The End of the Affair Read Online Free PDF

to give me the satisfaction of rejecting them myself. But she never played that game of make-believe, and then suddenly, unexpectedly, she would shatter my reserve with a statement of such sweetness and amplitude… I remember once when I was miserable at her calm assumption that one day our relations would be over, hearing with incredulous happiness, I have never, never loved a man as I love you, and I never shall again.’ Well, she hadn’t known it, I thought, but she too played the same game of make-believe.
    She sat down beside me and asked for a glass of lager, ‘I’ve booked a table at Rules,’ I said.
    ‘Can’t we stay here?’
    ‘It’s where we always used to go.’
    ‘Yes.’
    Perhaps we were looking strained in our manner, because I noticed we had attracted the attention of a little man who sat on a sofa not far off. I tried to outstare him and that was easy. He had a long moustache and fawn like eyes and he looked hurriedly away: his elbow caught his glass of beer and spun it on to the floor, so that he was overcome with confusion. I was sorry then because it occurred to me that he might have recognized me from my photographs: he might even be one of my few readers. He had a small boy sitting with him, and what a cruel thing it is to humiliate a father in the presence of his son. The boy blushed scarlet when the waiter hurried forward, and his father began to apologize with unnecessary vehemence.
    I said to Sarah, ‘Of course you must lunch wherever you like.’
    ‘You see, I’ve never been back there.’
    ‘Well, it was never your restaurant, was it?
    ‘Do you go there often?’
    ‘It’s convenient for me. Two or three times a week.’
    She stood up abruptly and said, ‘Let’s go,’ and was suddenly taken with a fit of coughing. It seemed too big a cough for her small body: her forehead sweated with its expulsion.
    ‘That’s nasty.’
    ‘Oh, it’s nothing. I’m sorry.’
    ‘Taxi?’
    ‘I’d rather walk.’
    As you go up Maiden Lane on the left-hand side there is a doorway and a grating that we passed without a word to each other. After the first dinner, when I had questioned her about Henry’s habits and she had warmed to my interest, I had kissed her there rather fumblingly on the way to the tube. I don’t know why I did it, unless perhaps that image in the mirror had come into my mind, for I had no intention of making love to her: I had no particular intention even of looking her up again. She was too beautiful to excite me with the idea of accessibility.
    When we sat down, one of the old waiters said to me, ‘It’s a very long time since you’ve been here, sir,’ and I wished I hadn’t made my false claim to Sarah.
    ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I lunch upstairs nowadays.’
    ‘And you. Ma’am, it’s a long time too…’
    ‘Nearly two years,’ she said with the accuracy I sometimes hated.
    ‘But I remember it was a big lager you used to like.’
    ‘You’ve got a good memory, Alfred,’ and he beamed with pleasure at the memory. She had always had the trick of getting on well with waiters.
    Food interrupted our dreary small-talk, and only when we had finished the meal did she give any indication of why she was there. ‘I wanted you to lunch with me,’ she said, ‘I wanted to ask you about Henry.’
    ‘Henry?’ I repeated, trying to keep disappointment out of my voice.
    ‘I’m worried about him. How did you find him the other night? Was he strange at all?’
    ‘I didn’t notice anything wrong,’ I said.
    ‘I wanted to ask you - oh, I know you’re very busy -whether you could look him up occasionally. I think he’s lonely.’
    ‘With you?’
    ‘You know he’s never really noticed me. Not for years.’
    ‘Perhaps he’s begun to notice you when you aren’t there.’
    ‘I’m not out much,’ she said, ‘nowadays,’ and her cough conveniently broke that line of talk. By the time the fit was over, she had thought out her gambits, though it wasn’t like her to