The End of the Affair

8

Parkis said, ‘It really was very easy, sir. There was such a crush, and Mrs Miles thought I was one of his friends from the Ministry, and Mr Miles thought I was one of her friends.’

‘Was it a good cocktail party?’ I asked, remembering again that first meeting and the sight of Sarah with the stranger.

‘Highly successful I should say, sir, but Mrs Miles seemed a bit out of sorts. A very nasty cough, she’s got.’ I heard him with pleasure: perhaps at this party there had been no alcove-kissing or touching. He laid a brown-paper parcel on my desk and said with pride, ‘I knew the way to her room from the maid. If anyone had taken notice of me, I should have been looking for the toilet, but nobody did. There it was, out on her desk; she must have worked on it that day. Of course, she may be very cautious, but my experience of diaries is they always give things away. People invent their little codes, but you soon see through them, sir. Or they leave out things, but you soon learn what they leave out.’ While he spoke I unwrapped the book and opened it. ‘It’s human nature, sir, that if you keep a diary, you want to remember things. Why keep it otherwise?’

‘Did you look at this?’ I asked.

‘I ascertained its nature, sir, and from one entry judged she wasn’t of the cautious type.’

‘It’s not this year’s,’ I said. ‘It’s two years old.’

For a moment he was dashed.

‘It will serve my purpose,’ I said.

‘It would do the trick as well, sir - if nothing’s been condoned.’

The journal was written in a big account book, the familiar bold handwriting crossed by the red and blue lines. There were not daily entries and I was able to reassure Parkis - ‘It covers several years.’

‘I suppose something must have made her take it out to read.’ Is it possible, I wondered, that some memory of me, of our affair, had crossed her mind this very day, that something may have troubled her peace? I said to Parkis, ‘I’m glad to have this, very glad. You know, I really think we can close our account now.’

‘I hope you feel satisfied, sir.’

‘Quite satisfied.’

‘And that you’ll so write to Mr Savage, sir. He gets the bad reports from clients, but the good ones never get written. The more a client’s satisfied, the more he wants to forget; to put us right out of mind. You can hardly blame them.’

‘I’ll write.’

‘And thank you, sir, for being kind to the boy. He was a bit upset, but I know how it is - it’s difficult to draw the line over ices with a boy like Lance. He gets them out of you with hardly a word said.’ I longed to read, but Parkis lingered. Perhaps he didn’t really trust me to remember him and wanted to impress more firmly on my memory those hang-dog eyes, that penurious moustache. ‘I’ve enjoyed our association, sir - if one can talk of enjoying under the sad circumstances. We don’t always work for real gentlemen even when they have titles. I had a peer of the realm once, sir, who flew into a rage when I gave him my report as though I were the guilty party myself. It’s a discouraging thing, sir. The more you succeed the more glad they are to see the last of you.’

I was very conscious of wanting to see the last of Parkis and his words woke my sense of guilt. I couldn’t hurry the man away. He said, ‘I’ve been thinking, sir, I’d like to give you a little memento - but then that’s just what you wouldn’t want to receive.’ How strange it is to be liked. It automatically awakens a certain loyalty. So I lied to Parkis, ‘I’ve always enjoyed our talks.’

‘Which started, sir, so inauspiciously. With that silly mistake.’

‘Did you ever tell your boy?’

‘Yes, sir, but only after some days, after the success with the wastepaper basket. That took away the sting.’ I looked down at the book and read: ‘So happy. M. returns tomorrow.’ I wondered for a moment who M. was. How strange too and unfamiliar to think that one had been loved, that one’s presence had once had the power to make a difference between happiness and dullness in another’s day.

‘But if you really wouldn’t resent a memento, sir…’

‘Of course I wouldn’t, Parkis.’

‘I have something here, sir, that might be of interest and use.’ He took out of his pocket an object wrapped in tissue paper and slid it shyly across the desk towards me. I unwrapped it. It was a cheap ashtray marked Hotel Metropole, Brightlingsea. ‘There’s quite a history, sir, with that. You remember the Bolton case.’

‘I can’t say I do.’

‘It made a great stir, sir, at the time. Lady Bolton, her maid and the man, sir. All discovered together. That ashtray stood beside the bed. On the lady’s side.’

‘You must have collected quite a little museum.’

‘I should have given it to Mr Savage - he took a particular interest - but I’m glad now, sir, I didn’t. I think you’ll find the inscription will evoke comment when your friends put out their cigarettes, and there’s your answer pat - the Bolton Case. They’ll all want to hear more of that.’

‘It sounds sensational.’

‘It’s all human nature, sir, isn’t it, and human love. Though I was surprised. Not having expected the third. And the room not large or fashionable. Mrs Parkis was alive then, but I didn’t like to tell her the details. She got disturbed by things.’

‘I’ll certainly treasure the memento,’ I said.

‘If ashtrays could speak, sir.’

‘Indeed, yes.’

But even Parkis with that profound thought had finished up his words. A last pressure of the hand, a little sticky (perhaps it had been in contact with Lance’s), and he was gone. He was not one of those whom one expects to see again. Then I opened Sarah’s journal. I thought first I would look for that day in June 1944 when everything ended, and after I had discovered the reason for that there were many other dates from which I could learn exactly, checking them with my diary, how it was that her love had petered out. I wanted to treat this as a document in a case - one of Parkis’s cases - should be treated, but I hadn’t that degree of calmness, for what I found when I opened the journal was not what I was expecting. Hate and suspicion and envy had driven me so far away that I read her words like a declaration of love from a stranger. I had expected plenty of evidence against her - hadn’t I so often caught her out in lies? - and now here in writing that I could believe, as I couldn’t believe her voice, was the complete answer. For it was the last couple of pages I read first, and I read them again at the end to make sure. It’s a strange thing to discover and to believe that you are loved, when you know that there is nothing in you for anybody but a parent or a God to love.