The End Of The Affair

Bendrix recalls the moment Sarah broke off their affair. As he reminisces, he recalls that “she was already under a stranger's influence” (37). They had been standing in the ruins of a building, one which had been damaged by the first wave of Nazi V1 rockets. The bombs had fallen while Bendrix and Sarah had been in bed together. Bendrix left to see whether his landlady was in the basement, and Sarah pleaded for him not to go: “it won’t be a moment” (38), Bendrix assures her.

As Bendrix runs down the stairs, the bomb hit. He wakes in a daze “five seconds or five minutes” (38) later, feeling his wounds. He scrambles to his feet and climbs up the damaged staircase, realizing that the house is not too badly damaged. Sarah is already exiting his room. Bendrix notes that “[she] sound[s] disappointed” when she says that he is alive. Sarah gathers her clothes and then washes Bendrix’s injured face. When he asks her what she was doing, Sarah says she was praying “to anything that might exist” (39). She had been certain that he was dead. As she leaves, Bendrix asks whether he will see her the next day. Sarah is elusive.