‘Vanity of vanities, all is vanity . . .’ The words of Qoheleth, son of David, King of Jerusalem, three hundred years before Christ. Jomier is familiar with the Bible: he reads the copy he won as a prize when a child to cull absurdities, monstrosities, contradictions to use in arguments with his Christian friend Theodor Tate. Qoheleth alias King Solomon asked God for wisdom rather than riches and so was given not just wisdom but also riches and a thousand wives. ‘Much wisdom, much grief,’ wrote Qoheleth. ‘The more knowledge, the more sorrow.’ And the wives? Qoheleth says nothing about love though he, King Solomon, was himself a child of love – the offspring of his father King David’s adulterous passion for Bathsheba. ‘It happened towards the evening when David had risen from his couch and was strolling on the palace roof, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; the woman was very beautiful.’ David made enquiries about this woman and was told, ‘Why, that is Bathsheba, Eliam’s daughter, the wife of Uriah the Hittite.’ Uriah the Hittite. Jomier the Huguenot. It happened towards the evening that Max was sipping ouzo at a beach bar in Crete when he saw Tilly hitch up her bikini top that had slipped while swimming in the sea. Max has no need to make enquiries about the woman with beautiful breasts. He knows that she is Tilly, daughter of Roddy Gardner, wife of Jomier the Huguenot, his friend. ‘Then David sent messengers and had her brought. She came to him, and he slept with her.’ Then Max made a telephone call and she came to him, and he slept with her.

Uriah the Hittite was sent to war with a message to Joab, David’s general: ‘Station Uriah in the thick of the fight and then fall back so that he may be struck down and die.’ And Joab did as he was told. Joab, then besieging the town, put Uriah on the front line. The men of the town sallied out; the army suffered casualties, and Uriah the Hittite was killed. And when Bathsheba heard that Uriah her husband was dead, she mourned for her husband. And when the mourning was past, David sent for her and fetched her to his house and she became his wife.

Jomier the Huguenot was not a soldier. He could not be sent to war. He was not killed. He was merely deceived. Cocu. Life left in his body. Death to his self-esteem. Better to have died a hero like Uriah.