The Flame of Life (33 page)

‘One can't forget that the Germans killed six million of us just because we were Jewish. Several hundred thousand were children, just like Mark and the other children at this house.'

Mandy bent her head, and tears fell on to her knees. ‘I know,' she said. ‘Dad told us years ago. But don't tell Ralph, will you? He couldn't stand it.' Misery was a dragon, a great monster that fixed its teeth into her heart till the pain became unbearable. If Ralph went mad because a small animal of the field had died, what would happen if he heard about the Germans murdering so many children – not to mention all the others who'd done nothing to nobody either? ‘I expect he already knows about it though, and that's why he can't bear to see a hedgehog die.'

Myra smiled, sorry now to have upset her. ‘None of it's your fault.'

‘It is,' she sobbed, ‘or I wouldn't be crying, would I?'

She comforted her, but one couldn't cut it off in midstream: ‘Mark's Jewish, because of the son of a Jewish mother is always Jewish, no matter what so-called race or religion the father is. So I'm not alone! Anyway, I feel that we're all the same sort in this house.'

‘But don't you ever want to go to synagogue?'

‘Sometimes. On the Day of Atonement. That's when all good Jews fast for twenty-four hours – and hope their sins will be forgiven.'

‘That's a fine idea,' said Mandy, drying her eyes with the Kleenex Myra gave her. ‘But I don't think I could go even for four hours without food. Still, it must be good to be Jewish if it makes you feel different.'

‘You think that's good?'

‘I reckon so. It's not dull, is it?'

‘I suppose it's not when you come across people who are anti-Jewish,' Myra said, hoping to change the topic.

‘If somebody got at me because I was Jewish,' Mandy said, ‘I'd scratch their eyes out. They'd never do it again to anybody. And if I was a Catholic and somebody called me for it I'd kill them as well. That's the way Dad brought us up. We used to go to school in rags, and when the kids mocked us we slaughtered 'em. Mam's the same way.'

‘That's why I call your parents generous,' said Myra.

‘Dad's not. He's a mean old swine.'

Myra laughed.

‘If it hadn't been for you,' Mandy held her hand, ‘this community would never have got off the ground.'

Myra stood and put more water in the kettle. Any minute she expected the others to converge on the kitchen. Food was the one unalterable law of life, which she perfectly understood. Maybe they'd found the notebooks. Handley would avoid blaming anyone if it were possible, unless Cuthbert had had a hand in it. In that case there'd be a bit of a row, before calm wrapped them up once more.

As boiling water steamed into the pot, a clear brick-splitting crack of a noise sounded from somewhere outside, its echoes whipping along the belly of the clouds and throwing a final stab back at the windows. Eric Bloodaxe whined with fear, a chilling heart-cry that went on and on.

‘Sounds like a firework,' Mandy said casually.

Myra finished with the tea, but breath pounded in her veins. Handley shouted words which she couldn't quite make out. A scream of rage or pain came from someone.

‘Was it a firework?' said Mandy, sensing it was far worse.

‘It was a gun,' Myra cried, rushing to the window. She looked out, then turned and ran upstairs to Mark when she heard him waking up.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

He'd had enough of John's room. There was nothing more to think about, and not much else to say, and no one in any case to say it to. John was dead, and Handley had lost an elder brother, but the spirit of the world had not come to an end because of that. Life was renewable, even when the angels died. It had to be.

He came downstairs, and went out of the front door to get some fresh air. Pink, white and lemon-coloured roses were in full smooth bloom, scenting the heavy afternoon. Their sweetness cloyed at his nostrils.

On such a day the house and compound seemed to have drawn itself into an imperishable cocoon. The air surrounding it was electrified and brittle, as if one flint-spark only was needed to touch it off like a shell-burst. Maybe he was afraid. His lack of energy made him fear the end. His yen to ward off the rest of the world and protect only himself, Myra and Mark, was bad breath to him. It was a poor wish. He'd had it all along yet not been familiar with what it meant. To get rid of such an idea would mean setting off alone to some other country, thereby confirming that his native energy was not so snuffed out as he had felt it to be for a long time. But weren't those days over for everyone?

He wanted to stay alive, but not by allowing any false desires to get the upper hand. You have to be practical, and think of others who depend on you, even when it seems that your spirit has reached the end. Walking into the yard, he noticed someone in the garage.

Richard saw him from the doorway. ‘Dawley's coming. He's spotted us.'

Handley was in the repair pit. ‘All right,' he said to Adam, who was passing the last pack of notebooks, ‘We've just found 'em, and we're getting 'em out.'

‘Understood,' Adam said, taking the bundle back.

It was a useless and farcial run-around, and Handley was tired of it. The notebooks had turned up, had been seen to be worthless, and here they were caught in a whirlpool of subterfuge just to save somebody's feelings. He wanted nothing more than to go back to his painting and forget the whole thing.

Dawley came in. ‘Any luck?'

‘If you can call it that,' Handley said. ‘Adam and Richard stumbled on 'em down here. They've had time to read a couple.'

Dawley smiled. He too wanted to get back to work, though he was interested to know how they'd landed in the garage.

‘That'll remain a mystery,' said Handley. ‘Might as well forget it. No names, no pack drill.'

‘They're not worth much,' said Adam, when the last one came out of the pit. ‘Shelley may have practised revolution, but he didn't write it. They're only feeble attempts to write dirty stories.' He pulled one from under the string and threw it to Frank, who took it to the entrance where a mirror on the open door reflected a better light.

‘Not that I'm against anybody writing pornography,' Handley said, ‘as long as it's good. I've done a bit myself, though I didn't call it that. I turned out an album of Goyaesque drawings last year – one of them showed a man's head up a woman's cunt, I remember – cartoons of bodies and faces from all angles. Then this potty little Church of England windbag in Cheshire gets hold of one and writes me a whining letter about corrupting youth, though I suppose he wasn't slow in letting his choirboys see them.'

Frank stopped listening. They were right. It was twisted, fly blown trash – a part of Shelley he'd never known about. Shelley's socialism was fired in action, and presumably ended there. The revolutionary government would have shot him as he walked away from the victory parade. What he wrote in his private notebooks had been for amusement, or to resolve sexual problems which were his alone. He'd delved into a world of dreams and fantasies which weren't latched in any way to valid ideas of human decency. Shelley was a practical man, and not an intellectual, otherwise his writings would have theorised about his realities and not dealt with such putrid stuff.

‘Satisfied?' said Handley.

He handed the book back. Before looking into the garage, where Handley stood, he glanced at the mirror, which reflected enough of the yard for Maricarmen to be seen on the other side of it, standing calm and still, and pointing a gun straight at him.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Cuthbert laughed so long that Ralph, thinking he was going off his head, came close to regaining his own sanity. It seemed to Cuthbert that the worst was about to happen now that Maricarmen had gone off with the gun, and when he stopped laughing Ralph was shocked at the acid smile on his face.

‘Don't go after her,' Cuthbert said. ‘Stay with me, and escape the slaughter that's about to start. You'll never hear the last of it, and that's a fact.'

‘I will,' said Ralph grimly. ‘Slaughter won't worry me. When my hedgehog died it was eaten to death by the sort of gnawing life that this community specialises in. If I don't get away it'll eat me as well.'

‘Maybe it's finished us off already.'

Ralph came close: ‘What did you do with the notebooks?'

‘That's easy. When you had them neatly knotted up in the plastic bag I untied it and took them out. The bag you so gleefully confined to the flames contained another sort of old rubbish.'

‘You're the worst of them all,' Ralph said. ‘Number one maggot that leads the others in, and then works hardest to undermine any sign of life. You'll end by eating yourself, not because there's no one left, but because everyone will get wise to you.'

Cuthbert grinned through his unhappiness: ‘There's one born every minute. And the reason Heaven doesn't fold up is that one dies every minute. Even a priest can have his jokes.'

At the first pistol shot Ralph jumped as if the bullet had shattered him. He cried out, and put a hand to his face. No part of Cuthbert's flesh moved. He was pallid, but still sure of himself. To accept his responsibility for it would make him seem naïve before all and sundry, especially Ralph, whom he had always despised. But Cuthbert, in the vital self-criticising space between gunshots, knew himself to be immature because he was afraid of appearing naïve. The only honest way to be unmoved was to admit that he was the cause of Maricarmen running amok.

At the second explosion Ralph sat down by the table, as if the strength of his legs had gone. He once shot a hare with a two-two rifle and saw the hole in its head. There were tears at his eyes as he visualised those grey rings of pulverized human flesh. He lifted his agonised face: ‘I took the notebooks from Shelley's trunk under her bed. But I didn't mean this to happen.' Cuthbert was unable to smile at his weakness.

‘What the hell did you imagine, then?' he shouted as the third shot went off.

‘The future's empty,' Ralph said sadly, as if there had been a time, thought Cuthbert, when he'd expected it to be full. That was the difference between the old days and now. Ralph belonged to the time when a future was said to be possible for everyone. Cuthbert prided himself on knowing that he'd never believed in that sort of Utopian dream. The present day was always a rope around his neck by which he may be hanged before nightfall.

‘You mean it's only full when there's mischief in it?' he demanded. ‘No one but God can take care of the future for us, and fill it or empty it however He likes. That's my insipid though heartfelt conclusion.'

Ralph's eyes shone, a deep uncertainty struggling to assert itself in a threatening manner. He wondered whether he should kill him, and get it over with. But they were too evenly matched, and he had no more treachery left.

‘In a way you're worse than this hotbed of constipated hornets plotting revolution,' Cuthbert went on. ‘They're at least trying to go in the right direction. But you're a compost heap of smouldering English virtues just waiting to be touched off by a spark from the Devil. I've got enough of it in me to see it in you, and to know it's the wrong way for anybody to be.'

‘I used to think you were different,' Ralph said, drawing a coat sleeve across his eyes, ‘but you're a Handley after all. I'm someone who won't ever be tolerated as a human being in a family like this. It just confirms to me that things are like they've always been, and that they'll never alter. All one can do is find a little protected area where nobody can come and spoil it.'

Cuthbert saw him as the common denominator of fear, and he hoped God would protect him – though someone like Ralph would not protect God, except in so far as his own safety was threatened. He lived a life of waking fear, and so his humanity wasn't to be trusted, because, trapped in that fear, the worst injustices could fester roundabout and he wouldn't notice. ‘It's not a God you want, but a nanny. The sort of nursery world you're after doesn't exist.'

‘It must, though,' Ralph said, more tears falling. ‘I don't know what I really want. I'm falling apart, that's all I know.' He leaned against the wall with his head bowed.

At his terrible and disheartened cry Cuthbert became strong. He knew exactly what to do. He put a hand over his shoulder, and felt the sobs that seemed to be breaking Ralph from the inside – just as a black frost breaks up hard soil in the middle of winter. He held his hand. ‘Let God take your guilt, and then you'll find peace.'

Ralph nodded, wiping his eyes on one of Handley's clean paint rags as he followed him to the door.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Dawley dropped. Having lived this moment before allowed him to act with a speed which saved his life – as he spun in his crouched position to face her.

Handley screamed – it sounded like a scream, and no one had heard such a noise from him before – but Dawley's brain was so filled up that he caught only a burst of lungs which disturbed him more than the second bullet. The first broke the mirror, and would have killed him if he hadn't leapt forcefully down. Based on the sharpest instinct, it lead to the pause, which followed the strong and vivid sensation of having been through it already.

He hadn't. But the second shot missed. Glass of the mirror cut his face. It burned like ice. From the crouch he ran. Energy which he thought he had lost rammed itself into every fibre and muscle. He hated life because it humiliated him by making him run, and he felt ashamed. But the shame gave him more strength. He ran towards her, but in a wide zigzag, as in any situation when under fire. His skin felt pitted with fear.

Her aim was out, because she didn't know how to offset the sights to his quick movement. When he got close enough to run at her, he turned the offer down because it seemed still too dangerous. It was the sort of opportunity to close-in which often got you killed. He was exhilarated by his own cunning. On his last angular approach, which should have taken him straight at her, he ran by, into the driveway that led to the front of the house. He was alive. If he hadn't been too busy trying to save himself he would have laughed.