Book Two: Chapter 3 - The End of the Affair

For I thought I could detect in Parkis's next report a genuine enthusiasm for the devil's game. At last he had really scented love and now he stalked it, his boy at his heels like a retriever. He had discovered where Sarah was spending so much of her time: more than that, he knew for certain that the visits were surreptitious. I had to admit that Mr Parkis had proved himself an astute detective. He had arranged with the help of his boy to get the Miles's maid outside the house just at the moment when the 'party in question' walked down Cedar Road towards No .16. Sarah stopped and spoke to the maid, whose day off it was, and the maid introduced her to young Parkis. Then Sarah went on and turned the next corner, where Parkis himself was waiting. He saw her walk a little way and then return. When she found the maid and young Parkis were out of sight she rang the bell at No .16. Mr Parkis then set to work to check on the inhabitants of No .16. This was not so easy, as the house was divided into flats and he had no means yet of knowing which of the three bells Sarah rang. He promised a final report in a few days. All he had to do, when next Sarah started out in this direction, was to get ahead of her and dust the three bells with powder. 'There is, of course, apart from exhibit A, no proof of misconduct by the party in question. If on the strength of these reports such proofs are required with a view to legal proceedings, it may be necessary after a suitable interval to follow the party into the flat. A second witness, who can identify the party, would be required. It is not necessary to catch the party in the act; a certain disarrangement of clothes and agitation might be held sufficient by the Courts.'

Hatred is very like physical love: it has its crisis and then its periods of calm. Poor Sarah, I could think, reading Mr Parkis's report, for this moment had been the orgasm of my hatred, and now I was satisfied. I could feel sorry for her, hemmed in as she was. She had committed nothing but love, and here were Parkis and his boy watching every movement, plotting with her maid, putting powder on bells, planning violent eruptions into what perhaps was the only peace that nowadays she enjoyed. I had half a mind to tear up the report and call the spies off her. Perhaps I would have done so if I had not, at the seedy club to which I belonged, opened a 'Tatler' and seen Henry's photograph. Henry was successful now: in the last Birthday Honours he had received a C. B. E. for his services at the Ministry: he had been appointed Chairman of a Royal Commission: and here he was at the gala night of a British film called 'The Last Siren', pallid and pop-eyed in the flashlight with Sarah on his arm. She had lowered her head to escape the flash, but I would have recognized that close knotty hair which trapped or resisted the fingers. Suddenly I wanted to put out my hand and touch her, the hair of her head and her secret hair, I wanted her lying beside me, I wanted to be able to turn my head on the pillow and speak to her, I wanted the almost imperceptible smell and taste of her skin, and there was Henry facing the pressman's camera with the complacency and assurance of a Departmental head.

I sat down under a staghead presented by Sir Walter Besant in 1898 and wrote to Henry. I wrote that I had something of importance to discuss with him and would he lunch with me - he could choose any day during the next week. It was typical of Henry that he rang up with great promptitude and at the same time suggested I should lunch with him - never have I known a man who was a more uneasy guest. I can't remember exactly what the excuse was, but it angered me. I think he said his own club had some particularly good port, but the real reason was that the sense of obligation irked him - even the small obligation of a free meal. He little guessed how small his obligation was going to be. He had chosen a Saturday and on that day my club is almost empty. The daily journalists have no paper to produce, the school inspectors have gone home to Bromley and Streatham, I never know quite what happens on that day to the clergy - perhaps they stay indoors to prepare their sermons. As for the authors (for whom the club had been founded), nearly all of them are hanging on the wall - Conan Doyle, Charles Garvice, Stanley Weyman, Nat Gould, with an occasional more illustrious and familiar face: the living you can count on the fingures of one hand. I have always felt at home in the club because there is so little likelihood of meeting a fellow writer.

I remember Henry chose a Vienna steak - it was a mark of his innocence. I really believe that he had no idea what he was ordering and expected something like a Wiener Schnitzel. Playing as he was away from the home ground, he was too ill at ease to comment on the dish and somehow he managed to ram the pink soggy mixture down. I remembered that pompous appearance before the flashlights and made no attempt to warn him when he chose Cabinet Pudding. During the hideous meal (the club that day surpassed itself) we talked elaborately about nothing. Henry did his best to lend an appearance of Cabinet secrecy to the proceedings of a Royal Commission that were reported daily in the Press. We went into the lounge for coffee and found ourselves entirely alone beside the fire in a waste of black horsehair sofas. I thought how suitable the horns along the walls were to the situation, and putting my feet up on the old-fashioned fender shut Henry firmly into his corner. I stirred my coffee and said, 'How's Sarah?'

'Pretty well,' Henry said evasively. He tasted his port with care and suspicion: he hadn't forgotten, I suppose, the Vienna steak.

'Are you still worried?' I asked him.

He shifted his gaze unhappily. 'Worried?'

'You were worried. You told me so.'

'I don't remember. She's pretty well,' he explained weakly, as though I had been referring to her health.

'Did you ever consult that detective?'

'I hoped you'd forgotten it. I wasn't well - you see, there was this Royal Commission brewing. I was overworked.'

'Do you remember I offered to see him for you?'

'We must both have been a bit overwrought.' He stared up at the old horns overhead, screwing up his eyes in his attempt to read the name of the donor. He said stupidly, 'You seem to have a lot of heads.' I wasn't going to let him off. I said, 'I went to see him a few days later.'

He put down his glass and said, 'Bendrix, you had absolutely no right... '

'I'm paying all the charges.'

'It's infernal cheek.' He stood up, but I had him penned in where he couldn't get past without an act of violence, and violence wasn't in Henry's character.

'Surely you'd have liked her cleared?' I said.

'There was nothing to clear. I want to go, please.'

'I think you ought to read the reports.'

'I've no intention... '

'Then I think I shall have to read you the bit about the surreptitious visits. Her love letter I returned to the detectives for filing. My dear Henry, you've been properly led up the garden.'

I really thought that he was going to hit me. If he had, I would have struck back with pleasure, struck back at this oaf to whom Sarah had remained in her way so stupidly loyal for so many years, but at that moment the secretary of the club came in. He was a man with a long grey beard and a soup-stained waistcoat, who looked like a Victorian poet but in fact wrote little sad reminiscences of the dogs he had once known. ('For Ever Fido' had been a great success in 1912.) 'Ah, Bendrix,' he said, 'I haven't seen you here in a long while.' I introduced him to Henry and he said with the quickness of a hairdresser, 'I've been following the reports every day.'

'What reports?' For once Henry's work had not come first to his mind when that word was uttered.

'The Royal Commission.'

When at last he had gone, Henry said, 'Now will you please give me the reports and let me pass.'

I imagined that he had been thinking things over while the secretary was with us, so I handed him the last report.

He put it straight into the fire and rammed it home with the poker. I couldn't help thinking that the gesture had dignity. 'What are you going to do?' I asked.

'Nothing.'

'You haven't got rid of the facts.'

'To hell with the facts,' Henry said. I had never heard him swear before.

'I can always let you have a carbon copy.'

'Will you let me go now?' Henry said. The demon had done its work, I felt drained of venom. I took my legs off the fender and let Henry pass. He walked straight out of the club, forgetting his hat, that black superior hat that I had seen come dripping across the Common - it seemed an age and not a matter of weeks ago.