Five Roundabouts to Heaven by John Bingham Read Free Book Online

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