Remorse. ‘The higher part of one’s body bends down to observe and judge the lower, and finds it monstrous. The sense of horror it experiences is what we call remorse.’ Italo Svevo. The morning after his date with Annie, Jomier feels remorse. He is fed up with the lower part of his body – the stomach, the bowels, the balls. He blames his balls for leading him to Garnier’s restaurant, his stomach for his greedy gobbling, and his bowels for their importunate and untimely demands. His stomach ignores his reproaches. It is a Saturday. He makes himself bacon and egg.

Later in the morning, Jomier begins to wonder whether the lower part of his body had not done him a favour. Does he really wish, now, that he had woken in a strange bed with a woman he hardly knows? Does he really want to shave with the razor she uses on her armpits in a bathroom strewn with drying knickers? Does he want to be preoccupied with post-coital post-mortems or encumbered with the demands that a ‘relationship’ inevitably entails? Would he not now be setting off with Annie to some art show in Dulwich or on a bike ride along the towpath of the Thames? How much better to spend the day alone – a trip to Waitrose, lunch listening to Any Questions, tinkering in his garden, preparing a supper of calves’ liver and sautéed potatoes, reading the New Yorker while he eats it and then retiring with a cup of filter decaf to watch a familiar film on TV?

Jomier calls Annie. He apologises for the fiasco of the night before. He suggests they meet at the Anglesea Arms for Sunday lunch. She can’t make it. Jomier is relieved. She may be hung-over and suffering, like Jomier, a measure of confused remorse. Or has she sensed the lack of enthusiasm in his tone of voice? Jomier says he will call her the following week. He does call her. They meet in her lunch hour at the Trattoria Umberto. Jomier tells that he is not really up to an affair. ‘I’m afraid age does matter,’ he says.

‘Sex isn’t everything,’ she says. Without much conviction. Both reassure one another that they will remain the best of friends.

Chapter 14

Chapter 14