Book One: Chapter 2 - The End of the Affair

I cannot say how many days passed. The old disturbance had returned and in that state of blackness one can no more tell the days than a blind man can notice the changes of light. Was it the seventh day or the twenty-first that I decided on my course of action? I have a vague memory now, after three years have passed, of vigils along the edge of the Common, watching their house from a distance, by the pond or under the portico of the eighteenth-century church, on the off-chance that the door would open and Sarah come down those unblasted and well-scoured steps. The right hour never struck. The rainy days were over and the nights were fine with frost, but like a ruined weather-house neither the man nor the woman came out; never again did I see Henry making across the Common after dusk. Perhaps he was ashamed at what he had told me, for he was a very conventional man. I write the adjective with a sneer, and yet if I examine myself I find only admiration and trust for the conventional, like the villages one sees from the high road where the cars pass, looking so peaceful in their thatch and stone, suggesting rest.

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... '

'Certainly, but it's not always possible. Your address, Mr Bendrix, and your telephone number?'

'It's not a private line. My landlady has an extension.'

'All my men use great discretion. Would you want the reports weekly or would you prefer only to receive the finished inquiry?'

'Weekly. It may never be finished. There's probably nothing to find out.'

'Have you often been to your doctor and found nothing wrong? You know, Mr Bendrix, the fact that a man feels the need of our services almost invariably means that there is something to report.'

I suppose I was lucky to have Mr Savage to deal with. He had been recommended as being less disagreeable than men of his profession usually are, but nevertheless I found his assurance detestable. It isn't, when you come to think of it, a quite respectable trade, the detection of the innocent, for aren't lovers nearly always innocent? They have committed no crime, they are certain in their own minds that they have done no wrong, 'as long as no one but myself is hurt', the old tag is ready on their lips, and love, of course, excuses everything - so they believe, and so I used to believe in the days when I loved.

And when we came to the charges, Mr Savage was surprisingly moderate: three guineas a day, and expenses, 'which must be approved of course'. He explained them to me as 'the odd coffee, you know, and sometimes our man has to stand a drink'. I made a feeble joke about not approving whisky, but Mr Savage didn't detect the humour. 'I knew a case,' he told me, 'when a month's inquiry was saved by a double at the proper time - the cheapest whisky my client ever paid for.' He explained that some of his clients liked to have a daily account, but I told him I would be satisfied with a weekly one.

The whole affair had gone very briskly: he had almost convinced me by the time I came out into Vigo Street that this was the kind of interview which happened to all men sooner or later.