pale-faced man with a bald head and signs of exophthalmic goitre. Their talk ranged from world politics and the atom bomb to the current trade position.
Later, one of the men dropped his voice and began to talk about somebody called Fred with whom the three had been drinking earlier.
Fred, it appeared, was unfaithful to his wife, and he was regarded with amused admiration by the three before the fire. They related the various excuses he made to his wife, and laughed at his astuteness. Fred was a bit of a dog.
Bartels wondered why they bothered to lower their voices, since every word was audible to him. He also wondered why they thought Fred was so clever.
Fred wasn’t clever. Anyone with half a brain could deceive his wife, provided his wife was a normal, trusting individual. What was clever about pulling the wool over the eyes of somebody who trusted you? What’s so frightfully bloody clever about that? thought Bartels irritably. Children can do it. Even dogs.
He felt like throwing down his pen and shouting: “What do you oafs know about the inner subtleties of deception, of the deceiver who suffers more than the deceived? You clods! You sit here, crouched round the fire, smirking and leering, and what do you know of the pain of the imagination? You, who snigger like smutty-minded schoolboys, what right have you to gabble about infidelity?”
He pictured the look on their faces as they swung round at his words. Indignation at the insults, first, then a strained look as they tried to puzzle it all out, and then, of course, the reproaches:
“Excuse me, old man; but this happens to be a private conversation.”
“No need to be insulting, old man.”
“Who are you, anyway, to come butting in?”
He picked up his pen, and began to write, trying so to concentrate on his thoughts as to exclude the talk around the fire.
“So Fred says without a second’s hesitation, “All right, dear,” he says, “if you don’t believe I stayed there, ring ’em up and ask ’em, write to ’em, do what you like, dear, if you don’t believe me,” and then the three pips goes and he cuts off with a quick goodbye. Of course, he knew she wouldn’t have the nerve.”
A louder gust of wind rattled the windows and drowned the rest. Bartels gazed at the notepaper.
Bartels sighed.
He crumpled the sheet of notepaper up because he had smudged it, and took another, and wrote a brief letter to Beatrice saying that he hoped to be back on the next day but one.
Then he went up the narrow, winding staircase to his room at the top of the hotel. The room was cheerless and sordid, a measure, he supposed, of his own lack of success as a wine salesman. He wondered why they couldn’t take him off the road, give him a job in the office. He’d be all right in the office. He was no good on the road. Hadn’t got the aggressiveness, the smooth talk, the self-confidence.
Sometimes he asked himself why they sent him out at all. Did they, too, suffer from pity, and talk behind his back, and say: “Poor old Barty, he’s no good, of course, but we can’t sack him. Had a hard time, in the war, you know. Keeps our name before the buyers, but that’s about all.”
He felt the blood mounting to his face as, for one moment, he wondered whether Lorna Dickson’s feelings, also, were based on pity. He thrust the thought from him, and gazed round the room, noting despondently the mass-produced furniture, the linoleum-covered floor with the narrow strip of carpet by the bed, the windowpanes of frosted glass so that you could not see out of them, and the one harsh electric-light bulb hanging from the middle of the ceiling.
There you had it all within four walls, the furnishings of failure, the symbols of the commercial traveller who was no good, who never had been any good, and who, despite all his efforts, never would be any good.
He undressed in the freezing, unheated room and crawled into bed, and lay in the darkness. He thought of the lout Fred, who was so devoid of finesse that he was hard put to it to lull the suspicions of his wife, and he wondered what the wife was like. Did she sit by her fireside, alone, bitter, and in tears, the unwanted woman; or pace up and down, up and down, like the wife of the former district commissioner used to do in the house in Melville Avenue?
He turned over on to his side. A chambermaid, with unexpected zeal, had placed a stone hot-water bottle in the bed. He pressed his feet harder against it to gather the warmth.
He thought that although she didn’t realize it, Fred’s wife had little to worry about. Fred would grow tired of his bits of stuff. Fred would always come home in the end. All the Freds in all the world would always come home in the end. But I’m different, he thought. For me there is no lighthearted dalliance; there never could be, because if you’ve got any imagination you can’t just love ’em and leave ’em; not if they’re sensitive, and if they’re not sensitive you don’t fall for them.
The warm air from the bottle and from his body, trapped within the bedclothes, slowly surrounded him, soothing his nerves and lulling the agitation in his mind.
He was comfortable now, warm and comfortable, and had no wish to fall asleep. Instead, he wished to stay awake a while with the image of Lorna before his mind’s eye, to feel in imagination the softness of her lips and the silkiness of her shoulders beneath his hand.
But the day’s events intruded. It had been a bad day, of course; there was nothing unusual about that. Buyers had been obstinate, some even refusing to see him. There ran through his mind the old time-honoured excuses which he had heard so often over the years:
“Mr Fowler asks if you will excuse him this time, as he is very busy.”
“Mr Roberts has the auditors with him and regrets he cannot see you.”
“Mr Martin is in the middle of stocktaking, and is sorry he cannot have the pleasure of seeing you on this occasion.”
“Very nice of you to call. Mr Andrews has asked me to say, however, that he is well satisfied with his present suppliers and sees no reason to change.”
The list of his wines ran through his head. Once he had thought them colourful and romantic. Even now they had a lilt about them, though, as he grew sleepier, the music was interrupted with snatches of his own sales talk, with thoughts of Lorna and Beatrice, and quantities and prices, and still more sales talk…St Emilion, St Julien, Bordeaux Rouge; Medoc, Beaune, Pommard; Chambertin, Beaujolais Superieur-“we have a most interesting parcel of Beaujolais.”
A most interesting parcel of Beaujolais, and at a keen price, and just the thing for your clientele. A full-bodied wine for the North, and Lorna came from the North…I love you, Lorna; I love you, Barty; I shall understand if it’s too hard, Barty, I shall understand…Bordeaux Rouge, Pommard, Medoc…Lorna, darling Lorna, don’t say that you, too, suffer from pity?…Lorna, my love…Cut the commission. Five percent on bulk wines. Two hogsheads, four hogsheads, eight hogsheads, and quarter bottles to contend with high restaurant prices.
Quarter bottles, a mixed case of eight quarter bottles, and pamphlets and a map for the Bordeaux wines. Of interest to customers, a help to the waiter! The trend to expect is a rise in Burgundies…It’s not what a man does, or even whether he succeeds, it’s how he does it that counts said Lorna once…Dear, sweet Lorna…A narrow market, a narrow market, wine fifteen shillings, duty twenty-six shillings, three-and-six freight and insurance, ten shillings bottling, price in bin fifty-four-and-sixpence, and a most interesting parcel of Beaujolais.
One hundred gallons, forty-eight dozen, two hogsheads. Four hogsheads. Eight hogsheads. Something special in St Julien, St Emilion, Medoc, Beaune, Chambertin, Macon, and Bordeaux Rouge…Don’t ever leave me, that’s what the hand of Beatrice had said to him in the dark…I need you.
Bartels sighed, confused, more than half asleep.
Beaujolais…a most interesting parcel of Beaujolais…A most interesting parcel of altrapeine…Just in case…I must buy a most interesting parcel of altrapeine…Somehow…Tomorrow. Without fail. Altrapeine…of interest to the customers, a help to the waiter. Bartels smirked once, drowsily, then slept.
Although Bartels fell asleep without too much trouble, he had a restless night disturbed by dreams. In one he
