It is autumn. Jomier takes the 94 bus to Shepherd’s Bush. The refurbished Underground station is now open – a modernist rectangle of glass and slate. Behind it the new Westfield shopping centre sits like a gigantic spaceship from E.T. or The War of the Worlds.
Jomier gets off the bus and joins the throng going into the spaceship to trade with the Mammonites from Mars. He is looking for a gift to give to Judith on her birthday. They are no longer lovers. Their affair ended amicably in the summer. Too much baggage. Too set in their ways. But they remain good friends. No more Kama Sutra sex; no more Viagra; but movies, an Indian every now and then, and dinner together on their birthdays.
Jomier goes into Tiffany’s and spends £355 on a flower necklace in 14-karat yellow gold. To Jomier it looks like something out of a Christmas cracker but he has taken advice from his daughter-in-law Sandra and she has assured him that it will be appreciated for what it is if it comes gift-wrapped in a Tiffany box.
Jomier leaves Tiffany’s and goes deeper into the marble-floored mall to Micro Anvika where he buys a Sony 16 GB memory stick. He returns home with his purchases. He puts the gift-wrapped Tiffany box on his chest of drawers ready for his date with Judith and takes the memory stick into his study. He removes the packaging, then plugs it into the USB hub.
Jomier has completed his task of transcribing his journals on to his hard disk. The past has now caught up with the present. He drags files from different folders from his hard disk C to the new removable disk F. In a couple of minutes his entire archive – his journals, the catalogue of his books, his works of art, his correspondence – are copied and stored. Geoffrey Jomier is now digitalised. With a few strokes on his keyboard he can look back on any period of his life. He does not do so. He does not want to look back. He does not want to remember Tilly returning flushed and sweaty after supposedly playing tennis on a Saturday morning with Marco and Marco’s friends. He does not want to ask himself where they had had sex. Or for how long it had gone on.
Jomier might have put these questions to Tilly but he has not. There would be anger in his tone of voice. Anger, rancour, vengeful feelings – all are forbidden under the terms of his contract with God. He lets Tilly believe that he has decided not to make a fuss about the past. To draw a line. To move on. Louisa’s paternity is their secret: his grandmother’s lover, Ferdy von Frycht, is now part of Jomier family lore. Jomier is affable towards Tilly when he sees her at their grandchildren’s birthday parties. He has been to some of Max and Tilly’s soirées – the invaluable unattached man. He does not enjoy these encounters. He is angry with Tilly and angry with God. He feels he has been cheated by both. Could he have done a better deal with the Devil? Why had no Mephistopheles come forward with a counter-offer? ‘I will cure Louisa if you sell me your soul.’ His yoke would surely have been lighter, his burden easier to carry. There would be no need to believe. No need to repent. No need to forgive. No need to love.
If Jomier does not believe, why not renege on the contract? Even if he did believe, could he not argue that God has failed to keep to his side of the bargain? He was to cure Jomier’s daughter, not Marco’s. Why not go on hating and wallow in rancour? Because, even though he now knows that Louisa is not his daughter, Jomier does not want her to die. Reason may tell him that her cure is not the result of his prayer; that the diagnosis of Frycht’s anaemia cannot have had anything whatsoever to do with the intervention of a First Cause from outside the space–time continuum. But Jomier has become superstitious. What if, as Pascal postulated, there are truths inaccessible to reason known only to the heart? Jomier does not yet believe or forgive or repent but he loves. He loves his son, his daughter-in-law and his grandchildren. He loves the daughter who is not his daughter. She is back in Argentina: Skype and emailed photos have shown that she has regained her colour and put on weight. He will go there for Christmas. Professor Adams and Professor Cochella are at one in saying that her cure is 99 per cent assured. But a relapse is not altogether impossible. There remains that 1 per cent. Jomier dares not take the risk of double-crossing God.
It is growing dark. Jomier has three hours before leaving to meet Judith at the Café Anglais. He goes down to his kitchen, makes a mug of tea, carries it through to his living room, and sits down on the sofa to watch Farewell, My Lovely which he recorded the night before.