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

by Alan Sillitoe

  ‘He’s not made much of a job of it so far.’

  ‘God is a reflection of man. He is good only when men are good.’

  ‘Men are good when they are persuaded to be by a socialist system of ethics,’ Dawley said. ‘You talk as if men are guilty. They’re not. They just can’t help themselves. So they have to be shown themselves right to the bone, and given a pattern to live by which they can respect and understand.’

  ‘I’ve not noticed much good from the communist system so far.’

  ‘It’s hardly been going sixty years. Yours has been here two thousand – and look what a mess it’s made.’ But Dawley felt friendly towards him in spite of his worn-out views. ‘When I was in Algeria,’ he said, coffee steam mingling with smoke from his cigarette, ‘I saw a man in the desert eating a snake. He belonged to some wandering sect. I’d been on the run for days, after a big balls-up of an attack on a French base, a forlorn hope that was only done to relieve pressure somewhere else, or maybe to influence peace talks at Evian – no bloody less. I was delirious and half dead, and wondered later whether I hadn’t imagined the whole thing. But I hadn’t.

  ‘There were a few scruffy palm trees and a tent or two, and nomads pulling water for their camels. I was dying of thirst, and hoped to get some. I couldn’t have cared less, either, because there wasn’t much life in me. You get beyond it after a while. It’s quite a revelation to have gone that far towards an absolute end. You’re sinking into peace yet you’re still doing something about saving yourself.

  ‘My shirt was like fire, but even that feeling went when I heard the music and edged through the crowd to see what was happening. I’d heard no music for months, and it soothed my aches and pains. Dusk was coming on, and my will to live was at its height. Maybe I was born at that time of the day. My parents are dead and they never told me. An old bloke was playing the pipe. A middle-aged man with a bad-tempered face moved his head from side to side in time to the music, and a young chap beat a drum.

  ‘At the feet of the middle-aged man was a damp sack, and when the music reached a certain pitch he bent down and took out a live snake. After playing with it for a while he began to rear and tremble, his yellow eyes bulging. The people drew back, but they couldn’t stop watching, as if he was a demon who’d show them what they were made of.

  ‘The speeded-up music helped him to keep the mad intensity of his vision. He needed all his strength, because he was actually fighting with the snake. It was fat and strong, about a yard long, and he was trying to subdue it, to get the energy and strength out of it. He was after its life. He was quick and knew how to fight, otherwise it would have buried its fangs in him a dozen times. He must have been immune to the venom, and a bite that did get through only increased his strength and cunning. He was determined to kill the snake.

  ‘There was worse to come. When the snake was almost done for he began to bite it. My guts turned to water. The nomads must have known what he was after. They groaned, as if the world was coming to an end. As his teeth ripped at the snake, which had done no man any harm, after all, I felt he was biting me. The music stopped, and this made it worse. It was horrible. All that the world meant, or had grown away from, was in this. I forced myself closer. It needed more push and courage to keep looking than it did to face bombs and bullets. I was dying with the snake, yet I was killing it myself. I was being bitten. I was struggling, and biting. I hardly thought about whether the man was brave or cruel, mad or benevolent, a wizard or a fool. He’d ripped my heart out.

  ‘The sky was milk-white and turning pink, but dead and empty. No help could come from that quarter. The gravel underfoot was cooling from the heat of the day. The camels nosed around us as if nothing were happening. I didn’t know whether to kill the man or kill myself. That was my moment of truth. If I’d been what I saw myself as – a true revolutionary who believed in rationality and progress – I would have killed him. I’d got a gun and ammunition. But I couldn’t move. He was tearing at the earth’s heart, and by watching I was approving of it. I was not only a revolutionary, but a human being, with whatever that implies.

  ‘There was a movement on the edge of the crowd. Two other FLN men came up, who weren’t hypnotised by it like me. They saw it as disgusting, and humiliating for all those fighting to create a just society. One of the men drew his gun and poured bullets into the snake-eater.

  ‘It was the death of the swamp in me. He’d done the right thing. I even thought so at the time. And his action had been a reproach to me – though he didn’t see it like that. I hadn’t been able to shoot the man. I was a foreigner. I was me, and my principles didn’t allow me to kill a man who was doing what in some primeval way he had to do. That was my excuse, though I had already killed people for less. But I failed, and knew at last that because there are things I can feel, there are things that I can’t do. I was dying and awake in the same egg.

  ‘I collapsed. Apart from my absolute exhaustion, the knot of the world slashed by bullets had shattered me. I was ill in every corner of my body and spirit, maybe for weeks. I don’t know. I can’t piece the days together. There are gaps. The sun ate the moon, but both were diseased. My solidity shifted. I’m another person. No, that’s not true: I’m the same. Everyone has a greater breadth than he or she imagines.

  ‘Bullets broke everything. If the man hadn’t arrived, and the show had ended as it was meant to, I might have been less affected. It would have worked itself out. But looking back, and I’m still forced to much of the time, it was the most crucial thing about the desert.

  ‘I stayed a few more months, till I was wounded and could do no more. It was like living in a dream, though the fighting was clear enough. It amazes me that I survived, but because it went by in a dream I was protected. The dead snake kept me safe. I was more in sympathy with it than anything else. I shouldn’t have been, but I was. I was closer to my own soul at the same time, closer to the soul of man than I had ever been. I accepted it, I still accept it. I wasn’t frightened enough to start shooting. The snake had been killed, but it still lived. The man was killed but he still lives. I still live. The earth is eternal. The soul of man has roots which go deeper than Marxism – only a fool wouldn’t think so – but Marxism can give it an honourable coat, something to cover the broken human spirit with.’

  What had haunted him, he told Cuthbert, was the face of the man eating the snake, showing the sanest and most pitiable eyes he had ever seen. Each pore of his skin was corroded, eating himself, and whoever his eyes turned on. It was less painful to look at the snake he was eating. The face, at the moment before turning to the snake, was one of pain, desperation, self-loathing, panic, fear, awe, the terror of letting go and, finally, courage.

  He saw the face later when Handley’s brother John found him in Algeria. On the final night when they were making their way down the hillside to a waiting boat that would take them to a ship out at sea, John had run back up the rocky slope with the intention of staying behind. He didn’t want to go – out and back to England – but Dawley had subdued him and forced him to the beach. In the dim light of a torch he had seen the same multiplicity of expressions on John’s face as had been on the snake-eater’s in the desert before he turned to consume the snake.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  A ginger-haired youth of eighteen, with a checked and gaudy shirt showing under his open jacket, got out of the car with Enid and Maricarmen. He had freckles and bright grey eyes, a narrow forehead, and the smooth skin of a well though not overfed face. He looked around nervously but, standing in the yard, seemed confident that things would ultimately be all right. To threatening belly-shuffles from Eric Bloodaxe he leaned his rucksack against the kitchen wall, and returning to the car he freed two basket-loads of groceries.

  ‘This is Dean,’ Enid said, when Dawley and Cuthbert approached. ‘He helped us get the stuff to the car park in Hitchin. He was coming in this direction, so we gave him a lift.’

  ‘Hi, there!’ said Dean, a hand held
out in a friendly manner.

  Cuthbert ignored it. ‘Are you American, then?’

  ‘No, siree! Just a bit of old Limey down from Nottingham, on my way to hitch-up with some of the lads in London. They’ve got a grotty pad in the Earls Court.’ His language was a prattle of false American and raw Nottingham and, undiscouraged by Cuthbert’s glacial stare, he turned to Dawley – who saw no reason not to greet him properly, though he hardly touched the hand when he shook it.

  Maricarmen, struggling across the yard with a box, wondered why there was so much smoke in the paddock. ‘Dean can stay to lunch,’ Enid said defensively. ‘He’s been a great help.’

  The provisions were quickly got from car to kitchen, where Myra stowed them into their various store-places. Dean stayed in the sun, sitting on the ground with his back to the wall, eating an apple filched from one of the baskets. ‘What did you say your name was?’ Dawley asked.

  ‘Dean W. Posters,’ he said readily, ‘as my old man named me. But for shit’s sake don’t ask what the W stands for or I’ll have to tell you it means William – Billy for short – though I allus use Dean ’cause it suits me better.’

  Frank crushed an impulse to laugh. ‘Are you on the move?’

  ‘Since last week. Decided to hop it. Get out of the mill race. Threadin’ bobbins was never my idea of the good life.’

  ‘What is?’

  He threw the apple-core as far as it would go. It wasn’t far, because soft arms showed below the rolled sleeves. It hit the side of the Rambler, however, and left its mark there. ‘Wain’t know till I find it, will I? Don’t even want to find it. The good life’s in looking for it, you know.’

  Frank stamped his cigarette. ‘I can smell cooking.’

  They washed hands at the kitchen sink, then collected their stew and went into the dining-room. Ralph, Maricarmen and Enid were already eating. Cuthbert sauntered in, and Richard and Adam came from upstairs.

  ‘Where’s Mandy?’ Handley said.

  ‘In bed,’ Ralph told him.

  Handley left his steaming plate and ran three at a time up the stairs. ‘Leave her be, for God’s sake,’ Enid shouted. ‘He’ll get ulcers one day if he don’t stop disturbing his mealtimes for a thing like that.’

  ‘Or we’ll get them,’ Dawley said.

  ‘What have you been burning, Ralph?’ Cuthbert asked, unmoved by the disturbance. If his father wanted ulcers who was he to stop him?

  ‘Rubbish,’ Ralph said with a faint flush. ‘I’m clearing the garage.’

  ‘Make sure it is rubbish,’ Cuthbert said. ‘Once it’s burnt you can’t bring it back.’

  Ralph stood, as if he would reach over to Cuthbert and stifle him. ‘What are you trying to accuse me of, you unfrocked priest?’

  Frank looked at Ralph. ‘Sit down and eat.’

  ‘He’s got too much on his conscience,’ said Cuthbert, spearing a carrot from his soup. ‘Otherwise he wouldn’t get so hot under the collar.’

  ‘Another word from you,’ Enid said, ‘and you’ll be outside.’

  Dean’s head was bent to his stew. Frantic shouting came from upstairs. A door slammed, and Handley walked back into the room, breathless but smiling. ‘The princess will descend in a few minutes.’

  ‘Lovely,’ Dean said, his plate empty.

  ‘Who the bloody hell are you?’ Handley demanded, noticing him for the first time.

  He stood, as if to be polite. ‘Dean William Posters. I’m on my way to the Smoke.’

  ‘He helped us with the provisions at the market,’ Enid said, ‘so we asked him to come and have a plate of stew.’

  Handley sat, breaking his slab of brown bread into chunks before dipping. ‘Can you poach?’ he asked. ‘Not eggs – rabbits.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where you from?’

  ‘Nottingham.’

  ‘So’s Frank. Rare old place. And you can’t poach?’

  Dean helped himself to more stew from the huge tureen. ‘I was two years threadin’ bobbins in a lace factory, and then I thought: this is no bleedin’ life for me. Too much like ’ard work.’ The more he ate the more his Nottingham accent came back.

  ‘You’re at the right house,’ Handley said, ‘if you don’t like work’ – looking meaningfully around. ‘What put you off?’

  ‘I’d done enough. I’m eighteen, and I left school at fifteen. So I thought I’d get on the move, see what I could make, hitch to Turkey, maybe India. I hear blokes do.’

  ‘What about money?’ Cuthbert asked.

  ‘I’ll peddle,’ Dean leered.

  ‘Peddle?’

  ‘Hash. Mary-Jane. Scrubbers bristles. Holy Smokes. Make plenty of gravy.’

  ‘So that’s what William Posters has come to,’ Handley grinned. ‘I wouldn’t have thought it, would you, Frank?’

  ‘Young kids get up to anything,’ he said.

  ‘What did your parents say when they heard you were going off like that?’ Enid wanted to know.

  ‘Mam cried a minute. Dad thought it was natural. Didn’t like me giving up my job, though. Saw a dazzling career in boobin-threadin’, Dad did. A job to him is a sort of paradise. Dad was young before the war, and allus talked about what life was like without a job. He thieved for a while and got shoved inside. Then he thieved again and was on the run. All through the war he was on the run. Used to make a joke about Bill Posters being prosecuted, and the bastard even named me William as a joke, so’s I’d carry the name on. But I’m not Bill bloody Posters. If I go on the run it’s at my own fair speed. Speed, see?’ he laughed, mouth full of food.

  Handley smiled. ‘You’d better watch it. Peddle hash and you’ll run faster than your old man ever did. I don’t suppose blue seas and olive groves will feel much better than the good old slums when you’ve got a dozen Turkish coppers on your tail.’

  ‘Life’s different now,’ Dean said confidently, ‘to what it was in the old days. Easier.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bank on that,’ said Handley.

  ‘It is. I skived all I could at the factory. Blokes tried to get me to join a union but I said my old man was in one and it never got him anywhere. Why should I join a union when I could skive? I had to join, though. Threatened to bash my nut.’

  ‘What does your old man do now?’ Dawley asked.

  ‘Poor bastard ain’t good for much,’ said Dean. ‘Had bronchial pneumonia last winter. Reckon he’ll croak one of these days. Works at the Raleigh sweeping up rammel. Poor old Dad. No future for him. He’s not above fifty. Had it too hard all his life.’

  ‘Don’t cry,’ said Enid, seeing he was about to. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘I know,’ he wept, ‘but I’m sorry for the poor lousy bastard.’

  ‘Maybe you should have stayed at home then,’ said Handley, ‘and looked after him. Give him some more stew, Myra. That’ll stop his blawting.’

  Maricarmen looked on with absolute contempt.

  ‘Any road up,’ Dean said, reaching for the bread-platter, ‘it wain’t happen to me, you can bet.’

  ‘As long as your old man don’t feel sorry for himself,’ Dawley said.

  ‘I don’t think he does any more. He did at one time. Sees it’s no good. But he thinks a lot. That’s why I left. I couldn’t stand it. You’ve only got to look at Dad and you can tell he’s had a hard life. The misery on his clock makes you wonder what you’ve done to make him like that. And you can see he’s thinking the same. So I’m steering clear.’

  It was impossible not to believe him, which was a good reason for changing the subject. Handley turned to Maricarmen: ‘I was wondering when we could have a look at Shelley’s notebooks. I don’t want to hurry you. I’m a master of patience when neccessary, but it might do us good to read some stirring revolutionary stuff. We need a new tone to inspire our decadent pedestrian souls.’

  She looked at her plate while he spoke. ‘Maybe after the next meeting.’

  ‘That’s in a fortnight,’ Handley said.

  ‘I didn’t
know I’d stumbled into a nest of Reds,’ Dean observed.

  ‘If you don’t like it,’ said Handley, ‘it’s bloody easy to stumble out again.’

  ‘I was only talking,’ Dean said in a wheedling tone. ‘Just talking, you know.’

  ‘There’s one thing,’ Maricarmen said. ‘I think Maria and Catalina should have a vote on the committee like the rest of us. They’re full-time working members of the community, even though they are au pair girls.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ Cuthbert exclaimed. ‘They don’t know enough English to understand what’s being said.’

  ‘They do,’ Maricarmen told him. ‘I’ve been speaking to them.’

  Handley didn’t like it either, but knew he’d have to agree if he expected her to hand over Shelley’s papers. ‘She has a point,’ Enid said. ‘They do more work than some people I could mention.’

  ‘Where are they today, then?’ asked Cuthbert.

  ‘In London,’ said Myra, collecting empty plates. ‘It’s their day off.’

  ‘The first for a fortnight,’ said Enid.

  ‘There’s a whiff of conspiracy here,’ Handley joked. ‘I’ll adjust the vote-meter so that it registers the proper number of ayes and noes.’

  ‘We’ll do it on a show of hands,’ Enid decided. ‘It’s simpler, as well as cheaper.’

  ‘That’s the end of the secret ballot, then,’ Handley grinned.

  Two huge apple crumbles and a bowl of custard were placed on the table. Mandy came into the room wearing her padded and flowered dressing gown. ‘Am I too late for stew?’

  Ralph smiled, and beckoned. She stood close to Dean: ‘What’s this?’

  He looked up with a wide smile, his small teeth so even that Handley wondered if they were false. ‘Hey up, duck! My name’s Dean. You look nice!’

  ‘Another sponger,’ she said, walking over to Ralph, whose face had turned purple at Dean’s insolent remarks to his lady wife. She kissed Ralph, and went into the kitchen to get some food.