The End of the Affair

3

10 July 1944.

I thought, I shall not be breaking my promise if accidentally on the Common I run into Maurice, and so I went out after breakfast and again after lunch and again in the early evening, walking about and never seeing him. I couldn’t stay out after six because Henry had guests for dinner. The speakers were there again as they were in June, and the man with the spots was still attacking Christianity and nobody was caring. I thought, if only he could convince me that you don’t have to keep a promise to someone you don’t believe in, that miracles don’t happen, and I went and listened to him for a while, but all the time I was looking round in case Maurice might come in sight. He talked about the date of the Gospels and how the earliest one wasn’t written within a hundred years of Christ being born. I had never realized they were as early as that, but I couldn’t see that it mattered much when the legend began. And then he told us that Christ never claimed to be God in the Gospels, but was there such a man as Christ at all and what do the Gospels matter anyway, compared with this pain of waiting around and not seeing Maurice? A woman with grey hair distributed little cards on which his name was printed, Richard Smythe, and his address in Cedar Road, and there was an invitation to anybody to come and talk to him in private. Some people refused to take the cards and walked away as though the woman was asking for a subscription and others dropped them on the grass (I saw her pick some up, for economy’s sake I suppose). It seemed very sad - the horrible spots, and talking about something nobody was interested in, and the cards dropped were like offers of friendship turned down. I put the card in my pocket and hoped he saw me do it.

Sir William Mallock came to dinner. He was one of Lloyd George’s advisers on National Insurance, very old and important. Henry of course has nothing to do with pensions any longer, but he keeps an interest in the subject and likes to recall those days. Wasn’t it widows’ pensions he was working on when Maurice and I had dinner for the first time and everything started? Henry began a long argument with Mallock full of statistics about whether if widows’ pensions were raised another shilling they would reach the same height as ten years ago. They disagreed about the cost of living, and it was a very academic argument because they both said the country couldn’t afford to raise them anyway. I had to talk to Henry’s chief in the Ministry of Home Security, and I couldn’t think of anything to talk about but the V1s, and I longed suddenly to tell everybody about coming downstairs and finding Maurice buried. I wanted to say, I was naked, of course, because I hadn’t had time to dress. Would Sir William Mallock have even turned his head, or would Henry have heard? He has a wonderful knack of hearing nothing but the subject in hand and the subject in hand at that moment was the cost-of-living index for 1943. I was naked, I wanted to say, because Maurice and I had been making love all the evening.

I looked at Henry’s chief. He was a man called Dunstan. He had a broken nose and his battered face looked like a potter’s error - a rejected-for-export face. All he would do, I thought, was smile: he wouldn’t be cross or indifferent -he would accept it as something that human beings did. I had a sense that I had only to make a move and he would reply to it. I wondered, why shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t I escape from this desert if only for half an hour? I haven’t promised anything about strangers, only about Maurice. I can’t be alone for the rest of my life with Henry, nobody admiring me, nobody excited by me, listening to Henry talking to other people, fossilizing under the drip of conversation like that bowler hat in the Cheddar Caves, 15 July 1944.

Had lunch with Dunstan at the Jardin des Gourmets. He said.., 21 July 1944.

Had drinks with Dunstan at home, while he waited for Henry. All went on to…

22 July 1944.

Had dinner with D. He came home afterwards for another drink. But it didn’t work, it didn’t work.

23 July 1944 - 30 July 1944.

D. telephoned. Said I was out. Started on tour with Henry. Civil Defence in Southern England. Conferences with Chief Wardens and Borough Engineers. Blast problems. Deep shelter problems. The problem of pretending to be alive. Henry and I sleeping side by side night after night like figures on tombs. In the new reinforced shelter at Bigwell-on-Sea the Chief Warden kissed me. Henry had gone ahead into the second chamber with the mayor and the engineer, and I stopped the Warden, touching his arm and asking him a question about the steel bunks, something stupid about why there weren’t double bunks for the married. I meant him to want to kiss me. He twisted me round against a bunk, so that the metal made a line of pain across my back and kissed me. Then he looked so astonished that I laughed and kissed him back. But nothing worked. Will it never work again? The mayor came back with Henry. He was saying, ‘At a pinch we can find room for two hundred.’ That night, when Henry was at an official dinner, I asked trunks to get me Maurice’s number. I lay on my bed, waiting for it to come through. I said to God, I’ve kept my promise for six weeks. I can’t believe in you, I can’t love you, but I’ve kept my promise. If I don’t come alive again, I’m going to be a slut, just a slut. I’m going to destroy myself quite deliberately. Every year I’ll be more used. Will you like that any better than if I break my promise? I’ll be like those women in bars who laugh too much and have three men with them, touching them without intimacy. I’m falling in pieces already.

I kept the receiver tucked in my shoulder, and the Exchange said, ‘We are ringing your number now.’ I said to God, If he answers, I’ll go back tomorrow. I knew exactly where the telephone stood beside his bed. Once I had knocked it down in my sleep, hitting out with my fist. A girl’s voice said, ‘Hello,’ and I nearly rang off. I had wanted Maurice to be happy, but had I wanted him to find happiness quite so quickly? I felt a bit sick in the stomach until logic came to my aid, and I made my brain argue with me - why shouldn’t he? You left him: you want him to be happy. I said, ‘Could I speak to Mr Bendrix?’ But everything had gone flat. Perhaps he wouldn’t even want me to break my promise now: perhaps he had found somebody who would stay with him, have meals with him, go with him to places, sleep with him night after night till it was sweet and customary, answer his telephone for him. Then the voice said, ‘Mr Bendrix isn’t here. He’s gone away for a few weeks: I’ve borrowed the flat.’

I rang off. At first I was happy, and then I was miserable again. I didn’t know where he was. We were not in touch. In the same desert, seeking the same water-holes perhaps, but out of sight, always alone. For it wouldn’t be a desert if we were together. I said to God, ‘So that’s it. I begin to believe in you, and if I believe in you I shall hate you. I have free will to break my promise, haven’t I, but I haven’t the power to gain anything from breaking it. You let me telephone, but then you close the door in my face. You let me sin, but you take away the fruits of my sin. You let me try to escape with D., but you don’t allow me to enjoy it. You make me drive love out, and then you say there’s no lust for you either. What do you expect me to do now, God? Where do I go from here?’

When I was at school I learnt about a King - one of the Henrys, the one who had Becket murdered - and he swore when he saw his birthplace burnt by his enemies that because God had done that to him, ‘because You have robbed me of the town I love most, the place where I was born and bred, I will rob You of that which You love most in me.’ Odd how I’ve remembered that prayer after sixteen years. A King swore it on his horse seven hundred years ago, and I pray it now, in a hotel room at Bigwell-on-Sea - Bigwell Regis. I’m going to rob you, God, of what you love most in me. I’ve never known the Lord’s Prayer by heart, but I remember that one - is it a prayer? Of what you love most in me.

What do you love most? If I believed in you, I suppose I’d believe in the immortal soul, but is that what you love? Can you really see it there under the skin? Even a God can’t love something that doesn’t exist, he can’t love something he cannot see. When he looks at me, does he see something I can’t see? It must be lovely if he is able to love it. That’s asking me to believe too much, that there’s anything lovely in me. I want men to admire me, but that’s a trick you learn at school - a movement of the eyes, a tone of voice, a touch of the hand on the shoulder or the head. If they think you admire them, they will admire you because of your good taste, and when they admire you, you have an illusion for a moment that there’s something to admire. All my life I’ve tried to live in that illusion - a soothing drug that allows me to forget that I’m a bitch and a fake. But what are you supposed to love then in the bitch and the fake? Where do you find that immortal soul they talked about? Where do you see this lovely thing in me - in me, of all people? I can understand you can find it in Henry - my Henry, I mean. He’s gentle and good and patient. You can find it in Maurice who thinks he hates, and loves, loves all the time. Even his enemies. But in this bitch and fake where do you find anything to love?

Tell me that, God, and I’ll set about robbing you of it for ever.

How did the King keep his promise? I wish I could remember. I can remember nothing more about him than that he let the monks scourge him over the tomb of Becket. That doesn’t sound like the answer. It must have happened before.

Henry’s away again tonight. If I go down into the bar and pick a man up and take him on to the beach and lie with him among the sand-dunes, won’t I be robbing you of what you love most? But it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work any longer. I can’t hurt you if I don’t get any pleasure from it. I might as well stick pins in myself like those people in the desert. The desert, I want to do something that I enjoy and that will hurt you. Otherwise what is it but mortification and that’s like an expression of belief. And believe me, God, I don’t believe in you yet, I don’t believe in you yet 4 12 September 1944.

Lunched at Peter Jones and bought new lamp for Henry’s study. A prim lunch surrounded by other women. Not a man anywhere. It was like being part of a regiment. Almost a sense of peace. Afterwards went to a news cinema in Piccadilly and saw ruins in Normandy and the arrival of an American politician. Nothing to do till seven when Henry would be back. Had a couple of drinks by myself. It was a mistake. Have I got to give up drinking too? If I eliminate everything, how will I exist? I was somebody who loved Maurice and went with men and enjoyed my drinks. What happens if you drop all the things that make you I? Henry came in. I could tell he was very pleased about something: he obviously wanted me to ask him what it was, but I wouldn’t. So in the end he had to tell me. ‘They are recommending me for an O. B. E.’

‘What’s that?’ I asked.

He was rather dashed that I didn’t know. He explained that the next stage in a year or two when he was head of his department would be a C. B. E., and after that,’ he said, ‘when I retire they’ll probably give me a K. B. E.’

‘It’s confusing,’ I said, ‘couldn’t you stick to the same letters?’

‘Wouldn’t you like to be Lady Miles?’ Henry said, and I thought angrily, all I want in the world is to be Mrs Bendrix and I have given up that hope for ever. Lady Miles - who doesn’t have a lover and doesn’t drink but talks to Sir William Mallock about pensions. Where would I be all that time?

Last night I looked at Henry when he was asleep. So long as I was what the law considers the guilty party, I could watch him with affection, as though he were a child who needed my protection. Now I was what they called innocent, I was maddened continually by him. He had a secretary who sometimes rang him up at home. She would say, ‘Oh, Mrs Miles, is H. M. in?’ All the secretaries used those unbearable initials, not intimate but companionable. H. M. I thought, looking at him asleep, H. M. His Majesty and His Majesty’s consort. Sometimes in his sleep he smiled, a moderate brief civil servant smile, as much as to say, yes, very amusing, but now we’d better get on with the job, hadn’t we?

I said to him once, ‘Have you ever had an affair with a secretary?’

‘Affair?’

‘Love affair.’

‘No, of course not. What makes you think such a thing?’

‘I don’t know. I just wondered.’

‘I’ve never loved any other woman,’ he said and began to read the evening paper. I couldn’t help wondering, is my husband so unattractive that no woman has ever wanted him? Except me, of course. I must have wanted him, in a way, once, but I’ve forgotten why, and I was too young to know what I was choosing. It’s so unfair. While I loved Maurice, I loved Henry, and now I’m what they call good, I don’t love anyone at all. And You least of all.