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

by Alan Sillitoe

  ‘We weren’t to know,’ said Ralph, taking drawing-pins from the map corners.

  ‘All trace of John must be eliminated, except for the family and personal photographs that can be framed and put on a sideboard, or carried in a wallet till they drop to pieces. Nobody’s been to Dover since John died, to cut the grass and put new flowers on his grave, because they’ve been so obsessed with this potty little inappropriate shrine.’

  ‘I think Handley has been there,’ Ralph said justly, crushing the first map into a ball of wastepaper.

  ‘That was only an excuse to get to London and see his mistress,’ Cuthbert told him, unplugging aerials and power-points to the transceiver.

  To rip all meaningful gear from the four-walled psyche of John’s holy room was so grandiose an idea that Ralph was saddened at never having thought of it himself. He could not have done it alone, though, for the power of the individual had its limits, which led him to see, as they went on with their vandalising labours, that maybe there was some virtue in co-operation after all.

  Cuthbert was at the door, propping the heavy communications receiver on his knee to open it. ‘Just follow me with the transmitter,’ he said sternly.

  While the others were busy in the kitchen and dining-room talking of the day’s events, and about food for the coming supper, they stepped downstairs and went out of the rarely used front door, avoiding the yard and the predatory sentinel growls of Eric Bloodaxe.

  They walked unseen to the far corner of the paddock, where a suitable grave awaited their burdens, a deep place already dug by Dawley as a slit trench for the children to play in, so long neglected that grass grew from the sides and almost obscured it. Cuthbert pulled back an armful, showing a foot of muddy water in the bottom. He heaved the receiver in, a deep thumping splash as it found its final resting-place in the drek.

  He was glad now that no one had been killed because of their folly. It needed more to destroy the community than attempted murder. He believed that God would look after them, and stop them veering from the true path – the truest path being where no path existed at all, which was where he wanted to go. Maybe Dawley had discovered this magic and decisive region, and Uncle John was there already. He shivered, and checked himself. There was much to do yet before the community crumbled. Setbacks only seemed to make it stronger.

  The transmitter had been set on the grass, and Cuthbert pushed it with his foot so that it hit the receiver already there, and bounced against the soft soil. Part of the lower trench fell in.

  Ralph walked across the paddock, as if the dreadful noise burned him, glad to get out of earshot before anyone caught them at their game. Cuthbert followed, back to the house, for the conversion of John’s den must be done by the time Handley returned from Gould’s Lake.

  They worked hurriedly, Ralph’s twinges of conscience entirely gone. The rest of the maps came down. All logs and notebooks were crammed into baskets. The desk was cleared, racks dusted and posters destroyed in Cuthbert’s excess of self-imposed evangelical uprooting. But he knew he was right, saw himself as the appointed discarder of the playthings of a community that was spiritually at the end of its tether. The false gods must be thrust out if righteous and proper life was to resume its course.

  It looked like the sort of bare plain room one let to students or put aside for guests. He gave it a final glance, as if he would never see it again. Then they descended with their last loads and went unobserved to the paddock, to fill in the trench, and burn all incriminating paper, this time with no mistake.

  Smoke rose from the declining fire in the paddock, mingling with the damp afternoon air as Handley went in by the kitchen door. Tea was still being served, and Myra was at the stove making Mark’s feed. ‘Where’s Cuthbert?’ Handley wanted to know.

  ‘He went upstairs to comfort Maricarmen.’

  He poured tea. ‘I’m as thirsty as a centipede. She’ll need a bit of calming down, I expect. I’m glad he has the necessary human feelings about him, though.’

  ‘That walk took you long enough,’ Enid said, coming in from the dining-room.

  ‘I did a sketch while I was about it. Can’t have people wondering what I was doing on Gould’s Lake. They’re a suspicious lot around here.’

  ‘You think of everything.’

  He wondered why there was such irony in her voice.

  ‘Nearly everything. I’m sure I wasn’t missed.’

  ‘You weren’t,’ she answered scornfully. It didn’t take much, he saw, for a good mood to melt. She went out, and he heard her talk in the dining-room to Dean – whom he couldn’t abide these days. He was only waiting for him to go, though there seemed little hope of it unless he was booted out bodily. If he didn’t take himself off soon he’d discuss with Cuthbert how it might be done. Everybody was too tolerant of him, especially Enid, who’d gone soft in a rather motherly way. But Handley told himself magnanimously that he was too proud to be vindictive, and went off to the peace of his studio for an hour before dinner.

  Her straight dark hair spread to one side, except for a few strands that lay on her pale forehead. She looked at the plain white ceiling, preferring emptiness to the humiliation of seeing other people’s faces. There were the marks of tears on her cheeks. She hardly breathed: using as little air as possible would keep out her shame.

  Cuthbert sat in a chair by the bed. ‘Feeling better?’

  It was a meaningless question. ‘I’m leaving tomorrow.’

  He waited. She was rational again. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Back to Spain. That direction.’ But she spoke in a dead voice, which wrung his heart because he knew there was so much life in her. ‘I shan’t be taking Shelley’s trunk. Myra told me what was in it.’

  ‘Any idea what you’ll do?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘One needs to have plans.’ His words were irrelevant. To those in distress you only listened.

  ‘It’s no good thinking what to do. I’ll pack, and go in the morning.’

  He bent close and pressed her hand, feeling a response, Any comfort was better than none at a time like this, she told herself, when she had no right to any.

  ‘I’ll be going with you,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t love you.’

  He winced, but only inwardly. ‘I don’t want love. I give it. How can I expect it? Giving it means everything.’

  ‘Don’t leave me,’ she said.

  Not like Shelley, he thought, or the Dawleys of the world. ‘Come down to supper.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘They want you to. They love you. The community’s successful in that respect. They’ve worked out a way of living that takes in everybody. You’ve been forgiven for this afternoon. All you have to do is turn up at supper, so that we can make our goodbyes.’

  ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Who does?’ he wondered.

  ‘I think you do,’ she said with a sad, half departed smile. ‘I must get up and wash my face.’

  Once more he had escaped, though bleached by God’s wrath. Mad man, mad woman, mad dog – the many manifestations of one’s defective self – year after year they came at him with fang and claw, bullet and fire, rain and snow. What could he do to hold them at bay?

  He went to the stove, hardly able to keep on his feet from so much whisky and close air.

  Maybe he might after all stay alive and see his son grow up. The coffee-smell freshened him. It wasn’t much to want, though in that blinding minute of conflict with Maricarmen he had asked and been given it by something which did not have a name and never could have. He was alive, and wondered why he should feel worse now than at the moment of peril. But the blood ran in such a way, the spirit worked peculiarly, and if the warning came afterwards instead of at the actual time, then perhaps the reason was that he must double his precautions against any such danger ever coming back.

  The bulb filament glowed with a piercing question mark and lit the table brilliantly, showing up the half-drunk
bottle of whisky. He took John’s letter from under the typescript. It was a poor exchange: a wad of paper for a man. John had died when he should have lived. Dawley didn’t think suicide was sinful, but would never do it himself because it was even more than a sin. There was no name for it. A man who killed himself had never finished being born. His mental sufferings were those of birth that as a grown man he was still by accident going through. The process overwhelmed him, for which he was to be pitied.

  The whisky deadened him, but the coffee cleared away some of the deadness. His thoughts perished. He stood at the door of the caravan and breathed fresh air. It was still light, but dimming at the ruins of the sky which was blue and heavy. He was tired, but as if he would never sleep again, a feeling he’d often known in Algeria after real exhaustion. The evening smelled good, a trace of smoke from the paddock fire. Eric Bloodaxe growled at nothing, his chain scraping along the coconut matting of his kennel. Dawley put John’s letter into his trouser pocket and strode across to the house, to kiss Mark goodnight before supper. Nothing perished for ever.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  She didn’t know why she married him, but then, who ever did? In fact it was hard to say why she’d done anything, even a few minutes after having done it. So far it hadn’t mattered, but now, the fact that she regretted the big as well as the little things was beginning to eat at her liver.

  Ralph slept. His huge looming menace, which she knew about from his frequent paranoid moods, didn’t frighten her, because her trusting innocence sensed no physical danger. But now, pretending sleep on the bed, curled up and looking peaceful as long as his eyes were shut, he shot out a big homicidal fist when she went close and said it was time to get up. If she hadn’t dodged, she’d have been felled to the floor.

  So she stood by the window: ‘Get up, you vicious slob. You can’t lie there all evening.’

  A few seconds seemed forever. ‘Can’t you hear me?’ He didn’t move. ‘I’ve been married to you over a year and you haven’t said ten words. It was the worst thing I did, getting tangled with a dumb pig like you. If this is marriage you can throw it up. I’ve had enough. Why don’t you go back to Mummy and leave me in peace? I’m only twenty and you make me feel sixty. I wish Maricarmen had blown your head off when she was on the rampage. I’d divorce you if I weren’t having another rotten baby – though I expect it’ll drop out dead the same as the last one. You’re so twisted-upside-down you can’t make anything stick.’

  He opened one eye, and gave it permission to look at her, a dim light of pettish resentment.

  ‘I know you’re awake,’ she said, before he could close it. ‘Let’s go downstairs. I want to hear what goes on at supper. Then we can come back and make love. We haven’t done it for a week. It ought to be marvellous.’

  He opened both eyes. ‘Are you really pregnant?’

  It had been her favourite ploy since she was sixteen, and such casually dropped news often helped her to get what she wanted. ‘I ain’t seen a doctor yet, but I know I am.’

  ‘Are you glad?’

  ‘As long as I’m blind drunk when I have it, and push the bastard out alive. It won’t make any difference to my life. I’ll just leave it with mam and take to the road if it gets on my nerves. Or I’ll send the sweet little bundle up to your mother in Lincolnshire, in revenge for palming you off on me. Better still, we can visit your parents for a grand reconciliation so’s it’ll shit and puke all over their chintzy parlour.’

  ‘Oh stop it,’ he said impatiently.

  ‘The only good thing they can do,’ she said, ‘is drop dead and leave us their money. Then I could get a decent car and go for a long drive. They’ve always hated my guts, so why should I wish them well?’

  ‘They’re all right,’ he said gently, knowing she had to have her fit now he’d had his – a pattern he’d frequently observed. ‘They’re just a bit misguided because they’re older.’

  ‘They hate me,’ she pouted. ‘They told me to my face, so I can’t forgive them. Not till they grovel. If people love me I love them but they hated me from the beginning.’

  He put an arm over her shoulder. She was right. ‘I’ll write a letter in the morning, and tell them you’re pregnant. They’ll like that.’

  Not even in the days before they married had she heard such a sane tone in his voice. When he kissed her lightly on the back of the wrist she began to worry, yet hoped it might last after all. The heady sensation was so intense she though she was going to faint, a lack of will that convinced her she must be pregnant even though she wasn’t absolutely sure.

  She fought off the desire to inform him of this uncertainty, in case it had an adverse effect. She was beginning to feel a more complicated person, and wondered if she’d be able to live up to it, and whether he would be able to live up to her if she succeeded.

  Handley sat by the vacant stove in his studio, indifferent to the huge half-done painting on the easel. After the happenings of the day he was quite sure Maricarmen would have to go. But there was much about her that he liked because she epitomised the spirit of female violence that could hold an artist in a state of enslaved youth till his dying day. He positively licked his chops over it, especially when thinking of petulant complaining Enid.

  Maricarmen had stepped out of the recurring dreams of his life, but, as plain as any man could see, she was hooked by Cuthbert, his one and only freebooting fishy left-handed son with no lobes to his ears. Maybe your eldest son always held the final card of carrying off your own life’s dream. Or perhaps it was just a sign of Handley growing up and getting old at last, and a brute sort of revenge from Cuthbert for having brought him into the world. It was a form of continuity he felt like spitting his guts at. But to lose one dream would merely set him free to conjure up another.

  He stood, and stretched himself, lit a cigar and poured brandy from a hip-flask, as if determined to lead the good life even in his bachelor studio. The sooner Maricarmen went the better, so that the community could settle down once more. And if Cuthbert left as well, it would be another troublemaker less. Handley sniffed victory if he could get rid of them both, though he would say nothing at supper, and wait for a quiet opportunity to have a word with them in the morning. It would cost him his dream to get shut of Cuthbert, but every victory had its price. He drank to the peaceful months ahead.

  Enid took cutlery into the dining-room and laid out thirteen places. Her progress along the table was slow because confusing and impossible notions raced through her mind. However devastating to her peace of heart, she felt already far away from the house she lived in. The uprooting had taken place during the long years she had been most solidly where she was. She hadn’t noticed it. The roots had loosened when the roots were firmest, as it was obvious they would, considering the sort of life she had been forced to lead. Maybe she was thinking this so that Dean would not be blamed. There was a difference in their ages – though not in the intensity of their love – which would put all foul imputations on to her and not him. She must be ready for it.

  Life with Handley had been a vivid dream that had suddenly lifted and revealed a state of painful chaos. Her hands trembled, yet the disarray brought fabulous compensations, and the confusion give her a base of euphoria not felt since the age of sixteen. It was as if seven children and Handley had never existed. Life in its changing cycles, its mysterious circles, was arbitrary in its miracles. She could have gone on getting older, taking the not unfruitful road to middle and old age, but she had changed because her ordinary heart was not so null as circumstances had continuously and relentlessly given out.

  She pushed her hair back, and wiped a tear with one of the napkins. Love was the only thing that gave freedom. With love you didn’t care any more, and so felt ready for any kind of freedom that love might suggest. Dean came in and set loaves of bread along the table. He smiled at her, too considerate to speak what others might hear, but he laid the bread down and came to her where they couldn’t be seen. ‘I love you,’ he
whispered, kissing her. ‘Don’t forget to think again about what I asked you.’

  She gripped his hand. ‘Are you sure?’

  His lips pursed, in pain and youthful anger. ‘It’s got to happen, you know it has. Don’t wait too long.’

  Enid felt his strong young arms around her and, in spite of the rather hard grip, sensed infinite sweet tenderness in them. The sensation was strange for, instead of her seeming to embrace him like the youth he was, it felt as if she were a small girl being fondled by someone twice her size and age. This impression almost caused her to swoon, so that it was impossible to distrust it.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Rain descended, dark and heavy, as it often does in war at the end of the day, when the guns have stopped firing, and clouds relax after the awful tension of destruction. Handley stood at the window and relished his thought, a will-o’-the-wisp banality to which rainfall gave the piss of death – he grinned, turning to sit down when the others came in. Richard had unchained Eric Bloodaxe at dusk and the dog crouched gratefully in a new world of warmth and noise and plenty by Enid’s chair. The company was now fourteen, pleasing to whoever felt superstitious.

  The meal of cold meat and smoked fish and black bread and salad and sundry wines had gone on for nearly an hour, very little said because the day had made them wolfishly hungry. A cold chicken leg kept Eric quiet. Maricarmen sat by Cuthbert, as if he were the only one in the community on whom she could depend for protection. He put a comforting hand on her shoulder. She didn’t look up, but he knew she needed his warmth, for the flesh was cold to the touch through her blouse. He felt her tremble, as if life were coming back in her, which might be necessary, judging by her pale and stony face.

  Handley noticed that both she and Cuthbert ate with one hand each, the other two joined under the table. In fact most of the company seemed similarly afflicted, being split more into couples than usual – except for Handley and Enid, who occasionally looked emptily at each other down the whole length of the table. Dean sat at her left side, he noted, still with that sly and satisfied look on his gullish face, which stayed there even while he butchered a loaf of bread.