Five Roundabouts to Heaven

by John Bingham

  Bartels was not as young as he had been, and I think he felt it deeply. Moreover, good wine was not, at first, easily obtainable; and at first, being expensive, was difficult to sell.

  But Beatrice had a small allowance for her clothes, and Bartels had his modest private income, so that despite everything, they managed to live reasonably. Bartels, who was of Dutch origin as his name suggests, stuck tenaciously to his selling, even though it involved an absence from home of two or three nights a week.

  I spent very many happy evenings with the Bartels and with their friends. There was Fred Manders, who was an architect, and his wife, Joyce; James Murray, an insurance chap; Bill and Margaret Barnet-he was something in a textile firm; and in the country there were the Derbyshires, who had a small-holding which they farmed in a desultory kind of way; Major and Mrs Godfrey, who did nothing in particular; John O’Brien, an Irish solicitor, who lived nearby in a cottage by himself and travelled up and down to town each day, and one or two others. Of them all, I liked John O’Brien best. He was a heavily built, jovial man in his middle thirties, with dark hair and blue eyes and a pugnacious jaw.

  When I first met him, he was already contemplating taking silk, and I formed the impression, and later events confirmed it, that with his good looks and Irish charm and wit he would go far at the Bar.

  He lived in the country, primarily because he was passionately devoted to St Bernard dogs, of which he had three. I frequently gave him a lift to town in my car, and on Sundays, when the Bartels were down there, he generally came in for a meal or a few drinks.

  We all liked John O’Brien. I still do.

  I had an open invitation to go down to Balcombe any weekend I liked, with or without warning. All that I needed to do, they said, was to drive up to the door. I often did. My room was always ready. Such was the closeness of the bonds between myself and Philip and Beatrice Bartels.

  So things remained for a period, which in retrospect seems like that sunny windless day when Beatrice arrived at the chateau and entered the life of Philip Bartels; the day which ended, so suddenly, in the gathering of the storm clouds and the rending of the sky by thunder and lightning and rain.

  Even when the first crack appeared, I was, at first, merely surprised and saddened. It began on 12 February, when he telephoned me at my office, and invited me to lunch at the Cafe Royal, saying that he had something he wished to tell me.

  I was rather busy that morning, and tried to stall him off.

  “It all depends upon what you want to tell me,” I remember I answered cautiously.

  He hesitated. “It is something you ought to know,” he replied at last.

  “Can’t you make it tomorrow? I’ve got a hell of a lot of work to cope with.”

  “It’s no good tomorrow. I really do want to see you today, alone.” Although he spoke in that slow, strong voice which contrasted so much with his appearance, I detected a note of genuine urgency in his tone.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll come.”

  “See you in the cocktail lounge at one o’clock-upstairs. No, make it twelve thirty.”

  “Don’t be silly. I told you I’ve got a lot of work.”

  “It’ll be pointless if you don’t come at twelve thirty.”

  I hesitated again. “What the hell is it about?”

  “I can’t tell you on the phone.”

  I thought: Oh well, I suppose I can make up the time this evening.

  “All right, then. Twelve thirty. I hope it’s worth it, that’s all.”

  “It’ll be worth it. I’m glad you can make it. It’s very important to me, Peter. I want your opinion.”

  I took a taxi, and arrived very punctually, but he was already seated on one of the settees, and had ordered my usual gin and tonic.

  Looking at him, as I walked towards him, I thought he had not changed much over the years. He was still meagrely built, whereas I had put on too much weight. There was the same wide, gentle smile. But recently he had seemed more withdrawn, at any rate when in the company of people other than myself; ironically, he trusted me implicitly.

  When with other people there was a faintly enigmatic air about him. In addition to his slow, deliberate, almost tired way of speaking, he had acquired an equally deliberate way of thinking for some seconds before answering a question; and while he was thinking, he would sometimes look at you with a sardonic smile, not on his lips or even in his eyes-it was not as noticeable as that-but rather behind his eyes. It was as if he were amused, not at you, but at certain remote implications behind your question.

  I put it down to the experiences, the rebuffs, which he had had “on the road.” He was not a very successful traveller for his wine firm. Had he not had a private income, he would have been hard put to it to live as he did.

  The impression you had, in those days, was of one who had schooled himself to accept the disappointments of life with a kind of amused contemplation. It was as though he were patiently awaiting the end of some phase or other, before proceeding on to some unspecified destiny.

  It was a queer sort of attitude, and I should say that it was hardly conducive to persuading hard-bitten wine merchants to part with their money.

  He joined me in a vague toast to our mutual health, and said nothing for some moments, but sat picking at a cigarette end in the ashtray with a used match. I asked him how business was, and he said it might be worse.

  I looked around the room, knowing it was useless to hurry him.

  The place was filling up rapidly. Across the room three bald men were drinking cocktails. They were obese, and sat huddled forward, round a little table, their knees apart to ease the weight of their stomachs. They were animated and joking, and at the all-jolly-good-fellows stage. Later, the masks would drop, and they would get down to business.

  Suddenly Bartels asked me about his wife. It was the last sort of question I anticipated.

  He said: “Do you like Beatrice? I mean, are you fond of her?”

  “Of course I like her,” I said. “Of course I’m fond of her. She’s a dam’ good scout. Why?”

  He nodded, as though he expected the answer, as well he might have done; you are hardly likely, whatever you think, to tell your best friend that you dislike his wife.

  “What are you getting at?” I asked.

  “I’m fond of her, too. That’s the devil of it.”

  “A lot of men are quite fond of their wives. I’m told it’s a mild kind of complaint, like chickenpox. You’ll probably get over it. But it may take time.”

  He didn’t smile. He looked across the room and said: “Well, I’m going to leave Beatrice, Peter. I thought I had better tell you. I thought you ought to know.”

  I have always prided myself on not showing dismay. I admire the Roman Catholic priest who said in the confessional: “You have committed murder, my son? Well, how many times?” So I took a pull at my gin and tonic, and replaced the glass on the table, and said as casually as I could:

  “Oh? Why? Why are you going to leave Beatrice?”

  “Because I want to be happy.”

  “That’s reasonable.”

  He gulped down his drink, and signalled to the waiter. But I said: “This one is on me,” and gave the order, though my own glass was still half full. When the waiter had taken the order I asked the obvious question:

  “Well, what’s her name?”

  “What’s whose name?”

  I knew he was fencing, and he knew that I knew it. I suppose it was a kind of conventional approach.

  “The name of the woman you’ve fallen for,” I said. “I know you and Beatrice well enough to know that your marriage is not an unhappy one. As a matter of fact, as marriages go, I always thought it was rather satisfactory. Who is she? And do I know her?”

  “Lorna is her name,” said Bartels, still fiddling with the match-stick. “Lorna Dickson. You haven’t met her.”

  I said nothing. When I said that I was fond of Beatrice, I was speaking the strict truth; and whe
n Bartels said that he was still very fond of her, I knew that he was speaking the truth, too. Beatrice had turned into a fine character. She was intelligent and witty; loyal to her own people; conscientious and hard-working; she obviously had a passionate disposition; and with it all, she was, as I’ve said, still remarkably good-looking in a red-haired, fair-skinned sort of way. She was also a really first-class cook.

  So all in all, I couldn’t see that Bartels had much to grumble about.

  It seemed to me perfectly clear that this Dickson woman was a floozy who had caught Bartels on the hop, at that period of a marriage when one or other of the partners is often ripe for a change. I had seen more intelligent, more sober-minded men than Bartels go down before that sort of thing; and live to regret it, too. But I knew it would be bad tactics to show opposition.

  “Is she very good-looking?” I asked.

  “To me, she is. To me she is beautiful. Other people might not think so.”

  Still continuing on my tack of showing no fundamental opposition I said: “Well, if you feel deeply enough, you’ll have to do as you plan. Beatrice will take it hardly.”

  “You don’t need to tell me that.”

  “No doubt she’ll get over it,” I said.

  “No doubt.”

  A silence fell between us.

  The waiter brought the second round of drinks. When he had given me my change and gone, I said:

  “How long have you known Laura?”

  “Lorna’s her name.”

  “Well, Lorna, then.”

  “About four months.”

  “Sometimes these things pass, you know.”

  Bartels turned and looked at me, and said: “This won’t. This is the real thing.”

  Having kicked around the world a bit, I suppose I have rather a mixed conception of morality. I am quite prepared, on occasions, to argue that the end justifies the means, and I was fond of Beatrice. I thought she was in for a pretty raw deal.

  So I said: “Why not hang on a little longer? Why not have Lorna, if you wish, as-well, as your girlfriend? Just to make sure.”

  “You mean, as my mistress?”

  “Well, if you like to put it that way. It might be as well to make sure. It’s a big step. You want to be sure. You’re going to hurt Beatrice like hell, so you want to be sure.”

  “I am sure.”

  “Sometime these things wear off.”

  “This is something different; I feel it is something I have been waiting for all my life.”

  His remark was so corny that I couldn’t help replying as I did:

  “I’m told it is always like that.”

  Bartels flushed. He did not reply.

  I sat drearily watching the three bald men drinking cocktails across the room. They had dropped the masks now; they had got down to business, talking in low tones, heads thrust forward.

  They looked solemn, keen, and avaricious, unaware that by my side a man who was gentle by nature, kindly and unselfish by instinct, was preparing an act of matrimonial treachery which was in contradiction to every fibre of his make-up.

  When a man commits, or even seriously contemplates committing, an act which is not in tone with his character, he is in psychological trouble. Women are similarly affected, but to a lesser degree, because their characters are more flexible.

  Bartels, that day at the Cafe Royal, was already in trouble. The beginnings were apparent to me as he sat breaking up the potato chips before him; breaking one up and then prodding the bits around with his forefinger, and then breaking up another one, until in a short while there were no whole chips left in the little dish, but only a pile of very small broken morsels.

  As I watched my friend, I hated the three big-paunched men.

  At length Bartels spoke. “The trouble is, you know, Beatrice has never been in love with me. Never. Not even at the beginning.”

  “As wives go, that doesn’t make her unique. Beatrice has got everything.” I went on, forgetting my resolution not to oppose him, “Dammit, she’s bloody attractive, efficient, witty, clever, and loyal. And fundamentally she’s kind-hearted. She’s a good girl, Barty. I don’t know what more you want.”

  Bartels turned, and looked at me for a few moments. His bright, intelligent, brown eyes had lost the enigmatic, sardonic look they often had. They were shining, with a curious, excited look in them.

  “Well?” I said.

  He took a deep breath. When he spoke, his voice, normally so strong and steady, had an undercurrent of nervousness about it which I had never heard before. It had the kind of tremor you hear when a diffident man gets up to make his first after-dinner speech.

  “I always dreamed of a woman being really in love with me, Pete. I suppose it sounds silly to you. I’ve never told anyone before. At least, not till I told Lorna. Maybe it was because I got ragged a good deal at school. You remember how it was. I was a funny-looking youth. I suppose I dreamed about it the more, just because it seemed unlikely that any girl ever would fall in love with me. I suppose that sounds silly to you?”

  “I don’t know that it does,” I answered softly. “No, I reckon I can understand that all right, Barty.”

  I didn’t look at him. I felt his eyes upon me, and knew that a wrong expression on my face, a wrong intonation in my voice, would shut him up. When a man is speaking to another man of love, of his inmost feelings, you’ve got to watch your step, almost hold your breath and cross your fingers, or he’ll shy off like a startled horse.

  “I proposed to her one day by a stream. It was a May day, very warm and sunny. We sat on a log, throwing twigs into the stream, and then I asked her to marry me. She hesitated for a while, then she said she would. So I kissed her.”

  Bartels smiled. “It was funny, that engagement kiss. She didn’t kiss me; she let me kiss her. I think that even then I knew I was making a mistake. But I wouldn’t admit it to myself. I thought I could force her to fall in love with me. Well, I couldn’t.”

  He had got over his nervousness now, and was talking quite fluently and easily.

  “I wouldn’t have thought Beatrice was cold,” I said. “That’s the last thing I would have thought.”

  “She isn’t. She’s very passionate. I found that out even before we were married, though we never slept together. Once she had committed herself, she came to life, but physically only. Only physically, Pete. That’s the point.”

  “Maybe she was in love with you, and you couldn’t see it.”

  Bartels shook his head. “No, she wasn’t.” He hesitated, then added: “It was sex, that’s all. You see, I remember her kiss when we drove away from the church after our wedding. It was like the engagement kiss. It was as though all her doubts had come back to her. That’s because she married me with her head and not with her heart, and she was wondering if she had done the right thing.”

  He laughed, as though ashamed of his revelations, and sat back on his seat.

  It is strange to see the anatomy of a marriage slowly and unexpectedly displayed before your eyes. Some people may enjoy it, but I didn’t. I did not feel actual embarrassment, but something rather different and difficult to describe. It was as though one were reluctantly watching the disrobing of an old woman’s body, once rounded and beautiful, or so one thought, and now shrunken and withered.

  Bartels glanced round the room. He said:

  “I remember I once said to her, years ago now, and in joking tones: “I think you only married me because I was the best financial bet among your boyfriends. I had a private income, prospect of a good position in a good firm, and you would live in London. Your local boyfriends hadn’t as much to offer as that, had they?” I had been wanting to say it for a long time, because I suppose I wanted to hear her deny it, but I hadn’t dared to risk it. Then one day, apropos of nothing, I just kind of blurted it out.”

  He smiled affectionately. “Beatrice can never lie convincingly. She doesn’t try. She’s too honest, you know.”

  I nodded. “Too honest, and
too strong, too fearless.”

  “She replied: ‘Well, I was very fond of you, anyway. And anyway, I love you now.’ I think she does, too, in her own way. She’s never been in love with me, but I think she loves me today more than when she married me.”

  He paused. Then he said, in a funny tone of voice: “I always remember the kind of sick feeling I had when I heard her words. But I just laughed, and we didn’t talk about it anymore.”

  “Well, we’ve all got to put up with something in life.” My remark was futile and pointless, and I only said it to fill in the silence.

  Bartels said slowly:

  “She is like a beautiful piece of mosaic, you know. She’s about perfect, except for one thing. The centrepiece of the mosaic, the thing I dreamed about, that’s not there.”

  “She’s given you everything she had to give. It’s not her fault if she can’t give you romantic love.” And because he said nothing, I made the same remark I had made before. I said: “We’ve all got to put up with something in life. We can’t have everything, Barty.”

  He shook his head and remained silent. So I knew that Lorna Dickson, whoever she was, had won. She might be a cheap little painted doll, she might be a well-groomed woman of the world; whatever she was like, she had won, and Beatrice had lost.

  I thought sadly how heavily the dice were loaded against the wife in any triangle of this kind.

  The other woman knows that the battle is on. The wife doesn’t. The other woman is on her best behaviour, trying to please, to charm, to flatter, and often, I suppose, to seduce.

  The wife, knowing nothing, is behaving like a natural person does: sometimes pleasant and amusing, sometimes dull, critical, or irritable. And silently watching her is her husband, noting her faults, comparing her with the alleged paragon of all the virtues.

  I heard Bartels make his point again.

  “You see, Beatrice has never been in love with me. It’s so different.”