The Flame of Life (5 page)

Myra created a kingdom of ease and plenty. She drove to the markets of Hitchin and Bedford, and came back with a car-load of baskets and bottles and boxes and crates, their son Mark strapped high in his chair beside her, watching rabbits run before them on the country lanes. The house prospered in its mildness, set for a warm summer and a comfortable year, which Frank felt the need of in spite of its dullness, because it was only a few months since he had left the perilous sands and hills of Algeria.

Fetching Nancy and the kids from Nottingham hadn't turned out as he'd expected, but he'd enjoyed the train ride, the usual thrill of going north again. At St Pancras he went by the ticket man to the waiting train – coiling upshoots of grey steam between each carriage.

Passing a stretch of the M1 beyond Hendon the train was overtaking every car on it. Factory walls of Vauxhall and SKF at Luton slid past. A solitary man walked across some tips, seen as William Posters, that indefatigable fugitive from Dawley's past who was nowadays turning more into a ghost and floating further from him than ever.

Rich fields and soil showed the great wealth of England, Pylons rose and fell in their lines, laced up a couple of woods and a crest of rising ground. More farms, rich land, empty roads now that the motorway had sucked off traffic. Crossing the Trent he thought that in middle age one turned to the past so as to arm oneself against what was left of the future.

He was almost sorry to leave the soothing train. The man of action is drawn deeper into rest than most. On a bus through town to the estate he noticed how the centre was splitting into car parks and one-way streets, dead acres and blocks of flats covering old houses now down and gone forever. It gave him a feeling that, in tune with his own travels and actions, the rest of the world had not lived either in vain or idleness. His favourite birthplace and city had done things for itself, though he didn't suppose that those who had stayed thought about it in the same comfortable nostalgic way that he did going through on the bus.

The black slum-zones remained, factories and gasometers, crippled churches and decrepit schools. Handley had offered the Rambler, expecting him to bring Nancy and the kids back on the same day with their belongings tied to the roofrack, as if she would leave job, give up house, and snap ties like a nomad who'd been a few days there instead of all her twenty-eight years. Handley sounded as unrealistic as ever, yet the impossible happened. She severed her woven bounds and was on her way back with Dawley in a week. He was locked in the shock of speed, the flowering of unexpected decisiveness that stopped him knowing what he finally felt about it. He could only be mystified, until calmness of heart returned that would make things plain. In the meantime he preferred to think (in his male and blinkered way, he told himself later when the whole thing got smashed) that Nancy loved him, and did not want to live alone with the kids.

Having wife and girlfriend in the same house he could sleep with neither openly, but visited one or the other in secret – whenever the good mood took him, and if it coincided with the convenience and desire of the woman herself. He kept separate from Myra and Nancy by occupying the caravan. He thought he was in love with both, and this disorientated him, proving something he already knew: that there was no ideal way of existence. Such split love was like having his feet on two different lifeboats in the middle of a stormy sea and far from land. But he liked it, and thought that was how life should be.

It was good being in a community, as long as there were enough women to go round. With the coming of Cuthbert this was no longer the case. Not that Frank was jealous of his women – there was so much trust in the air that no one cared one way or the other. Neither was he aware of anyone being jealous: what harm would it do if he was robbed of either of them, even if he did love both? A fair proof of love was the ability to lose it like a man when it was taken from you, and the only way to enjoy it was to get all you could while you could.

Cuthbert did not seem to fit in, and Handley plainly thought the same, though spoilt his case by shouting it loud and clear, for it was fatal to let Cuthbert know that you hated his guts. It paid to say nothing, and lead him to believe you were the strong silent type who might quietly bash his face in if he ever stepped too far out of line.

The mellow notes of early nightingales sounded in the lilac trees of the upper terrace. He stood with rolled-up shirt sleeves, and a cool breeze played over his skin. He saw Handley by the kitchen door. ‘What's going on? You look as if your liver's on the blink.'

‘Mandy's miscarrying. Enid and the doctor's with her. She's got moonbeams in her belly.'

Frank lit two fags and gave him one. ‘She's been taking life easy.'

‘Her heart's not in it, though, and who can blame her with that milk-brain of a husband? I should never have let them get married, but what can you do if they're set on it?' His sharp pallid features were screwed with anguish as Mandy's screams burst from an overhead window.

‘Not much,' Dawley admitted.

‘It's that doctor,' he went on. ‘She was bleeding a few days ago, and when she asked if she ought to go to bed, he laughed in his jolly old English avuncular fashion and said, “Oh no, just carry on as usual and get plenty of exercise, because you're young and healthy and as strong as a horse.” What can you do with a murderer like that except take him out to sea and drop him from a helicopter? He's up there now trying to stop her bleeding to death, but when this lot's over I wouldn't go to him again even if my arm was hanging off. He's the sort that rants against abortion but goes on killing foetuses by the dozen whenever he gets the chance – not to mention people.'

‘She's not lost it yet,' said Frank. ‘Maybe she won't.' It was the wrong thing to say, but what was right at such a time?

Handley didn't think much of it. At the moment he was a pessimist, though when all was going well he was the most optimistic person in the world. ‘It tears my guts. First John killed himself, and now Mandy's losing her baby. There's too much death. I hate death.' He said it as if there were some connection between the two catastrophes, which made Dawley wonder if he were using it to work himself into a state where life became interesting as well as insupportable, so that he could get back into his painting.

They strolled towards the boundary wall, and Dawley looked at the façade of the house. ‘I didn't know you'd put Mandy in Uncle John's old room.'

‘I didn't. Myra gave up hers. It's more convenient. She certainly takes the weight of the world on her shoulders. I often wonder if we're worth it, the ton of work she puts in. Still, I never was one to feel guilty when somebody does me a favour. That's not my line, though I'd like her to know I appreciate it. But telling somebody isn't enough. There has to be more to it than that.'

‘You slept with her last night,' said Frank. ‘I hope that put the idea across to her.'

Handley jumped. In spite of the lax rules of community-living he didn't like to make more turmoil than he himself would want to put up with. It was hard to drop your lifelong habits when everyone was watching. If he got rid of them at all he'd rather it were in secret, so as to give them most effect, but that would be going against the spirit of the community, so he was split two ways, which was better than the usual six. ‘You're a right bastard. But you're wrong.' There was a pause. ‘Anyway, what makes you think I did?'

Frank didn't know whether to believe him or not. ‘Same as tonight. Couldn't get my head down. Copped you sneaking out of the house with your tail between your legs. Never saw anyone with such a hangdog look.'

Handley felt it was his turn to laugh. ‘Let me know if it gets too much for you.'

‘I don't possess anyone.'

‘You will, when they possess you.'

‘I suppose it is a way of two people staying glued if they can't bear to lose each other,' Dawley said.

‘It's inhuman not to be jealous,' said Handley, ‘I would be – especially of somebody like Myra. You sound as if you enjoy her – as a woman, like.'

Dawley wouldn't answer. He usually did, but why tell everyone? In his gloating, Handley was pushing it, taking the unwritten rules of freedom too much to heart. Dawley wondered what he'd say if he knew someone had been sleeping with Enid which, by the law of jungle-averages, might have happened.

‘The trouble is,' Handley confessed, ‘I don't really enjoy it unless the woman does. If I try too hard the woman often doesn't. It's love that makes 'em come, not effort – sparking both of you off at the right time. Then, again, if a woman don't make it, it's no good either of you feeling guilty over it. I knew a chap who used to apologise if he didn't bring his girlfriend off. She had a nervous breakdown. Best thing is not to let them see you worry. Just care for them, as much as you do for yourself. I cottoned on to it when I got married, I suppose. The first act of civilisation is to get married. I've got seven kids, so what else can I say?' He smoothed down his moustache, and grinned, as if he were a young man again.

Mandy was quieter. The house had settled to sleep under the veil of their subdued talk. ‘It's also the most uncivilised act possible,' Handley snapped, changing his mind. ‘The one social law that stops the progress of humanity dead in its tracks.'

‘Where does kicking against it get us,' Frank said wryly, ‘except into this weird little set-up that we call a community?'

He was disappointed at not seeing Dawley's face. Was he also full of nails about it? We've all got out reasons for being here. It wasn't that he didn't trust Dawley, just that he didn't know how conscious he was of the ramifications of his altered existence.

‘It would be nice to know what living like this is doing to us,' Dawley wondered.

Handley saw that he might be in danger of underestimating him – another pitfall of community life: ‘We'll find out when it begins to fall apart.' Perhaps, in the obscurity beyond any immediate concern for Mandy's suffering, they saw something that might contribute to the community's smash up.

Handley had a vision of Cuthbert's face at dinner, of his smile in fact at any time during the last month or so. The truth of what it had been trying to say, and at the same time to hide, came on him now, If there was anyone in the establishment (he preferred that word to ‘community') who wanted to break things up, it was Cuthbert. One false move on his part, Handley decided, and he'd get booted out. ‘Did you say there was a light in John's room?'

Dawley wandered what the long silence had been for. ‘There still is. I thought Mandy was in it.'

During the few moments of peace Dawley had an unrealistic and irrational wish for it to reign forever. But it was not possible, especially when Handley strode aggressively towards the house, his eyes burning and lips set tight, on his way to tackle Cuthbert who was malingering in the forbidden territory of John's memorial room.

CHAPTER SIX

The house was like a hornets' nest, and Cuthbert wanted to cut off. He turned the handle and went into the room that had been fitted as a shrine to Uncle John, arranged precisely like his den in the far-off scorched-down house of Lincolnshire.

There were the same shelves of books, and on a wall were pinned Algerian maps, while along another were colourful sheets of RAF topographical charts covering South Vietnam. Under these was a single bed, and then an altar of radio equipment that hadn't been switched on since it was set up.

He wondered which knob to turn for sound, as another shattering cry of pain shot up from Mandy somewhere below, followed by a heartburst of guilt and sympathy from her husband Ralph. The padded earphones muffled a shout from Handley, and a lugubrious howl by Eric Bloodaxe. He heard no more – and knew how it was that insane and epileptic John had clung to life and sensibility in this zoo-den for so long.

The light held him in its circle, head and hands outlined against the complicated façade of transmitter-receiver. His slender fingers reached across the desk for a pencil pad, as if to switch on, tune-in, take down a message. But he covered the paper in rounds and squares: getting words by morse or voice was not meant for the sane and jittery like him. The animal world was blocked off under the twin clamps of padded earphones. He felt safe. No one could ever tell anything that he would see sense in. Neither God nor father nor friend nor teacher with knowledge or authority could impart useful advice. He who sought good counsel only advertised his weakness. He who took messages and signs as having any relevance to himself merely showed his helplessness before the ways of the cruel and fully designing world.

Handley thought that no one came into this room without his permission, for he alone had the key. But Cuthbert borrowed it for a day and got another made. He liked it here. Even though John hadn't lived between these particular bricks his spirit nevertheless seemed to have spread peace within. John had never been placid, as his suicide on the boat at Dover proved, but maybe this congenial aura was a last gift to the family, in which Cuthbert was able to rest from a world that he couldn't tolerate either.

In the old days Uncle John had shaken his head over adolescent Cuthbert, for John's gentle eyes were hurt at his unnecessary obstinacy. He had wistfully pronounced him to be politically ineducable – not like the others, who drank in his anarchistic and humane socialism with a greedy suspect interest. Cuthbert had always despised rules and principles, and before leaving Oxford he had formulated it thus: never listen or learn; never take advice; never work; never fall in love. You would then live a full and satisfying life. Allow yourself no way out. Hold these precepts like a magazine of musket balls for a last-ditch defence of your true and basic integrity, and you will need neither loyalty nor friends. To be an everything-man you had to be an ever-man and a no-man, an impermeable, invulnerable, impenetrable nothing-man living solely on the meat of your own life and nobody else's.