Hart: Damage Chapters 26-41

The remainder of Damage took me on a twisted rollercoaster ride. Ingrid begins to question if there is something that he has not told her and feels like he might be cheating on her. He covers up her suspicion with lies and then admits how his marriage never had any passion. The physical contact between them was diminishing. He says, “A sickness for Anna wrenched my being. It was as though Ingrid had been trying to invade the space which the ghost of the absent Anna filled.” The entire family decides to go to Hartley for the weekend to celebrate Ingrid’s father, Edward’s birthday. This is where Martyn proposes to Anna. In the middle of the night, Anna tells him how his son is going to tell the family the news the next day. She tells him, “I am everything you need in me. You live in me. Remember – everything, always.” The next day he was filled with pain. Everyone congratulated them and he had to force himself to send his best wishes. With their marriage set to June, the family then meets her step father, father, and mother who spill out all of her secrets. It turns out that Martyn has a shocking resemblance to her deceased brother Aston and that Anna still maintains a relationship with her first romance Peter. No wonder she lost contact with her family! He eventually calls Peter and later meets Anna where she gives him a key to the flat she promised. When he goes to visit, he finds a note that reads, “This room will contain nothing but us. A world within a world. I shall visit it to know your wishes. For in this world I have created, you rule and I am your slave. I will wait at the times you designate. Being obedient, I will always be there.” I could not believe that they were really going through with this and thought it would be that easy to maintain their secret life of “love.” On the day before Martyn and Anna’s wedding, he walked towards his new life with Anna with nothing, but happiness filling his heart. He says, “I accepted that my life would continue on a dangerous edge.” This is when he leads himself into self destruction. While making love to Anna, Martyn storms in to tell her that her father suffered from a stroke and catches them in the act. He is frantic and cannot believe his eyes. Martyn falls over the stair case banister and on to the floor where he dies instantly. What amazed me was as his father was trying to tend to his body, Anna simply left with no shame to the tragedy that just happened, as if she never existed. He makes a statement with the police and tells them the truth about their five month long affair and figures out how Peter must have given his son the address to the flat. When he goes home to Sally and Ingrid, they already know everything that has happened. Ingrid tells him, “Why oh why didn’t you kill yourself?” He replies how Aston had killed himself for Anna and now Martyn has died too. Ingrid then realizes how evil of a girl Anna was. She then says, “You and Anna match each other well. You cause agony in others’ lives. She’s always had that talent. Clearly you’ve just discovered it.” I bet that this must have been a horrible realization to come too. He loses his wife, resigns from his job, and unbelievably says, “The pain of Martyn’s loss was equaled only by the pain of longing for her. The name that my voice cried out was Anna, Anna, Anna. After everything that had happened, this man still wants his Anna! She disappeared and obviously wanted nothing to do with him or his son, but he could not see that. He goes to Peter to pick up a letter that she left for him where he finds out how Anna did not find it possible to continue their relationship. Peter delivers the cold truth to him when he says, “Anna could handle guilt all right. Actually, most people can. For example, you managed perfectly well to deceive your son. One barely finds it necessary to refer to the minor betrayal of your wife. Yet you are here days after your son has died, his death undoubtedly all but occasioned by you. You are here to search for Anna.” It was messed up when he learns how the whole affair allowed Anna to say goodbye to her brother and that he was essentially there to be a part of her healing process. In the letter she mentions how she was a fatal gift and that she has given him his own pain now, which he was destined for from the start. In the last chapter, he goes to the airport where he says, “Anna appears before me. She moves towards me. She takes my dark glasses from me. She looks beyond me as though gathering herself from me for ever. Silently, she wrestles for the part of her I still keep. She is all-powerful. It is an act of repossession.” He then notices how she is pregnant and is back with Peter. What a conniving bitch! Anna made him the victim all along. He is then left to deal with the damage and live a life alone in agony and misery where he stares at a life-size photograph of his son, Martyn and his lost love, Anna. He lost them both and destroyed his life because he allowed himself to lose control. The affair was the only thing he had in mind that was ultimately a fake act of passion on Anna’s part. I loved the wording of this book, which is why I jotted down so many quotations. I can now understand how one’s hasty behavior can have a disastrous toll on the impact of one’s life. When one enters an affair they really do not know what they are getting themselves into until they are caught. Passion at that moment in time drives them risky costs. Josephine Hart wrote such a brilliant work of art.