, I really can’t complain because the life I’ve had has been so happy.’
Louisa seems tired. Jomier prepares to leave.
‘Come tomorrow, will you?’
‘Of course.’
‘Mum tends to come in the morning.’
‘I’ll come in the afternoon.’
‘Jimmy’s gone to stay with Mum. I hope you don’t mind.’
‘Of course I don’t mind.’
‘I couldn’t bear to think of him alone in a hotel, and Mum’s got plenty of room.’
Jomier leaves St Chad’s troubled by scruples. Did he say he would come in the afternoon because he wished to avoid seeing Tilly? Or was it simply to make it more agreeable for Louisa by spreading the visits out over the day? Louisa assumes that he remains on bad terms with her mother. She is afraid that he might mind that Jimmy is staying with Tilly and Max in Phillimore Gardens. She tells him how to avoid running into her at Chad’s. This assumption would have been correct the day before but now Jomier is constrained by the terms of his agreement with He Who Might Be. He must forgive.
When he gets home he telephones Tilly. She says: ‘It’s so awful.’ Then: ‘What do you think?’
‘I think we should all meet.’
‘Of course.’
‘Can I drop by for a drink?’
‘When?’
‘This evening.’
‘Of course, though Max –’
‘Max should be there too. And Henry. I’ll call him.’
Henry will visit Louisa in Chad’s on his way home from work and then come on to his mother’s house in Phillimore Gardens. Jomier drives there from Hammersmith. He climbs the steps and rings the doorbell. It is the first time he has been to the home of his ex-wife. She opens the door. Tilly’s face is drawn. Her expression is puzzled. Jomier enters the hall tiled with buffed Carrara marble.
‘Come in,’ says Tilly. She leads him into the drawing room – beige Wilton carpet, huge Conran sofas, bright halogen downlights, heavy marble mantel, spotlit modern paintings on the wall. ‘Max isn’t back yet.’ She turns with a ready-to-be-annoyed-if-you-think-it’s-all-vulgar look on her face.
‘Does he have a view about Louisa?’ asks Jomier.
‘He says Adams is the best man in his field.’
‘He doesn’t think she should go to America?’
‘He hasn’t said so.’
‘And you?’
‘I don’t know. I think Jimmy’s looked into it all.’
They sit on the sofas. Tilly is dressed in a dark blue skirt and pale grey cashmere cardigan that clings to her breasts – the cantaloupes that were once Jomier’s and are now available to be fondled by Max. Her elegant legs are crossed: only the lines on her face and the loose skin on her neck mark the passing of time. She looks younger than her dying daughter.
‘Would you like some wine?’ Tilly stands and goes to a sideboard where an open bottle stands in a plastic cooler – placed there by a hidden Filipina hand. ‘Or something else? There’s vodka or rum. You used to like rum and tonic.’
‘A glass of wine would be fine.’
Tilly fills a glass and brings it to Jomier together with a small bowl filled with parsnip crisps. She seems uneasy. Uncomfortable. Even afraid. Why is he there? What is he up to? Jomier says: ‘It would be good for Louisa if she felt that we are now friends.’
Tilly shrugs as if to say ‘you’re the one who’s been unfriendly’ but out comes: ‘Of course.’
‘And it will be much easier for Jimmy, particularly if he’s staying with you.’
‘I agree.’
Tilly has fetched herself a glass of wine. She returns to her place on the second of the plush Conran sofas. She looks across at Jomier. ‘Do you think she’s dying?’
‘If they can make the diagnosis,’ says Jomier, ‘I’m sure they’ll come up with a cure.’
Tilly sniffs. ‘It’s all so awful. I can’t bear to look at her. She’s wasting away.’
Jomier wants to move to the other sofa and comfort Tilly. He cannot manage it. He cannot bring himself to take hold of her body. Will he have to? Is that what it means to forgive from the heart? ‘We mustn’t despair,’ he says.
‘No.’ She sobs. ‘But it’s hard to feel optimistic. I mean, well . . . Max says that what with the Internet and email most medical knowledge is pretty universal so it’s unlikely that Adams will come up with something that wasn’t thought of by the Argentinian doctors.’
‘It’s not impossible,’ says Jomier. ‘We mustn’t give up hope.’
Enter Max. Jomier has hardly seen him since the divorce. His hair has receded and what is left is mostly grey. He is not fat but his body has thickened – his neck, his jowls, his girth. Jomier makes as if to stand.
‘Don’t get up,’ says Max. ‘Have you got a drink?’
Jomier holds up his glass of wine. Max crosses to fill a glass for himself. A moment later the doorbell rings. Tilly goes from the drawing room into the hall. Jomier is alone in the room with Max. He feels nothing. No anger. No resentment. All passion is spent.
‘I am so sorry about Louisa,’ says Max.
‘It’s good of you to have Jimmy,’ says Jomier.
Max shrugs. ‘It’s the least we could do.’
Tilly comes back into the drawing room with Henry and Jimmy. Henry waves to Max, then comes to embrace his father. He has come with Jimmy from the hospital. ‘I really hope they know what they are doing. Chad’s is such a grim place.’ They are given drinks. They discuss the case. Occasionally Jomier intercepts uncertain glances aimed at him. What is going on? Why is he here? What’s with this new friendliness with Tilly and Max? Time passes. There is conversational slippage: Max, Henry and Jimmy talk about the credit crunch. Henry says with a forced bravado that in a month he may be out of a job. Max talks to Jimmy about soya futures. Jomier is left with Tilly but can think of nothing to say. He gets to his feet. ‘Let’s meet at the hospital tomorrow,’ he says to Tilly and Jimmy, ‘and try to see Professor Adams.’ They both agree.