Book summary “The End of the Affair”: summary

Introduction

You often find that the end of an affair leaves behind not a clean break, but an enduring ache of jealousy and obsession. The problem you face is how to reconcile intense passion with the consuming hatred that follows loss, especially when emotional boundaries blur beyond recognition.

Graham Greene explores this dilemma through the narrator Maurice Bendrix, whose passionate wartime affair with Sarah Miles ended abruptly without explanation. The central idea is that love and hatred share identical emotional intensities, and that human jealousy can unexpectedly collide with divine intervention.

The book moves from the psychological mechanics of writing and jealousy into wartime surveillance, spiritual awakening, and the posthumous revelation of secrets.

You will discover the answers to these questions as you read:

• How does professional routine protect you against personal chaos?
• What drives a person to make a desperate spiritual bargain during a bombing raid?
• Can love survive after physical separation and death?

1. Psychology of Relationships and Writing

Love and hatred operate through identical emotional mechanisms, while strict professional writing routines serve as a defense against personal chaos.

The Demon of Hatred

You discover that hate and love can operate through the same emotional mechanisms, producing very similar psychological and behavioral states. The narrator notes that his intense hatred for Sarah and Henry runs as deep as his former love, operating through the same internal glands and leading to obsession, vigilance, and torment.

Bendrix compares his feelings of hatred to those of biblical figures, wondering if onlookers could tell whether Judas or Peter loved Christ based solely on their actions.

Sexual desire and romantic attraction can be strongly linked to a feeling of superiority over the partner. Bendrix reflects on his past inability to feel sexual desire for intelligent or beautiful women without harboring some sense of mental or physical superiority. He notes his initial hesitation and sense of inferiority around Sarah because she was both beautiful and intelligent.

Relationships can initially be formed for utilitarian motives, such as gathering background information for a creative project. Bendrix admits he initially befriended Henry and cultivated a relationship with Sarah purely to extract realistic details for a novel featuring a senior civil servant.

Bendrix questioned Sarah about Henry's daily schedule, including his breakfast time, commute, briefcase, and whether he ate coffee beans to clear his breath before conferences.

The Writing Routine

Writing a set quota of words daily becomes an automatic discipline that survives catastrophes, war, and emotional turmoil until severe unhappiness breaks the habit. Bendrix maintains a strict professional routine of writing five hundred words a day for five days a week, relying on the unconscious mind to solve narrative problems during daily life. However, his obsessive hate and the painful end of his love affair completely destroy this disciplined workflow.

Even the V1 flying bombs of 1944 and daylight raids could not stop Bendrix's writing schedule, but the agonizing emotional breakdown over Sarah leaves him unable to work for a week.

A novelist's unconscious mind continues to process stories, solve narrative impasses, and develop details during ordinary daily tasks. Writing is sustained by the stream of the unconscious flowing undisturbed while the writer shops, pays taxes, or engages in casual conversations. Bendrix finds that while his conscious mind is consumed by hatred and the destruction of his love affair, his unconscious takes over the destructive emotional work rather than his fiction.

You can maintain your creative output by following strict professional rules:

• Write a fixed quota of five hundred words a day.
• Break off work immediately when the quota is reached, even in the middle of a scene.

These habits keep you grounded when twenty years of averaging five hundred words a day face sudden interruption. The typescript pages accumulate, marked by totals like 83,764 words marked on the front page, until personal suffering turns a cast-off into an obstacle.

2. The Investigation and the Blitz

Surveillance by private investigators uncovers marital secrets, while the sudden arrival of V1 flying bombs alters the characters' lives forever.

Jealousy exists exclusively alongside desire, causing intense insecurity and turning love into a form of suffering. The narrator explains that true jealousy requires physical or emotional desire, comparing his own obsessive torment with Henry's quiet despair over losing his wife's confidence. Insecurity poisons trust, making every trivial lie or evasion look like a major betrayal and turning a lover into a suspicious police officer.

The narrator hires a private detective named Mr. Parkis to track Sarah's movements, inspect her wastepaper basket, and investigate her visits to Cedar Road.

Detective Agency Procedure

Private inquiry agencies rely on systematic observation of trivial daily habits and associates to uncover marital secrets. Mr Savage and his operative Parkis conduct surveillance by monitoring transport, restaurant visits, and incidental contacts like maids to gather evidence of infidelity. Parkis follows Sarah and Bendrix to the Cafe Royal and Rules restaurant, noting their shared pork chops, and later tracks Sarah to a Roman Catholic church in Maiden Lane.

When you hire private detectives, you can expect a structured approach:

• Conduct a preliminary consultation to establish the mood and atmosphere of the case.
• Inquire about household members such as maids to uncover daily habits.
• Maintain weekly progress reports detailing expenses and movements.

These methods involve paying a three guineas preliminary consultation fee and three guineas a day for detective services at locations like 159 Vigo Street. Illicit meetings often take place in standardized, transient spaces designed for short stays. The couple frequents a row of hotels near Paddington Station colloquially known as Arbuckle Avenue, where rooms are rented by the hour without requiring twin beds.

The narrator and Sarah rent a room at the Bristol hotel in Arbuckle Avenue for fifteen shillings for a short stay, managing with an electric meter that only accepted shillings.

Lovers often develop private code words to discreetly reference their passion and normalize illicit affairs. The narrator and Sarah used the word onions to represent both their passion and the physical act of love itself, a code born from a shared moment over a cheap restaurant meal. Sarah mentions that Henry cannot bear the smell of onions, which leads to a shared intimate moment and establishes the secret word for their affair.

Guilt and jealousy drive the narrator to stage a direct confrontation with the husband, armed with evidence from a private investigator. The narrator invites Henry to his empty club on a Saturday, serves him a disastrous meal, and reveals the detective reports and a salvaged love letter to break Henry's composure. Henry meets the narrator at his club, eats a Vienna steak, and reacts to the investigator's reports by throwing them directly into the fireplace.

The Impact of V1 Rockets

The sudden arrival of V1 flying bombs during the London Blitz brings destruction and alters the psychological landscape of the characters. During the first night of the V1 robot bombs in June 1944, explosions destroy nearby buildings and shatter glass, leading directly to the fatal turning point of the affair. A V1 robot bomb crashes onto the Common during an air raid, leading to an explosion at the narrator's building that buries him under the front door.

Desperation and hopelessness in moments of crisis can drive a non-believer to pray for miracles. Following the bomb explosion, the narrator finds Sarah in the room and discovers she was praying to anything that might exist because she believed him to be dead under the rubble. Sarah tells the narrator she was praying on the floor when the bomb struck, leading to a profound change in her spiritual perspective.

3. Despair, Vows, and the Rival

After three weeks of relentless mental torment imagining Sarah with another man, you might seriously contemplate suicide. Maurice sets a specific date to end his life and saves sleeping pills, but ultimately abandons the plan because he refuses to give Sarah the relief of not having to worry about him anymore. The memory of Sarah's disappointed expression when he survived a V1 bomb attack stops him from granting her that satisfaction.

Confronting the Rival

Mr Parkis approaches his surveillance work with professional pride and strict boundaries, protecting his young son Lance from unpleasantness and refusing to let him eat ice cream in freezing weather. He insists that every profession maintains its own dignity.

Maurice uses young Lance as a pretext to gain entry into the flat of Richard Smythe, Sarah's new lover. Seeing Smythe's disfigured face and listening to his rationalist beliefs diminishes Maurice's hatred and reduces the affair to something bizarre and pathetic rather than grandly tragic. Maurice and young Lance visit Miss Smythe and her brother Richard at 16 Cedar Road under the guise of the boy feeling ill, allowing Maurice to observe his rival up close.

Richard Smythe runs a rationalist library and campaigns against Christianity, hoping to rid the world of religious lies so people can build heaven on earth. Smythe lectures people on the Common against the existence of God and invites visitors to his rationalist library in South London to discuss atheism. However, Maurice notes that Smythe possesses a crusading zeal and an obsession with religious concepts that resembles the very faith he opposes. Upon closing the case, private investigator Mr Parkis gifts Maurice a cheap hotel ashtray as a memento, originating from the Bolton Case and marked Hotel Metropole, Brightlingsea.

The Vow

Intense jealousy drives Maurice to the brink of despair, while Sarah's secret journal reveals a desperate spiritual bargain made during a bombing raid.

When Maurice finally obtains and reads Sarah's diary from two years prior, his perspective on her sudden disappearance shifts entirely. Maurice reads Sarah's account in an old account book detailing her inner life, her fear of emotional deserts, and her pact with God, recorded across entries on 12 June 1944 and 17 June 1944. Instead of ordinary desertion, he discovers that she made a desperate vow to God during a life-or-death crisis.

When a V1 bomb explodes and Maurice appears dead under the rubble, an atheist Sarah breaks down in hysteria. During the 1944 bombing raid, Sarah finds Maurice's motionless arm under the debris, prays to a God she claims not to believe in, and vows to surrender Maurice if he is revived. She kneels and promises God that if He brings Maurice back alive and gives him a chance at happiness, she will give him up forever and believe in God.

After keeping her promise to leave Maurice for six weeks, Sarah attempts to escape her emotional isolation by pursuing a connection with Dunstan, a ministry official, and seeking casual encounters. Sarah has lunch and drinks with Dunstan at the Jardin des Gourmets on 15 July 1944 and on 21 July 1944 while waiting for Henry, but realizes the physical intimacy fails to replace her true love or numb her pain.

Feeling trapped by a vow she made to a God she struggles to believe in, Sarah contemplates rebelling like the medieval king who robbed God of what He loved most out of spite. Sarah recalls a historical king who swore to rob God of what He loved most because his birthplace was destroyed, and she contemplates applying this logic to her own life during a stay at Bigwell-on-Sea, as noted on 12 September 1944 when she reflects on her routine, Henry's impending O.B.E., and her loss of identity. She considers seeking degradation in bars or beaches to spite the divine claim on her soul, though she realizes mechanical sin without pleasure lacks the power to hurt.

4. Religious Awakening and Conflict

Sarah undergoes a profound spiritual conversion and grapples with the physical demands of faith, while Maurice remains confident in their reunion.

Philosophical Struggle

Atheist Richard Smythe uses his own physical deformity and intellectual arguments to try and cure Sarah of her belief in God. Smythe argues that religion is born out of human desires, comparing God to a beautifying mirror that lets man see himself as powerful and just. Despite his arguments, Sarah notices his deep need to be useful and his genuine love of truth, recognizing that his fierce opposition to religion mimics the emotional attachment of belief.

Sarah visits Richard Smythe at 16 Cedar Road for private advice and philosophical discussions, eventually kissing his scarred cheek to embrace pain rather than empty happiness. Richard Smythe's hours for private advice span 4-6 daily. During a heated philosophical discussion, Smythe abruptly confesses his love and asks Sarah to marry him, offering to tolerate her religious beliefs as a bribe to win her. Smythe sits with Sarah on the chintzy sofa at 16 Cedar Road and asks her to marry him, noting that he would even let her pervert their children.

Religious Awakening

Sarah's initial revulsion toward the physical and realistic nature of Catholic statues transforms into a realization that human love and pain require a physical body. Entering a dark church in Park Road, Sarah initially hates the plaster statues and the resurrection of the body because her own body caused so much injury. However, she realizes she wants Maurice's physical scars to exist through eternity, concluding that people invent physical doctrines because human love requires physical expression.

Sarah visits the dark church in Park Road, sees a middle-aged man praying with celery in his hat, and eventually dips her finger in holy water to make a cross on her forehead. Sarah packs a large blue suitcase and a small brown one, places a dear Henry letter on the hall table, but hides it and tears it up after seeing Henry cry over a headache following their lunch date. Sarah packs her suitcases and writes a dear Henry letter explaining her love for Maurice, but upon seeing a weeping and vulnerable Henry, she abandons her plan, destroys the letter, and makes a new promise to stay.

Maurice remains utterly confident in their reunion, driven by the mathematical certainty that two people who love each other must eventually sleep together. Maurice tracks Sarah's movements, arranges to meet her, and plans a future together funded by an advance for writing a biography of General Gordon and finishing his novel. He believes he has won the psychological game against both Henry and God.

Maurice meets Sarah at Rules for lunch, follows her across the Common, and later corners her in the dark church to map out their escape to a cousin's cottage in Dorset. Savings from typing with Sarah total fifty pounds a year, while Maurice maintains a minimum daily writing goal of seven hundred and fifty words alongside a three-month advance period to keep them comfortable. Parkis visits the British Museum Reading Room on his day off to read law reports like the Russell case, seeking a broader historical vista away from his petty detective details. Maurice encounters Parkis reading The Times Law Reports in the British Museum Reading Room and offers him a real ham sandwich sent by an American publisher.

Overwhelmed by her failures to love properly, Sarah buys a cheap crucifix, locks herself in her room, and prays to stop focusing on herself, asking God to let her suffer so that others can be healed. Sarah buys a cheap, ugly crucifix from a shop, hides it at the bottom of her jewel-case, and prays to trade her own pain for the relief of Maurice and Henry. After eight days of waiting by the telephone for Sarah, Maurice receives an early morning call from Henry, who sounds strange and casually breaks the news of Sarah's passing. Henry calls Maurice just before nine o'clock in the morning, states that an awful thing has happened, and invites Maurice over for a drink because he dislikes being alone.

5. Grief, Secrets, and the Funeral

Sarah's death brings a flood of posthumous revelations, including secret Catholic instruction, a childhood baptism, and a final letter of surrender.

Bendrix wants Sarah completely obliterated and wishes to send Parkis to interrupt her eternity, viewing her death as a robbery of his memories and individuality. Bendrix persuades Henry to choose cremation so he can imagine saying, "Resurrect that body if you can." The bad year of 1945 when forgetting love was over had begun, and Sarah died at four in the morning.

The Secret Conversion

Smythe visits Henry's house, takes a lock of Sarah's hair, and confesses that Sarah asked him to pray for her and was making up her mind to convert. Smythe visits the house in Henry's absence and shows Bendrix the scrap of hair he took from Sarah's room.

A delayed letter arrives twenty-four hours after Sarah died, featuring the whole bag of tricks and explaining how she visited a priest before walking out because marriage was impossible. Father Crompton visits Henry's study and insists that Sarah would have been happier under the Church's care by invoking the baptism of desire.

The Mother's Revelation

Mrs. Bertram borrows three pounds from Bendrix and ten pounds previously borrowed from Henry, casually recounting the story of getting Sarah baptized by a priest in Normandy when Sarah was two years old. Over dinner at the Isola Bella, Mrs. Bertram explains her history of unhappy marriages with mean men and her revenge of baptizing Sarah without her husband's knowledge.

Bendrix wakes up at five in the morning from a dream of shooting at steel-coated bottles with the fierce conviction that Sarah belonged to him, not God. You realize that Bendrix refuses to believe a splash of water could overwrite his physical possession of Sarah.

10 Key Ideas

1. Maurice Bendrix discovers that his intense hatred for Sarah and Henry operates through the exact same emotional mechanisms as his former love, while his strict professional routine of writing five hundred words a day serves as a defense against personal chaos.
2. Private investigator Mr. Parkis conducts systematic surveillance of Sarah's movements and associates to uncover marital secrets, providing evidence that drives Bendrix to stage a direct confrontation with Sarah's husband, Henry.
3. The sudden arrival of V1 flying bombs during the London Blitz shatters the characters' physical and psychological landscape, leading an atheist Sarah to make a desperate spiritual bargain during a bombing raid.
4. Maurice tracks Sarah's new lover, Richard Smythe, to his rationalist library, where encountering the atheist lecturer's disfigured face diminishes Maurice's hatred and reduces the affair to something bizarre and pathetic.
5. When Maurice finally reads Sarah's secret diary, he discovers that she made a desperate vow to God during a bombing raid to surrender Maurice if he was revived from the rubble.
6. Sarah attempts to escape her emotional isolation by pursuing a casual connection with Dunstan, but ultimately realizes that physical intimacy fails to replace her true love or numb her pain.
7. Despite atheist Richard Smythe's philosophical arguments and a marriage proposal, Sarah undergoes a profound spiritual awakening and embraces the physical demands of faith by visiting a dark church and making a cross with holy water.
8. Maurice remains confident in their mathematical certainty of a physical reunion, tracking Sarah and arranging an escape, while an overwhelmed Sarah buys a cheap crucifix and prays to trade her own pain for the relief of Maurice and Henry.
9. Following Sarah's sudden death at four in the morning, Maurice persuades Henry to choose cremation out of spite, while Smythe visits to reveal that Sarah had asked him to pray and was considering conversion.
10. A delayed letter and a revelation from Mrs. Bertram over dinner at the Isola Bella expose a childhood baptism in Normandy and a final surrender, leaving Bendrix to grapple with the inescapable realization of divine love.