John Bingham - Five Roundabouts to Heaven

“Well?” she said again.

“Well, what?”

“Do you think I am wrong to wish to marry him?”

“I am not the judge of your conscience, and when I say that, I am not thinking of his wife. I am thinking of him. Perhaps of you, too.”

“I can make him happy. Happier than he has been. He is such a lovable chap,” she said, almost sadly, “I do so want to make him happy.”

I felt a little tug at my heart: I, too, was fond of old Barty. For some reason, I thought of him as I had first known him at school; being rolled in the mat, and pushed under the vaulting horse; and watching, pale-faced, from the school window until he could safely come out and run home. But I couldn’t afford to indulge in that line of thought for long.

“Look at me,” I said quietly, and when she had turned her head to face me, I said: “Are you in love with Barty?”

“I love him dearly.”

I shook my head. “Are you in love with him?”

When she hesitated, I dropped my little seed of doubt into the rich kindly soil of her heart, and left it to take root and bear fruit, if so it would.

“Actually, although she is not in love with him,” I said, quite casually, as though it were of no importance, “although she is certainly not in love with him, Beatrice loves him, too, in her own way. She’ll take it hardly, I fear. I wouldn’t care to do what Bartels is going to do.”

All the evening I was playing the decent fellow with Lorna; the sympathetic friend, the disinterested adviser; talking of all sorts of things as I drove her home along the frosty roads, back to the house in the lane where she lived; making her laugh now and again; interesting her with stories about the seamy side of big hotels; talking of travels abroad, and, at the end, saying how much I had enjoyed the evening.

I did not even accept her invitation to go into the house for a final drink.

I said goodbye to her on the porch, shaking hands almost primly, even though I longed to take her in my arms and crush her to me, and light the light of passion in her eyes, and feel the softness of her lips on mine, and the warm suppleness of her body.

I was taking no risks.

I wanted her so badly for my own that every nerve and brain cell was alert in my head, and the voice was crying: “Softee, softee, catchee monkey,” and I knew I must be patient or lose her.

They say that jealousy is caused by fear, or a lack of self-confidence, or a feeling of insecurity; but I am under the impression that I felt supremely confident in so far as Lorna was concerned. Nevertheless, I felt the pangs of jealousy most acutely.

In the six days that followed, I visited Lorna on two other occasions, and each time I acted with circumspection, well knowing that to attempt to hasten matters would result in showing me to be the false friend that, in fact, I was. But on each occasion, I contrived to let fall some further hint, some little indication that Beatrice, in her own way, loved Bartels; that for Lorna to encourage a divorce without being romantically in love with Bartels would merely cause him, in the end, to feel the same sense of frustration as he felt at the moment.

In this, I think that I was correct, though I did not act out of a sense of what was right, but simply because I desired the woman for myself. I would have done the same even had I thought I was wrong.

The jealousy which I felt naturally attacked me most fiercely on those evenings when I knew, by one means or another, that Bartels was with her.

It wasn’t any use telling myself that I was a better man than Bartels, and that in the end I would win. I knew it. But it did not prevent pictures forming in my mind. Pictures of Bartels with his arm round Lorna, on the settee in her comfortable drawing room; of Bartels spending long hours with Lorna’s head upon his shoulder, his hand on hers, while the fat roly-poly corgi dozed in front of the fire.

Worst, of course, was the almost unbearable thought of Bartels kissing her, and her lips responding, of Bartels taking her in his arms and telling her how much he loved her.

It came to the point that, when I met Bartels, the sight of his wide mouth, which had formerly only amused me, now filled me with disgust. A dull, painful anger burned in my stomach at the thought that those colourless, thin lips should ever be allowed to press upon Lorna’s mouth.

On such evenings, when I knew they were together, I would find myself compelled to go out, to a theatre, or a cinema; anywhere, rather than remain at home and imagine what was going on at Thatchley. Sometimes, out of a morbid sense of twisted humour, I would call on Beatrice.

Beatrice suspected nothing.

She was accustomed to him going away for two or three nights a week on a provincial tour selling his wines. She trusted him completely, and she was convinced that, whatever her emotional failings, he needed her and his well-being depended upon her; that without her, without her organizing ability, her strength of mind, he would be miserable and lost. There was no doubt in her mind on that score whatever. She made this clear to me many times in casual little remarks.

“I don’t know where he’d be if he hadn’t me to organize him a bit,” she would say affectionately. Then she would sigh a little and smile. Right up to the end, to the time when he went to Manchester and bought the altrapeine with which to poison her, and even later, Beatrice Bartels thought that her husband needed her.

So much for women’s intuition. I never believed much in it. I believe even less now.

On Friday afternoon, 23 February, I decided to drive down to Bartels’ cottage. I knew that Bartels would be with Lorna all that afternoon and early evening, and the thought of it, as usual, filled me with a restless resentment.

I lunched at my club, but my mood was such that the food was repulsive to me, and I left a great deal of it untouched. After lunch I strolled into the smoking room, and ordered coffee and a brandy. I tried to read some papers and periodicals, but found nothing in them to interest me.

Such people as I talked to bored me, and I have no doubt that I bored them, too.

I felt so restless that I got up and went into the billiards room, and played a game with the marker. I played abominably. My imagination was at work, my mind was elsewhere. I was thinking that at any moment Bartels would be arriving. I could see him drawing up at the front door in his old twelve-horse-power car, and Lorna Dickson greeting him on the threshold.

I could see them going into the drawing room together, and sitting together. I could see Bartels fondling her, and the sight of it so disturbed me that in the middle of the game I suddenly walked to the end of the room and returned my cue to the stand.

The marker looked at me curiously. I made some excuse about an appointment, but it was clear that he thought I was suffering from pique at my lack of skill-not that it mattered a damn to me what he was thinking.

The theatre and cinema guide showed nothing which appealed to me. So on the spur of the moment, I decided to drive down to Bartels’ weekend cottage, near Balcombe. I would take advantage of the open invitation which was extended to me, and spend the night with them. Beatrice, I knew, would be there, and possibly I would take her to a local hotel, in the early evening, where we could usually find one or two people we knew.

At the back of my mind was the thought that I would know exactly when he had returned from visiting Lorna: directly I was certain he was no longer with her, my peace of mind would return.

I drove back to my flat, packed a few things in a suitcase, and set off. I wish a thousand times, now, that I had not gone.

But I could not have foreseen what I would find there, or the quandary in which I would be placed.