The End of the Affair

2

The next few days I had to make a great effort to be sensible. I was working for both of us now. In the morning I set myself a minimum of seven hundred and fifty words on the novel, but usually I managed to get a thousand done by eleven o’clock. It’s astonishing the effect of hope: the novel that had dragged all through the last year ran towards its end. I knew that Henry left for work around nine-thirty, and the most likely hour for her to telephone was between then and twelve-thirty. Henry had started coming home for lunch (so Parkis had told me); there was no chance of her telephoning again before three. I would revise my day’s work and do my letters until twelve-thirty, and then I was released however gloomily from expectation. Until two-thirty I could put in time at the British Museum Reading Room, making notes for the life of General Gordon. I couldn’t absorb myself in reading and note-taking as I could in writing the novel, and the thought of Sarah came between me and the missionary life in China. Why had I been invited to write this biography? I often wondered. They would have done better to have chosen an author who believed in Gordon’s God. I could appreciate the obstinate stand at Khartoum - the hatred of the safe politicians at home, but the Bible on the desk belonged to another world of thought from mine. Perhaps the publisher half hoped that my cynical treatment of Gordon’s Christianity would cause a succčs de scandale. I had no intention of pleasing him: this God was also Sarah’s God, and I was going to throw no stones at any phantom she believed she loved. I hadn’t during that period any hatred of her God, for hadn’t I in the end proved stronger?

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.’