Henry said, ‘If one lives in London cremation’s the easiest thing. Until the nurse said that to me, I’d been planning to have it done at Golders Green. The undertaker rang up the crematorium. They can fit Sarah in the day after tomorrow.’
‘She was delirious,’ I said, ‘you don’t have to take what she said into account.’
‘I 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. She’s been so strange lately.’
‘Oh no, Henry. She didn’t believe in anything, any more than you or me.’ I wanted her burnt up, I wanted to be able to say, Resurrect that body if you can. My jealousy had not finished, like Henry’s, 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.
‘You are quite certain?’
‘Quite certain, Henry.’ I thought, I’ve got to be careful. I mustn’t be like Richard Smythe, I mustn’t 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: it’s 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 ‘Do you remember that first time together and how I hadn’t got a shilling for the meter?’, 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.
‘I hate all this fuss of prayers and grave-diggers, but if Sarah wanted it, I’d try to get it arranged.’
‘She chose her wedding in a registry office,’ I said, ‘she wouldn’t want her funeral to be in a church.’
‘No, I suppose that’s true, isn’t it? ‘
‘Registration and cremation,’ I said, ‘they go together,’ and in the shadow Henry lifted his head and peered towards me as though he suspected my irony.
‘Let me take it all out of your hands,’ I suggested, just as in the same room, by the same fire, I had suggested visiting Mr Savage for him.
‘It’s good of you, Bendrix.’ He drained the last of the whisky into our glasses, very carefully and evenly.
‘Midnight,’ I said, ‘you must get some sleep. If you can.’
‘The doctor left me some pills.’ But he didn’t 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.
‘I keep on forgetting she’s dead,’ Henry said. And I had experienced that too, all through 1945 - the bad year -forgetting 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.
‘Go to bed, Henry.’
‘I’m afraid of dreaming about her.’
‘You won’t if you take the doctor’s pills.’
‘Would you like one, Bendrix?’
‘No.’
‘You wouldn’t, would you, stay the night? It’s filthy outside.’
‘I don’t mind the weather.’
‘You’d be doing me a great favour.’
‘Of course I’ll stay.’
‘I’ll bring down some sheets and blankets.’
‘Don’t bother, Henry,’ 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 hasn’t 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 wastepaper 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. ‘I had forgotten to say, Bendrix, if there’s anything you want to take… I don’t think she’s left a will.’
‘It’s kind of you.’
‘I’m grateful now to anybody who loved her.’
‘I’ll take this stone if I may.’
‘She kept the oddest things. I’ve brought you a pair of my pyjamas, Bendrix.’
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 again - there was no substitute. I couldn’t 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 others - perhaps 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. ‘Have you bought something, Sarah?’
‘Not here,’ she said, ‘but they have some lovely little bottles further on.’
‘I haven’t time,’ I begged her, ‘help me. I’ve got to find something, for tomorrow’s the birthday.’
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Something always turns up. Don’t worry,’ and suddenly I didn’t 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, ‘Don’t worry,’ 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. ‘Is anything the matter, Maud?’ 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 upstairs - the 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 man’s 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 I thought. Now that everything is really over, I have got to begin again. I have fallen in love once: it can be done again. But I was unconvinced: it seemed to me that I had given all the sex I had away.
Another bell. What a lot of business was going on in the house while Henry slept. This time Maud came to me. She said, ‘There’s a gentleman below asking for Mr Miles, but I don’t like to wake him.’
‘Who is he?’
‘He’s that friend of Mrs Miles,’ she said and for the only time admitted her share in our shabby collaboration.