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

by Alan Sillitoe

  He had been particularly unobservant of his parents because they were so hard on him, which might explain why he was able to jettison their influence so painlessly. Later, the emptiness he found in rooting around the distant corners of his anguished mind drove him to painting – not in an attempt to discover himself, but to create a world in which it wasn’t necessary to do so.

  He sat on the swivel chair by the radio table, and suddenly felt afraid of this replica-room and the touchingly placed paraphernalia that had belonged to John who had never lived in it. John had burned down his real room in the Lincolnshire house, having meant it should no longer exist after he’d set off for Algeria. His suicide dated from that mad act – unable to live anywhere but in the room he could no longer go back to. So why perpetuate his memory with this homely shrine? Don’t we trust ourselves to remember him? By keeping the room intact he was celebrating death, not John, because he distrusted his loving memories of him.

  He walked to the window. He opened the curtains. Across the road, between two houses, were emerald meadows, and a glinting sluggish stream. John wouldn’t have liked such scenery. He loved the wolds of Lincolnshire.

  No one had loved him more than Handley. He was his one and only elder brother, that last real line that connected him to far-off Staffordshire. This mocked-up signals cabin, this faked hermit’s cave, this phoney remembrance centre, had nothing to do with it. When you created your own ghosts there was little you could do to get rid of them.

  He shook his head. The cigarette tasted foul before coffee and bread-and-butter. By the radio he lifted trays of nails and screws, a spirit-level and calipers, plumb-line and a pedometer, though John hardly ever walked, depth-gauge and spanners – his brother’s beloved gear without which life would have been even emptier. Man must have his tools, his toys of reality, aids to tame the world yet keep it at a distance, and not get too enmeshed in its despondencies.

  The cigar-box lid was held down by small tacks. From the radio-operator’s odds and ends on the desk he took a one-bladed pen-knife, and forced it upen. He swung the powerful lamp to it. There was nothing inside, and no amount of light could fill it. He felt a fool before turning angry. It was hard to move. He was rabid. The sweat came, as he let the lid fall. With a gun loose, the community was a death-trap.

  He switched off the lamp, went over and closed the curtains. A shade of day still came in, light which didn’t seem safe any longer. He sat on the bed and wondered what to do. His nature was to exaggerate everything, scare himself with the possibilities of disaster. The others thought that his bark was worse than his bite, and that he could never hold back what was on his mind, so for the moment he would say nothing, and hope to get some advantage from not letting Cuthbert know he’d found out about the gun.

  He closed the door quietly. There was no reason to lock it anymore. Back in his room he dressed rapidly: underwear, a pair of corduroys, an old white shirt without the collar, waistcoat. Hunger would consume his chest-wall unless he got a mouthful soon.

  Dawley had been up since seven to give Paul and Rachel their breakfasts and send them to school. He was glad of a day off from his Algerian travels, waiting in any case to read Shelley’s notebooks and get a few quotations to light up his reasons for going there in the first place. The abortive attack on Laghouat, and his encounter with the snake-eaters, had no time scale joining them together. The days were bruised and broken from each other, so what better way of poulticing the narrative than by a few earnest observations from Shelley’s truly revolutionary soul?

  Handley was stubbled around his chin: ‘It’s flown. Where is he?’

  ‘He got up to do some gardening.’

  ‘Gardening? Cuthbert?’

  He put a plate of scrambled eggs before him. ‘With Dean. They’re planting pot in a corner of the paddock, clearing the virgin lands for home consumption. It’s a dirty business, really.’

  Handley sat with head bowed, then looked up and began eating: ‘A drug-crazed maniac with a gun! I should never have let him into the community.’

  ‘You couldn’t keep your own son out. Maybe he didn’t take it. There are plenty of others. Ralph, for instance. Who knows?’

  Handley poured more coffee. ‘I bloody well do. A father knows more about his son than he does about himself. I may be a mystery to myself, but I brought Cuthbert up from unconsciousness. I watched every gesture as it came out. He’s got a wayward and villainous nature – though God knows where he gets it, because it’s not from Enid, and it ain’t me. It’s something totally different. But he was always delighted to exaggerate my bad traits, mimicking me behind my back in the hope I’d fall into a pit and get swallowed whole. What have I done to make him like that? I was so taken up by my painting that I had no time except to clout him when he cheeked his mother. It’s his way of getting his own back, I suppose. What a curse the family is. Where’s the bread and butter?’

  ‘We’re trying to solve that problem by this community,’ said Frank, passing it, ‘though we won’t feel the effect for twenty years.’

  ‘It’s just an idea for middle-aged people,’ Handley said, ‘this community. The young ones don’t want it, and won’t see the need of it till their own kids are grown up – by which time it’s too late, like it is with me. Cuthbert’s trying his best to ruin it. Ralph and Mandy want a nice little cottage thatched with daisies and buttercups so’s they can be all lovey-dovey in their pervy way. Adam and Richard are just a couple of lazy bastards pounding out revolutionary ideas in a permanently non-revolutionary society in order to avoid working. That’s not hearsay, it’s realistic. It’s costing me three hundred pounds a month to run this community, apart from what Myra puts in, so you can see what a bargain it is. It’s not that I’m worried about being ruined, but at least a man might expect peace at such a price. I want to get on with my work. That’s a natural desire, ain’t it? Domestic life is society’s secret weapon to stifle the artist. I’ve never had peace in my life, not with seven kids, but at least I don’t want a disaster with that bloody gun on the loose. The idea of killing never appealed to me, especially when it comes too close to my own skin.’

  Dawley always knew that Handley only let his sons play at revolution so that he could get on with his painting. If revolution ever became so real that he had no electric light or couldn’t get razor-blades he’d be the first to turn against it. He wanted to paint just as most people wanted to work and live in peace, and as an artist he really did represent mankind in that respect. Volatile and unpredictable as he was, he still loved his family and tried to look after them, and if there was injustice on a larger scale he was the sort who would get up and do something about it. There was no doubt about that.

  ‘I must have that gun back,’ he said, ‘and put it in a safe place where nobody can find it.’

  Dawley set plates and cups in racks of the dish-washing machine: ‘Ask Cuthbert point-blank what he’s done with it.’

  ‘He’d laugh in my face.’

  Frank thought for a while. ‘Why don’t we call a meeting and read Shelley’s notebooks? It’ll break the ice, and might throw a hint on where the gun is. I don’t like the thought of it being on the loose, either.’

  Handley was puzzled. ‘It’s a zany idea, though I suppose it can’t harm anybody.’

  ‘The indirect approach,’ Frank said. ‘Uproar in the East, strike in the West. Everyone will be at their ease, lulled by interest in the notebooks. That’ll be the time to pop the question.’

  ‘It’s too subtle,’ Handley said, ‘though it’s better than nothing. I’d almost forgotten about the notebooks. It is time we had a look. Do you think there’ll be much good in them?’

  ‘You never know.’

  Handley went to his studio, and Frank cleaned the kitchen. Not only would he use the material of Shelley’s notebooks to pad out his narrative, but he needed to shore up his revolutionary enthusiasm, to point the difference between the true fighter for the freedom of the underprivileged, and tha
t of a simple mercenary soldier who was paid for his actions by the excitement he got from it.

  He was beginning to wonder whether it had been no more than a great screen to conceal his real feelings from himself and others. Only peace brought out the truth – which led him to see that Handley’s attitude might easily be the right one.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Dean would follow Enid anywhere, beat down thistles even with his hands in order to be alone and out of the house with her at the same time.

  But he wasn’t making a trail, as in the picture painted by his self-esteem. He was walking behind, and letting her scythe the high thistles with a piece of stick, and tread them flat with her shoes. His own first version was still agreeable, as he watched her straight back, strong confident hips, and long hair only a few feet in front. He was never at ease in the house, even at meal-times. The family either did not like him, or thought him worthless because he was young and had no money.

  Being among enemies he hated the house, and detested anyone who thought he did not matter. It was impossible to brush off such insults. By showing he didn’t matter they were trying to get at him. He regarded himself as the most important person in the world, so they were wrong to think him insignificant, and insulting to let him know that they felt it.

  The person who didn’t treat him like a maggot was the one who mattered most in the community. Enid led him deeper into the paddock, wading through thistles, beyond the iris of any roving eye, trying to find the football that Paul had kicked this way – the second lost in a month. She wanted a stroll, and used it as an excuse. She’d seen Dean already wandering, and when he spied her, he followed. It was like having a dog, especially since he didn’t say much. It was strange to be with someone so silent, a young man younger than her eldest son. What did he want to follow her for? The question led her to wonder why she allowed him to. She supposed he needed to be near someone, even if only a few paces behind like a dog. He was so young he had the harmlessness of another woman.

  ‘You wain’t find anything,’ he said. ‘I expect the birds eat the footballs in half an hour. They love rubber.’

  ‘It was leather.’

  The hot sun’s warmth was pleasant on top of her head and against her bare arms. She sat on the tree trunk felled across the corner, Dean a few feet away looked at her. She wondered sadly what he saw, while quite clear what she saw herself. The open weather of summer released the vitality of her soul. It was her time of well-being, so she was pleased when Dean said: ‘You look good in the sun. It suits you.’

  ‘How can you tell?’ He had thought about her, anyway, though it was impossible not to tease him, he was so much a little dog. Even his face was like one, his low forehead, earnest eyes, small mouth, curly hair.

  ‘I can tell.’

  ‘But why?’ Her further question put a shade of irritation over his features. Then they cleared as he said with a smile: ‘Blonde women allus like the sun.’

  It was amazing how, no matter what she saw, he saw himself as her equal, as one man to her woman. His remark warned her to take him seriously, but it was difficult because he took himself so seriously.

  ‘Come and sit down here.’

  He hesitated. When she tried to accept him as a grownup, he distrusted her, because he had been fervently hoping she would do so. But he sat down, her offer being too good to miss, since you never knew what it might lead to. ‘I’d like to live where there’s sun all the time,’ she said. ‘But I don’t suppose I ever shall.’

  He pulled a piece of dusty bark from the tree. ‘You ought to go on holiday.’

  ‘I’ve got too much to do. Albert’d never want to.’

  ‘On your own.’

  He reached into his shirt pocket, and took out a loose cigarette that looked as if it had been through the last wash. ‘Want a drag?’

  ‘It’d knock me into a three-cornered stupor.’

  He had a relaxed smile – which became a laugh, showing teeth discoloured but still whole. Lighting up, he blew smoke towards her.

  ‘It smells nice,’ she said. ‘But don’t waste it on me.’

  He had been sober and nervous with her, and now wanted to relax by inhaling his lousy weed. Instead of fighting his way through such a mood he was taking a short cut. His stiff shyness had seemed slightly menacing, so in a way she was glad. A few minutes ago he’d seen her as someone she’d imagined she couldn’t be any more to such a young man – which was more worrying than disturbing – though not much of either. She didn’t known whether it was these thoughts or the pleasure of the warm sun that made her smile.

  He caught the movement of her lips. ‘Now you’re laughin’ at me’ – the hard sullenness going as he puffed on the cigarette. ‘You’re the only one I like, in this place.’

  ‘You’re sharp,’ she said, knowing she’d always been easy with people who had nothing to lose, and needed pulling up from the bottom – maybe like Albert in the early days.

  ‘If it worn’t for you they’d chuck me out.’

  ‘They might not. We aren’t that bad.’ There was a quite fundamental shyness about him, she noticed, which made her wonder what he was getting at. He was like a child still, wheedling at her – as if wanting everything because he didn’t yet know what exactly it was that he wanted. He would deliberately continue to want everything so that when he did decide what it was there’d at least be a chance of getting it. The groundwork would have been done. But she thought all young people were like that. It wouldn’t be fair to give him too black a mark for it.

  ‘Have a puff o’ this,’ he offered, as if the smoke were making him generous. ‘You’ve got to have it sooner or later.’

  She pushed his hand away. ‘I don’t like it.’ Yet she was tempted, and he saw that she was, which satisfied him for the moment. ‘You’re turning everybody on with it. Why is that?’

  ‘I just offer it ’cause I’m friendly. Anyway, they ask for it. I like to be friendly with everybody.’

  He was sad, so undiscriminating and unprotected that she wondered how long it would last, whether he would grow up and become wary before it did him permanent harm. ‘What if they don’t like you?’

  ‘I step aside.’ He almost sang it, as if he’d used the phrase many times. But he wasn’t so unconscious of his desires, for he made a clumsy movement to get hold of her wrist. ‘I like you more than anybody. I’ve liked you ever since I saw you at the market trying to lift them baskets.’

  She was frozen, so he drew his hand away without having to be told – which she hadn’t meant him to, because there was obviously no harm in it. It was a gesture anybody could make, especially Dean, with his all-embracing friendliness which was difficult to be offended by. She wanted to reassure him by taking his hand, but didn’t, suddenly knowing why she had stiffened in the first place.

  ‘It’s just that I love you,’ he said, decisive now that she appeared uncertain. ‘You’re a real woman.’

  She laughed at his earnestness, especially since his words could have no meaning. ‘I’m married. I’ve got seven kids.’

  He pressed the cigarette between his finger-ends, and threw it towards the corner of the paddock. ‘You’re beautiful.’

  ‘You’re a kid.’

  ‘I’m not. I had a woman when I was fourteen.’ It wasn’t hard to believe. He had that furtiveness and persistence, and an underlying ineradicable self-confidence that stopped at nothing – a forceful attraction that few women might want to resist. He wasn’t ugly, either, when a look came into his eyes that told him he might be getting somewhere. ‘You want to get the most out of life while it lasts,’ he said.

  ‘What makes you think I’m not?’

  He knocked his heels rhythmically against wood. ‘I don’t reckon anybody could enjoy life in this set-up.’

  She never questioned it. Enjoyment hadn’t been much of a problem. She liked life now and again. Who didn’t? Hard times couldn’t crush everything out of you. Albert had always been as good as he wa
s able, and no doubt the same went for her. There were times when she wished she hadn’t had so many kids, and moments when she could have done with none at all, but now she wouldn’t want to be without them. And then this kid of eighteen comes along and makes her think she might not be enjoying life! What a cheek!

  Yet he was right. She was forty-three, and the fact that the many years of life still to be lived would go on in the same old bickering way made her so depressed that often in bed at night the tears poured down her face. If her life didn’t change it would come to an end – an unbearable thought.

  ‘I can read it in your face,’ he said, a renewal of charm on seeing that he had made her think.

  It was amazing how the tricks with which people fought each other in marriage were there almost from the cradle. No girl would be lucky who married Dean. ‘I’ll get back and see how things are at the house. Mandy’s cooking lunch – assisted by Frank. I keep an eye on them just in case.’

  ‘I thought you liked being in the sun?’

  ‘I do,’ she smiled, feeling so much older and superior, ‘I only enjoy it because I know it’s got to stop.’

  ‘You ought to travel south.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere. Come on.’ She wanted him to lead a way through the thistles, because her legs were sore from them, but he was suddenly holding her, his lips on her cheeks. She was amazed at the strength of his arms when they went around her. He was as demanding as a baby in its primal urges, and his confidence foolishly led him to believe that she needed him with similar intensity, though for some reason he was afraid or unable to say so.

  He was trying to force a knee between her thighs, and at the same time get at her lips. The fact that she wanted to hold him, but couldn’t because his grip was too firm, gave her the strength to unravel him. He lost balance, and she pushed him so that his whole body went sprawling among the thistles.