The Flame of Life (14 page)

He grinned, as if his job were finished for the day, whistling a secret and tuneless tune to himself as he led them into the garage for the after-school talk which it was Richard's daily duty to give.

They placed a bench by a wall marked with map-like stains from the fumes of exhaust pipes. The cars were outside, and they sat away from the wind and any stray noise that might interfere with the anti-lesson.

‘Stop whistling, Paul, and listen to me.'

‘Has Cuthbert come back with that Spanish woman yet?' he wanted to know.

Richard smiled. ‘Why are you so interested in it?'

‘We just are. We can't wait to get a peep at somebody new.'

He wondered why the children were so bored, with such a variable set of people perpetually around. The atmosphere of the community was usually one of flux and impending change, of activity and rumour, yet when this heady atmosphere relaxed, and life threatened to subside into calm orderliness, everyone grew restless and moody. The children got it sooner than the others. ‘They'll be here this evening.'

‘Before we go to bed?' asked Rachel, with such curiosity in her voice that he almost caught it himself.

‘Depends on the trains. But forget it for the next half hour. When you got to school this morning what hymns did you sing?'

‘Horrid,' Janet said. ‘I hate hymns.'

‘I hate
her
as well,' giggled Simon Dawley.

‘Oh for God's sake,' wailed Rachel.

‘Tell me which ones you sang, Janet.' Hating things did not look good, when you considered that hatred made an even deeper impression than what you liked. It was positively bad that she was so virulent. Indifference was safer to work on.

‘I just sing other words to them,' Paul said. ‘It's fun.'

‘I used to do that,' said Richard, ‘but the teacher could lip-read, so I got caught out. It's safer to mouth the words but make no sound.'

‘That's what I do,' said Janet.

‘I like hymns,' said Simon. ‘I can sing loud. And if I mek a mistake, nobody knows.'

‘What number hymn was it?' Richard persisted.

Nobody could remember. Maybe they wouldn't say which one it was in case they'd noticed more than was necessary. Simon Dawley spoke up. ‘All things bright and beautiful …'

Richard reached into a tool box and took out a hymn-book, flipping quickly to the right page. He read the hymn as a piece of verse.

‘It's nice, though,' said Rachel.

‘That's because it rhymes and has a strong rhythm,' he explained. ‘But you have to look through, to what the words mean. Take the bit about the rich man in his castle and the poor man at his gate. The God who made that up was invented by the people who live in the castle. It was written to keep the man at the gate from getting inside.'

‘They chuck boiling oil on 'em when they scramble up the walls,' said Simon.

‘It don't stop 'em, though,' Paul said. ‘When they get in they kill the barons and set fire to the castle. They don't have to pay rent for the fields then.'

‘While things are bright and beautiful for some,' said Richard, when the talk rambled on, ‘they are not so cheery for others. I don't expect the Smith children who go to your school without overcoats and with only plimsolls on their feet in winter feel it's like that.'

‘That's because their dad's idle,' said Janet. ‘He's no good.

‘He's allus in the pub,' Rachel giggled.

‘But we have to ask ourselves
why
he drinks,' Richard said quietly.

‘He likes it,' Simon suggested.

Richard tried again, when they stopped laughing. ‘Why does he like it, do you think?'

‘It's lovely,' said Simon. ‘Dad gen me some beer once, and I liked it. So he don't gi' me any no more now.'

‘You was sick,' said Janet.

‘It's all right to sing hymns,' Richard went on. ‘You might even enjoy letting yourselves go. But I want you to know what the words signify.'

‘They mean what they say,' said Simon, scraping his boot along the concrete.

‘They do,' said Richard, ‘but people don't even know that much. They think they mean something else.'

Simon grunted. ‘I know what they mean, though.'

He was the most promising child of the group, in spite of being a Dawley. Or maybe it was because of that. He hoped not, but there was no point of going into it. Simon was an entity on his own. He doubted few things at the moment, so one couldn't press the anti-lessons too far, but let his schoolteachers do it, so that when he turned from their indoctrination he would do it with a useful sort of finality. Handled carefully, it would certainly not be a kindness to let him loose on the world.

At the same time it hurt Richard to regard him like this. For all his knowing remarks he seemed an unprotected bundle, lively but vulnerable, a child to be looked after even more than the others – not something regarded with favour by this egalitarian community. He followed its rules nevertheless, but made the anti-lessons easy and humorous half-hours for the children.

The idea of them had started after Handley looked through Paul's notebook one day, and read from his Scripture jottings that: ‘The Jews fought the Romans because they were forced to pay taxes.' The words rankled, and later he read in Rachel's history book that ‘the Jews in medieval England were all money-lenders.' In the first case Handley was rabid because the statement was untrue, since the conflict between the Romans and the Jews, as far as he understood it, was one between paganism and monotheism. In the second place nothing seemed to have been told to the children about why many of the Jews in England, before their expulsion, became money-lenders.

When he wrote to the headmaster politely pointing out these anti-Semitic tendencies in his educational system, he received an irate reply telling him in effect to mind his own business. They had children of every race in his school, and it was nonsense to accuse him of racialism.

Handley went back to his pen and informed the headmaster that his own opinion was different, and that he knew racial prejudice when he saw it, and that furthermore he would take care to see that his children weren't poisoned by it. He'd give them a talk every day on the lies they were told at school, and thought all parents ought to do the same if they valued their children's minds.

There was no reply to this, but certainly Handley hadn't since then seen anything similiarly offensive in his children's notebooks – though the talks had been kept up just the same to deal with what other lies and false information English schools still disseminated.

‘We'll leave the hymns for the moment,' Richard said, ‘and get back to where we left off yesterday. If you remember you told me about a film at school on life in Spain. I'll tell you something about the history of this place, and how it's governed at the present day.'

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The moon was in disparate parts of the car while crossing the yard to reach the sky. Adam felt crazy till he realised he was drunk, so pulled deep breaths into him for the alcoholic daze to wear off.

Eric Bloodaxe, that ancient bulldog and probably best friend of the Handleys, snored loudly in the kennel, dragging its overfed body across the coconut-matted floor to avoid troublesome dreams leaping from the dark imaginary trees above its head. Ever alert, it gave a growling throaty bark when Adam slammed the car door, then went back to those dreams which it had long regarded as more interesting than real life.

Adam was sober at the wheel, though the two-ton car became frighteningly light when it went along the lanes above sixty. But he stayed cool, as he'd been trained all his life to do, open windows bringing smells of grass and fresh soil against his cheeks. Headlights lit the lane that cats and rabbits crossed at their peril, and he kept a safe speed in spite of too much sherry since teatime.

He pushed on the radio to hear the final bars of a magnificent symphony. It was always like that, and to avoid endless unnecessary clapping he switched off and drove with only the engine to lull his thoughts. He'd grumbled at having to fetch Cuthbert and Maricarmen from the station, but much good it had done him. He'd have preferred staying in the warmth and light, drinking wine, and playing liar-dice or laryngitis-brag with Frank and Nancy Dawley.

But it was no use complaining about the things you were asked to do while, living in a community, where what you did was supposed to be for the good of everybody else. He'd rather go and chop down the gibbet on Hangman's Hill, to strike at the emblem of oppression so that American tourists couldn't take photos of it anymore with their friends standing underneath to send back home. The Handleys had spent days over maps and timetables working out the gibbet's disappearance with a thoroughness that would have been totally successful, except that a gang from London beat them to it, drove it off sticking from the back of a van – as one eye-rubbing farmer witnessed it.

Cuthbert took off his parson's collar as he stepped on to the platform, being too well known to wear it near home, the tip sticking from his pocket as he turned to help Maricarmen. Adam went forward to take the cases.

‘My brother,' Cuthbert told her, ‘will drive us to the house.' Adam took a soft hand offered, and would have expected it to be warmer judging by her face in the shadow of the station lamps. He was always uneasy when introduced to someone, but this time he was intrigued as well, and envious of Cuthbert who had already spent a few hours with her.

They stowed the trunk and cases in, and set off along the lanes in silence. Adam saw Cuthbert as a man of experience because, as the eldest son, he had been pushed while still a raw youth to schools and college. The rest of them hadn't expected to go, for after the effort of getting Cuthbert out, no more resources had been left. But now that there was money in the family it wasn't the case anymore, and nothing need stop either him or Richard going to university – a thought which had lately occurred to them both.

Handley was waiting on the lit-up doorstep. Eric Bloodaxe barked its welcome, shortlived as it slid back kennel-wards when Handley's boot made the usual half-loving gesture. Dawley stood in his shirtsleeves, arms folded, and came over to help get the trunk down. Maricarmen, surprised at no greeting, thought them more like a gang of efficient railway porters, but when her things were stacked near the back door Handley held out his hand: ‘You've met my sons. I'm their father. And this is Frank Dawley.'

Lights were on in upstairs windows, and others glowed from the caravans. She looked at Dawley, but did not shake his hand, unwilling to waste observations in the half light, merely noting his strong head and short greying hair, and powerful but harmless stance which gave no clue to the personality he was supposed to have.

Handley led her into the house. ‘We put off supper till you came. I hope you managed to sleep on the train.'

He was fazed by her silence, but put it down to exhaustion after her trip, and meeting strange people. She followed Myra upstairs to the room got ready, and ten minutes later came into the dining-room. She wore a white blouse, dark skirt, brooch at the throat, and held her head high as she walked to a chair, placing a bottle of Fundador brandy on the table.

‘That's not necessary,' Handley said, ‘though it's beautifully polite!'

She'd been safe on boat or train, locked in the actual journey and cut off from people packed around her, but now she felt isolated, and it put an added touchiness and pride into her face, which caused those who noticed it to speculate on how she would get on in the commune. Handley, with a small ironic smile, was curious as to who would fall in love with her first. His smirk dropped when she turned and wondered what it was for. He poured wine: ‘All I want to say is: welcome to Maricarmen. But we're hungry, and she's tired, so I suggest we get down to eating before any of us drop in a dead faint.'

She looked at the scalding and meaty soup, asking who made it. ‘It's one of mine,' said Enid.

‘Do the men cook?'

Handley's head jerked up: ‘We have study groups going, and do work in the garage. I paint all the time. There are one or two idle bastards among us, but we pull our weight – by and large.'

Ralph looked over his soup, wondering whether he could afford to ignore this slight on his honour. To let it go would disarm Handley sooner than any other reaction.

‘If the tin-hat fits, watch out for shrapnel,' Handley called.

‘Oh stop it,' Enid said.

Ralph decided to copy Cuthbert who, for the moment, was unaware that his father was getting at him. ‘But cooking, and washing up, and looking after children, and things like that?' Maricarmen kept on.

Handley decided that if anyone did fall in love with her it wouldn't be him. She'd only just arrived and was already getting the boot in. Cuthbert saw that she'd immediately put her hand on the weak spot of their society, a point which he'd never thought of. Myra saw the danger: ‘Enid and I look after the domestic side. It works well, and we're willing.'

‘I'm not bloody-well willing, though,' Mandy called. ‘We're glad there's another woman in the place to set to and give us a hand.'

Cuthbert was amazed at how danger to the Handley machine was immediately deflected by its hidden wheels within wheels. It moved into action with such precision that the threat itself was clumsy and Neanderthal by comparison. ‘I thought three women were enough,' he said, too much struck by Maricarmen to see her standing by a stove or sink all day.

‘She'll want a rest first,' Handley put in, for once in agreement with his firstborn son. ‘Then we'll go through those notebooks of Shelley's to see what revolutionary wisdom we can get from between the lines.'

‘I've not read them,' Maricarmen explained. ‘They were put into the trunk by Shelley, and I couldn't bear to look at them. I just kept them safe, expecting him to come back for them. I wouldn't want him to think I'd been prying into his personal papers. He was very easy-going, and very proud at the same time.'