Five Roundabouts to Heaven

Brooding in the woods above the chateau where Bartels and I had been so happy, I was compelled to admit to myself that I had played my cards cleverly in the events which occurred all those years later.

I concealed my part in the Bartels’ affair so well that I know for certain that on the February night when, for him, the world burst into flames and fell in ruins, the thoughts which he entertained for me were still those of a friend.

His actions proved it.

So much the better. I am glad to think that to the burden of his fear there was not added the bitterness of one who thinks he has been betrayed.

I don’t say that the role I played was a noble one. It was not. Where things of the heart are concerned men mostly become selfish. But although my actions had been dictated by my own interests, I had for long been in doubt as to whether I need entirely reproach myself for the course which I took.

I had argued that I had acted, at first, perfectly legitimately, and that by the time the moment for sacrifice had arrived, only a saint could have found the strength to make it.

If you lead a normal life in a town such as London, if you can call town life normal, which I doubt, you can get away from your conscience to some extent. I could, anyway. There are plenty of distractions.

But it was different when I was back there that evening.

When you go back, as I did, and see the ghosts, and one ghost in particular, and see him as he was, and remember all that happened in later years, you come face to face with yourself.

Arguments which have formerly held good begin to fall away. Doubts creep in, slimily, from behind, and you’ve got to round on them and grab them by the throat and throttle them, if you can, or they trample you down.

So the truth begins to emerge.

Chapter 5

After I had left the chateau I went to Germany and Italy, to learn the languages of those countries. I worked in hotels at home and abroad, on the Continent and in America, for although my father had a comfortable position in mind for me when I knew the hotel business, he was determined that I should go through the mill first.

I worked in every department which you can find in a big hotel, doing both manual work and office work, for my father, who had built his business the hard way, had no mind to have it wrecked some day by a dilettante.

It was hard, but I enjoyed it, meeting many types of men, and almost as many different types of women. But I rarely stayed more than a few months in each place, and, since there is safety in numbers, the attractions of one girl had hardly begun to impress me before I left; and the charms of her successor, I must own, proved scarcely less acceptable.

I had lost Ingrid, for reasons which it is unnecessary to outline, and thereafter I remained comparatively free.

It was not so with Bartels.

We wrote to each other fairly often, and in due course I learnt that he had gone into the wine trade, as envisaged, that after a period in a London office he had toured the well-known vineyards, and finally he had gone out on the road to sell his wares.

It is not fair to mention here the name of the firm for which he worked, but it had a reasonable reputation, and with the small income he inherited from his parents, and what he made by way of commission, he had an adequate income, at the age of twenty-six, upon which to marry.

So he married. He married Beatrice Wilson, and invited me formally to the wedding, though I was at that time in America. And when I heard the news I wondered why Beatrice Wilson, that attractive, witty, and intelligent girl, should have married little frog-faced Bartels; even though he did have a certain charm, and a slow and melodious voice.

I spent most of the war in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, but I was lucky, and returned to London in comparatively good health, in 1946. As my parents were at that time living in Bucking-hamshire, I sought and was fortunate enough to find a small modern furnished flat in Kensington High Street, and soon after my return, I telephoned Bartels at his office, not knowing whether he was dead or alive.

There was no mistaking the slow, deep voice which answered the phone, and which contrasted so curiously with his slender frame. He sounded genuinely delighted to hear from me. I agreed to go to dinner with him and Beatrice the following night, and when we learnt that we were living within a few minutes’ walk of each other we were as pleased as Punch.

It seemed that our old boyhood friendship would be renewed, and indeed for three years and more this proved to be the case. It was a happy time for me. I had work, friends, my darkroom in my flat, where I carried out photographic experiments.

I was delighted to see that, despite certain misgivings I had had, to all outward appearances the marriage was a success.

Beatrice was a splendid housewife. She was still extremely good-looking and seemed contented and happy. Her parents had bought for her a small cottage near Balcombe, in Sussex, and in the summer months they would go down there for long weekends. I often went with them.

They had a pleasant circle of friends, both in London and in Sussex, and if I sometimes thought that Bartels was quieter than he used to be, I formed the opinion that this was because he had not been very well treated by his firm.

It was, of course, the old story of the man who goes to the war-in his case, the African campaign, Italy, and Germany-and who returns to find that others have been promoted in his absence. They gave him his job back-on the road-but they pointed out, with a regret which might have been genuine, that in the present state of the wine trade they could do no more.

Bartels was not as young as he had been, and I think he felt it deeply. Moreover, good wine was not, at first, easily obtainable; and at first, being expensive, was difficult to sell.

But Beatrice had a small allowance for her clothes, and Bartels had his modest private income, so that despite everything, they managed to live reasonably. Bartels, who was of Dutch origin as his name suggests, stuck tenaciously to his selling, even though it involved an absence from home of two or three nights a week.

I spent very many happy evenings with the Bartels and with their friends. There was Fred Manders, who was an architect, and his wife, Joyce; James Murray, an insurance chap; Bill and Margaret Barnet-he was something in a textile firm; and in the country there were the Derbyshires, who had a small-holding which they farmed in a desultory kind of way; Major and Mrs Godfrey, who did nothing in particular; John O’Brien, an Irish solicitor, who lived nearby in a cottage by himself and travelled up and down to town each day, and one or two others. Of them all, I liked John O’Brien best. He was a heavily built, jovial man in his middle thirties, with dark hair and blue eyes and a pugnacious jaw.

When I first met him, he was already contemplating taking silk, and I formed the impression, and later events confirmed it, that with his good looks and Irish charm and wit he would go far at the Bar.

He lived in the country, primarily because he was passionately devoted to St Bernard dogs, of which he had three. I frequently gave him a lift to town in my car, and on Sundays, when the Bartels were down there, he generally came in for a meal or a few drinks.

We all liked John O’Brien. I still do.

I had an open invitation to go down to Balcombe any weekend I liked, with or without warning. All that I needed to do, they said, was to drive up to the door. I often did. My room was always ready. Such was the closeness of the bonds between myself and Philip and Beatrice Bartels.

So things remained for a period, which in retrospect seems like that sunny windless day when Beatrice arrived at the chateau and entered the life of Philip Bartels; the day which ended, so suddenly, in the gathering of the storm clouds and the rending of the sky by thunder and lightning and rain.

Even when the first crack appeared, I was, at first, merely surprised and saddened. It began on 12 February,