I looked over the back of my desk at the unforgettable moustache. ‘Very well, Parkis, thank you. Have an illicit sandwich?’
‘Oh no, sir, I couldn’t possibly… ‘
‘Come now. Imagine it’s on expenses.’ Reluctantly he took one and opening it up remarked with a kind of horror, as though he had accepted a coin and found it gold, ‘It’s real ham.’
‘My publisher sent me a tin from America.’
‘It’s too good of you, sir.’
‘I still have your ashtray, Parkis,’ I whispered, because my neighbour had looked angrily up at me.
‘It’s of sentimental value only,’ he whispered back. ‘How’s your boy?’
‘A little bilious, sir.’
‘I’m surprised to find you here. Work? You aren’t watching one of us, surely?’ I couldn’t imagine that any of the dusty inmates of the reading-room - the men who wore hats and scarves indoors for warmth, the Indian who was painfully studying the complete works of George Eliot, or the man who slept every day with his head laid beside the same pile of books - could be concerned in any drama of sexual jealousy.
‘Oh no, sir. This isn’t work. It’s my day off, and the boy’s back at school today.’
‘What are you reading?’
‘The Times Law Reports, sir. Today I’m on the Russell case. They give a kind of background to one’s work, sir. Open up vistas. They take one away from the daily petty detail. I knew one of the witnesses in this case, sir. We were in the same office once. Well, he’s gone down to history as I never shall now.’
‘Oh, you never know, Parkis.’
‘One does know, sir. That’s the discouraging thing. The Bolton case was as far as I’ll ever get. The law that forbade the evidence in divorce cases being published was a blow to men of my calling. The judge, sir, never mentions us by name, and he’s very often prejudiced against the profession.’
‘It had never struck me,’ I said with sympathy.
Even Parkis could awake a longing. I could never see him without the thought of Sarah. I went home in the tube with hope for company, and sitting at home, in dying expectation of the telephone-bell ringing, I saw my companion depart again: it wouldn’t be today. At five o’clock I dialled the number, but as soon as I heard the ringing-tone I replaced the receiver: perhaps Henry was back early and I couldn’t speak to Henry now, for I was the victor, since Sarah loved me and Sarah wanted to leave him. But a delayed victory can strain the nerves as much as a prolonged defeat.
Eight days passed before the telephone rang. It wasn’t the time of day I expected, for it was before nine o’clock in the morning, and when I said, ‘Hullo,’ it was Henry who answered.
‘Is that Bendrix?’ he asked. There was something very queer about his voice, and I wondered, has she told him? ‘Yes. Speaking.’
‘An awful thing’s happened. You ought to know. Sarah’s dead.’
How conventionally we behave at such moments. I said, ‘I’m terribly sorry, Henry.’
‘Are you doing anything tonight?’
‘No.’
‘I wish you’d come over for a drink. I don’t fancy being alone.’
1
I stayed the night with Henry. It was the first time I had slept in Henry’s 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 didn’t 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, ‘It’s strange, Bendrix, how one can’t be jealous about the dead. She’s only been dead a few hours, and yet I wanted you with me.’
‘You hadn’t so much to be jealous about. It was all over a long time ago.’
‘I don’t 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?’
‘I don’t know, Henry. I thought I did, but I don’t know.’
We sat in his study with no light on. The gas-fire was not turned high enough to see each other’s 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. ‘Tell me how it happened, Henry.’
‘You remember that night I met you on the Common? Three weeks ago, or four, was it? She got a bad cold that night. She wouldn’t do anything about it. I never even knew it had reached her chest. She never told anybody those sort of things’ - and not even her diary, I thought. There had been no word of sickness there. She hadn’t had the time to be ill in.
‘She took to her bed in the end,’ Henry said, ‘but nobody could have kept her there, and she wouldn’t have a doctor - she 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 didn’t 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 don’t know who: it wasn’t you or me, Bendrix. I made her see a doctor after that. He said if she’d had penicillin a week earlier, he’d have saved her.’
There wasn’t 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 don’t hate Henry. I hate You if you exist. I remembered what she’d said to Richard Smythe, that I had taught her to believe. I couldn’t for the life of me tell how, but to think of what I had thrown away made me hate myself too. Henry said, ‘She died at four this morning. I wasn’t there. The nurse didn’t call me in time.’
‘Where’s the nurse?’
‘She finished her job off very tidily. She had another urgent case and left before lunch.’
‘I wish I could be of use to you.’
‘You are, just sitting here. It’s been an awful day, Bendrix. You know, I’ve never had a death to deal with. I always assumed I’d die first - and Sarah would have known what to do. If she’d stayed with me that long. In a way it’s a woman’s job - like having a baby.’
‘I suppose the doctor helped.’
‘He’s awfully rushed this winter. He rang up an undertaker. I wouldn’t have known where to go. We’ve never had a trade-directory. But a doctor can’t tell me what to do with her clothes - the cupboards are full of them. Compacts, scents - one can’t just throw things away… If only she had a sister…’ He suddenly stopped because the front door opened and closed, just as it had on that other night when he had said, ‘The maid,’ and I had said, ‘It’s Sarah.’ We listened to the footsteps of the maid going upstairs. It’s extraordinary how empty a house can be with three people in it. We drank our whisky and I poured another. ‘I’ve got plenty in the house,’ Henry said. ‘Sarah found a new source…’ and stopped again. She stood at the end of every path. There wasn’t any point in trying to avoid her even for a moment. I thought, why did You have to do this to us? If she hadn’t 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, ‘And the funeral?’
‘Bendrix, I don’t know what to do. Something very puzzling happened. When she was delirious (of course, she wasn’t responsible), the nurse told me that she kept on asking for a priest. At least she kept on saying, Father, Father, and it couldn’t have been her own. She never knew him. Of course the nurse knew we weren’t Catholics. She was quite sensible. She soothed her down. But I’m worried, Bendrix.’
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?