Jomier lives alone but does not lack contact with other human beings. He talks to someone almost every day – mostly on the telephone, and often people at the end of help lines, the human interface between huge corporations and their customers. Because Jomier is methodical and keeps precise accounts, he notices the slippage that takes place across the board – small increases in direct debits, discounts forgotten, interest unpaid, surreptitious charges, computer errors – always, Jomier notices, in favour of the provider. He spends much time listening to recorded voices, pressing buttons on his telephone, waiting to reach an operator, repeating yet again his name, his date of birth, his postcode, the first line of his address; grappling with security codes and passwords and account numbers prior to stating his case to a woman in Scotland or a man in Mumbai. The sums in themselves are not large: often the cost of the call – the numbers that begin 08 or 09 – cuts into any refund or recompense that Jomier may negotiate. Were Jomier still working as a barrister, it would not have been cost-effective for him to spend so much time talking to the utility companies and service providers. But he is now retired. His time has no pecuniary value whereas the utility companies are paying the wages of the woman in Scotland or the man in Mumbai. He is costing them more than they are recouping from him.
Jomier also talks to government agencies – in particular his local council. Jomier’s house was built on low-lying land and after heavy falls of rain the sewers back up and effluent rises through the drain in Jomier’s garden. Jomier telephones the council to complain: he is referred to Thames Water. He telephones Thames Water, who refer him back to the council. It seems that no one is responsible and nothing can be done but build a new super-sewer to run along the bottom of the Thames towards the North Sea. It will not be completed in Jomier’s lifetime. It may not solve the problem. And it may become redundant before it is built because of global warming. Jomier has found on a government website a map of the flood plains around London. If the world warms as predicted and the sea level rises, most of Hammersmith will be under water. Jomier’s house will be submerged in a lake of effluent. He will form part of the human detritus – boat people sailing for the shores of Holland Park.
There are times when Jomier meets other human beings face-to-face. There is his doctor, his dentist, the barber and the postman. Inevitably his conversations with the doctor and the dentist are brief – with the doctor because he has a ten-minute slot in which to discuss deafness, cancer scares, prostate problems, vague aches and pains; with the dentist because his mouth is wide open and he cannot speak. The postman is friendly: Jomier likes postmen in general – humble loners – and this one in particular, who signs for things when he is out. But they meet only rarely – when Jomier is in and signs for a missive himself, or if Jomier happens to be coming or going when the postman is doing his rounds. They do not have much in common. Jomier listens to him talking about sport with an expression of feigned interest. He dare not admit that he has no interest in the kicking or hitting or carrying of large, small, round or spheroid-shaped balls. Jomier is afraid that were the postman to know this, he would decide that Jomier was a patronising git and dump important letters in a Hammersmith & Fulham refuse bin.
This leaves the barber, a Turkish Cypriot. Jomier does not like his hair to grow long and so spends half an hour each month with Nazim. Before the divorce, Jomier would have his hair washed and cut at Trumper’s in Mayfair. Thirty-five pounds would buy him a shampoo, a trim and the deference due to an English gentleman by a man who knew his place. His father had his hair cut at Trumper’s, so too many of the great and the good. But after the divorce Trumper’s was beyond his reach. Geographically. Financially. At Nazim’s barber’s shop off the Askew Road his hair is cut and washed for a third of the price; and instead of deference he has half an hour of Nazim on the state of the world, which Jomier in his reduced circumstances prefers.
Before he retired Jomier met other people in the course of his working day – the clerk at his chambers, his fellow barristers, court officials, solicitors, clients. Work forces us to interact with others. The retired have to make arrangements. They form book clubs. They give dinner parties. They have to pick up the telephone or send an email to suggest lunch.
Jomier never picks up his telephone or sends an email to suggest lunch but he is telephoned and emailed by others. Jomier is in demand among the salonnières of Hammersmith, Kensington, even as far afield as Islington. This is not because Jomier is popular but because he is an unattached man. There is a shortage of unattached men among Londoners of a certain age. The women who give dinner parties are liberated but nonetheless like to have an equal number of men and women around their table. Jomier would be happy to sit with the other male guests at one end of the table but this is not allowed. He must sit between two women. Nor are the male guests permitted, as they once did in certain circles, to remain behind after dinner while the women withdraw to the withdrawing room. Now people rarely get up from table until it is time to go home. Jomier is trapped between two women for two or three hours – one on his left, the other on his right.
Jomier is perfect for the role of the extra man. Like most barristers, he has been trained to go on talking long after there is nothing more to be said. He is thus a good conversationalist. He is presentable. Even handsome. He has no ponderous belly and a good head of hair. He drinks moderately and does not have the red blotchy face of those who down a 75-centilitre bottle of wine every day. Nor does Jomier smoke. He used to smoke but kicked the habit while still married to Tilly. Tilly too had smoked before she married but quit when she was pregnant with Henry. Jomier quit some time later, not for reasons of health – his health, Tilly’s health or the health of his children – but because he no longer enjoyed inhaling smoke from a cigarette. He remembers the feeling of concentrated tranquillity that it had once induced in him but little by little it ceased to have that effect. It was the same with reading. With travel. With sex. He remembers enjoying what he no longer enjoys. When Humphrey Bogart lights up on-screen Jomier feels a pang of acute nostalgia. So too when he kisses Ingrid Bergman or Lauren Bacall.
Though Jomier is in demand among the ladies of west London it is not because of his wit or charm. Women are happy to be placed next to him because they know that the conversation will never flag, but they sense that Jomier’s sociability is insincere. He asks questions about their lives or discusses films they had both seen as if he is reciting lines from a script – a script in which he is not playing a leading role, nor even a supporting role, but is simply ‘a man making conversation’ from central casting.
Jomier has no dress sense. He wears off-the-peg suits to drinks parties; pale blue shirts; dull ties. Jomier knows what is meant by ‘smart casual’ – the linen jacket or dark blue suit; the white shirt, open at the neck. Before the break-up, Tilly had given him ties from Harrods or shirts from Gieves & Hawkes as Christmas and birthday presents. Now, the supply cut off, Jomier has reverted to the status quo ante. He buys his clothes from Marks & Spencer and wears a tie. He does not like a naked neck – in men or in women: the skin between chin and breastbone is the first to wither with age. No amount of Botox can get rid of those turkey wrinkles. But Jomier does not wear a tie to conceal these signs of ageing. He wears it, he tells himself, to stop draughts going down his chest. If this makes him seem fogeyish – so be it. Jomier is not vain. He avoids looking at himself in the mirror. He does not like what he sees. His face. This since the Fall. Since the bust-up. Since he learned about Tilly and Max. The mirror had lied. It had not shown the horns growing out of his head. The Narcissus-smile of self-admiration was the smile of a sucker. A fool.
Jomier prefers cocktail parties to dinner parties – drinks to supper. At a drinks party he is not trapped between two women but can hop from person to person like a bee going from flower to flower, taking about as much time as a bee takes to pick up the pollen before moving on. At a drinks party Jomier can talk to men as easily as to women, and in five minutes of conversation everything worth saying has been said. He does not have to eat heavy, indigestible food at ten at night, but can be home in time to eat a sandwich in front of his wide-screen Panasonic television.
There are disadvantages even to drinks parties. As often as not, a number of the other guests are men and women Jomier has known for many years. He has known them but never felt inclined to get to know them better. That ten minutes of conversation back in the 1970s was even then enough to inform Jomier that he and his interlocutor would never be friends. Year after year Jomier comes face-to-face with these same acquaintances of yesteryear. Jomier and Tilly had had them to dinner but had never been asked back. Or vice versa. ‘We must ask the Platitudes to dinner . . .’ An intention never fulfilled. Social guilt gradually fading. Then once again face-to-face with the Platitudes. You know. They know. No shared sense of humour. No sexual attraction. No social ambition – the mixes that might have gone into a mortar to bind the Jomiers and the Platitudes together. They will run into one another again. And again. And again. See you in Purgatory: but they are in Purgatory – the drinks party. Words lost in the hubbub. Gusts of foul breath. But at least this is not a dinner party. They are not in Hell.