Five Roundabouts to Heaven (13 page)

Nobody spoke for about two minutes, and I thought: They’re going to have the matter out with me. If they weren’t, they would have started to talk trivialities. They are going to get down to business. I waited patiently for one or other of them to make a move.

John spoke first. He wiped some butter from his lips with his pocket handkerchief, and drained his teacup, and replaced it on the table, and turned his rather heavy red face towards me and said:

“Well, now you now, don’t you?”

“Know what?”

“Now you know how things stand between Beatrice and me.”

I hesitated. “Yes,” I said, “yes, I do.”

He nodded. Beatrice was looking down at her fingernails, hands in her lap.

“At least,” I added, “I know how things appear to stand. But appearances can be deceptive. I saw you kissing her, if that’s what you mean.”

“That is exactly what I mean.”

“Yes, well, it’s no business of mine,” I went on. “I’m not married to Beatrice. It’s no concern of mine to cause trouble. Beatrice is not the first girl to have a bit of a flirtation in her husband’s absence.”

Neither of them said anything.

“As far as I’m concerned,” I finished, “I’ve seen nothing. The firelight can play strange tricks. It’s not for me to pass on stories which could be based on a figment of the imagination.”

In my opinion it was a pretty fair offer. I had not yet become fully involved personally in the implications of what I had seen.

Beatrice wouldn’t have it that way. Beatrice, the courageous, the clear thinker, the woman who faced every issue fairly and squarely, declined the easy escape.

“It is not a flirtation,” she said, flatly. “I’m in love with John. And he says he’s in love with me. That is the position.”

The lamplight fell on her red hair, and in the same light her skin looked creamy white and rose. She looked beautiful and very seductive. There was no trace of shame in her demeanour. There was no tremor in her voice. Yet to call her shameless would be unfair; she was more a fearless woman who recognized that a certain situation had arisen and was prepared to cope with the consequences.

“That’s the position,” she said again, when I remained quiet.

“I suppose you’re quite sure?” I asked.

“Quite sure,” replied John firmly, and loudly.

“Absolutely,” said Beatrice.

“Divorce?” I said, looking directly at Beatrice. I saw John place his hand over hers on the settee, and surmised that the subject had been pretty thoroughly discussed.

She shook her head. “No, no divorce.”

“Not—ever?” I said.

“No, not ever. I made a bargain with Barty, and I’ll keep it. If I thought he didn’t need me so much, I think—well, I think I would. But I’m all he’s got to hang on to, you know. His job is a bit of a failure.”

She reached forward to toss a log on to the fire. Then:

“I’m still very fond of him, you know. And I can’t stand the thought of what he might do if I left him.”

“Do you mean he might commit suicide?”

“Not so much that.”

“What, then?”

Beatrice made a vague little gesture with her hand. “Oh, I don’t know. Drink, perhaps. And his clothes would all go to pot. And he might get the sack. Or get caught on the rebound by some untidy little slut who would drag him down.”

“What do you think, John?” I looked at him.

I had always liked old John, with his Irish lightheartedness, even though I had thought he was rather self-indulgent in matters of food and wine. I thought he might oppose her.

“Beatrice knows him best,” said John softly. “She honestly thinks that Barty would go to pieces without her. She may be right. The poor chap hasn’t had much fun out of life.”

I felt my heart beginning to beat faster. In a few words I could set their consciences at rest, make them two of the happiest people in England, and settle Barty’s problem for him, too.

“I’m so terribly sorry for him,” said Beatrice suddenly. “I remember not long ago he returned late one night, very cold and tired. I had written him a little note to cheer him up, and left it with a mince pie. I heard him read the note as I lay in bed, half asleep. Then he got into his bed, and I put out my hand to him, and in the end he went to sleep. He was so cold and tired, you know. I was glad he didn’t have to come back to an empty flat. That’s what would happen if I went away with John.”

“He works too hard,” said John, and got up to put another log on the fire. “And it doesn’t get him anywhere. That’s the trouble. He’ll never make a really good salesman.”

“Too modest,” said Beatrice. “Too modest and gentle. I think I could do it, if he was a real success, if he was making lots of money.”

“As it is, you can’t,” said John. “That’s ironic, really. He’s a failure at his job, and because he is a failure he’s a success with the one person in the world who matters. Queer, isn’t it?”

Beatrice caught the bitterness in his voice.

She reached out and gripped his hand and held it tight, and looked up at him.

I thought: Bartels was right. There is indeed one man in the world with whom she can be in love, and now she has found him.

But by now, ruthless as ever in the pursuit of that which I desired, I had made up my mind what to do. Just as I had planted and watered a seed of doubt in Lorna’s mind, so now I crushed all generous thoughts about revealing the true position to Beatrice and John O’Brien. For if Philip Bartels obtained his freedom from Beatrice, I should lose Lorna.

I had no intention of losing Lorna.

Doubtless Bartels, that over-kind man, would have acted differently. But Bartels was a failure in life. I was not. So I did not hesitate for long.

I spoke quietly and a little sadly, in the tone of voice of one who has deliberated deeply, and has come to the conclusion that however unpleasant his decision it must nevertheless be announced: the old family friend doing his stuff, the trusted adviser, impartial and benevolent, throwing his opinion into the scales. What hypocrisy it was!

“Would you like my views?” I asked mildly. And before they could reply I continued: “I think—I’m afraid Beatrice is right.”

She turned quickly and looked at me, and then looked away. It was only a glance, yet I thought I caught a flash of pain behind her eyes as though she had hoped, in spite of all she had said, that I would counter her arguments with some of my own.

I thought I saw, too, a tinge of despair. As if all hope were now indeed lost. I regretted it, but it did not deter me.

“I think he would be pretty lost without Beatrice,” I said. “I think he would certainly try to kill the pain in some fashion, quite possibly with drink. And I think that he might well end up by losing his job. He’s hardly indispensable in the firm, is he?”

Beatrice said: “Thank you for being frank.”

John said nothing for a moment. Then he said:

“Don’t you think he might marry again? Some nice woman or other? Don’t you think he might?”

I heard the note of urgency in his voice, and recognized it as a kind of last desperate appeal. One half of my mind was sorry for the poor chap. The other half, the part that looked after my own interests, was completely unmoved.

“No, I don’t,” I said flatly. And to ram the point well home I added: “I don’t think he would ever fall in love again. And don’t forget—I’ve known him since childhood.”

I got up and walked over to the window and stood looking out into the darkness. The wind had risen, and the trees were tossing against the night sky. I thought that in three hours, perhaps less, Bartels would be no longer with Lorna. Kissing her and fondling her. Pawing her. Mouthing phrases like a lovesick youth. Kissing her…kissing her…kissing her again. The wave of jealousy mounted higher and higher inside me.

I clenched my fists in my trouser pockets, and swung round again to Beatrice and John.

“I don’t think there is the slightest chance that he would marry again,” I said loudly and harshly. They thought, no doubt, that I sounded stern because I was concerned about Bartels’ well-being. Poor simpletons!

He came back about 9.30 that evening: Philip Bartels, my friend. Beatrice was very nice to him, and he was very nice to her.

He was glad to see me, too. He said so.

I didn’t know that in an inside pocket of his overcoat was a bottle marked
ASPIRINS
, that it had been there for some days, or that the contents bore not the slightest resemblance to aspirins.

I
shall always remember that Saturday, because as it turned out it was the last day which Philip and Beatrice Bartels and I spent together.

I did not know that, of course, and there was nothing to indicate it. It began as one of those days which make you think that winter is past, and that spring is not very far ahead; the sun shone out of a brittle blue sky, dazzlingly bright, and the sprinkling of frost on the lawn sparkled and danced in the pale, intense light.

I always sleep with the windows partly open, but when I got up that morning, I opened them wider still, and looked out, and breathed in deeply and felt glad to be alive.

The air was cold, and as I was not even wearing a dressing gown, it penetrated quickly to my skin, and raced over my face and neck and chest, yet left behind no feeling of chill, but rather a tingling, invigorating feeling as though I had been massaged.

It was quite late, past nine o’clock, for the Bartels took things very easily at weekends, as is right and proper, and we usually wandered down for breakfast at about a quarter to ten.

A robin fluttered down on to the lawn, hopped a few paces and stood listening. Somebody, presumably Beatrice, was moving about in the kitchen handling crockery.

The air was very still; so still that when the dog Brutus wandered out of the French windows below me, I picked up the sound as his heavy body disturbed the pebbles on the path.

The dog Brutus moved slowly on to the lawn, took a few paces and stopped, and stretched, his forelegs thrust out before him, tensing his hind legs in turn. The robin took no notice, as though aware that so old and heavy a body was incapable of sudden and dangerous attack.

The dog lowered his head to the ground, and sniffed, and then raised his half-blind eyes to the sun; his head moved slowly from side to side, as though he were trying to discern the source of the rays which were warming his body. He took a few more steps, and stood uncertainly looking across the lawn to where the vegetable garden lay.

“Brutus!” I called. “Hello, Brutus, boy!”

The dog took no notice, so I called louder: “Brutus! Hello, boy!”

The dog turned his heavy head and peered in the direction from which my voice had come. His stump of a tail moved gently from side to side, then he turned his head away and continued to gaze down the garden.

I thought: He is so old now that he does not much care whether human company is around or not; he is a half-numbed entity, for whom the hours and the days bring either warmth and comfort, or cold and discomfort; either food and satisfaction or vague stirrings of hunger and restlessness.

Men come to it, like dogs: but men have their memories to amuse and comfort them, or to torture and plague them. Memory is a mixed blessing. Time soothes most of the wounds of the past, but the ugliest remain unhealed; perhaps they are even exacerbated by the play of the imagination. Dogs don’t suffer like that. Dogs die easy deaths, devoid of hopes or fears. It’s a consolation for having to eat the half-cold remains from people’s plates, I thought.

I closed the window, and bathed and dressed, and went down to breakfast. Beatrice and Barty were already at table, reading the newspapers. There were boiled eggs for breakfast, two each, for Beatrice, efficient as ever, had good local contacts.

We did not talk much. I think that each of them was conscious that I shared his or her secret that bright February morning. As for me, I was merely concerned that neither should discern the true feelings of the other.

Of the two, as I thought even then, Beatrice was the finer character; she had made her bargain, married without being in love; but having made it she was going to keep it, even though it nearly broke her heart to do so.

Not so Philip Bartels. Unless I could prevent it, he was going to break what he considered to have been a bad bargain, and marry Lorna.

Such being the case, I had to take swift action in two directions. I had to consolidate the position in regard to Beatrice and John O’Brien, and I had to see Lorna Dickson and strengthen the idea that it would be wrong of her to take Bartels from Beatrice.

Yet all my plans were put in peril in a most unexpected way that same morning.

To begin with, everything went according to plan. After breakfast, Bartels went out into the garden to fix a piece of trellis-work that had come loose in the night, and I offered to help Beatrice with the washing-up.

Beatrice washed the things. I dried them. At first we did not speak; each knew the subject which lay uppermost in the other’s mind; each was reluctant to broach the subject, or perhaps Beatrice, like myself, did not know how to start.

At length, as I was drying the last few knives, I said abruptly:

“I have thought some more about you and John.”

“What have you thought?”

She turned her head and looked at me anxiously. I did not know whether she was hopeful that I might have changed my mind, in order that she could have some moral backing for reconsidering the problem herself, or whether, having now reconciled herself, she was fearful lest I put up arguments which would cause her to weaken.

“I think that you and John are well suited to each other, but I am not at all certain that one can build happiness upon the unhappiness of somebody else.”

“I suppose not,” she said. “I suppose you’re right.”

“Some people could, but not you, Beatrice dear. Not a person with your burden of conscience.”

“No.”

She wiped her right hand on her apron, and then pushed some hair back from her forehead. The blood had mounted to her head, and her lower lip was trembling. She raised her hand again, and brushed it across her eyes.

“I wish I could advise you otherwise. I would willingly sacrifice Barty, if I thought that you and John would be happy.”

She stood at the sink, saying nothing, cleaning a small glass marmalade dish with a small mop, pushing the mop round and round.

“John might be happy,” I went on, “but not you, Beatrice dear. Your thoughts would go out to Barty, all the time, souring everything. Perhaps even embittering your relationship with John.”

The winter sunlight shone through the little window, touching her beautiful red hair. Once, she looked quickly at me and tried to smile, and I saw the tears in her eyes. She nodded her head, with that quick little trembling smile, and bent over the sink again. And all the time, forgetful of what she was doing, she continued to push the little mop round the marmalade dish.

For a moment, despite my resolution, I felt sick at heart, not merely at her heartbreak, but at my own treachery.

I saw her standing, almost symbolically, at the sink, a woman who had been faced with the greatest temptation which a married woman can encounter. But because her conception of duty, of what is fair and decent, was so strong, she had won her struggle.

I suddenly flung the dishcloth over the back of a chair, and murmured an apology and went out of the kitchen.

I was nauseated by my own actions. “Beatrice dear,” I had called her. “I wish I could advise you otherwise,” I had said. And with it all, I had spoken in a low, regretful tone, as though the one thing I longed for was to be able to tell her something different. I went into the drawing room, and paced up and down in front of the fireplace.

I couldn’t go on with it.

I was not as tough as I thought I was. This was the invisible X, the unseen factor which was going to upset my plans.

I had the power to make three people happier than they had ever been before, and one person reasonably happy. As is so often the case with ruthless people like myself, I was swept by a wave of the most revolting sentimentality.

I conjured up mental pictures of Bartels, with his gentle smile, and quiet good nature, and diffident manner; Bartels, the unsuccessful wine salesman, traipsing round the countryside, longing for Lorna, whom he believed to be in love with him, and who would certainly never let him see that she was not.

I thought of Beatrice, whose heart called out for the strong masculinity of John O’Brien; Beatrice who was fundamentally so good that she was prepared to sacrifice her own happiness rather than harm, as she thought, a devoted and dependent husband.

Even the forceful and sturdy John O’Brien came in for his share of my pity: John, fundamentally decent, too, who was prepared to stand by Beatrice’s decision, whatever the cost to himself. John, the good-humoured, the generous, the kind.

The wave of sentimentality receded.

In its place I felt quite cool. I lit a cigarette, and threw the match in the fireplace, and stood smoking and looking out of the window. Bartels had apparently finished his work on the trellis, and must have gone down to the vegetable garden, for he was no longer in sight.

I had never imagined that I would be prepared to sacrifice my own ambitions for anybody else, not even for Beatrice and Bartels.

But that is what I now proposed to do.

I walked to the door and into the passage and along to the kitchen. My heart was beating a little faster than usual, but I was determined. Beatrice had finished the drying-up, and was going over the floor with a mop. The back door was open. The dog Brutus lay dozing on the mat.

I stood by the kitchen door in silence for a few seconds, watching her.

“Beatrice,” I said, at last, and now I had come to it, the word had to be forced through my lips. She looked up, but said nothing.

“Beatrice,” I said again. She stopped mopping the floor and looked round at me. A wisp of hair had fallen over one eye. She looked listless and tired.

“Yes?”

Curiously enough, at that moment I felt a surge of happiness within me. Even at this late date, I can still recall a faint flavour of it. It was the unalloyed, pure joy which only a giver can know.

For a second I hesitated, looking upon Beatrice’s unhappy face and anticipating the wild happiness I was going to bring to her. Yet I wasn’t feeling smug, or virtuous: just happy. It was most odd.

But the dog Brutus raised his head.

I heard the sound of footstep, then a noise as Bartels kicked some mud off his shoes on the scraper. Then he came into the kitchen. And I thought of him, with Lorna, his wide, colourless lips pressed on hers; his deep musical voice, in such contrast to his appearance, murmuring endearments. I imagined him married to her and all that that implied. It was too much for me.

“Beatrice,” I said loudly, “let’s go along to the local for a drink at twelve. What about it?”

If Bartels had stayed outside two minutes more, so much might have been changed.

We did not go to the local. Beatrice said she had to stay and watch the joint. It was my joint. I always brought a joint for the weekends. There is no point in being in the hotel business if one cannot scrounge a reasonably sized joint for oneself now and again.

But Bartels asked me to come for a stroll across the fields with Brutus. I went with him willingly enough, for the wave of jealousy was still around me, and the foolish, generous weakness had been replaced by the old well-known feeling of determination to fight for what I wanted by fair means and, if necessary, by foul ones—in that order.

I thought I did quite well during that walk, for I made him promise that he would not leave Beatrice until Easter, pointing out to him that at that time she would be spending a fortnight with her parents in Falmouth, and that the blow would be softened if she were with her family.

He promised readily enough.

In view of what he had in mind, I am not surprised.

I recall now, incidentally, how kind he was to the dog Brutus during that walk. Indeed, he had been unusually kind to the dog at breakfast, feeding him with titbits from the table, a thing he never normally allowed, and caressing him.

So now, upon that beautiful February morning, Bartels led the dog along hedgerows where a scent of rabbits could perhaps be detected, encouraging him with soft words, and sometimes calling him for a pat. And once we went through a small copse, because sometimes a cock pheasant lurked in the undergrowth.

The dog Brutus seemed for a space to regain some of his youthful vigour, and though he could not move fast, he showed all his former enthusiasm, and snuffled in the hedges and among the briars, tail wagging; and once, when he put a rabbit up, he lumbered after it excitedly, until shortness of breath made him abandon the chase after a few yards.