Five Roundabouts to Heaven Page 2

  But she didn’t come.

  She never came to me that evening. Instead, there was Bartels again, pushing the front door open, coming out and making his way towards me, his shotgun on his arm, a bag of cartridges over his shoulder.

  I saw him pause and look back at the house; stand looking up at one of the windows, just as he paused and looked up at another window nearly twenty years later.

  And I realized that the window he was looking at was the window of the room which Beatrice had occupied.

  I remember very clearly the evening when Beatrice Wilson arrived. It was a July evening, and very hot, with that humid, sticky heat which is perhaps the sole disadvantage of the beautiful Sologne area. But now there were clouds gathering on the horizon, and every promise of the storm which would bring freshness and relief in its train.

  Despite the heat, we had played tennis in the afternoon, had changed into evening dress and dined, and were sitting languidly on the terrace drinking coffee, when the family car which had fetched Beatrice from Orleans station swept round the drive to the front door. As always, we were filled with mild curiosity about the newcomer.

  Those of us who were English had adopted other nationalities, in accordance with an innocent subterfuge dear to the heart of Madame. I was to pretend to be a Swede. This arrangement had two advantages: it removed from the newcomer the temptation to speak English, and it provoked a good deal of fun and many tricky situations, all of which encouraged French conversation.

  I heard Madame greet Beatrice Wilson in the hall behind us, heard her go up to her room to wash. Then she came down and was introduced to us.

  She was a lovely-looking girl of about eighteen. Slim, in those days, with red hair and the milk-and-

  roses complexion which goes with hair of that colour. Her features were regular and her eyes hazel. But I think that what impressed me most was her complete self-possession. She must have been aware that she was being summed up, by seven or eight young people, with all the critical and ruthless acumen of the young; yet so far from being disconcerted she appeared to be coolly indulging in some summing up herself. She gazed at each one of us in turn, reflectively, as she was introduced, and when she spoke, she used her limited school French to the best advantage.

  I formed the opinion that Beatrice Wilson was likely to be a pleasant acquisition to our company, and so it proved.

  Two weeks after she arrived I had to leave, but Philip Bartels stayed on for another three months. By the time I left, I had mentally noted that now, instead of changing into old clothes and slouching off by himself to fish or shoot, Bartels had taken to changing into white flannels and was prone to join us on the tennis courts in the afternoons. Moreover, it often chanced that he walked to and from the courts with Beatrice, and for tea and after-dinner coffee his chair was usually close to hers.

  I was there to learn French because I was going into the hotel business; Bartels, because he was to join a well-known firm of wine importers; and Beatrice because her father, a solicitor in Worthing, thought that all his three children should be able to speak it.

  I remember thinking, before I left, that Bartels might get hurt, in the end, by the cool-headed Beatrice, because she did not seem to me to be the right type for him. I had no worse a premonition than that. But then I am not psychic. Not like Bartels’ aunt Emily and aunt Rose, thank God.

  I had come to the chateau that summer evening to dream only of the pleasant remote past, but instead, little by little, I found myself mentally drawing nearer and nearer to the events of a nearer date, of 26 February, that cold night of pain and anguish and fear. It was the last thing I wished; I was going on holiday to the south, partly, at least, to wipe out the memories of it all.

  I suppose it happened because the events of February had occupied so much of my mind; so that even when I was not consciously thinking about the matter, it all lay there in my subconscious, ready to leap out and colour my thoughts, and even to some extent my actions.

  For hours I would be free of the memories of that nightmare period, and then some little incident, some careless phrase from a stranger, perhaps, would bring me face to face with it; and off I would start, churning it all over and over again. Or perhaps the reason was that my own conscience was not clear in the matter.

  Perhaps I had really come to the chateau, not so much from a nostalgic yearning for the scenes of youthful happiness, as I thought, nor even to meet again the image of my first love: else why did she not come when I sat on the log in the place called L’Etoile? Why was it Bartels whom my imagination summoned for me, if I did not feel the need for a final showdown with him?

  But there I am wrong. The showdown was not to be with him. He always thought of me as his friend. The showdown was with myself.

  I often wonder whether Bartels thought of me as he drove to London on the night of 26 February, with one eye on the dashboard clock and fear rising in his throat. I think he did.

  If he didn’t, he should have done, because I was responsible for his-what? I was about to write: because I was responsible for his downfall. But upon further reflection I think I could as well write that I was responsible for his salvation. It depends upon what you regard as salvation. I don’t know for certain.

  But I was certainly responsible for his fear. Terror, you could call it, just as you could consider his fear of enclosed spaces, of suffocation, to be terror.

  I only saw two examples of it at the chateau. Once, during a visit to one or two of the more historic chateaux of the Loire, we stopped by the wayside for a picnic.

  We spread some rugs in a field off the highway, and ate the food and drank the wine; and afterwards lay about for a while, smoking and talking and joking. In due course, one or two of the more active spirits began to lark about.

  I think it was Danish Hans who crept up behind Bartels and flung a rug over his head and held him tight within its folds. I shall never forget the wild struggle which ensued, the sight of Bartels’ thrashing arms and legs, the upsetting of the wine bottle and picnic utensils, and, when he finally released himself, Bartels’ eyes, at first wild with terror and then hot and angry.

  “Don’t ever do that again,” he said, and got up and walked some distance away and sat down by himself. We looked at each other silently, as people often will who find themselves in the presence of something they don’t understand. Nobody said anything. And in due course, though still somewhat subdued, we went upon our way.

  The other occasion was when we were playing some hide-and-seek kind of game one evening. Somebody, I forget whom, knowing that Mary and Bartels were hiding together in a bedroom, locked the door on them, proposing to make a joke of it later, and to tell Bartels that he would have to marry the girl now.

  But it didn’t work out that way.

  We had to unlock the door almost at once in answer to the terrible, incessant banging upon it, and the unnaturally high-pitched shouts of Philip Bartels from within.

  Later, I asked Mary what had happened, but she wouldn’t discuss it. She just said: “I don’t think he likes being locked in. Some people have that fear. Claustrophobia, or something.”

  She quickly changed the subject. I formed the impression that what she had seen had been so upsetting that she did not wish to talk about it.

  Chapter 2

  I am, I believe, the only person who is in a position to record the full facts about Philip Bartels. One other person thinks he knows them, but he doesn’t. For one thing, he doesn’t know that I am, I suppose, a murderer, and one who carried out his crime under the nose of a police officer who, to this day, is quite unaware of the fact.

  I know the facts because I was so intimately acquainted with all the people in the affair. I still am, for that matter, but for obvious reasons I have used fictitious names for everybody, including myself. Indeed, especially for myself, for I am nothing if not prudent.

  The reconstruction of the story, then, is simple enough, but I may, I suppose, be attacked for daring to por
tray the thoughts which went on in the mind of Philip Bartels. How, I may be asked, do I know what went on in his mind?

  I might defend myself by saying that I knew Bartels better than anybody else ever knew him; that I knew his mind better than I knew the mind of any of my other friends; that twenty-eight years is a long time to know anybody.

  But I must record, with respect, and without in any way wishing to appear rude, that I am largely indifferent as to whether I am attacked or not.

  That is because-and here again I state the fact with the utmost diffidence-I am recording this business mostly for my own benefit; for my own peace of mind, perhaps. I myself did not play a noble role, and I want to get it all down on paper.

  I, Peter Harding, am a proprietor of hotels, comparatively young, but comparatively successful, and I am used to having things down on paper. I like it that way. I don’t like carrying things in my head.

  One other thing I know, now that the visit to the chateau is past: although I went there at first from nostalgic and other reasons, I hadn’t been there long before I realized that I was edging closer and closer to a solution to the one problem which had always baffled me: why a man of Bartels’ nature acted as he did.

  I shall never forget my feeling of rising excitement as, little by little, I drew nearer to the answer to the last riddle surrounding the strange personality of Philip Bartels.

  Chapter 3

  All living things need love. Even plants reach up for the caresses of the sun’s rays. Children and young people need it more than others, so that affection and a sense of security, though important, are no substitute for the real thing. I think that Bartels craved love in later days because, unlike myself, he was starved of it in an early age.

  I first met him when we were ten years old and day boys at a little school in York. Then, as later, he was no beauty. He was a little frog-faced chap, with gold-rimmed spectacles, and then, as later, he was of only medium height, and weedily built. During his first two terms he was badly bullied, and I took part in the bullying, and thought it rather fun.

  We used to roll him up in the matting in the gymnasium and bounce on him. There was a piano in the gymnasium, too, and singing lessons took place there, and sometimes, for a change, we would poke him under the vaulting horse and keep him there the entire lesson.

  Some psychologists say that if you know the cause of irrational fears you are as good as cured. Bartels suffered in afterlife from claustrophobia, which he ascribed to the vaulting horse incidents: but the knowledge didn’t cure him.

  When school was over, we would lie in wait for him outside the premises, but after a while he grew to expect this, and would lurk about in the comparative safety of a classroom until time compelled us to go home. I remember to this day the sight of his pale little face pressed against the classroom window as he waited hopefully for us to leave. Poor little Bartels!

  After a couple of terms we gave up bullying him, principally because he was a good-humoured fellow, and he and I became firm friends.

  At that time my parents had rented a house at Dringhouses, on the outskirts of York. There was a field next door in which black pigs were kept and a stagnant pond. After I had stopped bullying Bartels, we united to bully the pigs by throwing mud balls at them, and occasionally, since this was soon after the First World War, we would play at naval battles with bits of wood on the pond.

  During our last term at the school a play was produced in which I had the role of Julius Caesar and Bartels played Cassius. It used to amuse us greatly when I had to speak the famous words:

  Let me have men about me that are fat;

  Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o’ nights.

  Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;

  He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.

  It never occurred to me then that Bartels could ever be a dangerous man. Even in those days he was such a kind-hearted and gentle chap.

  For instance, we used to play a ludicrous card game called “Lams and Biffs,” in which we gambled, not for money but for our personal comfort or discomfort. At the end of the game, various winners inflicted upon various losers a number of whacks with a ruler to equal the points they had gained. Nobody much minded losing to Bartels, because you always got off with a few soft, perfunctory pats.

  When we left the little school in York, we went to different preparatory schools, and later, to different public schools, but I still saw a tremendous lot of him in London during the school holidays.

  My parents had a modernized flat in Kensington, and because they were gay and interested in everybody, and content with their lot, there was always a joke or two in the evenings, and a friend popping in for a talk and a cup of coffee.

  But for Bartels it was different.

  He was just thirteen when both his parents were killed in a train crash in France, and he was compelled to go and live with his aunt Emily, her sister, aunt Rose, and his uncle James, a retired colonel of the Somerset regiment, who, in addition to other acts of bravery, had married Bartels’ aunt Rose.

  I have come across some quaint households in my time, but nothing that could beat the extraordinary set-up into which Philip Bartels, a lonely and sensitive child, was pitchforked at the impressionable age of thirteen.

  There was laughter enough in my home, but the only jokes which amused me when I visited Bartels were quite unintentional and entirely due to the farcical goings-on in that incredible place.

  As for friends popping in for a chat, any acquaintances who called, for one reason or another, took their departure as soon as decency permitted, and I don’t blame them.

  Yet they were not wicked people. All the people in this record were fundamentally good people, apart from myself, perhaps; which possibly makes the tale of some slight interest, for crime involving wicked people is common enough.

  Bartels’ relations were kind and generous. They were very fond of each other, too, and would have given their last stick of furniture to help each other in case of dire emergency. But they were so occupied with the affairs of this world-and indeed of the next world, too-that they had little time to lavish upon Bartels the love which a child needs.

  I got to know them well over the years, for I was an only child and glad enough to go round there two or three times a week in the holidays. In the end, I even called them aunt Rose, and uncle James, and aunt Emily, as though they were my own relations.

  The house in which Bartels lived was situated off Bayswater Road, its exact address being No. 257 Melville Avenue.

  The word conjures up a double row of trees, but if there had ever been any trees in Melville Avenue they must have been long since chopped down, or, more likely, have died of blight. In either case it must have been a merciful release for them.

  There was no real colour in Melville Avenue. The houses, each hugging its neighbour, each with its two stucco pillars on either side of a flight of steps, were painted in tones which appeared to have been primarily chosen for their drabness. Some were fawn, some grey, and some had their pillars painted a curiously depressing shade of chocolate brown, or even black. The house owned by aunt Emily had once been painted the shade of weak mustard.

  Behind each house was a small garden, bordered by a grimy brick wall, and here lurked various dark-leaved shrubs and trees. Some house-owners tried to grow a patch of lawn-Bartels’ uncle had tried to do so-but the earth was black and sour and full of broken bricks and stones, and the grass grew only thinly and coarsely.

  At No. 257 the square of rank grass, with its bald patches and ragged edges, had been surrounded by Bartels’ aunt Rose with a border of large seashells, which made it particularly repulsive. Along the wall at the end of the garden an endless procession of cats passed by day and by night. Some were tabby, some black, some tortoiseshell or white, and a few displayed such a variety of colour and design as to make the imagination boggle at the broad-mindedness of their ancestors.

  No. 257 Melville Avenue, like all the neighbouring ho
uses, had a ground floor and basement, and two other stories. Bartels’ aunt Rose, and her husband James, aunt Emily, Cook, and Bartels himself occupied the ground floor and basement.

  The first floor was let to a retired district commissioner from East Africa, whose name I have forgotten. I would sometimes see him and his wife passing down the stairs, a spare, yellow-faced, unhappy-looking couple. He had obtained a job as secretary in some minor West End club, and rarely returned until late at night.

  Now and again, when my parents went away, I would spend a night at Bartels’ house; and I would hear the wife’s footsteps, as I lay in bed, pacing backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, above my head. Once I heard sobbing. I think she was being driven mad by loneliness.

  The top floor was let to an artist in his early thirties, and the woman whom he called his wife, though sometimes carelessly read-dressed letters led aunt Rose to remark good-humouredly that if Mrs Martin were asked to produce her marriage lines she might be hard put to it to find them. The Martins were a gay and happy couple, who kept much to themselves.

  Sometimes they gave noisy parties which went on late into the night, and afterwards the guests would make their way on tiptoe, giggling and whispering, down the linoleum-covered stairs. I have sometimes wondered how the district commissioner’s wife felt, as she listened to the sounds of gaiety, so near and yet so far removed from her.

  Aunt Rose and uncle James, as from force of habit I still think of them, lived on the ground floor with Bartels; aunt Emily and Cook lived in the basement. It is typical of the remarkable salesmanship of aunt Rose that although aunt Emily owned the house, aunt Rose and her husband occupied the best rooms, though they paid no rent, while aunt Emily lived in the basement.

  The reason was clear enough, at least to aunt Rose, and lay in the fact that one day aunt Rose was going to be a millionairess, and was going to keep all the rest of the family in luxury for the remainder of their lives.