Enduring Love: Chapter 17 Summary & Analysis

Several weeks later, Joe and Clarissa are lying in bed “long past midnight,” and Joe is reflecting on the state of their relationship. The two of them are “hardly at war,” but “everything between [them]” is “stalled.” Clarissa considers Joe to be “manic, perversely obsessed, and . . . the thieving invader of her private space,” while Joe considers Clarissa to be “disloyal, unsupportive . . . and irrationally suspicious.” Nevertheless, the couple have not been quarreling, perhaps because, Joe reasons, a “confrontation might blow [them] apart.” Rather, they have been going about their working lives and living together politely, despite the fact that they have “lost the trick of love.”

Considering the specifics of this cold existence, Joe recalls how he and Clarissa sleep “in the same bed” but never “embrace”—how they use “the same bathroom” but never see “each other naked.” Though Joe understands Clarissa’s beauty as “some schoolbook fact got by heart,” he feels himself to be “a giant polyp of uninspired logic with which [Clarissa is] mistakenly associated.”

Jed Parry, Joe reveals, has been sending “three or four letters a week,” all of which are “long and ardent” and all of which contain references to God’s love, Parry’s determination not to give up on Joe, and some “element of accusation” hurled in Joe’s direction. Parry continues to believe Joe to be “a tease” who is “leading him on,” and though Parry no longer insists that Joe is sending him “messages” with curtains or hedges, he now believes that Joe is speaking to him “in dreams.”

Joe narrates that he has learned how to “scan” Parry’s letters looking for some overt threat that he can take to the police. Parry, however, is too “cunning” to make his threats explicit, warning instead merely that Joe’s decision to ignore him might “end in sorrow and more tears than [they] ever dreamed.” Joe’s research into de Clerambault’s, meanwhile, has revealed that “well over half” of all male sufferers of the condition have “attempted violence on the subjects of their obsessions.”

In addition to writing, Parry has continued to lurk outside of Joe’s apartment building, yet he has ceased to talk to Joe when Joe passes him. This change in strategy, Joe reveals, has frustrated him because Joe has begun carrying a recording device with him in the hope of capturing on tape some threatening remark from Parry. Though Joe attempts to manipulate Parry into making such a threat, going so far as to run his fingers along a hedge in order to send Parry a fake “message,” he realizes that Parry’s “love [is] not shaped by external influences,” proceeding instead from a “private necessity” beyond Joe’s reach. Even if Joe were to write Parry a passionate love letter, he speculates, “it would have made no difference.”

Joe confesses to the reader that Parry has made him increasingly paranoid. He takes extra care “locking up the flat at night,” and he constantly worries that he is being followed. Joe has finally managed to secure an appointment with a police inspector, but he simultaneously wonders if he should purchase “mace” or “a knife” with which he might protect himself. Despite these daydreams, Joe realizes, however, that Parry is unlikely to “come at [him] head on.”

Setting aside these recollections, Joe watches Clarissa on the bed beside him. He wonders if the many years they have spent together “harmoniously” are enough to sustain them in this time of crisis. Rather than attempting another discussion, Joe has decided that “too much [is] made in pop psychology . . . of talking things through.” Instead, he will let the conflict between himself and Clarissa “die.” With this thought, he reaches out for her in an attempt to initiate an embrace.

To Joe’s surprise, Clarissa responds to this gesture by declaring that things between them are “over.” Joe realizes, upon hearing her say so, that he is in a “state of denial,” yet he simultaneously realizes that he feels “nothing at all.” Instead, his thoughts jump, “froglike,” to Jean Logan, with whom Joe now understands Clarissa to have something in common. Both are women who believe themselves “to be wronged” and who “expect something” from Joe as a result.

Thinking about Jean Logan immediately puts Joe in mind of the errand she has set him on, despite the fact that he hasn’t yet responded to Clarissa’s declaration. He has attempted to call Toby Greene but has found it difficult to get past Greene’s unfriendly mother. Upon finally speaking to Greene, Joe has learned that the man has no idea whether Jean’s husband was alone in the moments before the accident. Similarly unhelpful has been James Gadd, who has declared that he will only talk about the accident “in the coroner’s court.” Upon Joe’s reaching Joseph Lacey, however, his luck has changed. Though Lacey has insisted on meeting in person, he has implied that he indeed saw John Logan with a woman.

Clarissa herself, Joe recalls, is unsure about the number of doors she saw open on John Logan’s car, but she is certain that she didn’t see a woman. Joe remembers briefly considering asking Parry to recall the scene, thinking that perhaps he can use the conversation to goad Parry into making a threat, but he soon realizes that “the idea of obtaining linear information from [Parry] seemed fantastic.”

As Joe pursues these thoughts, he is interrupted by Clarissa, whose declaration about their relationship he has yet to answer. Clarissa accuses Joe, accurately, of thinking about Parry even in this moment, and when Joe insists once more that Parry is a “real threat,” Clarissa begins to cry. Joe reveals to her what his research on de Clerambault’s has taught him, but Clarissa recoils from the idea that Joe can “read [his] way out of this.” Yet Clarissa goes further, too, suggesting that Parry, whom she rarely sees outside their apartment, isn’t there as often as Joe claims and that Parry’s supposed handwriting is suspiciously similar to Joe’s. When Clarissa leaves the bedroom to sleep in the room set aside for children, Joe realizes that, although the two of them may continue to live “side by side,” he is finally “on [his] own.”