Read Online Five Roundabouts to Heaven by John Bingham - Free Book Online

suffering. That I know. You would gladly have stayed away from us had you known how things would develop.
    But you couldn’t know. In your innocence you came and lunched with us. Thereafter, not all your generosity, nor all your unselfishness, could stop the march of events.
    It is all finished, the strain and the pain, the struggle and the tears. There is only peace, of a sort, for all of us. Peace, most of the time, but sometimes for me the agony of doubt concerning the crafty manner in which I afterwards acted towards my best friend.

     
    It was over, by several months, when I revisited the château of our youth. It was finished, the climactic point reached and passed. Had I but remembered his words—“Death is of no consequence…it’s not dying that matters, it’s how you die”—then it is possible, just possible, that I might have felt some inner warning, some hidden voice which cried: “Stop! This woman is sacrosanct in the eyes of Philip Bartels.”
    I might have acted differently, after that first meeting with Lorna Dickson. But I doubt it. I think I would have gone ahead just the same.
    Such was my love for Lorna, born that day, that very day when she and Bartels and I had lunch together as friends.

Chapter 6
     
    I know so much now. I know, for instance, that on the day following the lunch at the Café Royal, Bartels went home in the evening with the firm intention of having things out, determined, despite what I’d said to him, to ask Beatrice to release him.
    It was typical of his ingenuous nature, in so far as women were concerned, that although he dreaded the business, he did not anticipate a prolonged fight. He thought she would be too proud, too strong, too independent to try for long to hold him.
    He thought she would fight with tooth and claw for a while, and then give in after a final burst of bitter invective, for she was a hot-tempered girl.
    I thought she would fight with tooth and claw, but would not give in. She had too much to lose.
    I thought he would have to leave her, and let time become his ally. I told him so, after Lorna had left us after lunch. He did not believe me.
    The evening began in a normal enough way, Bartels and Beatrice watching a play on the television; and their dog Brutus dozing in front of the fire. He was a very old dog by now; an ugly, square dog, of mixed blood, with a white-and-tan coat, and a heavy head and jowl.
    He had been given to them shortly after their marriage, and in those days he was a light and playful puppy; but now the weight of the years pressed heavily upon him; he was half-blind, and cumbersome, and lived only to eat and to sleep.
    The television programme ended at about 10.15. The play had a strong love theme running through it, and when it was over Beatrice went out and made some tea.
    Bartels waited, biding his time until Beatrice should comment on the play. She poured out the tea and handed him his cup, and sat sipping her tea and looking into the fire. Five minutes passed, and he began to think that the opportunity for which he was waiting would not arise.
    He sought in his mind for some method of approaching the subject. Now that the moment was near, he felt sad and nervous, as he always did at the thought of inflicting pain or distress.
    Then, suddenly, Beatrice spoke about the play.
    “I just don’t believe in this grand passion, this all-devouring flame which people are always writing about,” she said irritably. “It may occur in one case in a million, but I simply don’t believe it holds true for the normal run of people, I just don’t believe it.”
    She sat in her armchair, stirring her tea, and looking into the fire.
    It was her old line of argument, brought out and hacked around to all sorts and conditions of people; it was her attempt to justify to herself her actions in having married without being in love; an attempt to reassure herself that other people, or the vast majority, also married with their heads rather than their