worries. At such moments he recaptured a belief that, given the right set of circumstances, he still could carry out his earlier plan, and that he and Beatrice would be able to go their own ways in peace, and perhaps even friendship.
Bartels drove at speed that night, but without effort; he was a fine driver. The weather was dark, but cold and dry, and there was only an occasional car on the road at that hour. For long stretches at a time the road was well studded with catseyes, and the bends were gentle.
As he drove down the slope leading into Cobham, his headlamps picked up a fox slinking swiftly across the road, its belly close to the ground. He caught a glimpse of its pointed mask, and was surprised to come upon a fox in that area.
For a few moments it distracted his mind from the burden which was weighing it down. He thought of uncle James, and his wish for one day out fox-hunting before he died; and of an abortive fox-shoot which he himself had attended in Germany in 1947; and of his last close view of Germany, when he hurried from the Volkswagen, out of the sleet and the biting wind, into bomb-battered, dingy Hannover station.
The station was dirty from day and night use by thousands of men, women, and children, refugees from the east, businessmen in shabby suits clutching their attache cases, and women with mysterious bulging cloth carrier bags back from the country after bartering clothes, jewellery, anything, for food.
There were deep shadows, and a few weak electric-light bulbs, and draughts, and the strange musty smell formed by a mixture of German ration soap, German-grown tobacco, German perspiration; and always the raw, icy wind blowing eternally through the battered station.
Bartels dropped smoothly into Cobham, and followed the road as it curved through the village to the left, and thought: There you had it, in Hannover Station, the fruition of the dreams of revenge, the final triumphant blossoming of hatred’s hopes, the chance to look, to listen, to smell, to gloat, and to say: “Serve the swine right! They asked for it!”
In the main hall of the station, he remembered, a woman stood with a cheap pram in which a child lay, and two other children stood by her side. She had a round, yellow face, and wore glasses and was tall, and not very fat or very thin: just dull-looking. The group stood isolated beneath a light, caught in an island of illumination, as though picked out by an overhead searchlight, and the woman turned her head this way and that, as though looking for something or somebody, miserable and bewildered. That was defeat, that was our revenge.
If you went down below the station, to the former air-raid shelters, you found a thousand or two people herded together; some were there because it was warm, and the trains were always hours late, and you had to wait somewhere; others were there to do black-market deals; others because, in all Hannover, by day and by night, they had no other roof under which to shelter.
Here you met it again, hitting you in the face, the German smell, the stink of defeat and misery.
There were tables and hard chairs, but not enough, and a counter where you could queue and get a hot drink, if you had the right coupons. You picked your way carefully, in those foetid, smoky, musty vaults, shouldering your way through the human jungle, stepping over trunks, avoiding handbags, and legs, and feet, and bodies; some people were sitting or lying, some were awake, some sprawled asleep.
A seventy-year-old woman, with grey, streaky hair hanging lankly, sits on a suitcase, head on arms, knees up, eyes closed. A child lies across the end of a trunk, yellow hair touching the ground, sprawled out, ungainly, grotesque, as though a giant had used her as a toy, and then had tossed her down. She is asleep, despite the raucous songs from one corner of the room, the burble of voices, the shuffle of feet.
In the middle of the rooms the air is thick and foul and chokes you like cotton wool; but it is warm, it is away from the vicious wind, and the sleet, and the snow. So you pick your way gingerly past the woman with the crying baby, and the filthy ragged man mumbling to himself, and past, with greater care, the groups of long-haired, grubby youths who hang around and plot and trade in cigarettes and other unobtainable things. They look at you curiously with their grey faces and grey eyes, and would like to provoke an incident and beat you up and rob you.
Bartels took the final bend in the road out of Cobham, and thought: It’s so easy to hate at a distance. You read your newspaper, and you are well fed, and reasonably happy, and you say: “Let ’em suffer. We did.”
But it’s different when you’ve got to watch it.
You don’t feel as you thought you would, when you see women with yellow faces trying to shield undernourished children from icy draughts on the slimy steps of a ruined station, and when you hear the desperate words with which despairing human beings have tried to comfort each other since the beginning of history.
That’s what hurts, thought Bartels, the sight of people being unselfish in their miseries; trying to protect others, trying to cheer them when their own hearts are pools of unhappiness; trying to nurse them when there are no medicines, to give hope when there is none.
The man on the spot gets no satisfaction out of mass revenge; it is a thing to be read about and to be savoured from afar. The ordinary man has to stand at a distance to inflict suffering; if he comes too close he is lost. He becomes the victim of pity.
It is in man’s nature to remove the cause of the pain, and if he cannot remove the cause, he will, as like as not, put the sufferer beyond the range of it. If he is a veterinary surgeon, he turns to the lethal chamber, and the sufferer sleeps. If he is a doctor, he may take equivalent action.
But for the suffering of the mind, of the broken heart which cries out in its agony of loneliness, the trusting heart which has been betrayed-for this kind of suffering, thought Bartels, there is no release.
There are mercy killings for the others, but none for these.
Nobody has ever reached out a hand to help them to sleep. And certainly nobody has ever killed to
“Or have they?” said Bartels aloud. “Or have they?” he repeated, above the noise of the engine. “You can’t tell. You can’t tell, because you can’t see into people’s hearts.”
By now he had reached the stage when he could coolly contemplate the use of altrapeine. The time when he had refused to face his thoughts, refused to understand why he did not wish his aunt Emily to see him with a book on poisons, that time was past now.
If I kill Beatrice, he thought bitterly, and if I am caught, I shall go down in history as a monster of callous cruelty. That’s funny, of course, because if I did not care about her mental suffering, I could just walk out and leave her flat, and I wouldn’t even risk my neck.
I could have all I want, without risk, without even great trouble, if I were the callous monster they will consider me if I kill and get caught.
“Yes,” said Bartels, aloud again, “yes, it’s funny, and it’s silly.”
Outside Cobham, he saw a man walking by the side of the road. As he passed, the man turned and signalled for a lift. Bartels swore, and pulled up some yards farther down the road. He heard the sound of the man’s feet pounding on the roadway as he ran to catch up with the car. Bartels opened the side door, and the man climbed in.
“How far are you going?” Bartels asked.
“Couple of miles farther on. Thanks for stopping, mate.”
The man was still breathless from running, but he began to fumble in his pocket, and pulled out a packet of cigarettes and opened it and offered one to Bartels: “Have a ‘Wood,’ mate?”
“Thanks. You’re out late.”
The man searched his pockets for matches, found one, and struck a light. He said nothing as he held the match for Bartels. Bartels glanced at him in the light of the flame. He was a middleaged man, dingily dressed, with a thin, stringy tie, a cloth cap, and a lean, bony face.
Bartels wondered why he was out.
He thought idly that he might be a burglar, except that he hadn’t a bag of tools; or a poacher, except that he wasn’t wearing the kind of clothes you associate with a poacher; and he looked too old for a man returning from a love assignation.
“You’re out late,” said Bartels again.
“I’ve been with my sister. My eldest sister.” The man drew on his cigarette.
“Whereabouts does she live?”
“She lived in Cobham. She died this evening.”
Burglar, poacher, lover, mourner, they all looked much the same. They all wore suits of clothes, and asked for lifts, and offered you cigarettes. Aloud Bartels said: “I’m sorry to hear that. Very sorry indeed.”
