Five Roundabouts to Heaven Read Free Page A

vigorous rustling of a squirrel shaking the leaves. A descendant, I supposed, of the squirrels I had known and sometimes shot, though always with reluctance, and only to please old Georges Durois; for of all the creatures which look ugly and pathetic dead, and pretty alive, squirrels head the list. I know they do harm, but the harm always seems to me negligible compared with the joy of seeing them about.
    Then the jays ceased calling, and the squirrel moved to another tree, and except for the occasional whine of a mosquito the world was still.
    I moved back to the path from the remains of the tennis courts, and stood for a moment watching the bend in the path ahead. Surely Ingrid, my loved Ingrid, would come round the corner, in her pleated white tennis skirt, radiating all the glory of her eighteen-year-old vitality; and behind her, plodding heavy-footed but purposeful, dear old slow-witted Danish Hans; and behind him, in a group, Mary, the vivacious little dark-eyed American girl; and Bob, the son of a Bradford wool merchant; and perhaps Freddie Harris, the ambitious cockney who worked in a bank and spent his annual holidays at the château to learn French and improve his prospects. And loping along to catch them up, always late, always gentle and good-tempered, would come any moment now old Rolf, the giant Norwegian with the build of an ancient Viking.
    But not Philip Bartels. Not yet.
    I didn’t expect to see Bartels yet, for Bartels would be dressed in an old pair of flannel bags and an open-necked shirt, sitting by the lake, trying for the fish he so rarely caught.
    Then I realized that I was all wrong. It was now about seven o’clock. No wonder they didn’t come. They would be changed for dinner, lounging on the terrace, in the soft evening sunshine, waiting for Madame to invite them into the dining room. So I walked slowly on, more quietly than ever, and turned the bend and stood, partly concealed by a rhododendron bush, and gazed at the house.
    It lay quiet and still, bathed in the waning sunlight, the walls glowing warmly, surrounded by the decorative moat. The little light wooden drawbridge, which one man could raise quite easily, was in position, connecting the terrace and the back of the château to the broad path which circled the reed-fringed lake and led to the drive between the poplars.
    At the far side of the house I could see the hedge of the vegetable garden, where Madame had assigned a small plot of earth to those who wished for it; where I had grown the radishes. I was quite keen on keeping fit in those days, and used to get up at about 8.15 and put on a pair of shorts, and run a couple of times round the lake, and then go and pick some of my radishes.
    I would wrap some of them in a handkerchief, and toss a pebble lightly against Ingrid’s window, and when she put her head out, still tousled with sleep, I would throw them up to her. She used to like to eat them with her morning petit déjeuner. I looked at her window now, and then at the door below, leading to the terrace.
    Apart from anything else, I knew from my correspondence with the family that Ingrid, whom I had lost, was married and living in Oslo; and loyal but slow-witted old Hans had found the Gestapo too much for him, and was dead. I did not know about Freddie, the bank clerk, but Bob had died at Alamein. And Mary, twice divorced, disillusioned, and hurt, was in Chicago.
    But I peopled the terrace with my ghosts, just the same. I stood in the shadow of the rhododendron bush, and brought them all out, and made them stroll up and down and converse, and listened, from where I was, to the sound of their voices and to the occasional laughter.
    Later, when I had had enough, I would allow them to drift into the house, and I would go to the most important rendezvous of all, to the place we called L’Étoile, because several paths converged there, so that it bore some resemblance to a star. There, Ingrid would come to meet me, as so often before,