disappointments, no suggestion at all that since she had married with her head rather than her heart she was at least partly to blame.
Then he would simply not come back.
Knowing himself, he knew that he might weaken if he came back, and if she cried and implored him to give the marriage another chance. He wouldn’t risk it.
As it was late, he left the car in front of the house and went upstairs to the flat. He let himself in quietly, and switched on the light in the hall, and glanced casually at the letters on the hall table.
There was a Final Demand from the gas company, a document from the authorities telling him that unless he appealed he would be summoned for jury duty, and a bill from the local garage: a fairly representative selection of letters, in fact. He stuffed them in his overcoat pocket. Before he left, he would clear up all outstanding bills; he would leave her clear, able to make a clean start.
He made his way to the kitchen and cut himself a thick slice of bread and cheese, and ate margarine with the bread to economize the butter ration. Beatrice did not like margarine.
There was three-quarters of a pint of milk in the refrigerator. He poured himself out a cup, then realized that there would not be enough left for coffee for breakfast. Beatrice preferred coffee to tea. He poured the milk back into the bottle, and replaced it in the refrigerator, and quenched his thirst with water.
It made him feel like a man apologizing for stepping upon the toe of an individual into whose back he was shortly to plunge a stiletto.
Bartels went into the drawing room, and stood by the embers of the fire which Beatrice had made up for him. He looked around the room, noting objects which linked him to the past.
There was the picture of the Seine which he and Beatrice had bought in Paris while on their honeymoon, upon which, indeed, they had spent more money than they could afford. There was the set of porcelain horses Beatrice had bought while visiting a friend in Belgium. And the Victorian silver picture frame, holding a picture of Beatrice as a girl: the first thing they ever bought for their home.
He looked at these things, trying to resurrect from the ashes of his emotions some tiny flicker of sentiment. But there was nothing left; it was all dead, grey, unstirring, and without warmth. He saw only a painting, some china objects, and a frame with a good-looking girl in it.
He threw the remains of his cigarette into the grate and began to undress in the drawing room, as he always did when he was late, in order not to disturb Beatrice. He went into the bedroom in his shirt and underpants, and quietly slipped them off and put on his pyjamas.
Beatrice had left the gas-fire burning, half turned up, and he turned it up higher and stood by it, warming his hands and feet.
By the light of the fire, he could make out the two twin beds, side by side. Beatrice was asleep, lying on her back, one arm above her head, as though she had found the room and the bedclothes too hot. As his eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, he saw something white on the small table by his bedside, and moved silently across to see what it was.
It was a mince pie. Under the mince pie was an envelope addressed to him in Beatrice’s handwriting. On the envelope she had written: “Eat the pie, and read the letter.”
Bartels ate the pie. It was freshly made and crumbly. He knelt by the fire and opened the letter. The slight noise caused Beatrice to stir. She murmured his name sleepily.
“I’m back,” he replied softly.
She said something he could not catch, and turned over on her side and fell asleep again. He opened out the letter and read:
He folded the letter and put it back in its envelope, and placed the envelope on the mantelpiece. He thought: Tomorrow evening I must go out. I can’t stay at home. If I stay at home I shall weaken. I must make some kind of excuse. I must get out tomorrow evening.
He turned the fire out and climbed into bed, and drew the sheets up to his chin and lay staring into the darkness. All his movements had been slow and noiseless, but the slight creak of the bed disturbed Beatrice.
She thrust her hand through the bedclothes, and out of her bed, and fumbled for Bartels’ hand. She found, not his hand, but his forearm, which seemed to be sufficient, for she sighed, as if with content, and dropped off to sleep again.
Bartels lay still, rigid, as the old turmoil of fear and pain and confusion gripped his stomach, and spread up his body to his throat. Then the pain and the fears dispersed, and only the confusion remained, and withdrew to his brain whence it had originated, and remained there a while, circulating round and round and round.
He kept it there as long as he could, fighting against certainty, because so long as there was confusion there was no decision, and so long as there was no decision there was no action, and without action there was safety.
But the uncertainty dispersed, too, in the end, as he knew it would.
So that he had to face the truth. It was not as though she were awake and play-acting. She had been three parts asleep. It had been an instinctive, almost subconscious action. The movement of the hand, with its groping, fumbling action, had wiped out the memory of the imaginary argument with the police constable. It had removed all the comfortable hopes.
He was not even back where he was. It was worse. There was no escape now, no more reasons for delay, no excuses which the hand of Beatrice, reaching out for him in the darkness, had not placed far beyond his reach.
I do need you: that’s what the hand had said. I may seem tough and self-reliant, and competent, but I’m not. I’m glad when you come back. I may not love you as you would like to be loved, but I need you. I’m glad when you return, because I don’t like being left alone. Fundamentally, I’m unhappy and unsure when I’m alone. Always come back to me. I do my best, I can’t do more, so don’t ever leave me. I would be so lonely, so frightfully lonely inside me, and so cold.
Bartels stared up into the darkness, his wrist gripped by the hand of Beatrice, fighting the old hopeless forlorn fight against the waves of pity.
Once, he tried, with infinite care, to disengage himself, but Beatrice sensed his intentions through her sleep, and tightened her grip. So he continued to lie on his back, while the certainty of what he must do grew stronger in his mind.
Because it was a cold night, the hand which gripped his wrist grew cold as the hand of a dead woman, or the hand of a woman to whom death had now come very close, even though there were, in fact, some days to go before 26 February.
Chapter 9
Two days later, travelling by a very early train, Bartels went to Manchester, as he had planned. In the evening, he sat in the writing room of his hotel. He felt cold, tired, and dispirited. The room was curiously named, because there were no pens, no writing paper, no blotting paper, and the inkwells were dry. But there were a few shoddy desks, and if you asked, they would reluctantly give you a few cheap sheets of headed notepaper at the reception desk.
There was a smouldering fire in the grate, but in spite of the fire the room was chilly, and a raw wind hammered periodically at the windows.
Round the grate sat three other commercial travellers. Bartels, trying to compose a letter to Beatrice, was distracted by their conversation.
Two of the men were in their thirties, thin, sharp-featured, red-faced fellows. The third was about fifty, a
