‘She never pretended to be what she wasn’t’
‘I wasn’t her only lover -‘
‘Stop it,’ Henry said. ‘You’ve no right… ‘
‘Let him alone,’ Father Crompton said. ‘Let the poor man rave.’
‘Don’t give me your professional pity, father. Keep it for your penitents.’
‘You can’t dictate to me whom I’m to pity, Mr Bendrix.’
‘Any man could have her.’ I longed to believe what I said, for then there would be nothing to miss or regret. I would no longer be tied to her wherever she was. I would be free.
‘And you can’t teach me anything about penitence, Mr Bendrix. I’ve had twenty-five years of the Confessional. There’s nothing we can do some of the saints haven’t done before us.’
‘I’ve got nothing to repent except failure. Go back to your own people, father, back to your bloody little box and your beads.’
‘You’ll find me there any time you want me.’
‘Me want you, father? Father, I don’t want to be rude, but I’m no Sarah. No Sarah.’
Henry said with embarrassment,’ I’m sorry, father.’
‘You don’t need to be. I know when a man’s in pain.’
I couldn’t get through the tough skin of his complacency. I pushed my chair back and said, ‘You’re wrong, father. This isn’t anything subtle like pain. I’m not in pain, I’m in hate. I hate Sarah because she was a little tart, I hate Henry because she stuck to him, and I hate you and your imaginary God because you took her away from all of us.’
‘You’re a good hater,’ Father Crompton said.
Tears stood in my eyes because I was powerless to hurt any of them. ‘To hell with the lot of you,’ I said.
I slammed the door behind me and shut them in together. Let him spill his holy wisdom to Henry, I thought, I’m alone. I want to be alone. If I can’t have you, I’ll be alone always. Oh, I’m as capable of belief as the next man. I would only have to shut the eyes of my mind for a long enough time, and I could believe that you came to Parkis’s boy in the night with your touch that brings peace. Last month in the crematorium I asked you to save that girl from me and you pushed your mother between us - or so they might say. But if I start believing that, then I have to believe in your God. I’d have to love your God. I’d rather love the men you slept with.
I’ve got to be reasonable, I told myself going upstairs. Sarah has been dead a long time now: one doesn’t go on loving the dead with this intensity, only the living, and she’s not alive, she can’t be alive. I mustn’t believe that she’s alive. I lay down on my bed and closed my eyes and I tried to be reasonable. If I hate her so much as I sometimes do, how can I love her? Can one really hate and love? Or is it only myself that I really hate? I hate the books I write with their trivial unimportant skill, I hate the craftsman’s mind in me so greedy for copy that I set out to seduce a woman I didn’t love for the information she could give me, I hate this body that enjoyed so much but was inadequate to express what the heart felt, and I hate my untrusting mind, that set Parkis on the watch who laid powder on door bells, rifled wastepaper baskets, stole your secrets.
From the drawer of my bedside table I took her journal and opening it at random, under a date last January, I read: ‘O God, if I could really hate you, what would that mean?’ And I thought, hating Sarah is only loving Sarah and hating myself is only loving myself. I’m not worth hating - Maurice Bendrix, author of The Ambitious Host, The Crowned Image, The Grave on the Water-Front, Bendrix the scribbler. Nothing - not even Sarah - is worth our hatred if You exist, except You. And, I thought, sometimes I’ve hated Maurice, but would I have hated him if I hadn’t loved him too? O God, if I could really hate you…
I remembered how Sarah had prayed to the God she didn’t believe in, and now I spoke to the Sarah I didn’t believe in. I said: You sacrificed both of us once to bring me back to life, but what sort of a life is this without you? It’s all very well for you to love God. You are dead. You have him. But I’m sick with life, I’m rotten with health. If I begin to love God, I can’t just die. I’ve got to do something about it. I had to touch you with my hands, I had to taste you with my tongue: one can’t love and do nothing. It’s no use your telling me not to worry as you did once in a dream. If I ever loved like that, it would be the end of everything. Loving you I had no appetite for food, I felt no lust for any other woman, but loving him there’d be no pleasure in anything at all with him away. I’d even lose my work, I’d cease to be Bendrix. Sarah, I’m afraid.
That night I came wide-awake at two in the morning. I went down to the larder and got myself some biscuits and a drink of water. I was sorry I had spoken like that about Sarah in front of Henry. The priest had said there was nothing we could do that some saint had not done. That might be true of murder and adultery, the spectacular sins, but could a saint ever have been guilty of envy and meanness? My hate was as petty as my love. I opened the door softly and looked in at Henry. He lay asleep with the light on and his arm shielding his eyes. With the eyes hidden there was an anonymity about the whole body. He was just a man - one of us. He was like the first enemy soldier a man encounters on a battlefield, dead and indistinguishable, not a White or a Red, but just a human being like himself. I put two biscuits by his bed in case he woke and turned the light out 8 My book wasn’t going well (what a waste of time the act of writing seemed, but how else could time be spent?) and I took a walk across the Common to listen to the speakers. There was a man I remembered who used to amuse me in the pre-war days and I was glad to see him safely back on his pitch. He had no message to convey like the political and the religious speakers. He was an ex-actor and he just told stories and recited snatches of verse. He would challenge his audience to catch him out by asking for any piece of verse. ‘The Ancient Mariner,’ somebody would call, and at once, with great emphasis, he would give us a quatrain. One wag said, ‘Shakespeare’s Thirty-Second Sonnet’ and he recited four lines at random and when the wag objected, he said, ‘You’ve got the wrong edition.’ I looked around at my fellow listeners and saw Smythe. Perhaps he had seen me first, for he had the handsome side of his face turned towards me, the side Sarah had not kissed, but if so he avoided my eye.
Why did I always wish to speak to anybody whom Sarah had known? I pushed my way to his side and said, ‘Hullo, Smythe.’ He clamped a handkerchief to the bad side of his face and turned towards me.’ Oh, it’s Mr Bendrix,’ he said.
‘I haven’t seen you since the funeral.’
‘I’ve been away.’
‘Don’t you still speak here?’
‘No.’ He hesitated and then added unwillingly, ‘I’ve given up public speaking.’
‘But you still give home-tuition?’ I teased him.
‘No. I’ve given that up too.’
‘Not changed your views, I hope?’
He said gloomily, ‘I don’t know what to believe.’
‘Nothing. Surely that was the point.’
‘It was.’ He began to move a little way out of the crowd and I found myself on his bad side. I couldn’t resist teasing him a little more.’ Have you got toothache?’ I asked.
‘No. Why?’
‘It looked like it. With that handkerchief.’
He didn’t reply but took the handkerchief away. There was no ugliness to hide. His skin was quite fresh and young except for one insignificant spot.
He said, ‘I get tired of explaining when I meet people I know.’
‘You found a cure?’
‘Yes. I told you I’ve been away.’
‘To a nursing home?’
‘Yes.’
‘Operation?’
‘Not exactly.’ He added unwillingly, ‘It was done by touch.’
‘Faith-healing?’
‘I have no faith. I’d never go to a quack.’
‘What was it? Urticaria?’