Trawling through his archive, Jomier compiles a list of women he has desired, women he has propositioned, and women with whom he went to bed. He calculates that around 63 per cent of the women he propositioned said yes and 37 per cent said no. But these statistics are misleading. Eighty per cent of the 63 per cent who said yes did so either before he was married or after he had divorced. After his divorce, his success rate was high but the sample was small. The second largest category consists of those women whom he fancied while he was married but did not proposition. Because he was married. Or because they were married. He would like to have slept with them, and perhaps they would liked to have slept with him, but neither wanted to jeopardise their own or the other’s marriage. And the unmarried women on the whole did not want to waste emotional resources on a man who clearly would never leave his wife.

It has also to be said – by Jomier, as he studies his list – that there is no one whom he wishes he was married to now. This is why Jomier is so exasperated by his yearning for a woman’s love. It is generic. Invariably the specific disappoints. From behind, in the street, a tall swaying figure, long fair hair – the promise of love. He walks past and looks back. A face. Dull, arrogant, stupid, common, vain. The face of a person. Jomier is not looking for another person. Persons have moods, needs, appetites, aspirations, irritating habits. Jomier’s ideal is blank beauty – eyes, nose, mouth, ears, chin that express no personality; no character; no thoughts or feelings. Such women do exist – models on billboards or actresses on the screen. Other men search for women without qualities. Jomier is not alone.

Every now and then, Jomier sees such a blank beauty in the street. She scowls. Women take great trouble to be noticed. They think about eyeshadow and shampoo and tights and skirts and tops. But they want to be noticed only by good-looking young men. Or by other women. They are angry if these fail to notice them, but they are also angry if they are noticed by older men. Men like Jomier. Hence the scowl. Pretty girls – the blank beauties – scowl because they are so often noticed by the wrong people. Jomier can read the thought behind the scowl. ‘Fuck off!’ ‘Leave me alone!’ ‘Piss off, grandad!’ Jomier accepts that his glance is, in a sense, an invasion of privacy. Professors at American colleges are told not to make eye contact with their students. Seminarians are taught ‘custody of the eyes’. Jomier is not a seminarian or an American professor, so he looks, admires and suffers to think that he will never hold that girl in his arms.