The Flame of Life: A Novel (The William Posters Trilogy Book 3)

by Alan Sillitoe

  Maricarmen hadn’t come to England so that the Handleys could comb Shelley’s notebooks for aphorisms on revolution. They, after all, were ten-a-penny compared to the rarity of action. Who could say what the notebooks contained, anyway? Shelley had never been one for writing his great notions down, but usually spouted them to whoever was near by. His friendship with Shelley had been deep enough for him to laugh at the more impractical ideas. Maricarmen had another sort of friendship with him, and he saw that she had come to find out exactly how it was that Shelley had decided against his usual and better judgment to go into a country that was at war. Frank felt that the revolution had really come home to roost, and he was uneasy.

  Later that night, when they went back to the caravan, Nancy sat opposite with her knitting, while he tried to scribble a few notes out of himself. The kids were tucked into their sleeping places, dead to the world after a day roaming the woods for cowslips and birds’ eggs.

  His thoughts floated, idle and infertile, and because he was tired, and in a way content, he waited for them to tell him something new.

  ‘I can’t stand this life any longer,’ Nancy said, pausing in her needlework.

  He looked up.

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘I want a home of my own, that’s what’s wrong with it. I don’t like living on top of other people.’ She was knitting a jumper for Simon, having bought a Fair Isle pattern from the store in the village, one of those fly-blown pamphlets paled by the sun that you see all over the country, with an illustration of a kid-on the envelope already wearing it, the sort of smiling nipper that never was except in Nancy’s mind.

  ‘I want to live in private, not public,’ she said. ‘Nor in a caravan, either. It’s like when I was a girl and lived in a slummy street, everybody sitting on their door-steps and shouting across to everybody else. I was glad when we went to the housing estate.’

  ‘You can’t compare this to a slum.’

  The clicking needles showed off her mood. As if he needed them! She had a lot to say, and didn’t relish the fact that he was making her say it. He was sly as well as idle these days, and such people can’t love. ‘Perhaps not. But I’d like us to be more on our own.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to,’ he said. ‘This is a good way to live.’

  ‘Where does that bleddy leave me, then?’ she demanded.

  ‘If we can’t agree, there’s not much point in things.’

  ‘If you’d agree with me,’ she answered, ‘we’d be all right. Depends which way you look at it, don’t it?’

  ‘I expect it does.’

  She was not prepared for it to stay like that, though she didn’t doubt he would have been. ‘I’m going back to Nottingham, then.’

  ‘Oh ye’? Gonna get rooms?’

  ‘Not bleddy likely. I kept the house on.’

  He hadn’t known about that. ‘You just came down for a holiday, like?’

  They sat at the table, with a pot of tea between them – which he had made. ‘I’ve got two kids to think about, and I know I can’t rely on you to do anything. You’ve been back months and you haven’t even got a job yet.’

  ‘It’s not so important.’

  ‘It is for me,’ she said.

  ‘There’s plenty of others to sweat in factories. I’ve done my share.’

  ‘Twelve years isn’t a fair share. And where’s the money going to come from?’

  He saw the lines already at her mouth, the hard-bitch determination to do nothing that wasn’t approved of in TV adverts and the Daily Retch. To her there was nought else to do but the done thing, to knuckle under and get back to it and pull your weight and feed the hungry mouths in the handpainted nest – mostly for the benefit of bastards who’d faint at the smell of an oil-rag, or who couldn’t even mend a fuse. He felt an ugly mood in him, and held it back. ‘Are you short of money? I’ll solve that problem if you are.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have talked like that in the old days,’ she shrugged. He’d be an old man if he stayed here much longer, doing something he was never cut out for. But he was shifting and unreliable. He’d left her once, and would do it again, so she might as well get it in first.

  ‘Times change,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Well I change, then.’

  He’d done the wrong thing going to see her in Nottingham after coming back. He couldn’t think why he’d done it now, except out of curiosity, and a wish to look at the children. But it was a useless waste, because even if they’d missed him they were used to him having vanished by then. Such a thoughtless return had ruined everything, and now it was being done again – by Nancy this time – so he had to do his bit and not make it look too easy: ‘Can’t you stick with things for a while? What about all the love you told me you had?’

  He wouldn’t have said that a year ago, either. He felt a wave of self-dislike, yet at the same time knew he hadn’t come back from Algeria to get caught in this.

  ‘Maybe it’s gone so deep I can’t get to it,’ she said. ‘But I know what would be best for the kids.’

  ‘They’re happy here.’

  They were, too.

  ‘They’ll be happier in Nottingham, even though I’ll have to go to work. It’ll be more real for them up there.’

  More real! Good God! Wasn’t it real everywhere? But there was no moving her. Nor did he want to, finally. He was aware of being unjust in his indifference, but there was nothing he could do about it. He’d known for weeks it wasn’t working out.

  ‘I’ll pack tomorrow,’ she said. ‘And if you want to follow on, you can. But don’t leave it too late. Things have a way of altering for good. I’m only thirty, don’t forget.’

  ‘I won’t go back to work in a factory,’ he said quietly. ‘Not till I’ve tried something else.’

  ‘What, though?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet.’

  ‘Well, you ought to be. You liked the factory at one time. That’s all you know how to do, anyway.’

  ‘Do you think that’s a good life?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I’ve worked as a bus conductress, and that wasn’t exactly fun. And I sweated in a stocking factory from fifteen, till I married you. I’ve done my share, and I know I’ll have to go on doing it – all my bloody life.’

  So Nancy left. Nobody could persuade her not to, and they all missed her when she went, which made him feel quite bad about it. In fact he didn’t realise how much she and the children meant to him till afterwards.

  A final set-to at the station showed that she knew Myra’s son Mark was his child, and that her pride would not let her live so close to them. He couldn’t blame her for it, and it was as clean a way of parting as he could think of. He did wonder though what vile gett had thought fit to tell her. It was strange, he brooded on his way back from the station, how she’d made up his mind for him, instead of it being the other way round.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Ralph Spilsby regarded himself as an honourable man, but since marrying Mandy he had lived on his in-laws and earned no money at all. He therefore computed to the best of his ability, being honourable, how much in cash he owed the Handley community, hoping one fine day to pay every shilling back.

  The fact that he was in their debt, yet went on living with them, tormented him from time to time, though Handley to his credit did not remind him of it, nor tell him to get a job, any more frequently than he did to a member of his own family. But Ralph kept his calculations, and waited with fierce patience for the day when one of his rich aunts would die and leave him a fortune.

  He came to live with the Handleys because he’d married Mandy. But also he valued the priceless silence of the countryside. When even those sounds were pushed into the background, all remaining noises were his own, and in the middle of the day, with the kids at school and Handley in his studio, it was indeed peaceful around the compound. Dawley’s wife Nancy had left the community and taken their two kids, so even that made things qui
eter.

  A calm life to Ralph meant hearing no other noises but his own, for then the silences belonged totally to him. He wanted infinite space and emptiness in all directions, that he could fill with his own speech and movement, shapes and colours. He had an active imagination, and sat alone like a king, quiescent in his benign selfishness, which was his one pure reason for having been born, and the nearest he ever got to real happiness. He thought it was this craving for peace and silence that made him an honourable man.

  He got up from his log in the paddock, and talked inwardly with himself while burning yesterday’s paper-rubbish from the house. Maricarmen came through the gate. ‘I thought everyone was taking a nap,’ she said.

  ‘I can’t rest at the moment.’ He raked stray bits of paper closer to the fire. ‘I prefer to sleep at night.’

  ‘Do you like being in this community?’

  ‘I can’t live anywhere else, so I have to,’ he said, kicking a pile of school exercise books into the flame.

  ‘You’re honest. Why not?’

  ‘My wife’s here. I have shelter. That’s a good reason to like it. And I eat good food.’

  ‘Do you agree with their ideas?’

  ‘I don’t have to,’ he smiled.

  She sat on the log. ‘If you have pride you do.’

  ‘What does anyone want with that?’ he laughed – uneasily.

  ‘Aren’t you a man?’

  ‘A gentleman,’ he said firmly, and she was afraid of the violence in his voice, ‘who has all the pride he needs. I believe in doing as little harm as possible to my fellow-men, and living as quietly as I can.’

  ‘That means you consider yourself one of the elite, living off those who do real work.’

  A smile disguised his face. ‘There’s a lot of unemployment in the country. It would be unjust of me to take somebody else’s job.’

  ‘With a socialist system there’d be work for everybody.’

  ‘I suppose there would be a lot of pushing around,’ he said. ‘Who do you live off?’

  ‘I’ve worked since I was sixteen. I’ve picked olives off the ground, or harvested oranges, and have done domestic work in hotels. I’ve worked in prison. I’ve worked in the textile factories of Sabadell. I’m not a stranger to it.’ She was angry with him.

  A bag of broken plastic toys swept into flame, and they moved from searing heat. ‘Those who don’t work,’ she said, ‘should have no food. In a democratic system a steel-worker and a coalminer would have ten votes on the electoral roll because they are what Shelley used to call “primary producers”.’

  ‘What about doctors and teachers?’

  ‘They’re important, too.’

  ‘Everybody is important,’ he said. ‘Your beliefs and Dawley’s are similar: ruthless justice. Two of a kind. To me all people are equal.’

  Her eyes were full of scorn. ‘I don’t understand that sort of equality.’

  Large drops of rain were spitting on to the fire. They watched it, drawn by its noise and little puffs of vapour. Grass and earth sent up a heavy smell of pungent soil. The rain seemed weightier than the steely needles of water that fell among the olive trees behind her village at home. The soil here soaked up water, whereas there it ran into gullies and fed the Ebro, unmistakable in its purpose.

  Ralph wanted to go into the house where it was dry and there’d be fresh hot tea to drink, but he couldn’t move or run while Maricarmen stood there. Her thin blouse was quickly soaked, the upper part of her breasts showing pink through the material. Noting the colour and shape, he blushed and looked towards the hedge.

  She smiled at his stupid embarrassment, and didn’t think Dawley would turn away so readily. Nor would Handley, who often stared at her either as an artist, or with the brazenness of an older man.

  She walked to the house. Everyone agreed that she and Dawley would get on well together, but so far she had avoided him so successfully that she thought he was deliberately keeping out of her way, which only proved how guilty he felt because of what he had done to Shelley. This made her more determined to settle him for his crime. Yet she must have proof. Her sense of justice required it. To kill for a good reason was still murder. If society killed for a bad reason, it was justice. Yet where was the difference if you had no belief in the so-called rights of the State?

  On the other hand, to kill someone when you had proof of his guilt was also an act of revenge. Was that better for your conscience than an act of passion? Society carried out these acts of revenge all the time, and in her name who had never sanctioned it. And yet why should she imitate a society she despised? It confused and worried her. But the fact that she had to kill Dawley kept her calm, though she couldn’t do so till she had proper evidence on which to convict him. If she didn’t find enough proof to back up her intuition, which could only mean that he was innocent, then she would go quietly back to political work in Spain.

  She went to help in the kitchen. Enid, stirring a huge pan of sauce on the stove, turned at the noise of the door: ‘You got caught in the rain. I’d change if I were you.’

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘You won’t say that if you get pneumonia. I’ll lend you a blouse if you haven’t got a clean one. We’re about the same size in front.’

  They looked after her as if she were some delicate flower who might perish in their hideous climate, not knowing how bad Spanish weather could be, how she’d often been caught in snow and rain on journeys that none in this house might survive. Such persistent solicitousness affronted her pride, yet out of natural politeness she said nothing, and went up to change.

  In her room she rubbed herself dry. Her only other brassiere was still damp, so she put on a vest and clean blouse. Suddenly tired and tempted to lie down, she wondered whether such lethargy hadn’t come on her since seeing the person she had decided to kill, a state of somnolence in which the act would resolve itself without any effort at all.

  She looked at the grey light of the window, rain hammering the glass, full blown trees creaking in the garden. Who wouldn’t be sleepy with such a green and deadly landscape? Who wouldn’t act in it?

  A dozen cups and saucers had been set out over the formica-topped table, and two-year-old Mark looked on gravely from his highchair as Myra clattered a spoon into each saucer. ‘He’s an intelligent child,’ Maricarmen said.

  ‘They are, at his age.’

  She liked Myra, though they had made little contact so far. She sat down, but feeling livelier in face of such activity, and the high wattage bulbs radiating in the large kitchen. At the slightest sign of dim weather, or hours before dusk, even if it was bright outside, every houselight was turned on. In Spain one small bulb sufficed for a whole thrifty family, and here the continual waste made her uneasy. ‘Who is Mark’s father?’ she asked, not finally clear on who belonged to whom.

  ‘Frank. I had Mark in Tangier just after he went off with Shelley. Whose did you think he was?’ she asked, seeing an expression on her face as if a needle had been stuck into her.

  ‘I thought maybe he was Handley’s. It’s a strange house.’

  Myra took a cake tin out of the cupboard. ‘It is if you’re a stranger to it.’

  ‘I mean,’ said Maricarmen, ‘it’s very normal in one way because all the women stay in the kitchen, while the men do their own work. It’s not what I’d call a liberal community – the men plotting revolution and equality, and the woman kept at their traditional labour.’

  Myra laid pieces of cake on a platter, and cut bread for sandwiches. This girl was saying what went continually through her own mind. ‘There isn’t too much to do. It’s shared between Enid, myself, Mandy and the two au pair girls. It’s mechanised. Ralph and Cuthbert, as well as Albert now and again, take care of the garden and garage chores.’

  ‘It’s the principle of the system,’ Maricarmen went on.

  Myra was interested to know how she would alter it.

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘There you are, then
.’

  At that, she was stung to reply: ‘Everyone over eighteen, male or female, should do a day’s work in the kitchen. That would include Mr Handley, who may be an artist, but even an artist has to eat.’

  Myra laughed. ‘Let’s talk to Enid, then we can put our new system forward at the next meeting. You’re living in the house, so you can vote, and that’ll make four of us. It’s a pity Nancy left, because she’d have been with us. But if Mandy can talk Ralph to our side that will be five. Cuthbert might back us for devilment if he sees his father’s against it. That’ll be six-four. We may do it.’ She was surprised at her optimism, and renewed energy at the thought of breaking the usual flaccid routine. Mark clattered his spoon against the highchair tray, and made a noise as if asking for cake – which was passed to him in a plastic dish.

  ‘It’ll be interesting to see if they really believe in equality,’ Maricarmen said. ‘But don’t say anything till the day of the meeting, then perhaps it’ll come as such a shock that no one will oppose it!’

  Myra was dubious. ‘You’ve had experience at this sort of thing.’

  ‘Of what?’ Enid came in from the hall with a bowl of cooking apples, which she set on the table and began to peel for sauce. Myra went through the plan, elaborating each stage with Maricarmen, who began to help Enid.

  ‘I’ve been in it so long,’ Enid said, ‘that I’d die if I ever got out of it. But I’m only forty-odd so I can always start a new life. It’ll certainly be new for Albert if we pull it off.’

  ‘Pull what off?’ Handley demanded, coming in from the garden, trousers and jacket smeared with paint. Even his face was pocked with colour.

  Enid stood to pour his tea. ‘Just one of those little domestic issues that bore you to death.’

  He sat down, and held up both hands which were also caked with paint: ‘I’ve always been a dirty worker. It’s just that I forget myself. Splash, splash, splash.’ He stretched his legs towards the Aga. ‘Any biscuits? I get a ravenous appetite, being the breadwinner.’