The Flame of Life (37 page)

‘But still one must train for it like a high priest in his or her apprenticeship. God desires this. Train and purify yourselves for it. Imbue yourselves with skill, patience, and faith, and goodness of heart. By regarding Revolution as religious more than political you can never be robbed of your faith by the shallow and insipid world. There is no such thing as a God that failed. Only you fail. The transient world lives in a dream. It lies on the edge of nightmare yet rarely tips into it – though this century of tears isn't over yet. Only good can negate evil.

‘In order to attain and pursue these necessary qualities, Revolution must become the salvation of the individual. There is no contradiction. Revolution is not the normal enslavement of people which we have seen so far. It must mean liberation into mutual good. It must begin in peace and end in peace. A revolution that does not lead to real equality and real freedom is counter-revolution: it takes us back instead of forward. A revolution that is brought about by War and Civil War is likely to destroy freedom. So stop your false pastimes and theoretical pursuits, and instead convert people to the goodness of Revolution by turning it into a religion but without idols, without figureheads, without suffering and killing, and with no more ritual than that of inspired words that will show all people how to understand and love.

‘It is getting light. One side of me is drifting apart from the other. My lucidity is melting. I need a long sleep from which I shall only wake briefly so that Dawley can read this letter. When I kill myself the two sides of me will be so far apart that I'll know they can never come together again.

‘You have often asked why I killed myself. These words must explain it. I am tired and can suffer no more. Someone else must take my guilt and pain. There are many of us, though never enough. I hope I can remove the false influences from my dear and charitable family, having just come from a country where I saw a war being fought with such ferocity that it will bode little good for the future. I hope I am wrong. The world must have had enough of it. I am supposed to be an Englishman, but at the same time we're all foreigners, whether we like it or not, whether we believe it or not. With the elaborate visa of life we are allowed a short stay on earth. The one virtue is to know oneself as a man or woman of the world, and not of one country.

‘I want to save you from the perdition of unnecessary bloodshed, of fruitless hope, of futile and useless suffering. Leave your intoxicating, heart-chilling pastimes and seek the more spiritual way. Be like cosmopolitan Children of the Book. If everyone followed the precept – Know thyself there would surely be no greater Revolution. Don't let the easiest road pull you along it. Deny the fervent drudgery that kills whatever god-fearing regard you have for your fellow women and men. Goodbye, until the final meeting of us all.'

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

‘He's broken my spirit,' Richard said, turning the recorder off.

Handley scratched a match into flame, and relit his cigar. ‘You're lucky. It'll be soonest mended.'

A wine bottle tapped at a glass. Wind banged the house, and thunder rumbled over the chimneys. Richard unknowingly drew his head back in the attitude of Handley himself. ‘You can tell me that when you've had yours broken.'

‘It has been often enough,' Handley said mildly, ‘and I expect it will be again.'

Cuthbert shaded his eyes from the light. John's thoughts in some uncanny way accorded with his own. ‘I'd like to ask him a few questions, though,' Richard called out.

‘Makes sense to me,' Handley said sharply. ‘Slide the brandy along.'

‘That's because he's your brother,' Adam said. ‘We'd still like to talk to him.'

‘Wouldn't we all? But that's his strength: we can't. And never could. He had his language: we had ours. And he's had the final say – at a price.' He collected meat scraps and chicken bones, an overspilling platter which he set in front of the dog.

Having read aloud, and done his best to put expression into it, Dawley had missed some of the letter's finer points. He would study it later, because the argument had seemed confused. For what its message of crack-pot God-love might be worth, he would try to sort it out. But first he'd copy it, and give the original to the museum upstairs.

‘I'm leaving in the morning,' Maricarmen said, breaking the brief silence.

‘I'll be going as well,' Cuthbert told them.

Handley was on his way back to his chair. He was glad, but at the same time regretted it. ‘Where to?'

‘France. Spain, maybe. Where Maricarmen goes, I'll go.'

Handley envied him – for a moment. ‘I'll drive you to London. We'll take the Rambler so's there'll be enough space for your luggage.'

‘I'll need money,' Cuthbert said.

‘There's a tobacco tin on the table in my studio with a few hundred in it. No, don't take that. That's my secret reserve!' He didn't look at Dean while he said it, but knew his sharp ears took it in. I'll trap him yet. ‘We'll call at the bank in town, and get five hundred out. That'll see you right. But don't be too rash with it.'

Dawley was surprised that Cuthbert and Maricarmen had given in so easily, and wondered whether, with the main threat shifted, the community could go on. The shattered spirit did not need peace: with danger pressing like a stone on his veins, he had in fact worked better at his book.

‘What do you want to go to London for?' Enid asked, the first words said directly to him that evening.

She hadn't taken in that her eldest son was leaving home, which seemed strange to him. ‘To see Teddy Greensleaves about my next show,' he said, though hoping to visit Daphne Ritmeester, after such a hard wearing day. He expected an argument, but she was unusually quiet, and he was glad, because even if he'd no valid excuse for the trip he'd have gone just the same.

She got up to make coffee. ‘Dean can help me carry it in.'

‘He is a jack-of-all-trades,' Handley said, touching off laughter along the table.

Adam stood: ‘Father, may I say something?'

Handley poured more brandy. ‘I'm in a good mood. I'll drink myself into a three-cornered pigpen if I'm not careful. John's letter put me into a considerate frame of mind. Makes me realise that life is short. Perhaps I've lost my youth. If so, there's hope I'll paint something yet. It's nice to think, though, that one's sons can become inordinately polite when the occasion arises! Even Cuthbert's getting that way. Maybe it's because he's in love. We all go under in the end. Love is the most extreme form of alienation I know. Or is it marriage?'

‘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.