Jomier eats his lunch listening to The World at One. Terrorist atrocities abroad. Political bickering at home. He only half concentrates on what he hears. He is thinking about Louisa. He does this reluctantly. It is painful to think of her suffering: intolerable to envisage her seriously ill. Jomier is willing to suffer himself; he is sanguine about death and would be happy to donate his kidneys, liver, heart or bone marrow to any of his children or grandchildren. He is less willing to witness the suffering of his children or grandchildren. For this reason he has not dwelt on Louisa’s recalcitrant virus. He has accepted Louisa’s assurances that some days are better than others, that she is sure to get better in the end.

He calls Buenos Aires. He speaks to Louisa.

Her voice is weak but its tone cheerful. ‘It’s such a lovely morning. I wish you were here.’

‘Are you in bed?’

‘Yes. But I’ll get up for lunch.’

‘What are your symptoms?’

‘Oh, you know . . . weakness, lassitude. I think they call it chronic fatigue syndrome.’

‘Are you in pain?’

‘A bit achy, like having flu.’

‘What do the doctors say?’

‘They tested me for brucellosis but that was negative. Also for sarcoidosis – all these illnesses one never knew existed!’ She laughs. ‘Ow, ow, it hurts my ribs when I laugh.’ She goes on laughing. ‘They injected me with something radioactive and did a scan. But that came up negative. They’re still talking about the Epstein–Barr virus and then there’s ME.’

‘We think you ought to come to London,’ says Jomier.

‘I know. Henry told me. Mum thinks so too. So does Jimmy. But there are the children . . .’

Chapter 24

Chapter 24

Jomier sits in the reading room of the London Library. He has come here, as he does every week, to escape from Maria as she cleans his house and washes his clothes. The reading room is like the libraries of the nearby London clubs – the Reform, the Travellers’, the Athenaeum. It has deep leather armchairs in which members may read or doze. The subscription is expensive; Jomier could buy the books he borrows at less cost through Amazon or AbeBooks, but that would mean knowing in advance what books he wanted to read. In the London Library he can wander through the labyrinthine stacks to look at books he does not know had been written. Novels by forgotten novelists. The memoirs of unremembered diplomats and statesmen. The reminiscences of obscure old princes and divas who once had their day in the sun – the celebrities of yesterday and the day before and the day before that. It is like walking through a cemetery with little tombstones that one can pull out of the ground to learn about the deceased.

He would confide as unto trusted friends

His secrets to his notebooks; turn there still

Not elsewhere, whether faring well or ill.

So that the old man’s whole life lay revealed