A year or so later, Jomier met a young Austrian at a dinner party in Pimlico. Initial probing conversation revealed that they had Marco in common. Jomier was his friend. The Austrian was his cousin. He told Jomier that Marco had died from a rare hereditary blood disease – a galloping anaemia – passed through the Frycht gene. It had been misdiagnosed in New York: it had been thought to be Aids. In Austria the disorder, Frycht’s anaemia, was better known but, by the time Marco had been flown there for treatment, it was too late. Complications had set in. Removal of his spleen. Blood transfusions. All in vain. The young Austrian sighed. Only Frychts were susceptible to the disease. It was a hereditary disability like the Habsburgs’ protruding jaw. He sighed again. Noblesse oblige. Clearly, he thought it was a risk worth running – a fair exchange for the blue blood.

‘So it wasn’t Aids after all,’ Jomier had told Tilly on their way home from Pimlico. Tilly: ‘Whoever thought it was?’

It had never occurred to Jomier until the memorial service at the Church of the Holy Redeemer in Chelsea that Marco had been a Roman Catholic. When Jomier came to think about it, with an aristocratic Austrian mother, he could hardly have been anything else. When Jomier came to think about it further, he realised that it explained a lot. A Catholic takes risks because he is confident that his sins will be forgiven. Sin for a Protestant betrays that he is not one of the elect. Jomier does not think of himself as a Protestant but he has a Huguenot gene. Or a gene that had inclined Jomier the bookbinder to be a Huguenot. Better than a hereditary disease, perhaps. Did Marco know that he was doomed? Was that why he lived so furiously? Never settled down? Like Achilles – a short and glorious life; rather than one that was long and inglorious – like Jomier’s.

Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Did Marco repent? Did he receive absolution? Has he now passed through Purgatory into a rococo paradise filled with Habsburgs, Schwarzenbergs and Frychts? Jomier knows about Heaven and Hell and Purgatory from his Catholic friend, Theodor Tate. Theo is quite unlike Marco Davenport. He goes to Mass every Sunday at the Brompton Oratory wearing twill trousers, a tweed jacket, brown brogue shoes, sometimes a waistcoat, always a tie. He is a Knight of Malta and a member of the Athenaeum: he and Jomier meet there for lunch from time to time. Jomier puts on a suit and travels up to Piccadilly. Jomier enjoys these outings. He likes London clubs such as Brooks’s, White’s, the Travellers, the Athenaeum – the grand rooms with pillars and porticos; the leather armchairs; the atmosphere of male exclusivity; the unctuous staff. Like his father, he had been a member of the Garrick. After the divorce he could no longer afford the subscription.