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.
5
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.’