BOOK FIVE
I
I stayed the night with Henry. It was the first time I had slept in Henryās house. They had only one guest-room and Sarah was there (she had moved into it a week before so as not to disturb Henry with her cough), so I slept on the sofa in the drawing-room where we had made love. I didnāt want to stay the night, but he begged me to.
We must have drunk a bottle and a half of whisky between us. I remember Henry saying, āItās strange, Bendrix, how one canāt be jealous about the dead. Sheās only been dead a few hours, and yet I wanted you with me.ā
āYou hadnāt so much to be jealous about. It was all over a long time ago.ā
āI donāt need that kind of comfort now, Bendrix. It was never over with either of you. I was the lucky man. I had her all those years. Do you hate me?ā
āI donāt know, Henry. I thought I did, but I donāt know.ā
We sat in his study with no light on. The gas-fire was not turned high enough to see each otherās faces, so that I could only tell when Henry wept by the tone of his voice. The Discus Thrower aimed at both of us from the darkness. āTell me how it happened, Henry.ā
āYou remember that night I met you on the Common? Three weeks ago, or four, was it? She got a bad cold that night. She wouldnāt do anything about it. I never even knew it had reached her chest. She never told anybody those sort of thingsāāand not even her diary, I thought. There had been no word of sickness there. She hadnāt had the time to be ill in.
āShe took to her bed in the end,ā Henry said, ābut nobody could have kept her there, and she wouldnāt have a doctorāshe never believed in them. She got up and went out a week ago. God knows where or why. She said she needed exercise. I came home first and found her gone. She didnāt get in till nine, soaked through worse than the first time. She must have been walking about for hours in the rain. She was feverish all night, talking to somebody, I donāt know who: it wasnāt you or me, Bendrix. I made her see a doctor after that. He said if sheād had penicillin a week earlier, heād have saved her.ā
There wasnāt anything to do for either of us but pour out more whisky. I thought of the stranger I had paid Parkis to track down: the stranger had certainly won in the end. No, I thought, I donāt hate Henry. I hate You if you exist. I remembered what sheād said to Richard Smythe, that I had taught her to believe. I couldnāt for the life of me tell how, but to think of what I had thrown away made me hate myself too. Henry said, āShe died at four this morning. I wasnāt there. The nurse didnāt call me in time.ā
āWhereās the nurse?ā
āShe finished her job off very tidily. She had another urgent case and left before lunch.ā
āI wish I could be of use to you.ā
āYou are, just sitting here. Itās been an awful day, Bendrix. You know, Iāve never had a death to deal with. I always assumed Iād die firstāand Sarah would have known what to do. If sheād stayed with me that long. In a way itās a womanās jobālike having a baby.ā
āI suppose the doctor helped.ā
āHeās awfully rushed this winter. He rang up an undertaker. I wouldnāt have known where to go. Weāve never had a trade-directory. But a doctor canāt tell me what to do with her clothesāthe cupboards are full of them. Compacts, scentsāone canāt just throw things away ā¦ If only she had a sister ā¦ā He suddenly stopped because the front door opened and closed, just as it had on that other night when he had said, āThe maid,ā and I had said, āItās Sarah.ā We listened to the footsteps of the maid going upstairs. Itās extraordinary how empty a house can be with three people in it. We drank our whisky and I poured another. āIāve got plenty in the house,ā Henry said. āSarah found a new source ā¦ā and stopped again. She stood at the end of every path. There wasnāt any point in trying to avoid her even for a moment. I thought, why did You have to do this to us? If she hadnāt believed in You she would be alive now, we should have been lovers still. It was sad and strange to remember that I had been dissatisfied with the situation. I would have shared her now happily with Henry.
I said, āAnd the funeral?ā
āBendrix, I donāt know what to do. Something very puzzling happened. When she was delirious (of course, she wasnāt responsible), the nurse told me that she kept on asking for a priest. At least she kept on saying, Father, Father, and it couldnāt have been her own. She never knew him. Of course the nurse knew we werenāt Catholics. She was quite sensible. She soothed her down. But Iām worried, Bendrix.ā
I thought with anger and bitterness, You might have left poor Henry alone. We have got on for years without You. Why should You suddenly start intruding into all situations like a strange relation returned from the Antipodes?
Henry said, āIf one lives in London cremationās the easiest thing. Until the nurse said that to me, Iād been planning to have it done at Golders Green. The undertaker rang up the crematorium. They can fit Sarah in the day after tomorrow.ā
āShe was delirious,ā I said, āyou donāt have to take what she said into account.ā
āI wondered whether I ought to ask a priest about it. She kept so many things quiet. For all I know she may have become a Catholic. Sheās been so strange lately.ā
āOh no, Henry. She didnāt believe in anything, any more than you or me.ā I wanted her burnt up, I wanted to be able to say, Resurrect that body if you can. My jealousy had not finished, like Henryās, with her death. It was as if she were alive still, in the company of a lover she had preferred to me. How I wished I could send Parkis after her to interrupt their eternity.
āYou are quite certain?ā
āQuite certain, Henry.ā I thought, Iāve got to be careful. I mustnāt be like Richard Smythe, I mustnāt hate, for if I were really to hate I would believe, and if I were to believe, what a triumph for You and her. This is to play act, talking about revenge and jealousy: itās just something to fill the brain with, so that I can forget the absoluteness of her death. A week ago I had only to say to her āDo you remember that first time together and how I hadnāt got a shilling for the meter?ā, and the scene would be there for both of us. Now it was there for me only. She had lost all our memories for ever, and it was as though by dying she had robbed me of part of myself. I was losing my individuality. It was the first stage of my own death, the memories dropping off like gangrened limbs.
āI hate all this fuss of prayers and grave-diggers, but if Sarah wanted it, Iād try to get it arranged.ā
āShe chose her wedding in a registry office,ā I said, āshe wouldnāt want her funeral to be in a church.ā
āNo, I suppose thatās true, isnāt it?ā
āRegistration and cremation,ā I said, āthey go together,ā and in the shadow Henry lifted his head and peered towards me as though he suspected my irony.
āLet me take it all out of your hands,ā I suggested, just as in the same room, by the same fire, I had suggested visiting Mr Savage for him.
āItās good of you, Bendrix.ā He drained the last of the whisky into our glasses, very carefully and evenly.
āMidnight,ā I said, āyou must get some sleep. If you can.ā
āThe doctor left me some pills.ā But he didnāt want to be alone yet. I knew exactly how he felt, for I too after a day with Sarah would postpone for as long as I could the loneliness of my room.
āI keep on forgetting sheās dead,ā Henry said. And I had experienced that too, all through 1945āthe bad yearāforgetting when I woke that our love-affair was over, that the telephone might carry any voice except hers. She had been as dead then as she was dead now. For a month or two this year a ghost had pained me with hope, but the ghost was laid and the pain would be over soon. I would die a little more every day, but how I longed to retain it. As long as one suffers one lives.
āGo to bed, Henry.ā
āIām afraid of dreaming about her.ā
āYou wonāt if you take the doctorās pills.ā
āWould you like one, Bendrix?ā
āNo.ā
āYou wouldnāt, would you, stay the night? Itās filthy outside.ā
āI donāt mind the weather.ā
āYouād be doing me a great favour.ā
āOf course Iāll stay.ā
āIāll bring down some sheets and blankets.ā
āDonāt bother, Henry,ā but he was gone. I looked at the parquet floor, and I remembered the exact timbre of her cry. On the desk where she wrote her letters was a clutter of objects, and every object I could interpret like a code. I thought, She hasnāt even thrown away that pebble. We laughed at its shape and there it still is, like a paper-weight. What would Henry make of it, and the miniature bottle of a liqueur none of us cared for, and the piece of glass polished by the sea, and the small wooden rabbit I had found in Nottingham? Should I take all these objects away with me? They would go into the waste-paper basket otherwise, when Henry at last got around to clearing up, but could I bear their company?
I was looking at them when Henry came in burdened with blankets. āI had forgotten to say, Bendrix, if thereās anything you want to take ā¦ I donāt think sheās left a will.ā
āItās kind of you.ā
āIām grateful now to anybody who loved her.ā
āIāll take this stone if I may.ā
āShe kept the oddest things. Iāve brought you a pair of my pyjamas, Bendrix.ā
Henry had forgotten to bring a pillow and lying with my head on a cushion I imagined I could smell her scent. I wanted things I should never have againāthere was no substitute. I couldnāt sleep. I pressed my nails into my palms as she had done with hers, so that the pain might prevent my brain working, and the pendulum of my desire swung tiringly to and fro, the desire to forget and to remember, to be dead and to keep alive a while longer. And then at last I slept. I was walking up Oxford Street and I was worried because I had to buy a present and all the shops were full of cheap jewellery, glittering under the concealed lighting. Now and then I thought I saw something beautiful and I would approach the glass, but when I saw the jewel close it would be as factitious as all the othersāperhaps a hideous green bird with scarlet eyes meant to give the effect of rubies. Time was short and I hurried from shop to shop. Then out of one of the shops came Sarah and I knew that she would help me. āHave you bought something, Sarah?ā
āNot here,ā she said, ābut they have some lovely little bottles further on.ā
āI havenāt time,ā I begged her, āhelp me. Iāve got to find something, for tomorrowās the birthday.ā
āDonāt worry,ā she said. āSomething always turns up. Donāt worry,ā and suddenly I didnāt worry. Oxford Street extended its boundaries into a great grey misty field, my feet were bare, and I was walking in the dew, alone, and stumbling in a shallow rut I woke, still hearing, āDonāt worry,ā like a whisper lodged in the ear, a summer sound belonging to childhood.
At breakfast time Henry was still asleep, and the maid whom Parkis had suborned brought coffee and toast in to me on a tray. She drew the curtains and the sleet had changed blindingly to snow. I was still bleary with sleep and the contentment of my dream, and I was surprised to see her eyes red with old tears. āIs anything the matter, Maud?ā I asked, and it was only when she put the tray down and walked furiously out that I came properly awake to the empty house and the empty world. I went up and looked in at Henry. He was still in the depths of drugged sleep, smiling like a dog, and I envied him. Then I went down and tried to eat my toast.
A bell rang and I heard the maid leading somebody upstairsāthe undertaker, I supposed, because I could hear the door of the guest-room open. He was seeing her dead: I had not, but I had no wish to, any more than I would have wished to see her in another manās arms. Some men may be stimulated that way: I am not. Nobody was going to make me pimp for death. I drew my mind together, and...