The End of the Affair (18 page)

Waterbury was waiting in a sherry-bar off Tottenham Court Road. He wore black corduroy trousers and smoked cheap cigarettes, and he had with him a girl much taller and better-looking than he was who wore the same kind of trousers and smoked the same cigarettes. She was very young and she was called Sylvia and one knew that she was on a long course of study that had only begun with Waterbury - she was at the stage of imitating her teacher. I wondered where, with those looks, those alert good-natured eyes and hair the gold of illuminations, she would end. Would she even remember Waterbury in ten years and the bar off Tottenham Court Road? I felt sorry for him. He was so proud now, so patronizing to both of us, but he was on the losing side. Why, I thought, catching her eye over my glass at a particularly fatuous comment of his about the stream of consciousness, even now I could get her from him. His articles were bound in paper, but my books were bound in cloth. She knew she could learn more from me. And yet, poor devil, he had the nerve to snub her when occasionally she made a simple human unintellectual comment. I wanted to warn him of the empty future, but instead I took another glass and said, ‘I can’t stay long. I have to go to a funeral in Golders Green.’

‘A funeral in Golders Green,’ Waterbury exclaimed. ‘How like one of your own characters. It would have to be Golders Green, wouldn’t it?’

‘I didn’t choose the spot.’

‘Life imitating art.’

‘Is it a friend?’ Sylvia asked with sympathy and Waterbury glared at her for her irrelevance. ‘Yes.’

I could see that she was speculating - man? woman? what kind of a friend? and it pleased me. For I was a human being to her and not a writer: a man whose friends died and who attended their funerals, who felt pleasure and pain, who might even need comfort, not just a skilled craftsman whose work has greater sympathy perhaps than Mr Maugham’s, though of course we cannot rank it as high as…

‘What do you think of Forster?’ Waterbury asked.

‘Forster? Oh. I’m sorry. I was just wondering how long it took to Golders Green.’

‘You ought to allow forty minutes,’ Sylvia said. ‘You have to wait for an Edgware train.’

‘Forster,’ Waterbury repeated irritably.

‘You’ll have to take a bus from the station,’ Sylvia said.

‘Really, Sylvia, Bendrix hasn’t come here to talk about how to get to Golders Green.’

‘I’m sorry, Peter, I just thought… ‘

‘Count six before thinking, Sylvia,’ Waterbury said. ‘And now can we get back to E. M. Forster?’

‘Need we?’ I asked.

‘It would be interesting as you belong to such different schools… ‘

‘Does he belong to a school? I didn’t even know that I did. Are you writing a text-book?’

Sylvia smiled and he saw the smile. I knew from that moment he would grind sharp the weapon of his trade, but it didn’t matter to me. Indifference and pride look very much alike, and he probably thought I was proud. I said, ‘I really ought to be going.’

‘But you’ve only been here five minutes. It’s really important to get this article right.’

‘It’s really important for me not to be late at Golders Green.’

‘I don’t see why.’

Sylvia said, ‘I’m going as far as Hampstead myself. Ill put you on your way.’

‘You never told me,’ Waterbury said with suspicion.

‘You know I always see my mother on Wednesdays.’

‘Today’s Tuesday.’

‘Then I needn’t go tomorrow.’

‘It’s very good of you,’ I said, ‘I’d like your company.’

‘You used the stream of consciousness in one of your books,’ Waterbury said with desperate haste. ‘Why did you abandon the method?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Why does one change a flat?’

‘Did you feel it was a failure?’

‘I feel that about all my books. Well, good-bye, Waterbury.’

‘I’ll send you a copy of the article,’ he said as though he were uttering a threat. ‘Thanks.’

‘Don’t be late, Sylvia. There’s the Bartok programme on the Third at six-thirty.’

We went together into the debris of Tottenham Court Road. I said, ‘Thank you for breaking up the party.’

‘Oh, I knew you wanted to get away,’ she said.

‘What’s your other name?’

‘Black.’

‘Sylvia Black,’ I said, ‘it’s a good combination. Almost too good.’

‘Was it a great friend?’

‘Yes.’

‘A woman?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and I had the impression that she meant it. She had a lot to learn, in the way of books and music and how to dress and talk, but she would never have to learn humanity. She came down with me into the crowded tube and we strap-hung side by side. Feeling her against me I was reminded of desire. Would that always be the case now? Not desire, but only the reminder of it. She turned to make way at Goodge Street for a newcomer, and I was aware of her thigh against my leg as one is aware of something that happened a long time ago.

‘This is the first funeral I’ve ever been to,’ I said to make conversation.

‘Are your father and mother alive, then?’

‘My father is. My mother died when I was away at school. I thought I’d get a few days’ holiday, but my father thought it would upset me, so I made nothing out of it at all. Except I was let off prep, the night the news arrived.’

‘I wouldn’t like to be cremated,’ she said.

‘You’d prefer worms?’

‘Yes, I would.’

Our heads were so close together that we could talk without raising our voices, but we couldn’t look at each other because of the press of people. I said, It wouldn’t matter to me one way or the other,’ and wondered immediately why I had bothered to lie, because it had mattered, it must have mattered, for it was I in the end who had persuaded Henry against burial.

On the afternoon before, Henry had wavered. He had telephoned asking me to come over. It was odd how close we had become with Sarah gone. He depended on me now much as before he had depended on Sarah - I was somebody familiar about in the house. I even pretended to wonder whether he would ask me to share the house when once the funeral was over, and what answer I would give him. From the point of view of forgetting Sarah there was nothing to choose between the two houses: she had belonged to both.

He was still hazy with his drugs when I arrived, or I might have had more trouble with him. A priest sat rigidly on the edge of an armchair in the study: a man with a sour gaunt face, one of the Redemptionists probably who served up Hell on Sundays in the dark church where I had last seen Sarah. He had obviously antagonized Henry from the start and that had helped.

‘This is Mr Bendrix, the author,’ Henry said. ‘Father Crompton. Mr Bendrix was a great friend of my wife’s.’ I had the impression that Father Crompton knew that already. His nose ran down his face like a buttress, and I thought, perhaps this is the very man who slammed the door of hope on Sarah.

‘Good afternoon,’ Father Crompton said with such ill-will that I felt the bell and the candle were not far away.

‘Mr Bendrix has helped me a great deal with all the arrangements,’ Henry explained.

‘I would have been quite ready to take them off your hands if I had known.’

There had been a time when I hated Henry. My hatred now seemed petty. Henry was a victim as much as I was a victim, and the victor was this grim man in the silly collar. I said, ‘You could hardly have done that surely. You disapprove of cremation.’

‘I could have arranged a Catholic burial.’

‘She wasn’t a Catholic’

‘She had expressed the intention of becoming one.’

‘Is that enough to make her one?’

Father Crompton produced a formula. He laid it down like a bank note. ‘We recognize the baptism of desire.’ It lay there between us waiting to be picked up. Nobody made a move. Father Crompton said. ‘There’s still time to cancel your arrangements.’ He repeated, ‘I will take everything off your hands,’ repeated it in a tone of admonition as though he were addressing Lady Macbeth and promising her some better process of sweetening her hands than the perfumes of Arabia.

Henry said suddenly, ‘Does it really make much difference? Of course, I’m not a Catholic, father, but I can’t see… ‘

‘She would have been happier…’

‘But why?’

‘The Church offers privileges, Mr Miles, as well as responsibilities. There are special Masses for our dead. Prayers are regularly said. We remember our dead,’ he added, and I thought angrily, how do you remember them? Your theories are all right. You preach the importance of the individual. Our hairs are all numbered, you say, but I can feel her hair on the back of my hand: I can remember the fine dust of hair at the base of her spine as she lay face down on my bed. We remember our dead too, in our way.

Watching Henry weaken I lied firmly, ‘We’ve absolutely no reason to believe she would have become a Catholic’

Henry began, ‘Of course the nurse did say,’ but I interrupted him, ‘She was delirious at the end.’

Father Crompton said, ‘I would never have dreamed of intruding on you, Mr Miles, without serious reason.’

‘I had a letter from Mrs Miles written less than a week before she died,’ I told him. ‘How long is it since you saw her?’

‘About the same time. Five or six days ago.’

‘It seems very odd to me that she didn’t even mention the subject in her letter.’

‘Perhaps Mr… Mr Bendrix, you hadn’t her confidence.’

‘Perhaps, father, you jump a little too quickly to conclusions. People can be interested in your faith, ask questions about it, without necessarily wishing to become Catholics.’ I went quickly on to Henry, ‘It would be absurd to alter everything now. Directions have been given. Friends have been invited. Sarah was never a fanatic. She would be the last to want any inconvenience caused for the sake of a whim. After all,’ I drove on, fixing my eyes on Henry, ‘it will be a perfectly Christian ceremony. Not that Sarah was even a Christian. We saw no signs of it anyway. But you could always give Father Crompton money for a Mass.’

‘It isn’t necessary. I said one this morning.’ He made a movement with his hands in his lap, the first break in his rigidity: it was like watching a strong wall shift and lean after a bomb had fallen. ‘I shall remember her every day in my Mass,’ he said.

Henry said with relief as though that settled matters, ‘Very good of you, father,’ and moved a cigarette-box.

‘It seems an odd and impertinent thing to say to you, Mr Miles, but I don’t think you realize what a good woman your wife was.’

‘She was everything to me,’ Henry said.

‘A great many people loved her,’ I said.

Father Crompton turned his eyes on me like a headmaster who hears an interruption at the back of the class from some snotty youngster.

‘Perhaps not enough,’ he said.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘to go back to what we were discussing. I don’t think we can alter things now, father. It would cause a great deal of talk too. You wouldn’t like talk, would you, Henry?’

‘No. Oh no.’

‘There’s the insertion in The Times. We should have to put in a correction. People notice that kind of thing. It would cause comment. After all you aren’t unknown, Henry. Then telegrams would have to be sent. A lot of people will have had wreaths delivered already to the crematorium. You see what I mean, father.’

‘I can’t say that I do.’

‘What you ask is not reasonable.’

‘You seem to have a very strange set of values, Mr Bendrix.’

‘But surely you don’t believe cremation affects the resurrection of the body, father?’

‘Of course I don’t. I’ve told you my reasons already. If they don’t seem strong enough to Mr Miles, there’s no more to be said.’ He got up from his chair, and what an ugly man he was. Sitting down he had at least the appearance of power, but his legs were too short for his body, and he rose, unexpectedly small. It was as if he had suddenly moved a long way off.

Henry said, ‘If you’d come a little sooner, father. Please don’t think… ‘

‘I don’t think anything wrong of you, Mr Miles.’

‘Of me perhaps, father?’ I asked with deliberate impertinence.

‘Oh, don’t worry, Mr Bendrix. Nothing you can do will affect her now.’ I suppose the Confessional teaches a man to recognize hate. He held his hand out to Henry and turned his back on me. I wanted to say to him, You’re wrong about me. It’s not Sarah I hate. And you are wrong about Henry too. He is the corrupter, not me. I wanted to defend myself, ‘I loved her’, for surely in the Confessional they learn to recognize that emotion too.

‘Hampstead’s the next stop,’ Sylvia said.

‘You’ve got to get out to see your mother?’

‘I could come on to Golders Green and show you the way. I don’t usually see her today.’

‘It would be an act of charity,’ I said.

‘I think you’ll have to take a taxi if you are to be on time.’

‘I suppose it doesn’t really matter missing the opening lines ‘

She saw me to the courtyard of the station, and then she wanted to go back. It seemed strange to me that she had taken so much trouble. I have never seen any qualities in me for a woman to like, and now less than ever. Grief and disappointment are like hate: they make men ugly with self-pity and bitterness. And how selfish they make us too. I had nothing to give Sylvia: I would never be one of her teachers, but because I was afraid of the next half hour, the faces that would be spying on my loneliness, trying to detect from my manner what my relations with Sarah had been, who had left whom, I needed her beauty to support me.

‘But I can’t come in these clothes,’ she protested when I begged for her company. I could tell how pleased she was that I wanted her with me. I knew I could have taken her from Waterbury there and then. His sands had already run out. If I chose he would listen to Bartok alone.

‘We’ll stand at the back,’ I said. ‘You might be just a stranger walking round.’

‘At least they are black,’ she said, referring to her trousers. In the taxi I let my hand lie on her leg like a promise, but I had no intention of keeping my promise. The crematorium tower was smoking, and the water lay in half-frozen puddles on the gravel walks. A lot of strangers came by - from a previous cremation, I supposed: they had the brisk cheerful air of people who have left a dull party and can now ‘go on’.