The End of the Affair (14 page)

I followed him all the way, keeping him in sight. So many times we had been together to the Pontefract Arms. I knew which bar he’d go to, what he’d order. Should I go in after him, I wondered, and order mine and see him turn and everything would start over again? The mornings would be full of hope because I could telephone him as soon as Henry left, and there would be evenings to look forward to when Henry warned me that he would be home late. And perhaps now I would leave Henry. I’d done my best. I had no money to bring Maurice and his books brought in little more than enough to keep himself, but on typing alone, with me to help, we should save fifty pounds a year. I don’t fear poverty. Sometimes it’s easier to cut your coat to fit the cloth than lie on the bed you’ve made.

I stood at the door and watched him go up to the bar. If he turns round and sees me, I told God, I’ll go in, but he didn’t turn round. I began to walk home, but I couldn’t keep him out of my mind. For nearly two years we had been strangers. I hadn’t known what he was doing at any particular hour of the day, but now he was a stranger no longer because I knew as in the old days where he was. He would have one more beer and then he would go back to the familiar room to write. The habits of his day were still the same and I loved them as one loves an old coat. I felt protected by his habits. I never want strangeness.

And I thought, how happy I can make him and how easily. I longed again to see him laugh with happiness. Henry was out. He had had a lunch engagement after the office, and he had telephoned to say that he wouldn’t be in till seven. I would wait till half past six and then I would telephone Maurice. I would say, I am coming for tonight and all the other nights. I’m tired of being without you. I would pack the large blue suitcase and the small brown one. I would take enough clothes for a month’s holiday. Henry was civilized and by the end of a month the legal aspects would have been settled, the immediate bitterness would be over, and anything else I needed from the house could be fetched at leisure. There wouldn’t be much bitterness: it wasn’t as though we were still lovers. Marriage had become friendship, and the friendship after a little could go on the same as before.

Suddenly I felt free and happy. I’m not going to worry about you any more, I said to God as I walked across the Common, whether you exist or whether you don’t exist, whether you gave Maurice a second chance or whether I imagined everything. Perhaps this is the second chance I asked for him. I’m going to make him happy, that’s my second vow, God, and stop me if you can, stop me if you can.

I went upstairs to my room and I began to write to Henry. Darling Henry, I wrote, but that sounded hypocritical. Dearest was a lie, and so it had to be like an acquaintance, ‘Dear Henry.’ So, ‘Dear Henry,’ I wrote, ‘I’m afraid this will be rather a shock to you, but for the last five years I’ve been in love with Maurice Bendrix. For two years nearly we haven’t seen each other or written but it doesn’t work. I can’t live happily without him, so I’ve gone away. I know I haven’t been much of a wife for a long time, and I haven’t been a mistress at all since June 1944, so everybody’s the worse off air round. I thought once I could just have this love affair and it would peter slowly and contentedly out, but it hasn’t worked that way. I love Maurice more than I did in 1939. I’ve been childish, I suppose, but now I realize that sooner or later one has to choose or one makes a mess in all directions. Good-bye. God bless you.’ I crossed out ‘God bless you’ very deeply so that it couldn’t be read. It sounded smug, and anyway Henry doesn’t believe in God. Then I wanted to put Love, but the word sounded unsuitable although I knew it was true. I do love Henry in my shabby way.

I put the letter in an envelope and marked it Very Personal. I thought that would warn Henry not to open it in anybody’s presence - for he might bring home a friend, and I didn’t want his pride hurt. I pulled out the suitcase and began to pack and then I suddenly thought, where did I put the letter? I found it at once, but then I thought, suppose in my hurry I forget to put it in the hall and Henry waits and waits for me to come home. So I carried it downstairs to put it in the hall. My packing was nearly done - only an evening dress to fold, and Henry wasn’t due for another half an hour.

I had just put the letter on the hall table on top of the afternoon’s post when I heard a key in the door. I snatched it up again, I don’t know why, and then Henry came in. He looked ill and harassed. He said, ‘Oh, you’re here?’ and walked straight by me and into his study. I waited a moment and then I followed. I thought, I’ll have to give him the letter now: it’s going to need more courage. When I opened the door I saw him sitting in his chair by the fire he hadn’t bothered to light, and he was crying.

‘What is it, Henry?’ I asked him. He said, ‘Nothing I’ve got a bad headache, that’s all.’

I lit the fire for him. I said, ‘I’ll get you some Veganin.’

‘Don’t bother,’ he said. ‘It’s better already.’

‘What sort of day have you had?’

‘Oh, much the same as usual. A bit tiresome.’

‘Who was your lunch date?’

‘Bendrix.’

‘Bendrix?’ I said.

‘Why not Bendrix? He gave me lunch at his club. A horrible lunch.’

I came behind him and put my hand on his forehead. It was an odd thing to be doing just before leaving him for ever. He used to do that to me when we were first married and I had terrible nervous headaches because nothing was going right. I forgot for a moment that I would only pretend to be cured that way. He put up his own hand and pressed mine harder against his forehead. ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘Do you know that?’

‘Yes,’ I said. I could have hated him for saying it: it was like a claim. If you really loved me, I thought, you’d behave like any other injured husband. You’d get angry and your anger would set me free.

‘I can’t do without you,’ he said. Oh yes, you can, I wanted to protest. It will be inconvenient, but you can. You changed your newspaper once and you soon got used to it. These are words, conventional words of a conventional husband, and they don’t mean anything at all: then I looked up at his face in the mirror and he was crying still.

‘Henry,’ I said, ‘what’s wrong?’

‘Nothing. I told you.’

‘I don’t believe you. Has something happened at the office?’

He said with unfamiliar bitterness, ‘What could happen there?’

‘Did Bendrix upset you in some way?’

‘Of course not. How could he?’

I wanted to take away his hand, but he held it there. I was afraid of what he’d say next: of the unbearable burdens he was laying on my conscience. Maurice would be home by now: if Henry hadn’t come in, I would have been with him in five minutes. I would have seen happiness instead of misery. If you don’t see misery you don’t believe in it. You can give anyone pain from a distance. Henry said, ‘My dear, I haven’t been much of a husband.’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I said.

‘I’m dull for you. My friends are dull. We no longer -you know - do anything together.’

‘It has to stop sometime,’ I said, ‘in any marriage. We are good friends.’ That was to be my escape line. When he agreed I would give him the letter, I would tell him what I was going to do, I would walk out of the house. But he missed his cue, and I’m still here, and the door has closed again against Maurice. Only I can’t put the blame on God this time. I closed the door myself. Henry said, ‘I can never think of you as a friend. You can do without a friend,’ and he looked back at me from the mirror and he said, ‘Don’t leave me, Sarah. Stick it a few more years. I’ll try…’ but he couldn’t think himself what he’d try. Oh, it would have been better for both of us if I’d left him years ago, but I can’t hit him when he’s there and now he’ll always be there because I’ve seen what his misery looks like.

I said, ‘I won’t leave you. I promise.’ Another promise to keep, and when I had made it I couldn’t bear to be with him any more. He’d won and Maurice had lost, and I hated him for his victory. Would I have hated Maurice for his? I went upstairs and tore up the letter so small nobody could put it together again, and I kicked the suitcase under the bed because I was too tired to start unpacking, and I started writing this down. Maurice’s pain goes into his writing: you can hear the nerves twitch through his sentences. Well, if pain can make a writer, I’m learning, Maurice, too. I wish I could talk to you just once. I can’t talk to Henry. I can’t talk to anyone. Dear God, let me talk.

Yesterday I bought a crucifix, a cheap ugly one because I had to do it quickly. I blushed when I asked for it. Somebody might have seen me in the shop. They ought to have opaque glass in their doors like rubber-goods shops. When I lock the door of my room, I can take it out from the bottom of my jewel-case. I wish I knew a prayer that wasn’t me, me, me. Help me. Let me be happier. Let me die soon. Me, me, me.

Let me think of those awful spots on Richard’s cheek. Let me see Henry’s face with the tears falling. Let me forget me. Dear God, I’ve tried to love and I’ve made such a hash of it. If I could love you, I’d know how to love them. I believe the legend. I believe you were born. I believe you died for us. I believe you are God. Teach me to love. I don’t mind my pain. It’s their pain I can’t stand. Let my pain go on and on, but stop theirs. Dear God, if only you could come down from your Cross for a while and let me get up there instead. If I could suffer like you, I could heal like you.

4 February 1946.

Henry took a day off work. I don’t know why. He gave me lunch and we went to the National Gallery and we had an early dinner and went to the theatre. He was like a parent coming down to the school and taking the child out. But he’s the child.

5 February 1946.

Henry’s planning a holiday abroad for us in the spring. He can’t make up his mind between the chateaux of the Loire or Germany where he could make a report on the morale of the Germans under bombing. I never want the spring to come. There I go again. I want. I don’t want. If I could love You, I could love Henry. God was made man. He was Henry with his astigmatism, Richard with his spots, not only Maurice. If I could love a leper’s sores, couldn’t I love the boringness of Henry? But I’d turn from the leper if he were here, I suppose, as I shut myself away from Henry. I want the dramatic always. I imagine I’m ready for the pain of your nails, and I can’t stand twenty-four hours of maps and Michelin guides. Dear God, I’m no use. I’m still the same bitch and fake. Clear me out of the way.

6 February 1946.

Today I had a terrible scene with Richard. He was telling me of the contradictions in the Christian churches, and I was trying to listen, but I wasn’t succeeding very well, and he noticed it. He said to me suddenly, ‘What do you come here for?’ and before I could catch myself, I said, ‘To see you.’

‘I thought you came to learn,’ he said, and I told him that’s what I meant.

I knew he didn’t believe me, and I thought his pride would be hurt, and he’d be angry, but he wasn’t angry at all. He got up from his chintzy chair and came and sat with me on the chintzy sofa on the side where his cheek wouldn’t show. He said, ‘It’s meant a lot to me, seeing you every week,’ and then I knew that he was going to make love to me. He put his hand on my wrist and asked, ‘Do you like me? ‘

‘Yes, Richard, of course,’ I said, ‘or I wouldn’t be here.’

‘Will you marry me?’ he asked, and his pride made him ask it as though he were asking whether I’d take another cup of tea.

‘Henry might object,’ I said, trying to laugh it off.

‘Nothing will make you leave Henry?’ and I thought angrily, if I haven’t left him for Maurice, why the hell should I be expected to leave him for you?

‘I’m married.’

‘That doesn’t mean anything to me or you.’

‘Oh yes, it does,’ I said. I had to tell him some time.

‘I believe in God,’ I said, ‘and all the rest. You’ve taught me to. You and Maurice.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘You’ve always said the priests taught you to disbelieve. Well, it can work the other way too.’

He looked at his beautiful hands - he had those left. He said very slowly, ‘I don’t care what you believe. You can believe the whole silly bag of tricks for all I care. I love you, Sarah.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

‘I love you more than I hate all that. If I had children by you, I’d let you pervert them.’

‘You shouldn’t say that.’

‘I’m not a rich man. It’s the only bribe I can offer, giving up my faith.’

‘I’m in love with somebody else, Richard.’

‘You can’t love him much if you feel bound by that silly vow.’

I said drearily, ‘I’ve done my best to break it, but it didn’t work.’

‘Do you think me a fool?’

‘Why should I?’

‘To expect you to love a man with this.’ He turned his bad cheek towards me. ‘You believe in God,’ he said. ‘That’s easy. You are beautiful. You have no complaint, but why should I love a God who gave a child this?’

‘Dear Richard,’ I said, ‘there’s nothing so very bad…’ I shut my eyes and put my mouth against the cheek. I felt sick for a moment because I fear deformity, and he sat quiet and let me kiss him, and I thought I am kissing pain and pain belongs to You as happiness never does. I love You in Your pain. I could almost taste metal and salt in the skin, and I thought, How good You are. You might have killed us with happiness, but You let us be with You in pain.

I felt him move abruptly away and I opened my eyes. He said, ‘Good-bye.’

‘Good-bye, Richard.’

‘Don’t come back,’ he said, ‘I can’t bear your pity.’

‘It’s not pity.’

‘I’ve made a fool of myself.’

I went away. It wasn’t any good staying. I couldn’t tell him I envied him, carrying the mark of pain around with him like that, seeing You in the glass every day instead of this dull human thing we call beauty.

10 February 1946.

I have no need to write to You or talk to You, that’s how I began a letter to You a little time ago, and I was ashamed of myself and I tore it up because it seemed such a silly thing to write a letter to You who know everything before it comes into my mind. Did I ever love Maurice as much before I loved You? Or was it really You I loved all the time? Did I touch You when I touched him? Could I have touched You if I hadn’t touched him first, touched him as I never touched Henry, anybody? And he loved me and touched me as he never did any other woman. But was it me he loved, or You? For he hated in me the things You hate. He was on Your side all the time without knowing it. You willed our separation, but he willed it too. He worked for it with his anger and his jealousy, and he worked for it with his love. For he gave me so much love, and I gave him so much love that soon there wasn’t anything left, when we’d finished, but You. For either of us. I might have taken a lifetime spending a little love at a time, eking it out here and there, on this man and that. But even the first time, in the hotel near Paddington, we spent all we had. You were there, teaching us to squander, like you taught the rich man, so that one day we might have nothing left except this love of You. But You are too good to me. When I ask You for pain, You give me peace. Give it him too. Give him my peace - he needs it more.