The End of the Affair (12 page)

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.

8 May 1945.

Went down to St James’s Park in the evening to watch them celebrate V. E. day. It was very quiet beside the floodlit water between the Horse Guards and the palace. Nobody shouted or sang or got drunk. People sat on the grass in twos, holding hands. I suppose they were happy because this was peace and there were no more bombs. I said to Henry, ‘I don’t like the peace.’

‘ I’m wondering where I shall be drafted from the Ministry of Home Security.’

‘Ministry of Information?’ I asked, trying to be interested.

‘No, no, I wouldn’t take it. It’s full of temporary civil servants. How would you like the Home Office?’

‘Anything, Henry, that pleased you,’ I said. Then the Royal Family came out on the balcony and the crowd sang very decorously. They weren’t leaders like Hitler, Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt: they were just a family who hadn’t done any harm to anybody. I wanted Maurice beside me. I wanted to begin again. I wanted to be one of a family too.

‘Very moving, isn’t it,’ Henry said. ‘Well, we can all sleep quiet at night now,’ as though we ever did anything else at night but just sleep quiet.

10 September 1945.

I have got to be sensible. Two days ago when I was clearing out my old bag - Henry suddenly gave me a new one as a ‘peace present’ - it must have cost him a lot of money - I found a card saying ‘Richard Smythe 16 Cedar Road 4-6 daily for private advice. Anyone welcome.’ I thought, I have been pulled about long enough. Now I’ll take a different medicine. If he can persuade me that nothing happened, that my promise doesn’t count, I’ll write to Maurice and ask him if he wants to go on again. Perhaps I’ll even leave Henry. I don’t know. But first I’ve got to be sensible. I won’t be hysterical any more. I’ll be reasonable. So I went and rang the bell in Cedar Road.

Now I’m trying to remember what happened. Miss Smythe made tea and after tea she went and left me alone with her brother. He asked me what my difficulties were. I sat on a chintz sofa and he sat on a rather hard chair with a cat on his lap. He stroked the cat and he had beautiful hands and I didn’t like them. I almost liked the spots better, but he chose to sit showing me only his good cheek.

I said, ‘Will you tell me why you are so certain there isn’t a God?’

He watched his own hands stroking the cat, and I felt sorry for him because he was proud of his hands. If his face hadn’t been marked, perhaps he would have had no pride.

‘You’ve listened to me speaking on the Common?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘I have to put things very simply there. To sting people into thinking for themselves. You’ve started thinking for yourself?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘What church have you been brought up in?’

‘None.’

‘So you aren’t a Christian?’

‘I may have been christened - it’s a social convention, isn’t it?’

‘If you haven’t any faith, why do you want my help?’

Why indeed? I couldn’t tell him about Maurice under the door and my promise. Not yet I couldn’t. And that wasn’t the whole point, for how many promises I’ve made and broken in a lifetime. Why did this promise stay, like an ugly vase a friend has given and one waits for a maid to break it, and year after year she breaks the things one values and the ugly vase remains? I had never really faced his question, and now he had to repeat it.

I said, ‘I’m not sure that I don’t believe. But I don’t want to.’

‘Tell me,’ he said and because he forgot the beauty of his own hands and turned towards me his ugly cheek, forgetting himself in the desire to help, I found myself talking - about that night and the bomb falling and the stupid vow.

‘And you really believe,’ he said, ‘that perhaps.. ‘Yes.’

‘Think of the thousands of people all over the world praying now, and their prayers aren’t answered.’

‘There were thousands of people dying in Palestine when Lazarus…’

‘We don’t believe that story, do we, you and I?’ he said with a kind of complicity.

‘Of course not, but millions of people have. They must have thought it reasonable… ‘

‘People don’t demand that a thing be reasonable if their emotions are touched. Lovers aren’t reasonable, are they?’

‘Can you explain away love too?’ I asked.

‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘The desire to possess in some, like avarice: in others the desire to surrender, to lose the sense of responsibility, the wish to be admired. Sometimes just the wish to be able to talk, to unburden yourself to someone who won’t be bored. The desire to find again a father or a mother. And of course under it all the biological motive.’