I remember I dreamed a lot of Sarah in those obscure days or weeks. Sometimes I would wake with a sense of pain, sometimes with pleasure. If a woman is in one’s thoughts all day, one should not have to dream of her at night. I was trying to write a book that simply would not come. I did my daily five hundred words, but the characters never begin to live. So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one’s days. One may be preoccupied with shopping and income tax returns and chance conversations, but the stream of the unconscious continues to flow undisturbed, solving problems, planning ahead: one sits down sterile and dispirited at the desk, and suddenly the words come as though from the air: the situations that seemed blocked in a hopeless impasse move forward: the work has been done while one slept or shopped or talked with friends. But this hate and suspicion, this passion to destroy went deeper than the book - the unconscious worked on it instead, until one morning I woke up and knew, as though I had planned it overnight, that this day I was going to visit Mr Savage.
What an odd collection the trusted professions are. One trusts one’s lawyer, one’s doctor, one’s priest, I suppose, if one is a Catholic, and now I added to the list one’s private detective. Henry’s idea of being scrutinized by the other clients was quite wrong. The office had two waiting-rooms, and I was admitted alone into one. It was curiously unlike what you would expect in Vigo Street - it had something of the musty air in the outer office of a solicitor’s, combined with a voguish choice of reading matter in the waiting-room which was more like a dentist’s - there were Harper’s Bazaar and Life and a number of French fashion periodicals, and the man who showed me in was a little too attentive and well-dressed. He pulled me a chair to the fire and closed the door with great care. I felt like a patient and I suppose I was a patient, sick enough to try the famous shock treatment for jealousy.
The first thing I noticed about Mr Savage was his tie: I suppose it represented some old boys’ association: next how well his face was shaved under the faint brush of powder, and then his forehead, where the pale hair receded, which glistened, a beacon-light of understanding, sympathy, anxiety to be of service. I noticed that when he shook hands he gave my fingers an odd twist. I think he must have been a freemason, and if I had been able to return the pressure, I would probably have received special terms.
‘Mr Bendrix?’ he said. ‘Sit down. I think that is the most comfortable chair.’ He patted a cushion for me and stood solicitously beside me until I had successfully lowered myself into it. Then he drew a straight chair up beside me as though he were going to listen to my pulse. ‘Now just tell me everything in your own words,’ he said. I can’t imagine what other words I could have used but my own. I felt embarrassed and bitter: I had not come here for sympathy, but to pay, if I could afford it, for some practical assistance.
I began, ‘I don’t know what your charges are for watching?’
Mr Savage gently stroked his striped tie. He said, ‘Don’t worry about that now, Mr Bendrix. I charge three guineas for this preliminary consultation, but if you don’t wish to proceed any further I make no charge at all, none at all. The best advertisement, you know,’ - he slid the cliché in like a thermometer - ‘is a satisfied client.’
In a common situation, I suppose, we all behave much alike and use the same words. I said, ‘This is a very simple case,’ and I was aware with anger that Mr Savage really knew all about it before I began to speak. Nothing that I had to say would be strange to Mr Savage, nothing that he could unearth would not have been dug up so many dozens of times already that year. Even a doctor is sometimes disconcerted by a patient, but Mr Savage was a specialist who dealt in only one disease of which he knew every symptom.
He said with a horrible gentleness, ‘Take your time, Mr Bendrix.’
I was becoming confused like all his other patients.
‘There’s really nothing to go on,’ I explained.
‘Ah, that’s my job,’ Mr Savage said. ‘You just give me the mood, the atmosphere. I assume we are discussing Mrs Bendrix?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘But she passes under that name?’
‘No, you are getting this quite wrong. She’s the wife of a friend of mine.’
‘And he’s sent you?’
‘No.’
‘Perhaps you and the lady are - intimate?’
‘No. I’ve only seen her once since 1944.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t quite understand. This is a watching case, you said.’
I hadn’t realized till then that he had angered me so much. ‘Can’t one love or hate.’ I broke out at him, ‘as long as that? Don’t make any mistake. I’m just another of your jealous clients, I don’t claim to be any different from the rest, but there’s been a time-lag in my case.’
Mr Savage laid his hand on my sleeve as though I were a fretful child. ‘There’s nothing discreditable about jealousy, Mr Bendrix. I always salute it as the mark of true love. Now this lady we are discussing, you have reason to suppose that she is now - intimate with another?’
‘Her husband thinks that she’s deceiving him. She has private meetings. She lies about where she’s been. She has - secrets.’
‘Ah, secrets, yes.’
‘There may be nothing in it, of course.’
‘In my long experience, Mr Bendrix, there almost invariably is.’ As though he had sufficiently reassured me now to go ahead with the treatment, Mr Savage returned to his desk and prepared to write. Name. Address. Husband’s occupation. With his pencil poised for a note, Mr Savage asked, ‘Does Mr Miles know of this interview?’
‘No.’
‘Our man mustn’t be observed by Mr Miles?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘It adds a complication.’
‘I may show him your reports later. I don’t know.’
‘Can you give me any facts about the household? Is there a maid?’
‘Yes.’
‘Her age?’
‘I wouldn’t know. Thirty-eight?’
‘You don’t know if she has any followers?’
‘No. And I don’t know her grandmother’s name.’
Mr Savage gave me a patient smile: I thought for a moment that he planned to leave his desk and pat me down again. ‘I can see, Mr Bendrix, that you haven’t had experience of inquiries. A maid’s very relevant. She can tell us so much about her mistress’s habits - if she is willing. You’d be surprised what a lot is relevant to even the simplest inquiry.’ He certainly that morning proved his point: he covered pages with his small scratchy handwriting. Once he broke off his questions to ask me, ‘Would you object, if it was urgently necessary, to my man coming to your house?’ I told him I didn’t mind and immediately felt as though I were admitting some infection to my own room. ‘If it could be avoided… ‘
‘Of course. Of course. I understand,’ and I really believe he did understand. I could have told him that his man’s presence would be like dust over the furniture and stain my books like soot, and he would have felt no surprise or irritation. I have a passion for writing on clean single-lined foolscap: a smear, a tea-mark, on a page makes it unusable, and a fantastic notion took me that I must keep my paper locked up in case of an unsavoury visitor. I said, ‘It would be easier if he gave me warning… ‘