The End Of The Affair

Days after the bomb hits and Sarah leaves Bendrix, he maintains hope. He writes to her once but gets no reply; all communication is severed. Bendrix struggles to sleep and obsesses over her final religion-tinged words to him. At one point, he “began to think quite seriously of suicide” (40-41). He abandons the idea as he believes Sarah will not care and he does not want to “give her that satisfaction” (41). Bendrix begins to hate Sarah. Six months later, he had finally stopped thinking of her every day.

Bendrix abandons his hate, up until the moment he talks to Henry in the Victoria Gardens. He picks apart Parkis’s latest report, which says Sarah is visiting a flat occupied by Miss Smythe and her brother, Richard. Bendrix asks Parkis for advice on how to get a look at this Richard Smythe. They concoct a scheme in which Parkis’s son, Lance, will accompany Bendrix to the house. Bendrix will claim that Lance is his son and is feeling faint and that they have the wrong address. They won’t be able to “help letting him sit down for a while” (42), Bendrix believes. Bendrix then corrects Parkis’s knowledge of Arthurian mythology, revealing that it was Galahad who found the Holy Grail, while Lancelot was found in bed with Guinevere.

The next day, they execute the plan. Henry is hosting a cocktail party, meaning that “the coast was clear” (42). Bendrix rings the bell with Lance at his side. A middle-aged woman—whom Bendrix presumes to be Miss Smythe—opens the door, and Bendrix gives her the wrong name. After the plan works, they are invited inside so the apparently sick Lance can rest for a moment. Lance winks at Bendrix as Miss Smythe fetches the boy a glass of orange squash.

Bendrix elicits information about Richard Smythe, who is “not exactly” (43) a clergyman. At that moment, Richard walks in. Richard is uglier than Bendrix had assumed (though only due to a mark along one side of his face), but 100 questions queue themselves up in his mind. Richard seems to see through Bendrix’s plan and says as much. When Bendrix decides to leave, Richard wants Lance to stay behind and answer his questions. They discuss religion, and Richard reveals that he has no religious beliefs. He says that he wants to rid Lance of “all the lies they inject at school” (45). As Bendrix assures them of his own irreligiosity, Richard and his sister invite him to their library, “the best rationalist library in South London” (45).

As he leaves, Bendrix mentions “a friend of mine, Mrs. Miles” in the hope of drawing a reaction. Richard’s face flushes. Bendrix immediately regrets his “shot” (46). Lance vomits in the gutter outside the house while Bendrix stands by and thinks of Sarah. 

Parkis reports on what he observed at the Miles’s cocktail party, which he attended undercover. Sarah seemed “a bit out of sorts” (46) with a nasty cough. Parkis has stolen Sarah’s diary and hands it to Bendrix. Pleased, Bendrix tells Parkis that they can close their account and promises to write a letter of praise to Mr. Savage. Parkis lingers while Bendrix wants to read the diary, so Bendrix lies to hasten the detective’s departure.

Before he leaves, Parkis gifts Bendrix an ashtray from a hotel where a notorious affair took place. Parkis took the ashtray from the bedside and claims that it can become a conversation piece between Bendrix and his friends. When he is finally left alone, Bendrix takes a moment to leaf through the diary and finds that it is not at all “what [he] was expecting” (48). He begins to read.