The Flame of Life (22 page)

Enid smiled significantly at Maricarmen, and Frank wondered what secret plans they had devised for the rest of them.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

After each meal Handley went to his studio, and everyone thought he was working. They got on with their chores and duties, and grumbled while the days and hours passed, but thought it worthwhile because it allowed the great man to do his immortal painting.

These attitudes sifted through. He brooded too much on the forces that kept him going. It was good that he worked well for a time, but when it went on as if the peace would last forever he felt empty and irritable. If he laboured well, everyone concerned about him with such calm efficiency that he didn't notice it, he felt that nobody cared whether he lived or died.

In his sketchbook he drew a clock, with hands over its eyes, and a huge mouth from which blood ran. The community worked by the clock: every piece of machinery was in place and doing its job, and the only result was that time passed and nothing happened. The peace was killing, but he realised that when he thought this, something violent and heart-wrenching was on its way. Yet even this couldn't be guaranteed. You were in the hands of fate. What you expected was what you hoped for, a wish never to be granted except in such a back-handed fashion that it knocked you flat.

He paced up and down, from easel to door, from the bookcase to a small table in the corner with an electric kettle and cups on it, and paused at a shaving mirror nailed on the wall. His face looked more tormented than usual, and he could find no response except to fart and stroll across to the door and lift his cap from a hook, put it on, and resume walking up and down.

It was months since he'd seen Daphne Ritmeester, but feeling empty he had no desire to visit anybody. He wasn't in love with her. He muttered that he didn't even fall in love any more, and whatever he told himself, true or not, he believed at the time the words went uncontrollably through his head. I have a full life of work to get done, he hoped, plugging in the kettle for the sake of something to do. Love is a form of self-destruction, a kind of slow suicide, a full-time occupation that pulls you away from your central self – though I wouldn't mind a bit of it right now, because it can be useful in hauling you clear when your middle starts to eat you up. Still, it's a bitter sort of get-out, expensive and time-consuming.

He pondered how refreshing it would be to pack a tent and hide himself in some impenetrable wood or other. You can't run away. Or can you? He felt in the grip of fluxes, fevers and frenzies, and to calm himself began composing a begging letter, maybe practising for when he was on his uppers again. The good thing about life was that nothing was certain, which was a thought to keep him going.

He threw his dip-pen at the door, then screwed up the paper and ate it. His heart wasn't in it. Maybe he never would have to write such things again. The kettle boiled and he filled the pot, thinking to drink himself into a colander.

After the first cup, supped vacantly while looking at a couple of squabbling rooks by the window, he went to his sketch-pad and roughed out notes for a large new picture.

It was Enid's turn to do the washing, and sheets from the machine had been hung up to air on a line from garage to back door. She'd thought it would stay fine, but at the moment it didn't look good. A thunderstorm might clear the air.

It had been hard work most of the day, which reminded her how difficult things had become compared to life at their burned-down house in Lincolnshire. She had taken to the community like a duck to water, as far as Albert could see – which was not far. She'd nevertheless found it interesting to live in such a way, and useful in that it opened doors wide to her discontent. Maybe it would have come anyway – with age.

She was discontented, though not unhappy – a state which made her feel light-headed and confused so that she didn't, as it were, know which way to turn. She used to expect all the days of her life to be the same, but now the end of a day was like the end of an era, so that tomorrow was bound to be different. Nothing was settled any more.

She looked on Handley as a cancer-producing agent, having decided that in some unreasonable underhand way he had ruined her life, while at the same time she'd made certain that he had, so as one day to blame him for it and ruin him back. Such marriages must surely be made in heaven.

Handley sensed it, too, for they touched on it in their arguments. ‘We'll go down together when we go,' he'd said, the white devil of mockery in him. ‘A handsome though ageing couple, you going left into a door marked HERS, and me going right through a slot labelled MINE – to have our shock treatment. The hallmark of a successful marriage is how many volts it can take before it's blasted apart, how much current to make the common united cinder fit to be exhibited in any church or townhall as the apotheosis of holy moonstruck matrimony. Raise the voltage, sling in the amps and slap down the ohms, and sooner or later the equilibrium will split at its strongest point while the weaknesses remain uncharred to become the strengths of another day,'

Love with a capital L she thought, watching him spit. We loved each other so well at the beginning it was bound to come to this. If a man can't let you blame him for ruining your life he just doesn't love you. And the fact that he doesn't love you proves that he ruined your life, and will go on ruining it for as long as you try to put it back together again.

She knelt by a herbaceous border and tried to calm herself by pulling up weeds, but they snapped half-way because she could never get at the roots. In any case they were weak except at the roots. When I was young I was naïve, she thought, full of love and hope, and help for others but mostly for him, and now after seven kids I'm middle-aged and he doesn't want me any more. So how can he deny he's ruined my life? But he goes on denying it only so that he can ruin it more, because though he's an artist he's the most callow man alive. He knows nothing about me in particular or women in general, or human beings at all. Even if he wasn't an artist it would be the same, because the Handley in him goes deeper than the painter he's turned into.

When we were young and had no money and lots of kids to feed we'd get depressed and hold hands and shed tears at our common troubles, console each other at our plight and he'd kiss and make love and promise to try and sell a painting and write another dozen begging letters to bring some money in.

But now he thinks he's rich, and there's not a bit of tenderness left for me. He doesn't even see me anymore. His tears dried up long ago if ever they were there in the first place, which I doubt because I think he only shed them so as to get deeper into my spirit and start to destroy it by the hatred he has for everybody – not only me.

There wasn't much work to do, and maybe that was the trouble. There were more willing hands than necessary, as well as dishwashers, vacuum-cleaners, washing-machines: a fully automated house run by as many people as if there were no gadgets at all. It was Handley's little plaything of a community, the modern doll's house of the selfish man complete with furniture and more people to play around with. The only sensible member of it was Dawley's wife Nancy, who'd left as soon as she saw what was going on.

She went in and took off her apron, then came out again. Dean was inside the Rambler, lying along the back seat reading a comic. He lifted an idle hand as she went by, and blew her a kiss. Not much had been said about him staying on. Some were for it, others not, so he glued himself to the place as a sort of watchman-gatekeeper till a proper decision was made. He was already firm friends with Maria and Catalina, who were said, among other things, to be teaching him Spanish.

She opened Handley's door without knocking, stepped inside and closed it. He sensed her presence, but he went on mixing colours, and attentively applying paint to the large canvas pinned before him. She wondered how long he'd go on ignoring her.

He turned, jacket off and shirt open, a piece of rope holding up his paint-smeared trousers. ‘I love you,' he said, but staying where he was. ‘I love you, Enid, more than I've ever loved anybody or anything. You're the one great fabulous love of my life. I always loved you, and I always will. You're handsome, beautiful, passionate, and violent. In other words: marvellous – all I could ever wish for. But don't disturb me, sweetheart, because I've got a fantastic painting to do, and I've just begun it, the best thing I've ever started. So I'll see you later, if you don't mind.'

She was latched to the floor with anger at the cool machine-like injustice of his ploy. By the look on her face Handley realised that he'd wasted his breath. There were times when she wanted to make love but was too clogged with frustration to start it, and so a quarrel was the only way to get through to them both. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't. Sometimes he was too soured to move when it came to the point, but when it did the trick they were calm and loving afterwards as if they were seventeen again. He felt like going to bed with her, in fact, being often most randy when working well, but he was determined to get to the bones of his painting first.

‘Are you too dead-ignorant to say anything?'

He looked surprised at her opening move of attack, as if only half knowing what she meant.

‘We live together,' she said, coming close to the table, ‘but we don't ever get five minutes to talk. That suits you, doesn't it, because as long as you can be at your paints, you're happy. But I'm just one of the domestics in this setup. I exist like a robot, and if I didn't say anything you'd never speak a civilised word to me again.'

He was uneasy because he sensed some truth in what she said, so he levelled his voice skilfully to appear reasonable. Such hypocrisy cut into her sharply, for she knew how he wallowed in his deceptions. ‘We often talk,' he said. ‘And there's Myra and Maricarmen. The place is full of people to talk to.'

‘I hate you.'

His control snapped at the venom in her, as she had known it would. ‘You hate me, do you? Did you hear that?' he said, as if everyone were listening at the window. ‘She hates me! If only you'd said so when we first met. I'd have known then that you loved me. Fancy telling me now, after so long. I didn't know you cared!'

‘I hate you.'

‘Oh God,' he groaned. ‘You say it every month. Tell me something new.'

‘You don't know me,' she cried. ‘We've never met. You won't meet me. Your shell's too hard. You're stuck fast in your own concrete shelter.'

‘I do love you,' he answered. ‘I've said it till my stomach's full of holes. I know you'd like it if we spent all the time looking babies in one another's eyes, but all I want just now is to get on with this painting.'

‘Do it then,' she screamed.

‘I can't.'

‘Well, don't blame me. You blame anybody but yourself.'

He wiped the paint off his hands with a turps rag, a gesture he knew would annoy her because it meant he didn't expect to paint any more that day, and that it was her fault. ‘We've got seven kids,' he said. ‘The eldest is twenty-five, yet we go on shouting like thirty year olds! Can't we calm down a bit?'

‘You want old age? I'm still a young woman, as far as I'm concerned. You've got money but you hardly ever take me to London. Oh no, you go on your own, and God knows what you get up to.'

‘What the hell do you think?'

‘I've heard tales. There's more than one poison-pen letter writer in this village. They go down to shop in the West End, and spot you up to your antics. They can't wait to report back.'

‘I'll kill the bastards!' he said. ‘I'm absolutely innocent. You know how hard I work. I slave at it too much to take time off having affairs.'

‘You expect me to believe that? What would you do if I bloody well carried on?'

‘You want to know?' he raved. ‘I'd kill him. And if he got away I'd search him out from the seven corners of the earth with a double-barrelled blunderbuss and blow his bollocks off one by one.'

‘If ever a man walked in the spitten-image of injustice, that man's you.'

He relaxed, as if they'd reached the end of round one.

At night when they slept together they seemed to eat each other up in their dreams. The peaceful life of the community had failed to wean them from the attractions of a rough and tumble life. What they said they wanted was absolute order and calm, but they wouldn't admit that what the consciousness craves is often what the subconscious doesn't allow it to have. To get what they wanted meant settling the hash of their subconscious – and what self-respecting subconscious would ever allow that done to it?

‘Sit down,' he said, approaching her. ‘I'll make some more tea, just for the two of us, and put a good drop of Irish whiskey in.'

She sat. ‘Don't touch me.'

‘I want you to be happy,' he said tenderly.

‘You haven't acted like it this last couple of years.'

He plugged in the hotplate, and reached for the bottle. ‘I thought you were happy here. I tried to create a paradise but it's turned into a medieval slum. Apart from the house there's two caravans, the garage, tool-sheds, coal-stores, three cars, a greenhouse, a wendy hut, two spare lavatories, and a leaking sauna-cabin. Talk about the back-to-backs of the affluent society. I sometimes think I'd be happier in a remote cottage with a bog outside and oil lamps hanging from the ceiling, with a plain wood stove that fills the kitchen with smoke every time you want a warm.'

‘It sounds marvellous,' she said. ‘We'd have a garden though, and there'd be a wood where we'd go for kindling and bluebells and blackberries.'

‘You're right,' he said regretfully. ‘This community can't work. Not for me, anyway. The trouble is I've got my family mixed up in it. If I was on my own I'd have more of a chance. But I'm too bound up with you and the kids to be on my own. And if I've got to choose between the family and the community I suppose I'd pick the family. You can't beat it for the homely and profitable suffering it keeps you stuffed up with!'