The End of the Affair (16 page)

One day as I ate my sandwiches, on to which my indelible pencil somehow always got transferred, a familiar voice greeted me from the desk opposite in a tone hushed out of respect for our fellow workers. ‘I hope all goes well now, sir, if you’ll forgive the personal intrusion.’

I looked over the back of my desk at the unforgettable moustache. ‘Very well, Parkis, thank you. Have an illicit sandwich?’

‘Oh no, sir, I couldn’t possibly… ‘

‘Come now. Imagine it’s on expenses.’ Reluctantly he took one and opening it up remarked with a kind of horror, as though he had accepted a coin and found it gold, ‘It’s real ham.’

‘My publisher sent me a tin from America.’

‘It’s too good of you, sir.’

‘I still have your ashtray, Parkis,’ I whispered, because my neighbour had looked angrily up at me.

‘It’s of sentimental value only,’ he whispered back. ‘How’s your boy?’

‘A little bilious, sir.’

‘I’m surprised to find you here. Work? You aren’t watching one of us, surely?’ I couldn’t imagine that any of the dusty inmates of the reading-room - the men who wore hats and scarves indoors for warmth, the Indian who was painfully studying the complete works of George Eliot, or the man who slept every day with his head laid beside the same pile of books - could be concerned in any drama of sexual jealousy.

‘Oh no, sir. This isn’t work. It’s my day off, and the boy’s back at school today.’

‘What are you reading?’

‘The Times Law Reports, sir. Today I’m on the Russell case. They give a kind of background to one’s work, sir. Open up vistas. They take one away from the daily petty detail. I knew one of the witnesses in this case, sir. We were in the same office once. Well, he’s gone down to history as I never shall now.’

‘Oh, you never know, Parkis.’

‘One does know, sir. That’s the discouraging thing. The Bolton case was as far as I’ll ever get. The law that forbade the evidence in divorce cases being published was a blow to men of my calling. The judge, sir, never mentions us by name, and he’s very often prejudiced against the profession.’

‘It had never struck me,’ I said with sympathy.

Even Parkis could awake a longing. I could never see him without the thought of Sarah. I went home in the tube with hope for company, and sitting at home, in dying expectation of the telephone-bell ringing, I saw my companion depart again: it wouldn’t be today. At five o’clock I dialled the number, but as soon as I heard the ringing-tone I replaced the receiver: perhaps Henry was back early and I couldn’t speak to Henry now, for I was the victor, since Sarah loved me and Sarah wanted to leave him. But a delayed victory can strain the nerves as much as a prolonged defeat.

Eight days passed before the telephone rang. It wasn’t the time of day I expected, for it was before nine o’clock in the morning, and when I said, ‘Hullo,’ it was Henry who answered.

‘Is that Bendrix?’ he asked. There was something very queer about his voice, and I wondered, has she told him? ‘Yes. Speaking.’

‘An awful thing’s happened. You ought to know. Sarah’s dead.’

How conventionally we behave at such moments. I said, ‘I’m terribly sorry, Henry.’

‘Are you doing anything tonight?’

‘No.’

‘I wish you’d come over for a drink. I don’t fancy being alone.’

I stayed the night with Henry. It was the first time I had slept in Henry’s house. They had only one guest-room and Sarah was there (she had moved into it a week before so as not to disturb Henry with her cough), so I slept on the sofa in the drawing-room where we had made love. I didn’t want to stay the night, but he begged me to.

We must have drunk a bottle and a half of whisky between us. I remember Henry saying, ‘It’s strange, Bendrix, how one can’t be jealous about the dead. She’s only been dead a few hours, and yet I wanted you with me.’

‘You hadn’t so much to be jealous about. It was all over a long time ago.’

‘I don’t need that kind of comfort now, Bendrix. It was never over with either of you. I was the lucky man. I had her all those years. Do you hate me?’

‘I don’t know, Henry. I thought I did, but I don’t know.’

We sat in his study with no light on. The gas-fire was not turned high enough to see each other’s faces, so that I could only tell when Henry wept by the tone of his voice. The Discus Thrower aimed at both of us from the darkness. ‘Tell me how it happened, Henry.’

‘You remember that night I met you on the Common? Three weeks ago, or four, was it? She got a bad cold that night. She wouldn’t do anything about it. I never even knew it had reached her chest. She never told anybody those sort of things’ - and not even her diary, I thought. There had been no word of sickness there. She hadn’t had the time to be ill in.

‘She took to her bed in the end,’ Henry said, ‘but nobody could have kept her there, and she wouldn’t have a doctor - she never believed in them. She got up and went out a week ago. God knows where or why. She said she needed exercise. I came home first and found her gone. She didn’t get in till nine, soaked through worse than the first time. She must have been walking about for hours in the rain. She was feverish all night, talking to somebody, I don’t know who: it wasn’t you or me, Bendrix. I made her see a doctor after that. He said if she’d had penicillin a week earlier, he’d have saved her.’

There wasn’t anything to do for either of us but pour out more whisky. I thought of the stranger I had paid Parkis to track down: the stranger had certainly won in the end. No, I thought, I don’t hate Henry. I hate You if you exist. I remembered what she’d said to Richard Smythe, that I had taught her to believe. I couldn’t for the life of me tell how, but to think of what I had thrown away made me hate myself too. Henry said, ‘She died at four this morning. I wasn’t there. The nurse didn’t call me in time.’

‘Where’s the nurse?’

‘She finished her job off very tidily. She had another urgent case and left before lunch.’

‘I wish I could be of use to you.’

‘You are, just sitting here. It’s been an awful day, Bendrix. You know, I’ve never had a death to deal with. I always assumed I’d die first - and Sarah would have known what to do. If she’d stayed with me that long. In a way it’s a woman’s job - like having a baby.’

‘I suppose the doctor helped.’

‘He’s awfully rushed this winter. He rang up an undertaker. I wouldn’t have known where to go. We’ve never had a trade-directory. But a doctor can’t tell me what to do with her clothes - the cupboards are full of them. Compacts, scents - one can’t just throw things away… If only she had a sister…’ He suddenly stopped because the front door opened and closed, just as it had on that other night when he had said, ‘The maid,’ and I had said, ‘It’s Sarah.’ We listened to the footsteps of the maid going upstairs. It’s extraordinary how empty a house can be with three people in it. We drank our whisky and I poured another. ‘I’ve got plenty in the house,’ Henry said. ‘Sarah found a new source…’ and stopped again. She stood at the end of every path. There wasn’t any point in trying to avoid her even for a moment. I thought, why did You have to do this to us? If she hadn’t believed in You she would be alive now, we should have been lovers still. It was sad and strange to remember that I had been dissatisfied with the situation. I would have shared her now happily with Henry.

I said, ‘And the funeral?’

‘Bendrix, I don’t know what to do. Something very puzzling happened. When she was delirious (of course, she wasn’t responsible), the nurse told me that she kept on asking for a priest. At least she kept on saying, Father, Father, and it couldn’t have been her own. She never knew him. Of course the nurse knew we weren’t Catholics. She was quite sensible. She soothed her down. But I’m worried, Bendrix.’

I thought with anger and bitterness, You might have left poor Henry alone. We have got on for years without You. Why should You suddenly start intruding into all situations like a strange relation returned from the Antipodes?

Henry said, ‘If one lives in London cremation’s the easiest thing. Until the nurse said that to me, I’d been planning to have it done at Golders Green. The undertaker rang up the crematorium. They can fit Sarah in the day after tomorrow.’

‘She was delirious,’ I said, ‘you don’t have to take what she said into account.’

‘I wondered whether I ought to ask a priest about it. She kept so many things quiet. For all I know she may have become a Catholic. She’s been so strange lately.’

‘Oh no, Henry. She didn’t believe in anything, any more than you or me.’ I wanted her burnt up, I wanted to be able to say, Resurrect that body if you can. My jealousy had not finished, like Henry’s, with her death. It was as if she were alive still, in the company of a lover she had preferred to me. How I wished I could send Parkis after her to interrupt their eternity.

‘You are quite certain?’

‘Quite certain, Henry.’ I thought, I’ve got to be careful. I mustn’t be like Richard Smythe, I mustn’t hate, for if I were really to hate I would believe, and if I were to believe, what a triumph for You and her. This is to play act, talking about revenge and jealousy: it’s just something to fill the brain with, so that I can forget the absoluteness of her death. A week ago I had only to say to her ‘Do you remember that first time together and how I hadn’t got a shilling for the meter?’, and the scene would be there for both of us. Now it was there for me only. She had lost all our memories for ever, and it was as though by dying she had robbed me of part of myself. I was losing my individuality. It was the first stage of my own death, the memories dropping off like gangrened limbs.

‘I hate all this fuss of prayers and grave-diggers, but if Sarah wanted it, I’d try to get it arranged.’

‘She chose her wedding in a registry office,’ I said, ‘she wouldn’t want her funeral to be in a church.’

‘No, I suppose that’s true, isn’t it? ‘

‘Registration and cremation,’ I said, ‘they go together,’ and in the shadow Henry lifted his head and peered towards me as though he suspected my irony.

‘Let me take it all out of your hands,’ I suggested, just as in the same room, by the same fire, I had suggested visiting Mr Savage for him.

‘It’s good of you, Bendrix.’ He drained the last of the whisky into our glasses, very carefully and evenly.

‘Midnight,’ I said, ‘you must get some sleep. If you can.’

‘The doctor left me some pills.’ But he didn’t want to be alone yet. I knew exactly how he felt, for I too after a day with Sarah would postpone for as long as I could the loneliness of my room.

‘I keep on forgetting she’s dead,’ Henry said. And I had experienced that too, all through 1945 - the bad year -forgetting when I woke that our love-affair was over, that the telephone might carry any voice except hers. She had been as dead then as she was dead now. For a month or two this year a ghost had pained me with hope, but the ghost was laid and the pain would be over soon. I would die a little more every day, but how I longed to retain it As long as one suffers one lives.

‘Go to bed, Henry.’

‘I’m afraid of dreaming about her.’

‘You won’t if you take the doctor’s pills.’

‘Would you like one, Bendrix?’

‘No.’

‘You wouldn’t, would you, stay the night? It’s filthy outside.’

‘I don’t mind the weather.’

‘You’d be doing me a great favour.’

‘Of course I’ll stay.’

‘I’ll bring down some sheets and blankets.’

‘Don’t bother, Henry,’ but he was gone. I looked at the parquet floor, and I remembered the exact timbre of her cry. On the desk where she wrote her letters was a clutter of objects, and every object I could interpret like a code. I thought. She hasn’t even thrown away that pebble. We laughed at its shape and there it still is, like a paper-weight. What would Henry make of it, and the miniature bottle of a liqueur none of us cared for, and the piece of glass polished by the sea, and the small wooden rabbit I had found in Nottingham? Should I take all these objects away with me? They would go into the wastepaper basket otherwise, when Henry at last got around to clearing up, but could I bear their company?

I was looking at them when Henry came in burdened with blankets. ‘I had forgotten to say, Bendrix, if there’s anything you want to take… I don’t think she’s left a will.’

‘It’s kind of you.’

‘I’m grateful now to anybody who loved her.’

‘I’ll take this stone if I may.’

‘She kept the oddest things. I’ve brought you a pair of my pyjamas, Bendrix.’

Henry had forgotten to bring a pillow and lying with my head on a cushion I imagined I could smell her scent. I wanted things I should never have again - there was no substitute. I couldn’t sleep. I pressed my nails into my palms as she had done with hers, so that the pain might prevent my brain working, and the pendulum of my desire swung tiringly to and fro, the desire to forget and to remember, to be dead and to keep alive a while longer. And then at last I slept. I was walking up Oxford Street and I was worried because I had to buy a present and all the shops were full of cheap jewellery, glittering under the concealed lighting. Now and then I thought I saw something beautiful and I would approach the glass, but when I saw the jewel close it would be as factitious as all the others - perhaps a hideous green bird with scarlet eyes meant to give the effect of rubies. Time was short and I hurried from shop to shop. Then out of one of the shops came Sarah and I knew that she would help me. ‘Have you bought something, Sarah?’

‘Not here,’ she said, ‘but they have some lovely little bottles further on.’

‘I haven’t time,’ I begged her, ‘help me. I’ve got to find something, for tomorrow’s the birthday.’

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Something always turns up. Don’t worry,’ and suddenly I didn’t worry. Oxford Street extended its boundaries into a great grey misty field, my feet were bare, and I was walking in the dew, alone, and stumbling in a shallow rut I woke, still hearing, ‘Don’t worry,’ like a whisper lodged in the ear, a summer sound belonging to childhood.

At breakfast time Henry was still asleep, and the maid whom Parkis had suborned brought coffee and toast in to me on a tray. She drew the curtains and the sleet had changed blindingly to snow. I was still bleary with sleep and the contentment of my dream, and I was surprised to see her eyes red with old tears. ‘Is anything the matter, Maud?’ I asked, and it was only when she put the tray down and walked furiously out that I came properly awake to the empty house and the empty world. I went up and looked in at Henry. He was still in the depths of drugged sleep, smiling like a dog, and I envied him. Then I went down and tried to eat my toast.