That was the worst period of all: it is my profession to imagine, to think in images: fifty times through the day, and immediately I woke during the night, a curtain would rise and the play would begin: always the same play, Sarah making love, Sarah with X, doing the same things that we had done together, Sarah kissing in her own particular way, arching herself in the act of sex and uttering that cry like pain, Sarah in abandonment. I would take pills at night to make me sleep quickly, but I never found any pills that would keep me asleep till daylight. Only the robots were a distraction during the day: for a few seconds between the silence and the crash my mind would be clear of Sarah. Three weeks passed and the images were as clear and frequent as at first and there seemed no reason why they should ever end, and I began quite seriously to think of suicide. I even set a date, and I saved up my sleeping pills with what was almost a sense of hope. I needn’t after all go on like this indefinitely, I told myself. Then the date came and the play went on and on and I didn’t kill myself. It wasn’t cowardice: it was a memory that stopped me—the memory of the look of disappointment on Sarah’s face when I came into the room after the VI had fallen. Hadn’t she, at heart, hoped for my death, so that her new affair with X would hurt her conscience less, for she had a kind of elementary conscience? If I killed myself now, she wouldn’t have to worry about me at all, and surely after our four years together there would be moments of worry even with X. I wasn’t going to give her that satisfaction. If I had known a way I would have increased her worries to breaking point and my impotence angered me. How I hated her.
Of course there is an end of hate as there is an end of love. After six months I realized that I had not thought of Sarah all one day and that I had been happy. It couldn’t have been quite the end of hate because at once I went into a stationer’s to buy a picture postcard and write a jubilant message on it that might—who knows?—cause a momentary pain, but by the time I had written her address I had lost the desire to hurt and dropped the card into the road. It was strange that hate should have been revived again by that meeting with Henry. I remember thinking, as I opened Mr Parkis’s next report, if only love could revive like that too.
Mr Parkis had done his work well: the powder had worked and the flat had been located—the top flat in 16 Cedar Road: the occupant, a Miss Smythe and her brother, Richard. I wondered whether Miss Smythe was as convenient a sister as Henry was a husband, and all my latent snobbery was aroused by the name—that y, the final e. I thought, has she fallen as low as a Smythe in Cedar Road? Was he the end of a long chain of lovers in the last two years, or when I saw him (and I was determined to see him less obscurely than in Mr Parkis’s reports) would I be looking at the man for whom she had deserted me in June 1944?
‘Shall I ring the bell and walk right in and confront him like an injured husband?’ I asked Mr Parkis (who had met me by appointment in an A.B.C.—it was his own suggestion as he had the boy with him and couldn’t take him into a bar).
‘I’m against it, sir,’ Mr Parkis said, adding a third spoonful of sugar to his tea. His son sat at a table out of earshot with a glass of orangeade and a bun. He observed everybody who came in, as they shook the thin watery snow from their hats and coats, watched with his alert brown beady eyes as though he had to make a report later—perhaps he had, part of the Parkis training. ‘You see, sir,’ Mr Parkis said, ‘unless you were willing to give evidence, it complicates things in the Courts.’
‘It will never reach the Courts.’
‘An amicable settlement?’
‘A lack of interest,’ I said. ‘One can’t really make a fuss about a man called Smythe. I’d just like to see him—that’s all.’
‘The safest thing, sir, would be a meter inspector.’
‘I can’t dress up in a peaked cap.’
‘I share your feelings, sir. It’s a thing I try to avoid. And I’d like the boy to avoid it too when the time comes.’ His sad eyes followed every movement his boy made. ‘He wanted an ice, sir, but I said no, not in this weather,’ and he shivered a little as though the thought of the ice had chilled him. For a moment I had no idea of his meaning when he said, ‘Every profession has its dignity, sir.’
I said, ‘Would you lend me your boy?’
‘If you assure me there’ll be nothing unpleasant, sir,’ he said doubtfully.
‘I don’t want to call when Mrs Miles is there. This scene will have a Universal certificate.’
‘But why the boy, sir?’
‘I’ll say he’s feeling ill. We’ve come to the wrong address. They couldn’t help letting him sit down for a while.’
‘It’s in the boy’s capacity,’ Mr Parkis said with pride, ‘and nobody can resist Lance.’
‘He’s called Lance, is he?’
‘After Sir Lancelot, sir. Of the Round Table.’
‘I’m surprised. That was a rather unpleasant episode, surely.’
‘He found the Holy Grail,’ Mr Parkis said.
‘That was Galahad. Lancelot was found in bed with Guinevere.’ Why do we have this desire to tease the innocent? Is it envy? Mr Parkis said sadly, looking across at his boy as though he had betrayed him, ‘I hadn’t heard.’
VII
Next day—to spite his father—I gave the boy an ice in the High Street before we went to Cedar Road. Henry Miles was holding a cocktail party—so Mr Parkis had reported, and the coast was clear. He handed the boy over to me, after twitching his clothes straight. The boy was wearing his best things in honour of his first stage appearance with a client, while I was wearing my worst. Some of the strawberry ice fell from his spoon and made a splash upon his suit. I sat in silence till the last drop was drained. Then I said, ‘Another?’ He nodded. ‘Strawberry again?’
He said, ‘Vanilia,’ and added a long while after, ‘Please.’
He ate the second ice with great deliberation, carefully licking the spoon as though he were removing fingerprints. Then we went hand in hand across the Common to Cedar Road like a father and son. Sarah and I are both childless, I thought. Wouldn’t there have been more sense in marrying and having children and living quietly together in a sweet and dull peace than in this furtive business of lust and jealousy and the reports of Parkis?
I rang the bell on the top floor of Cedar Road. I said to the boy, ‘Remember. You’re feeling ill.’
‘If they give me an ice …’ he began: Parkis had trained him to be prepared.
‘They won’t.’
I assumed it was Miss Smythe who opened the door—a middle-aged woman with the grey tired hair of charity bazaars. I said, ‘Does Mr Wilson live here?’
‘No. I’m afraid …’
‘You don’t happen to know if he’s in the flat below?’
‘There’s nobody called Wilson in this house.’
‘Oh dear,’ I said. ‘I’ve brought the boy all this way, and now he’s feeling ill …’
I dared not look at the boy, but from the way in which Miss Smythe gazed at him, I felt sure he was silently and efficiently carrying out his part: Mr Savage would have been proud to acknowledge him as a member of his team.
‘Do let him come in and sit down,’ Miss Smythe said.
‘It’s very kind of you.’
I wondered how often Sarah had passed through this door into the little cluttered hall. Here I was in the home of X. Presumably the brown soft hat on the hook belonged to him. The fingers of my successor—the fingers that touched Sarah—daily turned the handle of this door which opened now on the yellow flame of the gas-fire, pink-shaded lamps burning through the snow-grey afternoon, a waste of cretonne loose covers. ‘Can I fetch your little boy a glass of water?’
‘It’s very kind of you.’ I remembered I had said that before.
‘Or some orange-squash.’
‘You mustn’t bother.’
‘Orange-squash,’ the boy said firmly: again the long pause and ‘please’ as she went through the door. Now we were alone I looked at him: he really did look ill, crouching back
on the cretonne. If he had not winked at me, I would have wondered whether perhaps … Miss Smythe returned, carrying the orange-squash, and I said, ‘Say thank you, Arthur.’
‘Is his name Arthur?’
‘Arthur James,’ I said.
‘It’s quite an old-fashioned name.’
‘We’re an old-fashioned family. His mother was fond of Tennyson.’
‘She’s … ?’
‘Yes.’ I said and she looked at the child with commiseration.
‘He must be a comfort to you.’
‘And an anxiety,’ I said. I began to feel shame: she was so unsuspicious, and what good was I doing here? I was no nearer meeting X, and would I be any happier for giving a face to the man upon the bed? I altered my tactics. I said, ‘I ought to introduce myself. My name is Bridges.’
‘And mine is Smythe.’
‘I have a strong feeling I have met you somewhere before.’
‘I don’t think so. I have a very good memory for faces.’
‘Perhaps I have seen you on the Common.’
‘I go there sometimes with my brother.’
‘Not by any chance a John Smythe?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘Richard. How is the little boy feeling?’
‘Worse,’ said Parkis’s son.
‘Do you think we ought to take his temperature?’
‘Can I have some more orange-squash?’
‘It can do no harm, can it?’ Miss Smythe wondered. ‘Poor child. Perhaps he has a fever.’
‘We’ve trespassed on you enough.’
‘My brother would never forgive me if I didn’t make you stay. He’s very fond of children.’
‘Is your brother in?’
‘I’m expecting him any moment.’
‘Home from work?’
‘Well, his working day is really Sunday.’
‘A clergyman?’ I asked with secret malice and received the puzzling answer, ‘Not exactly.’ A look of worry came down like a curtain between us and she retired behind it with her private troubles. As she got up the hall door opened and there was X. I had an impression, in the dusk of the hall, of a man with a handsome actor’s face—a face that looked at itself too often in mirrors, a taint of vulgarity, and I thought sadly and without satisfaction, I wish she had better taste. Then he came through into the light of the lamps. The gross livid spots which covered his left cheek were almost like marks of distinction—I had maligned him, he could have no satisfaction in looking at himself in any glass.
Miss Smythe said, ‘My brother Richard. Mr Bridges. Mr Bridges’s little boy is not feeling well. I asked them in.’
He shook hands with his eye on the boy: I noticed the dryness and heat of his hands. He said. ‘I’ve seen your boy before.’
‘On the Common?’
‘Perhaps.’
He was too powerful for the room: he didn’t go with the cretonne. Did his sister sit here, while they, in another room … or did they send her out on errands while they made love?
Well, I had seen the man; there wasn’t anything to stay for—except all the other questions that now were released by the sight of him—where had they met? Had she made the first move? What had she seen in him? How long, how often had they been lovers? There were words she had written that I knew by heart: ‘I have no need to write to you or talk to you … I know I am only beginning to love, but already I want to abandon everything, everybody but you,’ and I stared up at the raw spots on his cheek and thought, there is no safety anywhere: a humpback, a cripple—they all have the trigger that sets love off.
‘What was the real purpose of your coming?’ he suddenly broke into my thoughts.
‘I told Miss Smythe—a man called Wilson …’
‘I don’t remember your face, but I remember your son’s.’ He made a short frustrated gesture as though he wanted to touch the boy’s hand: his eyes had a kind of abstract tenderness. He said, ‘You don’t have to be afraid of me. I am used to people coming here. I assure you I only want to be of use.’
Miss Smythe explained, ‘People are often so shy.’ I couldn’t for the life of me think what it was all about.
‘I was just looking for a man called Wilson.’
‘You know that I know there’s no such man.’
‘If you would lend me a telephone directory I could check his address …’
‘Sit down again,’ he said and brooded gloomily over the boy.
‘I must be going. Arthur’s feeling better and Wilson …’ His ambiguity made me ill at ease.
‘You can go if you want to, of course, but can’t you leave the boy here—if only for half an hour? I want to talk to him.’ It occurred to me that he had recognized Parkis’s assistant and was going to cross-question him. I said. ‘Anything you want to ask him you can ask me.’ Every time he turned his unmarked cheek towards me my anger grew: every time I saw the ugly flavid cheek it died away and I couldn’t believe—any more than I could believe that lust existed here among the flowered cretonnes, with Miss Smythe getting tea. But despair can always produce an answer and despair asked me now: Would you so much rather it was love and not lust?
‘You and I are too old,’ he said. ‘But the schoolmasters and the priests—they’ve only just begun to corrupt him with their lies.’
‘I don’t know what the hell you mean,’ I said, and added quickly, ‘I’m sorry,’ to Miss Smythe.
‘There you are, you see,’ he said. ‘Hell, and if I angered you, as like as not you’d say My God.’
It seemed to me that I had shocked him: he might be a Nonconformist minister: Miss Smythe had said he worked on Sundays, but how horribly bizarre that a man like that should be Sarah’s lover. Suddenly it diminished her importance: her love affair became a joke: she herself might be used as a comic anecdote at my next dinner party. For a moment I was free of her. The boy said, ‘I feel sick. Can I have some more orangeade?’
Miss Smythe said, ‘My dear, I think you’d better not.’
‘Really I must be taking him away. It’s been very good of you.’ I tried to keep the spots well in view. I said, ‘I’m very sorry if I offended you at all. It was quite by accident. I don’t happen to share your religious beliefs.’
He looked at me with surprise. ‘But I have none. I believe in nothing.’
‘I thought you objected …’
‘I hate the trappings that are left over. Forgive me. I go too far, Mr Bridges, I know, but I’m sometimes afraid that people will be reminded even by conventional words—good-bye for instance. If only I could believe that my grandson would not even know what a word like god had meant to us any more than a word in Swahili.’
‘Have you a grandson?’
He said gloomily, ‘I have no children. I envy you your boy. It’s a great duty and a great responsibility.’
‘What did you want to ask him?’
‘I wanted him to feel at home here because then he might return. There are so many things one wants to tell a child. How the world came into existence. I wanted to tell him about death. I wanted to rid him of all the lies they inject at school.’
‘Rather a lot to do in half an hour.’
‘One can sow a seed.’
I said maliciously, ‘That comes out of the Gospels.’
‘Oh, I’ve been corrupted too. You don’t need to tell me that.’
‘Do people really come to you—on the quiet?’
‘You’d be surprised,’ Miss Smythe said. ‘People are longing for a message of hope.’
‘Hope?’
‘Yes, hope,’ Smythe said. ‘Can’t you see what hope there’d be, if everybody in the world knew that there was nothing else but what we have here? No future compensation, rewards, punishments.’ His face had a crazy nobility when one cheek was hidden. ‘Then we’d begin to make this world like heaven.’
‘There’s a terrible lot to be explained first,’ I said.
‘Can I show you my library?’
‘It’s the best rationalist libra
ry in South London,’ Miss Smythe explained.
‘I don’t need to be converted, Mr Smythe. I believe in nothing as it is. Except now and then.’
‘It’s the now and thens we have to deal with.’
‘The odd thing is that those are the moments of hope.’
‘Pride can masquerade as hope. Or selfishness.’
‘I don’t think that has anything to do with it at all. It happens suddenly, for no reason, a scent…’
‘Ah,’ Smythe said, ‘the construction of a flower, the argument from design, all that business about a watch requiring a watchmaker. It’s old-fashioned. Schwenigen answered all that twenty-five years ago. Let me show you …’
‘Not today. I must really take the boy home.’
Again he made that gesture of frustrated tenderness, like a lover who has been rejected. I wondered suddenly from how many death-beds he had been excluded. I found I wanted to give him some message of hope too, but then the cheek turned and I saw only the arrogant actor’s face. I preferred him when he was pitiable, inadequate, out of date. Ayer, Russell—they were the fashion today, but I doubted whether there were many logical positivists in his library. He only had the crusaders, not the detached.
At the door—I noticed that he didn’t use that dangerous term good-bye—I shot directly at his handsome cheek, ‘You should meet a friend of mine, Mrs Miles. She’s interested …’ and then I stopped. The shot had gone home. The spots seemed to flush a deeper red and I heard Miss Smythe say, ‘Oh, my dear,’ as he turned abruptly away. There was no doubt that I had given him pain, but the pain was mine as well as his. How I wished my shot had gone astray.
In the gutter outside Parkis’s boy was sick. I let him vomit, standing there wondering, has he lost her too? Is there no end to this? Have I now got to discover Y?
VIII
Parkis said, ‘It really was very easy, sir. There was such a crush, and Mrs Miles thought I was one of his friends from the Ministry, and Mr Miles thought I was one of her friends.’
‘Was it a good cocktail party?’ I asked, remembering again that first meeting and the sight of Sarah with the stranger.