The End of the Affair

5

I laid the newspaper flat on the table and read the same page over and over again because I wouldn’t look at the doorway. People were continually coming in, and I wouldn’t be one of those who by moving their heads up and down betray a foolish expectation. What have we all got to expect that we allow ourselves to be so lined with disappointment? There was the usual murder in the evening paper and a Parliamentary squabble about sweet-rationing, and she was now five minutes late. It was my bad luck that she caught me looking at my watch. I heard her voice say, ‘I’m sorry. I came by bus and the traffic was bad.’

I said, ‘The tube’s quicker.’

‘I know, but I didn’t want to be quick.’

She had often disconcerted me by the truth. In the days when we were in love, I would try to get her, to say more than the truth - that our affair would never end, that one day we should marry. I wouldn’t have believed her, but I would have liked to hear the words on her tongue, perhaps only to give me the satisfaction of rejecting them myself. But she never played that game of make-believe, and then suddenly, unexpectedly, she would shatter my reserve with a statement of such sweetness and amplitude… I remember once when I was miserable at her calm assumption that one day our relations would be over, hearing with incredulous happiness, I have never, never loved a man as I love you, and I never shall again.’ Well, she hadn’t known it, I thought, but she too played the same game of make-believe.

She sat down beside me and asked for a glass of lager, ‘I’ve booked a table at Rules,’ I said.

‘Can’t we stay here?’

‘It’s where we always used to go.’

‘Yes.’

Perhaps we were looking strained in our manner, because I noticed we had attracted the attention of a little man who sat on a sofa not far off. I tried to outstare him and that was easy. He had a long moustache and fawn like eyes and he looked hurriedly away: his elbow caught his glass of beer and spun it on to the floor, so that he was overcome with confusion. I was sorry then because it occurred to me that he might have recognized me from my photographs: he might even be one of my few readers. He had a small boy sitting with him, and what a cruel thing it is to humiliate a father in the presence of his son. The boy blushed scarlet when the waiter hurried forward, and his father began to apologize with unnecessary vehemence.

I said to Sarah, ‘Of course you must lunch wherever you like.’

‘You see, I’ve never been back there.’

‘Well, it was never your restaurant, was it?

‘Do you go there often?’

‘It’s convenient for me. Two or three times a week.’

She stood up abruptly and said, ‘Let’s go,’ and was suddenly taken with a fit of coughing. It seemed too big a cough for her small body: her forehead sweated with its expulsion.

‘That’s nasty.’

‘Oh, it’s nothing. I’m sorry.’

‘Taxi?’

‘I’d rather walk.’

As you go up Maiden Lane on the left-hand side there is a doorway and a grating that we passed without a word to each other. After the first dinner, when I had questioned her about Henry’s habits and she had warmed to my interest, I had kissed her there rather fumblingly on the way to the tube. I don’t know why I did it, unless perhaps that image in the mirror had come into my mind, for I had no intention of making love to her: I had no particular intention even of looking her up again. She was too beautiful to excite me with the idea of accessibility.

When we sat down, one of the old waiters said to me, ‘It’s a very long time since you’ve been here, sir,’ and I wished I hadn’t made my false claim to Sarah.

‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I lunch upstairs nowadays.’

‘And you. Ma’am, it’s a long time too…’

‘Nearly two years,’ she said with the accuracy I sometimes hated.

‘But I remember it was a big lager you used to like.’

‘You’ve got a good memory, Alfred,’ and he beamed with pleasure at the memory. She had always had the trick of getting on well with waiters.

Food interrupted our dreary small-talk, and only when we had finished the meal did she give any indication of why she was there. ‘I wanted you to lunch with me,’ she said, ‘I wanted to ask you about Henry.’

‘Henry?’ I repeated, trying to keep disappointment out of my voice.

‘I’m worried about him. How did you find him the other night? Was he strange at all?’

‘I didn’t notice anything wrong,’ I said.

‘I wanted to ask you - oh, I know you’re very busy -whether you could look him up occasionally. I think he’s lonely.’

‘With you?’

‘You know he’s never really noticed me. Not for years.’

‘Perhaps he’s begun to notice you when you aren’t there.’

‘I’m not out much,’ she said, ‘nowadays,’ and her cough conveniently broke that line of talk. By the time the fit was over, she had thought out her gambits, though it wasn’t like her to avoid the truth. ‘Are you on a new book?’ she asked. It was like a stranger speaking, the kind of stranger one meets at a cocktail party. She hadn’t committed that remark, even the first time, over the South African sherry.

‘Of course.’

‘I didn’t like the last one much.’

‘It was a struggle to write at all just then - Peace coming…’ And I might just as well have said peace going.

‘I sometimes was afraid you’d go back to that old idea -the one I hated. Some men would have done.’

‘A book takes me a year to write. It’s too hard work for a revenge.’

‘If you knew how little you had to revenge. “,’

‘Of course I’m joking. We had a good time together; we’re adults, we knew it had to end some time. Now, you see, we can meet like friends and talk about Henry.’

I paid the bill and we went out, and twenty yards down the street was the doorway and the grating. I stopped on the pavement and said, ‘I suppose you’re going to the Strand?’

‘No, Leicester Square.’

‘I’m going to the Strand.’ She stood in the doorway and the street was empty. ‘I’ll say good-bye here. It was nice seeing you.’

‘Yes.’

‘Call me up any time you are free.’

I moved towards her: I could feel the grating under my feet. ‘Sarah,’ I said. She turned her head sharply away, as though she were looking to see if anyone were coming, to see if there was time… but when she turned again the cough took her. She doubled up in the doorway and coughed and coughed. Her eyes were red with it. In her fur coat she looked like a small animal cornered.

‘I’m sorry.’

I said with bitterness, as though I had been robbed of something, ‘That needs attending to.’

‘It’s only a cough.’ She held her hand out and said, ‘Good-bye - Maurice.’ The name was like an insult. I said ‘Good-bye’, but didn’t take her hand: I walked quickly away without looking round, trying to give the appearance of being busy and relieved to be gone, and when I heard the cough begin again, I wished I had been able to whistle a tune, something jaunty, adventurous, happy, but I have no ear for music.