‘Stop it, Father,’ Cuthbert said mildly.
‘Don’t worry, old son, at what I say. I’m relieved and happy that the day’s ended well, and when I’m happy I tend to say the opposite of what I mean because my nerve-ends get a bit painful when they jump.’
Ralph, too easily disturbed by such moods in Handley, twitched his wrist and broke the delicate stem of a wine glass.
‘You’re not with us,’ Handley said. ‘You’re over the hills and far away.’
‘Leave him alone,’ Mandy cried, drawing the loose bits together, fearing he would send her unstable husband on another lone trail of mad zigzaggery. ‘You’re getting as pissed as a newt.’
‘You know I’m fond of Ralph,’ Handley said. ‘We understand each other at last. It’s just that so many pots have been getting smashed lately we’ll soon be eating off the backs of old envelopes.’
Adam sipped coffee. ‘We’re thinking of going to university.’
The cigar fell from Handley’s mouth and hissed in his coffee, ruining both. ‘What’s that?’
‘We’ve got our A levels. It should be easy.’
‘And if we don’t go now, we may be sorry one day,’ Richard said.
‘So you regret not going to university?’ Handley said. ‘They’re hankering to round off their state education by a final bout of conformity. Nobody with any self-respect has ever been to university, you couple of fat-necked moaners. Don’t you know that? You can regret you weren’t born to inherit a million acres, or that you haven’t won the pools, but for God’s sake don’t regret not having gone to university. Can’t you skive here just as well as there?’
When Handley carried on like this it was easy to score points against him. ‘I’m not an artist,’ Adam said, ‘so of course I’ll regret it. I can’t live on National Assistance, like you and Mother did, or hang on to your turn-ups forever.’
‘You see,’ said Richard, ‘we think we’re wasting our time studying the theory of revolution. As far as you’re concerned it’s only something that keeps us out of mischief. Yes, we’ve known that for a long time. But if we go to a university we can put our revolutionary and working-class contacts to good use in the student movement.’
Handley lit another cigar, and snapped his finger for Dean to bring more coffee. ‘You want me to fork out the money and help you through?’
‘It would be good if you could,’ said Adam.
‘My children’s wish is my command.’
‘Buy me a car, then,’ Mandy called out.
While Handley was concocting a suitable reply, which by the workings of his face promised not to take too long, Ralph said, in a reasoned and amiable voice: ‘It would be a big mistake, father-in-law, to buy her a car.’
‘There’s no danger of old tight-fist doing that,’ Mandy said, shocked at Ralph going so firmly against her, yet not angry because it seemed another mark of his newly found sanity.
Handley controlled his ire by waiting for Enid to stamp vociferously on Mandy’s dearest wish. But she merely looked before her in some embarrassed way that had nothing to do with the present issue. He wondered what great or secret even had taken her over in recent days. He’d go to London in the morning, but resolved to be more attentive to her when he got back. He knew it would be better if he squashed the idea of his trip, but when he was impelled to do something by the compass-pull of his loins, not all the persuading lodestone of both poles could draw him away from it.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
They put their trunk and cases in the big rear space of the Rambler, and leaned close against each other in the back seat without saying a word the whole way to Welwyn.
No speech could touch the galaxy of devastation inside her. Dawley’s farewell grip of her hand, and his bereaved immobile face, were still there. She had not spilled his blood, but felt she had killed his revolutionary spirit nevertheless, and because of this could not remember what Shelley looked like any more. The only chance of retrieving something from the wreckage would be if Handley turned the car round and took her back to Dawley. But she was empty and icy, and could ask for nothing. The stiffness of pride and honour had taken over from the heart.
When she touched Cuthbert’s hand, it was not out of affection, but to feel skin which had living blood behind it. He sensed the depth of her loss. Its misery spilled over to him. So he responded to her touch, but with casual affection, reasoning that the poison of her recent disasters would slowly spill out – the further they got from the house. And if it came back at times he would be there to guide her through any psychic upset. He was calm and solicitous, and would wait for her to collapse, if she had to, so that he could mend her. By then she might grow to love him. If not he would be satisfied for the privilege of being near. He settled for such conditions because it seemed the only way she could begin to love. She was someone who needed life itself to break her down, and life itself to mend her.
Handley enjoyed driving on empty lanes. He liked handling a car, and he loved painting. He was fond of women, and he relished the countryside. In other words, he felt in a good mood, wearing his new brown suit with collarless shirt and button-up waistcoat, watch chain and ankle boots, cigar and aftershave. He’d even cut his nails the night before. A poor old coney was flat on the road, fur and blood spreadeagled. The machine age was mixed with his bucolic aspirations. His obsession with machines was entangled with a desire for people and slow-motion living, the beautiful raped by the abominable and all in the same body and soul. He fondled machines, angles, emotives forces that he could not see but which functioned under the slightest whim of his will. Maybe if I got this peace of mind I’m always hankering for I wouldn’t paint, he thought.
Adam and Richard would also be packing up soon. With four people pulling out he wondered if the community would keep going. Thinking of the future made him so nervous that, coming to the main road, a lorry almost ground him into the tarmac because it was too close and fast behind. A duel of hooters followed, till Handley’s powerful engine pulled him out of earshot. Fluent and flowered curses died in his gorge because Maricarmen sat in the back. It began to rain, and traffic was thick on the narrow winding trunk-lane. ‘You should have taken the motorway,’ Cuthbert suggested.
‘It’s too dull,’ he replied, vision beamed on a huge truck in front that spat black sludge over his windscreen. ‘I’ll get you there.’
‘I’m not worried.’
‘You trust your old Dad, eh?’ He pressed the brake pedal when the lorry suddenly pulled up. The car skidded slightly. He put the gear in neutral and drew the handbrake on, then reached into the glove box for a hip flask. ‘They tell you not to drink and drive, but I can’t drive in these conditions unless I have a drink.’ He took a swig and passed it back: ‘Have a good go. I filled it up last night.’
They drank, and Cuthbert sent it forward. Handley sipped again, just in time before the lorry moved and he slipped into gear to follow it. A police car waved them on. A car was upside down beyond a bend, and an articulated lorry lay on its flank. A wall had crumbled under the impact, and dozens of barrels were scattered among the trees of an orchard. Police were writing in little books, and marking maps, and several people were walking dazedly up and down, as if to get the chill out of their veins, though the day was warm and humid. One man lay in the grass with blood on his face.
He looked in the mirror to check traffic behind, and saw Maricarmen cross herself at the accident. ‘It’s a battlefield,’ he said, hearing a yelp of brakes some way in front. ‘You often wonder whether the next car you see’s got your name along its bumpers. I feel like an old soldier though where driving’s concerned: the longer you survive the more you learn how to.’
Traffic speeded up, and on a straight section Handley overtook the sludge-chucking lorry. ‘I hope you’ll be all right at home,’ Cuthbert said.
‘No danger of that.’
‘Take care of mother.’ The memory of her being loved-up by Dean chilled him – a picture he’d n
ot forget in a hurry. He’d said nothing about it either to Handley or Enid because, after all, they were grown people who had to sort out their own problems. No doubt Dean would be sent on his way, and they’d settle into the old cat-and-dog routine once more. The only thing he was sure of was that his parents loved each other. It was good to have an eternal set-up you could fall back on at moments of insecurity.
‘I’ll guard her with my life,’ Handley told him. ‘Why else do you think I’m on earth? I’ll look after anybody if they need my help, but she’s number one.’
‘I’m sorry for the disturbance I caused,’ said Maricarmen.
‘It’s good to have a shake-up now and again,’ Handley smiled. ‘Anyway, there’s no hard feelings in our family – otherwise we wouldn’t have lasted five minutes.’
Sucked into the London rush hour, he kept his window shut to avoid lethal gusts of coagulating motor traffic, but then opened it for fresh air to avoid going to sleep, finally cursing the sharp metallised poison that came in and gave him a headache. At half past nine he drew into a parking bay near Covent Garden, convenient for his bank on the Strand. Cuthbert and Maricarmen waited, and when he returned he put an envelope into his son’s hand: ‘There’s fifty ten pound notes. Don’t spend it all at once.’
‘I feel I’m robbing you.’
Handley lit a vigar. ‘You’re my son, aren’t you?’
‘You’re generous, that’s all I can say.’
‘As long as you don’t hold it against me. Generosity don’t count with your own family.’ They walked through the market to a café, and sat down to sandwiches and tea. ‘A steamy day,’ he said, ‘like a cold jungle. Take care of yourselves. Don’t get shot, squashed, poisoned, or slung in clink. If you want to pay me back for the five hundred quid just live safely. That’ll satisfy me.’
Cuthbert sat opposite his father and Maricarmen, amazed at how one of a pair they seemed, Handley lean like a gypsy, and she a Spanish woman who was bound to thicken to his satisfaction in later years. Such similarities drew them together, all in the same family at last, no matter how farspread they’d be in a few days time. ‘We’ll stay in town tonight,’ he said, ‘somewhere around Victoria, and set out for France tomorrow. We’ll get off the train at Bayonne, near the Spanish frontier, and talk things over there.’
‘I have friends in San Sebastian,’ Maricarmen said, ‘and in Irun. They’ll tell us if there’s anything we can do,’
He remembered her crossing herself in the car. ‘Nothing violent, I hope?’
‘No,’ Cuthbert said.
She smiled. ‘We’ll be all right.’
‘You’d better be,’ Handley said, ‘or I’ll come and pull your arses out of it – wherever you are, Still, you’re grown up, just like I am – if that means anything – so you can look to your own safety. It’s a hell of a world, though, if you want to do something about it. All I ask is that you mull over John’s letter.’
Cuthbert finished his tea, and pushed his cup to the middle of the table, as if wanting to be on his way. ‘I typed a copy last night. I’ll always want it with me.’
‘Maybe I’ll get it printed,’ Handley said. ‘A hundred pamphlets. John might like that. Ay, but it’s terrible to lose a brother. It’s still eating me, and always will, otherwise I’d be dead. All he was suffering from was a regressive return – as they call it – the famous depression of incoming travellers back to this tight little island after a fair sojourn somewhere else. Or maybe he was the man who thinks there’s something beyond the womb but discovers there isn’t. John always felt like a rat in a trap while he was in England. No wonder he couldn’t come back. I hope you don’t get the same way when you feel like hiving in again.’
Cuthbert lifted a hand benignly. ‘There’s no chance of that.’
Handley drove them to a hotel on Ebury Street, and left them alone at last.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
The sun dazzled as he rounded the island by Buckingham Palace. He felt free, caught in the vital pull of London, which he always enjoyed. He swore it wasn’t because Cuthbert had gone, but knew that in part it certainly was. Dangerous and smouldering Maricarmen had taken hard-headed Messianic Cuthbert to some mad do-gooding adventure on the slopes of the Pyrenees, and now he hoped for a great peace which would enable him to resume his painting and pull off a few big ideas that were jumping on the trampoline of his mind.
He turned up the Mall towards Piccadilly, going smoothly between traffic. London was hell to get into and out of with a car, but once inside it didn’t seem too bad because he knew every one-way backstreet and was never at a loss for movement. He thought of Daphne Ritmeester, whom he hadn’t seen since their spine-shifting encounter several months ago. In fact he couldn’t smell London without the wick-fever coming on, and hoping for a repetition of that midnight potent flash in the middle of the day – which seemed never likely to happen again, at least not by chance.
He went along Dover Street and through Berkeley Square, finding a spare meter almost opposite the gallery. It was only half past ten and he wondered whether Teddy would be in. He was certainly difficult to get by phone, like all other English gaffers and executives. If you phoned before eleven they weren’t there yet. Patiently, you went back to your painting and forgot to phone again till twelve, by which time they were out at lunch. So it was no use phoning before three. And if you were too absorbed in your work and didn’t ring till four they were already on their way home. Whole days had often passed before he’d pinned someone down. The phone seemed more antiquated than smoke signals, and he found it quicker to make contact simply by driving to London, or writing a letter. They talk about the working man being a skiver, he thought.
The gallery wasn’t open, so he walked to Selfridges to search out a present for Enid in case he spent time in Daphne’s bed. The midweek store was crowded, and he hated being thrust among so many people, wanting only to get back to the quiet of his paddock and studio. The rhubarb noise burned his ears.
A sweet old English lady with the usual sharp holdall jabbed at him as if to get by. He trod on her foot by way of his own back, and smiled an apology. She bent down to rub the pain out of her toes, and slipped two pair of tights – which she had previously knocked off the counter – into her shoplifter’s reticule. She was too low to be seen by television scanners beaming from above, and in any case he’d screened her by his apology. It was well worked out, he thought, getting on his way before he was grabbed as an accomplice.
He bought a tin of cigars from the tobacco section, then an expensive bottle of French scent for Enid. Glad to be in the air, even though it was ninety per cent fumes, he dashed between the cars and towards Teddy’s gallery.
It was open, and he walked through an exhibition of huge grey drawings by some gloomy sado-masochistic German who seemed to have been brought up by a mad aunt in a damp cellar on the banks of the Rhine. He went into the inner office without knocking, to find Teddy in a casual embrace with a young man in overalls who looked like one of the window-cleaners. He hurriedly unclasped, a flush spreading over his strawberry face: ‘Off you go then, Bill. I’ll see you later.’
‘All right, guv’nor,’ said Bill, walking nonchalantly back to the main part of the gallery.
‘I know we have no secrets,’ Teddy complained, ‘but you ought to knock.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Handley said, sitting in the leather armchair. ‘I was here half an hour since, saw the place shut, and thought you’d gone off to Portugal with all my money.’
‘Yours wouldn’t get me far,’ he laughed, noting how smart Handley looked. ‘But you have got some more coming to you. The Tate are asking for a dozen paintings, and they’ll do half of them on postcards. Then the Keel Gallery in Zurich wants to put on a big exhibition of contemporary British painters. You’re to be the big star. A private gallery in Rome, and one in Venice are getting the hot flushes about you. You’re really hitting the jackpot.’
‘That’s just as well,’ Handley said,
feeling fashionably dead at the idea of getting more money than was good for his inner life. ‘My children are starting to leave home – which is always expensive.’
Teddy, ever hospitable, poured him his customary brandy. ‘Too much tranquillity can ruin an artist. Maybe a bit of emotional stir-about will do you good.’
He held up his glass before drinking, not caring to mention the stir-about of the last day or two. ‘Any news of Daphne?’
Teddy didn’t like anyone referring to Lady Ritmeester by her first name. ‘Daphne?’
‘Oh piss off! You know who I mean: my glorious proudarsed patroness with the hair like Sugar Loaf Mountain.’
‘Lady Ritmeester? Came in last week and mentioned she was going to the family chateau in France for a while.’
Teddy seemed glad to give out this piece of news, Handley noted, as a little titbit of revenge. ‘I’m thwarted in my evil sexual designs. Like you were when I came in. So let’s get back to money.’
‘Didn’t you receive my letter?’
‘I got nothing.’
‘My secretary sent it a week ago.’
‘I suppose my mad son-in-law found it,’ Handley said, ‘and burned it.’
‘Anyway, I sold “Abraham in Flanders”, “The Prodigal Poacher” and “Jacob and Esau”. I’ve had offers for four others. Then there are royalties on reproductions. Comes to nearly £3,000.’
‘Was there a chit in the envelope?’
‘I believe so.’ He took a cheque book from his drawer and showed the stub for £2,952.
‘Write me another,’ Handley said. ‘And give me a drink. My hand’s trembling.’
‘If you don’t mind,’ Teddy said, ‘I’ll see first whether or not this one’s been cashed.’
The Flame of Life Page 29