John Bingham - Five Roundabouts to Heaven

“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 when 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.