by John Bingham
He watches her, therefore, in a detached way; sees her going about her household chores, cleaning, making the beds; observes her quietly reading in the evening, or sewing and listening to the radio; hears her, too, making plans; what dress she will buy, whom she proposes to invite to tea, what film she intends to go and see.
All the while he is thinking: You won’t be doing that work much longer; neither sewing, nor reading, nor carrying out your other plans; that mechanism which you call your body will soon be stilled.
You will be dead and in your grave. Finished. You think you have your own little future, like other people, and you are filled with your own hopes and modest ambitions.
You think that I am fond of you; you think you can trust me, or you would not remain under my roof; you think I would even protect you from danger.
But you’re wrong. I’m going to kill you.
The mind of the normal wife-murderer must therefore be almost animal-like in its lack of sensitivity, or it must be twisted, perverted with a kind of cat-and-mouse sadism raging within it.
But Bartels was an exception.
So far from lacking sensitivity, he had too much; and so far from being sadistic, he was too kind.
I brooded over these contradictions that evening when I returned to the chateau. I could not as yet entirely resolve the problem. I could not see how a man of Bartels’ temperament could fill the role of one who was either cloddishly insensitive or gloatingly feline.
But I was continually conscious of a sensation of discovery, for I felt instinctively that as the next part of the story unfolded in my mind, I should be groping still nearer to the solution of at least one part of the mystery. I had already sensed that pity, the inability to inflict pain, had played a part in Bartels’ action. What I had not hitherto realized was the devastating effect which this had had on him.
Now I was beginning to get a clearer picture and, collating all that I knew, I suddenly saw that, queerly enough, it was Beatrice herself who made up Bartels’ mind for him, not by any conscious deed, or quarrel, or hurtful words, but by a small instinctive action in the early hours of the morning, while she lay in bed more than three parts asleep.
Chapter 8
Bartels had driven down to Thatchley, and dined with Lorna. She had been very sweet to him that evening, because she knew his kindly nature, and knew also, therefore, that a struggle was going on in his mind, though she obviously had no idea of its exact nature.
He left her at about 11.30 p.m. and set out on the road home, and Beatrice’s chances of life increased as he felt the car answering to his touch and listened to the hum of the engine.
Driving, the feeling of controlling a car, always increased his self-confidence, helped to smooth out his worries. At such moments he recaptured a belief that, given the right set of circumstances, he still could carry out his earlier plan, and that he and Beatrice would be able to go their own ways in peace, and perhaps even friendship.
Bartels drove at speed that night, but without effort; he was a fine driver. The weather was dark, but cold and dry, and there was only an occasional car on the road at that hour. For long stretches at a time the road was well studded with catseyes, and the bends were gentle.
As he drove down the slope leading into Cobham, his headlamps picked up a fox slinking swiftly across the road, its belly close to the ground. He caught a glimpse of its pointed mask, and was surprised to come upon a fox in that area.
For a few moments it distracted his mind from the burden which was weighing it down. He thought of uncle James, and his wish for one day out fox-hunting before he died; and of an abortive fox-shoot which he himself had attended in Germany in 1947; and of his last close view of Germany, when he hurried from the Volkswagen, out of the sleet and the biting wind, into bomb-battered, dingy Hannover station.
The station was dirty from day and night use by thousands of men, women, and children, refugees from the east, businessmen in shabby suits clutching their attache cases, and women with mysterious bulging cloth carrier bags back from the country after bartering clothes, jewellery, anything, for food.
There were deep shadows, and a few weak electric-light bulbs, and draughts, and the strange musty smell formed by a mixture of German ration soap, German-grown tobacco, German perspiration; and always the raw, icy wind blowing eternally through the battered station.
Bartels dropped smoothly into Cobham, and followed the road as it curved through the village to the left, and thought: There you had it, in Hannover Station, the fruition of the dreams of revenge, the final triumphant blossoming of hatred’s hopes, the chance to look, to listen, to smell, to gloat, and to say: “Serve the swine right! They asked for it!”
In the main hall of the station, he remembered, a woman stood with a cheap pram in which a child lay, and two other children stood by her side. She had a round, yellow face, and wore glasses and was tall, and not very fat or very thin: just dull-looking. The group stood isolated beneath a light, caught in an island of illumination, as though picked out by an overhead searchlight, and the woman turned her head this way and that, as though looking for something or somebody, miserable and bewildered. That was defeat, that was our revenge.
If you went down below the station, to the former air-raid shelters, you found a thousand or two people herded together; some were there because it was warm, and the trains were always hours late, and you had to wait somewhere; others were there to do black-market deals; others because, in all Hannover, by day and by night, they had no other roof under which to shelter.
Here you met it again, hitting you in the face, the German smell, the stink of defeat and misery.
There were tables and hard chairs, but not enough, and a counter where you could queue and get a hot drink, if you had the right coupons. You picked your way carefully, in those foetid, smoky, musty vaults, shouldering your way through the human jungle, stepping over trunks, avoiding handbags, and legs, and feet, and bodies; some people were sitting or lying, some were awake, some sprawled asleep.
A seventy-year-old woman, with grey, streaky hair hanging lankly, sits on a suitcase, head on arms, knees up, eyes closed. A child lies across the end of a trunk, yellow hair touching the ground, sprawled out, ungainly, grotesque, as though a giant had used her as a toy, and then had tossed her down. She is asleep, despite the raucous songs from one corner of the room, the burble of voices, the shuffle of feet.
In the middle of the rooms the air is thick and foul and chokes you like cotton wool; but it is warm, it is away from the vicious wind, and the sleet, and the snow. So you pick your way gingerly past the woman with the crying baby, and the filthy ragged man mumbling to himself, and past, with greater care, the groups of long-haired, grubby youths who hang around and plot and trade in cigarettes and other unobtainable things. They look at you curiously with their grey faces and grey eyes, and would like to provoke an incident and beat you up and rob you.
Bartels took the final bend in the road out of Cobham, and thought: It’s so easy to hate at a distance. You read your newspaper, and you are well fed, and reasonably happy, and you say: “Let ’em suffer. We did.”
But it’s different when you’ve got to watch it.
You don’t feel as you thought you would, when you see women with yellow faces trying to shield undernourished children from icy draughts on the slimy steps of a ruined station, and when you hear the desperate words with which despairing human beings have tried to comfort each other since the beginning of history.
That’s what hurts, thought Bartels, the sight of people being unselfish in their miseries; trying to protect others, trying to cheer them when their own hearts are pools of unhappiness; trying to nurse them when there are no medicines, to give hope when there is none.
The man on the spot gets no satisfaction out of mass revenge; it is a thing to be read about and to be savoured from afar. The ordinary man has to stand at a distance to inflict suffering; if he comes too close he is lost. He becomes the victim of pi
ty.
It is in man’s nature to remove the cause of the pain, and if he cannot remove the cause, he will, as like as not, put the sufferer beyond the range of it. If he is a veterinary surgeon, he turns to the lethal chamber, and the sufferer sleeps. If he is a doctor, he may take equivalent action.
But for the suffering of the mind, of the broken heart which cries out in its agony of loneliness, the trusting heart which has been betrayed-for this kind of suffering, thought Bartels, there is no release.
There are mercy killings for the others, but none for these.
Nobody has ever reached out a hand to help them to sleep. And certainly nobody has ever killed to prevent such suffering.
“Or have they?” said Bartels aloud. “Or have they?” he repeated, above the noise of the engine. “You can’t tell. You can’t tell, because you can’t see into people’s hearts.”
By now he had reached the stage when he could coolly contemplate the use of altrapeine. The time when he had refused to face his thoughts, refused to understand why he did not wish his aunt Emily to see him with a book on poisons, that time was past now.
If I kill Beatrice, he thought bitterly, and if I am caught, I shall go down in history as a monster of callous cruelty. That’s funny, of course, because if I did not care about her mental suffering, I could just walk out and leave her flat, and I wouldn’t even risk my neck.
I could have all I want, without risk, without even great trouble, if I were the callous monster they will consider me if I kill and get caught.
“Yes,” said Bartels, aloud again, “yes, it’s funny, and it’s silly.”
Outside Cobham, he saw a man walking by the side of the road. As he passed, the man turned and signalled for a lift. Bartels swore, and pulled up some yards farther down the road. He heard the sound of the man’s feet pounding on the roadway as he ran to catch up with the car. Bartels opened the side door, and the man climbed in.
“How far are you going?” Bartels asked.
“Couple of miles farther on. Thanks for stopping, mate.”
The man was still breathless from running, but he began to fumble in his pocket, and pulled out a packet of cigarettes and opened it and offered one to Bartels: “Have a ‘Wood,’ mate?”
“Thanks. You’re out late.”
The man searched his pockets for matches, found one, and struck a light. He said nothing as he held the match for Bartels. Bartels glanced at him in the light of the flame. He was a middleaged man, dingily dressed, with a thin, stringy tie, a cloth cap, and a lean, bony face.
Bartels wondered why he was out.
He thought idly that he might be a burglar, except that he hadn’t a bag of tools; or a poacher, except that he wasn’t wearing the kind of clothes you associate with a poacher; and he looked too old for a man returning from a love assignation.
“You’re out late,” said Bartels again.
“I’ve been with my sister. My eldest sister.” The man drew on his cigarette.
“Whereabouts does she live?”
“She lived in Cobham. She died this evening.”
Burglar, poacher, lover, mourner, they all looked much the same. They all wore suits of clothes, and asked for lifts, and offered you cigarettes. Aloud Bartels said: “I’m sorry to hear that. Very sorry indeed.”
The man drew on his cigarette again. Bartels saw the red glow in the windscreen. The man said:
“I was happy to see her go, and that’s the bloody truth, mate. She’s been hanging on for seven months. Well, we’ve all got to go sometime.”
“That’s right,” said Bartels, “we’ve all got to go sometime.”
“They didn’t find out soon enough; that was the bloody trouble. You’ve got to catch it early with a growth; that’s what the nurse said. A good nurse she was, too. It was a happy release, and that’s the truth. A bloody happy release.”
Platitudes and cliches, one sneers at them, thought Bartels, but they have their uses. We’ve all got to go sometime. A happy release. And all the others, ranged neatly in rows, potted and tinned and ready to hand for all occasions; the ever-ready solace and balm for simple folk, the soothing ointment for untutored minds. Aloud he said:
“Well, none of us can live forever.”
“That’s a bloody fact,” agreed the man. “That’s true enough.” He said nothing for a few moments, then he added: “It was bad the last two days because the poison didn’t burst the walls of her stomach, it kind of went to her brain; that’s what the nurse said.”
Bartels felt slightly sick. Desperately he said: “Yes, well, it’s all over now. She’s at peace now.”
He hoped the man had finished, but he had to have a last fling.
“They didn’t find out early enough,” he repeated dully; “that was Mildred’s trouble. She was never one for running to bloody doctors. Not Mildred. There’s a turning at the bottom of the hill, if you’d stop there, mate.”
Bartels stopped at the turning, and the man got out and thanked him, and trudged off down the lane. Bartels threw away the end of the Woodbine and drove on.
It was all over now, he had said, and he was right. If you didn’t adopt that attitude about suffering, you went mad in the end. Suffering wasn’t permanent, except in hell, if there was a hell; there was always peace in the end, one way or the other, and then the pain was finished, and the fear. Finished and over and at an end, forever and ever; past, irrevocably past and done with.
That was the only way to cope with the suffering, the agony, and the fear in the world. Any other line of thought made you clutch your temples and groan aloud.
He drove through Esher and beyond, and turned right at the Kingston Bypass, and twenty-five minutes later crossed the Thames by Hammersmith Bridge. Hammersmith Broadway was deserted except for one policeman standing at a corner.
Bartels had a sudden desire to hear a strong, normal human voice unburdened by grief, untrammelled by worries, which would drag him from his own thought-world of speculation, and intrigue, and foreboding.
He stopped the car, and the policeman moved slowly over to him. Bartels lowered the nearside window, and the officer stooped down and looked through the window at him.
“Can I help you, sir?”
“Could you tell me the way to Alvington Road, please?”
“Yes, sir, it’s near Olympia. Take the road facing you, and after the second set of traffic lights, take the first turning on the left, and you’ll see it up on the right.”
“Thanks very much. It’s a nice night,” Bartels added, reluctant to let him go.
“Lovely night. Bit cold out here, though.”
The policeman laughed good-naturedly. Bartels envied him. To Bartels the policeman represented sanity: a plain man, an honest man, leading a regular life, without fears for the future or regrets for the past. After the miserable conversation with the bereaved man, after the loneliness of the drive in the dark, Bartels clung eagerly to human warmth and said:
“All quiet round here, tonight?”
“Not a mouse stirring, sir.”
Bartels took out his cigarette case. “Cigarette?”
The policeman hesitated, then removed a glove, looked briefly round the Broadway, and accepted one.
“Not supposed to, really, sir.”
“You’ll probably find a quiet corner.”
“I wouldn’t say it isn’t done sometimes, sir. Thanks.” He smiled and put the cigarette into his breast pocket. There seemed little more to say.
Reluctantly, Bartels put the car into first gear and released the handbrake. He bade the policeman good night and took the road leading to Kensington. His depression had lifted. He thought: I must get this thing into its right perspective. He would have liked to have had a drink with the policeman. Perhaps several drinks, so that they could reach the stage where personal problems could be aired, and the policeman would forget that he was a policeman and give the common-sense view of a down-to-earth man.
“Well, sir, if you’re not hap
py with your wife, leave her,” the policeman would say in his solid way. “There’s no need to kill her. That’s murder, sir, and there’s no two ways about it. You get hanged for that sort of thing.”
“But it’s to save her suffering and humiliation,” he would reply. “What difference do a few years more or less make, in all the aeons of time which make up eternity?”
“I don’t know what an aeon of time is, but I know what murder is.”
“It’s a mercy murder; surely you see that?”
He imagined the man taking a gulp of his beer, and setting down his glass and saying: “Murder is murder, sir, call it what you like.” And his own reply:
“But, dammit, she is flesh and blood, and filled with her hopes for the future. I am part of those hopes.”
Now he imagined the constable looking at him in surprise and heard him say:
“Don’t think me rude, sir, but aren’t you being a bit conceited? There are other men in the world, sir. She sounds a very attractive young lady. Anyway, there’s no reason to kill her, sir, none at all. That’s murder, that is.”
“You think she would get on all right without me?”
“I think she would be very hurt, sir. Especially in her vanity. Women are great ones for vanity, sir.”
“But she would get on all right in the end?” he heard himself insisting.
“I’ve no doubt she would get over it, sir. Anyway, she would rather take her chance, sir, if you were to be so bold as to put it to her.”
By the time he had reached the traffic lights at Holland Road he had made up his mind. He saw now that he had been overdramatizing things. He had been neurotic and hypersensitive and ridiculous, and had very nearly put his neck, literally, into a noose.
It was perfectly simple, after all.
He would leave Beatrice and go and live in digs again, near Lorna. He would do just that. He would give Beatrice a handsome share of his income. Five hundred a year, that’s what he would give her. Tax-free, too. A good income that, even in these days.
