John Bingham - Five Roundabouts to Heaven

Sometimes he asked himself why they sent him out at all. Did they, too, suffer from pity, and talk behind his back, and say: “Poor old Barty, he’s no good, of course, but we can’t sack him. Had a hard time, in the war, you know. Keeps our name before the buyers, but that’s about all.”

He felt the blood mounting to his face as, for one moment, he wondered whether Lorna Dickson’s feelings, also, were based on pity. He thrust the thought from him, and gazed round the room, noting despondently the mass-produced furniture, the linoleum-covered floor with the narrow strip of carpet by the bed, the windowpanes of frosted glass so that you could not see out of them, and the one harsh electric-light bulb hanging from the middle of the ceiling.

There you had it all within four walls, the furnishings of failure, the symbols of the commercial traveller who was no good, who never had been any good, and who, despite all his efforts, never would be any good.

He undressed in the freezing, unheated room and crawled into bed, and lay in the darkness. He thought of the lout Fred, who was so devoid of finesse that he was hard put to it to lull the suspicions of his wife, and he wondered what the wife was like. Did she sit by her fireside, alone, bitter, and in tears, the unwanted woman; or pace up and down, up and down, like the wife of the former district commissioner used to do in the house in Melville Avenue?

He turned over on to his side. A chambermaid, with unexpected zeal, had placed a stone hot-water bottle in the bed. He pressed his feet harder against it to gather the warmth.

He thought that although she didn’t realize it, Fred’s wife had little to worry about. Fred would grow tired of his bits of stuff. Fred would always come home in the end. All the Freds in all the world would always come home in the end. But I’m different, he thought. For me there is no lighthearted dalliance; there never could be, because if you’ve got any imagination you can’t just love ’em and leave ’em; not if they’re sensitive, and if they’re not sensitive you don’t fall for them.

The warm air from the bottle and from his body, trapped within the bedclothes, slowly surrounded him, soothing his nerves and lulling the agitation in his mind.

He was comfortable now, warm and comfortable, and had no wish to fall asleep. Instead, he wished to stay awake a while with the image of Lorna before his mind’s eye, to feel in imagination the softness of her lips and the silkiness of her shoulders beneath his hand.

But the day’s events intruded. It had been a bad day, of course; there was nothing unusual about that. Buyers had been obstinate, some even refusing to see him. There ran through his mind the old time-honoured excuses which he had heard so often over the years:

“Mr Fowler asks if you will excuse him this time, as he is very busy.”

“Mr Roberts has the auditors with him and regrets he cannot see you.”

“Mr Martin is in the middle of stocktaking, and is sorry he cannot have the pleasure of seeing you on this occasion.”

“Very nice of you to call. Mr Andrews has asked me to say, however, that he is well satisfied with his present suppliers and sees no reason to change.”

The list of his wines ran through his head. Once he had thought them colourful and romantic. Even now they had a lilt about them, though, as he grew sleepier, the music was interrupted with snatches of his own sales talk, with thoughts of Lorna and Beatrice, and quantities and prices, and still more sales talk…St Emilion, St Julien, Bordeaux Rouge; Medoc, Beaune, Pommard; Chambertin, Beaujolais Superieur-“we have a most interesting parcel of Beaujolais.”

A most interesting parcel of Beaujolais, and at a keen price, and just the thing for your clientele. A full-bodied wine for the North, and Lorna came from the North…I love you, Lorna; I love you, Barty; I shall understand if it’s too hard, Barty, I shall understand…Bordeaux Rouge, Pommard, Medoc…Lorna, darling Lorna, don’t say that you, too, suffer from pity?…Lorna, my love…Cut the commission. Five percent on bulk wines. Two hogsheads, four hogsheads, eight hogsheads, and quarter bottles to contend with high restaurant prices.

Quarter bottles, a mixed case of eight quarter bottles, and pamphlets and a map for the Bordeaux wines. Of interest to customers, a help to the waiter! The trend to expect is a rise in Burgundies…It’s not what a man does, or even whether he succeeds, it’s how he does it that counts said Lorna once…Dear, sweet Lorna…A narrow market, a narrow market, wine fifteen shillings, duty twenty-six shillings, three-and-six freight and insurance, ten shillings bottling, price in bin fifty-four-and-sixpence, and a most interesting parcel of Beaujolais.

One hundred gallons, forty-eight dozen, two hogsheads. Four hogsheads. Eight hogsheads. Something special in St Julien, St Emilion, Medoc, Beaune, Chambertin, Macon, and Bordeaux Rouge…Don’t ever leave me, that’s what the hand of Beatrice had said to him in the dark…I need you.

Bartels sighed, confused, more than half asleep.

Beaujolais…a most interesting parcel of Beaujolais…A most interesting parcel of altrapeine…Just in case…I must buy a most interesting parcel of altrapeine…Somehow…Tomorrow. Without fail. Altrapeine…of interest to the customers, a help to the waiter. Bartels smirked once, drowsily, then slept.

Although Bartels fell asleep without too much trouble, he had a restless night disturbed by dreams. In one he was offering a sample of Beaujolais to a buyer, but he couldn’t make the wine come out of the bottle because, try as he might, he was unable to tilt the bottle to the right angle; meanwhile the buyer waited, watching and sneering.

In another dream, Beatrice and Lorna alternately reproached him and wept, while the dog Brutus lifted his heavy brown-and-white head and looked at him mournfully and said, “It can’t be done, it can’t be done, and well you know it, young man.”

And once he woke, sweating and trembling, and clutching the bedclothes, his heart racing and thumping, from a dream in which he found himself locked in a cabin on a ship. When he rattled the handle and called for help, the voice of a man he knew to be Fred shouted through the ventilator: “It’s false, old man. It’s not a handle at all, old man. We’re at the bottom of the sea, so why worry, old man? If you don’t believe me, ring me up, write to me, do what you like, old man.”

The chambermaid woke him at 7.45, in the half-dark, with a cup of lukewarm, red tea. He heard her set the cup of tea on the chair by his bedside and move towards the door. He raised himself on one elbow and said: “May I have a bath-towel, please? They’ve only given me a hand-towel.”

The maid was a middle-aged woman with a lined face rendered discontented and querulous by too much work, too much stair-climbing, too much clearing up of other people’s disgusting messes. She turned at the door and looked at him in surprise, and said in a flat Lancashire accent: “Bath-towel? You don’t get bath-towels in this hotel. Not in this hotel.” She went out.

Bartels gulped down the red, bitter tea, and lay back, trying to summon the energy to get out of bed into the cold air. But he was tired from his restless night, and his limbs ached. He closed his eyes, intending to rest for ten minutes. When he awoke, it was a quarter to nine.

He made his way to the bathroom at the end of the corridor, and opened the door. A man was sleeping on a camp bed near the bath. He returned to his bedroom. At 9.30 he went down to the dining room, and sat at a table by himself. There were marmalade stains and toast crumbs on the cloth.

“Good morning,” he said to the waitress. “What’s for breakfast?” He tried to sound cheerful. He was sorry for waitresses in seedy hotels. She replied: