The Flame of Life (23 page)

While she reflected on this he washed two mugs at the sink, then poured a good flow of whiskey in each, and strong tea after it.

‘You've always wanted to be free of the family,' she said. ‘You never stop hoping you'll come back from Town one day and find we've been the victims of some madman with a machine-gun.'

‘I'm only human,' he said calmly, putting the mugs down. ‘Of course I've often thought that. I'm honest: I admit it. But twice as many times I've told myself how much I love you. God knows, if anything happened to you or the kids I'd die of misery in a fortnight.'

‘You don't know me,' she jeered, ‘If you did you'd control yourself, and not say such things about wishing me and the kids dead. I'm not the hard woman you think I am. I may look it because you've made me that way, but I'm not. I can't stand the way you're always trying to kick me down.'

Of her many accusations, the one that he didn't know her galled him most. It filled his brain with razor-blades. It brought out the worst in him, so that both of them were soon lost in the mists of spite – further from each other than ever.

‘When I want comfort,' she said, walking around his table, a movement which made him nervous, ‘you don't give it to me.'

‘How can I,' he shouted, ‘while you're ripping my guts out? You're a shark. You want to bite people.' He took a gulp of fortified tea and wallowed in false, lying counter-accusation, knowing it to be so but swinging out joyfully like an ape over the trees: ‘You want to eat people. So you're worse than a shark because you're a shark out of choice and not just because you've got to survive. You're a killer shark, and I can't live near it anymore.'

I must stop, he thought, at the sight of her face poised for retaliation. It seemed thinner in the midst of battle, but at the same time less lined and tired. I mustn't give in to spite, he told himself, his heart suspended while the mechanics of self-preservation worked out a suitable reply in her breast. I must never give in to spite. I've got too much of it, like everything else. But leave spite out of it. I don't want her to turn into a bitter cabbage with mad eyes and a slit mouth.

She spoke in a quiet voice. ‘You'd stand there forever, wouldn't you? You'd leave me to rot and die before wondering how I was feeling.'

‘Drink your tea, love.'

‘You're paralytic,' she said, ‘paralysed by your own weakness.'

‘Old spirit-breaker.' He laughed drily, sweating under his emptiness, picking up his brush and making a great letter X across the painting he'd so far done. ‘Does that make you happy? I'll sacrifice that to you, because I know that's what you want, old spirit-breaker!'

‘If that's so,' she smiled calmly, placated slightly by his Handley-like gesture of love, ‘your spirit isn't up to much. But then, it never has been.'

‘Well,' he went on, ‘you
can
break it there's no denying. I'm human, even though I am an artist. But you can only do it as far as you are concerned. You can't smash it so finally that no one can come up and pulverise it again in their particular way. That's love, though. Your spirit can be knocked up a hundred times without it being forever. And if you do smash it, it would only mean I'd be shut of you. But maybe you're only trying to get rid of me. Nobody can blame you for that. I'd be free of you as well, don't forget!'

She listened to him going on. He was vile, and neglected her for his so-called art, but now and again if she prodded him hard enough in the right places she got him to talk, even if it was the worst sort of wordy flow that cut her in all the wrong places – though more truth came out than when they were sitting politely around the table with the others.

‘I'm a painter,' he was saying, while she drank her tea. ‘How do you think I became a painter?'

‘To get away from me.'

‘To express all those pains I suffered and got no sympathy for. I hoped that the world would get the sympathy and understanding that I didn't get.'

She laughed. ‘It's these woolly epigrams I can't stand. You look so pompous, like a parson who's had to chop his pulpit up for firewood.'

‘You're a frigid castrating bitch,' he said, before he could bite his tongue off.

Both of them thought this was a lie, which was something that united them, but Enid, in the fury of quarrelling, chose to believe that he was serious in what he said. So she had to reply in kind: ‘That's because you're impotent. Everybody thinks that because we've got seven kids you strut around with a permanent hard-on. What a mistake they make! And you wouldn't tell 'em otherwise.'

‘I didn't mean it in that way,' he said, ‘though it's interesting to hear what you think, you one-track-minded bitch. We've always fucked well, and you know it.'

‘You say so. Oh yes, I know, sometimes we have, but with you, you just about get me going when you've finished. I have my orgasm and you think that's that.'

How did I get this far in? ‘If you don't like it,' he said, pouring more tea, ‘if you suffer so much, why don't you go? Take the kids if you like, but go. You're free. Go on, take all the money to live on if you like. Take everything. I'm generous. Leave me a tent, that's all. I'll survive. I don't want to go on ruining your life any longer. It's a crime against civilisation. I never wanted to ruin anybody's life.'

‘You're so selfish,' she cried, her voice packed hard and ready to break, ‘that you don't know when you're making somebody suffer. And as soon as I let you know it, because I love you, after all, you tell me to get out. You want to chuck me and the kids in so that you can look for a young girl to marry and start a new life with.'

‘No!' He wailed – his eyes wild, as if about to go into an epileptic fit. He grabbed his head, pressing to squeeze his whole vision out of existence. He closed his eyes because he couldn't bear to look at anything. The space he stood in was blocked off from him even though he opened his eyes, and the whole room of the hut was locked in the wide spaces of his own head. He could not get out of it.

‘Now you want to frighten me,' she called. ‘You'll try any rotten trick.'

He'd scared himself more, and was ashamed that he should be so goaded by her taunts. He stood, breathless and pale, looking across at the table. It's a war of attrition. The flower of one's manhood perishes in it. Why do we do it? How did we get locked into it? He wanted to weep, but couldn't. Not even when she'd gone would he be able to weep. There's no victory, only an occasional armistice to allow us to renew our strength, a pulling back of the battle lines for a bit of re-construction. The losses are too great for us to get much from such blood-letting. There's no hope of being buoyed up to the skies by victory in this sixty-year war. ‘I'm worn to the bone,' he admitted.

Soothe his wounded heart, patch up his deepest gashes, get his arm in a sling, a shade on his eye. Put a cape on his head at an even cockier angle than before, and send him back into the matrimonial barrage.

‘I'm sorry,' he said, holding her in his arms. It was too soon to try and kiss her, though he managed one on her forehead. She remained stiff against him, but he was roused by the closeness of her body. ‘I know you've had a hard life, though God knows, you look young enough for it.'

‘You've done your best to pull me down,' she said, her hot breath against him, ‘and keep me in my place.'

‘We've lived,' he said. ‘What else do you want? And what's more, we're still living. Very well, too.'

‘As long as I eat three times a day you don't care.'

He felt the quarrel priming up for another take-off, but all his energy was sapped, his body a hollow tube, his mouth dry, his eyes tinderous. ‘I don't want to hurt you. I don't mean what I say. I don't own any of it. As Job said: “God destroyeth the perfect and the wicked.” Which am I? You tell me. I can't.'

‘It's a pity you can't,' she said. ‘You're like a volcano. You spew for the sake of spewing. Why do you say such things, if you don't mean them?'

‘Because I don't want to burst. I've got to say something. How can I mean what I say when it comes out like that?'

‘If you lie at such a time I don't see when you can ever tell the truth.' But she gave his hand a friendly squeeze.

‘Don't you? I do. Let me tell you why, and get it straight. I mean what I say when I say something in a tender and loving voice. That's the only time. All else is wind and piss, hot air and jelly-bile. I'm sorry about it then.'

She pulled her hand free, and walked towards the window: ‘What a child you are!'

He could see her smile, though her back was to him: ‘Why don't you cut your wrists and stop bothering me?' he shouted. ‘I take you into my heart and it means nothing to you. A child, eh? Is that how you've seen me all these years while we've been struggling through the mud of this matrimonial Passchendaele? As for you, I suppose you're still looking for a daddy – a great big cuddly daddy for his little baby girl!'

She swung round, and rushed at him. ‘You vicious lousy rotten gett!'

Her white bare arm swept the table like an iron bar, and what she missed because it was too near the middle she reached over for and picked up piece by piece to throw at him with all her strength. The cup with the dregs of tea bounced from his mutilated canvas, a steel ruler spun like a scythe, a stone he'd found in his younger days on some isolated beach flew by his head and smashed the window neatly. A jotting pad winged his face, and a jam jar full of nails and thumb tacks travelled over like a shrapnel bomb.

He watched her with a sardonic smile, and dodged as best he could, feeling the beating rhythm of his heart slowing down. ‘Go on,' he said when she paused. ‘Smash everything. If I had the strength I'd help you.'

‘Stop laughing.'

‘Oh, I know, you're serious.'

She reached a large bottle of spirits and hurled it as a final effort. It turned many times in flight, and smashed against the glowing hotplate accidentally left on from tea making. It exploded like a Molotov Cocktail. Flames crept gleefully along the floor, and Handley side-stepped calmly when they threatened his shoes. They edged up the wall.

‘You'd better save yourself,' he said. ‘You'd think I belonged to a family of arsonists. I'm staying here because I've had enough.' He folded his arms on his chest and stood still.

‘Albert,' she said, ‘let's put it out.'

‘Let my forty paintings burn,' he said magnanimously. ‘And me with them.'

‘You're still trying to torment me,' she screamed. ‘When will you stop? What have I done to be treated so vilely by you? If only you'd treat me like a human being at least.'

‘I'll die,' he said. ‘A one-man holocaust.'

‘Please!'

He reached for the fire extinguisher, knocked the top, and sprayed the flame with powder till it subsided. Scorch marks showed on the wall. It smouldered, and they coughed as they talked. ‘Does that satisfy you?' he said, kissing her on the lips.

Her hot tongue was in his mouth. Her legs opened and curled around him. ‘Only one thing satisfies me.'

It was already rampant, and he pushed it against her. ‘You know how I love you,' he said, his hand over her breasts and pressing them hard in the way she liked.

‘You only say you love me,' she said, ‘when you want to have me.'

He wanted to strangle her, but the impulse went when he realised the cost of resuming their quarrel. But he was afraid that murder would brew up one day between them. He unbuttoned her blouse, while she let down her skirt. Half-way to the cot-bed in the corner of the hut she began pulling at his trousers. They hadn't made love for days, so the pot had had time to boil. He loathed her. He loved her – so sublimely that the loathing didn't matter. He could drown it any day.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Handley stood up to open the session: ‘It seems to me – because I'm not blind – that certain power blocs are forming in this community, which between them will deaden the life of all future meetings. It'll come down to the stupid brute strength of party politics, which are anathema in a true democracy. Innovation may be possible, but real human progress will be out of the question.'

Thirteen people sat along both sides of the table, and a snap vote had already decided that no one could occupy the head or foot, so he moved next to Maria, the tallest of the
au pair
girls with blue-black hair and sultry eyes, who felt uneasy that he was so close, and wanted to move away.

‘There's been an immovable power bloc at these meetings ever since they began,' Enid said, ‘and that's been you. Maybe we will end up with two sides, but that'll be better than being manipulated like puppets.'

‘It's been fair give and take,' he said.

Myra stood. ‘I'll explain what we want. There are a few of us who believe it's time that the domestic work was divided equally between the men and women.'

Her slight pause enabled Handley to snap into argument: ‘And who's going to give me a hand with my painting? Who'll work with Frank on his book? There'll be no lack of volunteers, I expect, to help Cuthbert to do damn-all, or to muck in with Dean and his pot-smoking.'

‘That's not the point,' Enid said. ‘This place is nothing but a holiday camp for those with a penis. Otherwise it's shopping, or sewing, or washing, or cooking or cleaning. I'm not doing any more unless the men share – and as a duty, not a bit of skylarking when they want exercise or a change of scenery to make them feel good. So if you don't help, we stop work altogether, and you can live off tinned food and wear paper shirts – or however you want it.'

‘This is the most uncivilised notion I ever heard of,' said Handley. ‘Don't
you
think so?' he called to Dean, set between Enid and Maricarmen.