The Flame of Life

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Ralph Spilsby regarded himself as an honourable man, but since marrying Mandy he had lived on his in-laws and earned no money at all. He therefore computed to the best of his ability, being honourable, how much in cash he owed the Handley community, hoping one fine day to pay every shilling back.

The fact that he was in their debt, yet went on living with them, tormented him from time to time, though Handley to his credit did not remind him of it, nor tell him to get a job, any more frequently than he did to a member of his own family. But Ralph kept his calculations, and waited with fierce patience for the day when one of his rich aunts would die and leave him a fortune.

He came to live with the Handleys because he’d married Mandy. But also he valued the priceless silence of the countryside. When even those sounds were pushed into the background, all remaining noises were his own, and in the middle of the day, with the kids at school and Handley in his studio, it was indeed peaceful around the compound. Dawley’s wife Nancy had left the community and taken their two kids, so even that made things quieter.

A calm life to Ralph meant hearing no other noises but his own, for then the silences belonged totally to him. He wanted infinite space and emptiness in all directions, that he could fill with his own speech and movement, shapes and colours. He had an active imagination, and sat alone like a king, quiescent in his benign selfishness, which was his one pure reason for having been born, and the nearest he ever got to real happiness. He thought it was this craving for peace and silence that made him an honourable man.

He got up from his log in the paddock, and talked inwardly with himself while burning yesterday’s paper-rubbish from the house. Maricarmen came through the gate. ‘I thought everyone was taking a nap,’ she said.

‘I can’t rest at the moment.’ He raked stray bits of paper closer to the fire. ‘I prefer to sleep at night.’

‘Do you like being in this community?’

‘I can’t live anywhere else, so I have to,’ he said, kicking a pile of school exercise books into the flame.

‘You’re honest. Why not?’

‘My wife’s here. I have shelter. That’s a good reason to like it. And I eat good food.’

‘Do you agree with their ideas?’

‘I don’t have to,’ he smiled.

She sat on the log. ‘If you have pride you do.’

‘What does anyone want with that?’ he laughed — uneasily.

‘Aren’t you a man?’

‘A gentleman,’ he said firmly, and she was afraid of the violence in his voice, ‘who has all the pride he needs. I believe in doing as little harm as possible to my fellow-men, and living as quietly as I can.’

‘That means you consider yourself one of the elite, living off those who do real work.’

A smile disguised his face. ‘There’s a lot of unemployment in the country. It would be unjust of me to take somebody else’s job.’

‘With a socialist system there’d be work for everybody.’

‘I suppose there would be a lot of pushing around,’ he said. ‘Who do you live off?’

‘I’ve worked since I was sixteen. I’ve picked olives off the ground, or harvested oranges, and have done domestic work in hotels. I’ve worked in prison. I’ve worked in the textile factories of Sabadell. I’m not a stranger to it.’ She was angry with him.

A bag of broken plastic toys swept into flame, and they moved from searing heat. ‘Those who don’t work,’ she said, ‘should have no food. In a democratic system a steel-worker and a coalminer would have ten votes on the electoral roll because they are what Shelley used to call “primary producers”.’

‘What about doctors and teachers?’

‘They’re important, too.’

‘Everybody is important,’ he said. ‘Your beliefs and Dawley’s are similar: ruthless justice. Two of a kind. To me all people are equal.’

Her eyes were full of scorn. ‘I don’t understand that sort of equality.’

Large drops of rain were spitting on to the fire. They watched it, drawn by its noise and little puffs of vapour. Grass and earth sent up a heavy smell of pungent soil. The rain seemed weightier than the steely needles of water that fell among the olive trees behind her village at home. The soil here soaked up water, whereas there it ran into gullies and fed the Ebro, unmistakable in its purpose.

Ralph wanted to go into the house where it was dry and there’d be fresh hot tea to drink, but he couldn’t move or run while Maricarmen stood there. Her thin blouse was quickly soaked, the upper part of her breasts showing pink through the material. Noting the colour and shape, he blushed and looked towards the hedge.

She smiled at his stupid embarrassment, and didn’t think Dawley would turn away so readily. Nor would Handley, who often stared at her either as an artist, or with the brazenness of an older man.

She walked to the house. Everyone agreed that she and Dawley would get on well together, but so far she had avoided him so successfully that she thought he was deliberately keeping out of her way, which only proved how guilty he felt because of what he had done to Shelley. This made her more determined to settle him for his crime. Yet she must have proof. Her sense of justice required it. To kill for a good reason was still murder. If society killed for a bad reason, it was justice. Yet where was the difference if you had no belief in the so-called rights of the State?

On the other hand, to kill someone when you had proof of his guilt was also an act of revenge. Was that better for your conscience than an act of passion? Society carried out these acts of revenge all the time, and in her name who had never sanctioned it. And yet why should she imitate a society she despised? It confused and worried her. But the fact that she had to kill Dawley kept her calm, though she couldn’t do so till she had proper evidence on which to convict him. If she didn’t find enough proof to back up her intuition, which could only mean that he was innocent, then she would go quietly back to political work in Spain.

She went to help in the kitchen. Enid, stirring a huge pan of sauce on the stove, turned at the noise of the door: ‘You got caught in the rain. I’d change if I were you.’

‘It’s nothing.’

‘You won’t say that if you get pneumonia. I’ll lend you a blouse if you haven’t got a clean one. We’re about the same size in front.’

They looked after her as if she were some delicate flower who might perish in their hideous climate, not knowing how bad Spanish weather could be, how she’d often been caught in snow and rain on journeys that none in this house might survive. Such persistent solicitousness affronted her pride, yet out of natural politeness she said nothing, and went up to change.

In her room she rubbed herself dry. Her only other brassiere was still damp, so she put on a vest and clean blouse. Suddenly tired and tempted to lie down, she wondered whether such lethargy hadn’t come on her since seeing the person she had decided to kill, a state of somnolence in which the act would resolve itself without any effort at all.

She looked at the grey light of the window, rain hammering the glass, full blown trees creaking in the garden. Who wouldn’t be sleepy with such a green and deadly landscape? Who wouldn’t act in it?

A dozen cups and saucers had been set out over the formica-topped table, and two-year-old Mark looked on gravely from his highchair as Myra clattered a spoon into each saucer. ‘He’s an intelligent child,’ Maricarmen said.

‘They are, at his age.’

She liked Myra, though they had made little contact so far. She sat down, but feeling livelier in face of such activity, and the high wattage bulbs radiating in the large kitchen. At the slightest sign of dim weather, or hours before dusk, even if it was bright outside, every houselight was turned on. In Spain one small bulb sufficed for a whole thrifty family, and here the continual waste made her uneasy. ‘Who is Mark’s father?’ she asked, not finally clear on who belonged to whom.

‘Frank. I had Mark in Tangier just after he went off with Shelley. Whose did you think he was?’ she asked, seeing an expression on her face as if a needle had been stuck into her.

‘I thought maybe he was Handley’s. It’s a strange house.’

Myra took a cake tin out of the cupboard. ‘It is if you’re a stranger to it.’

‘I mean,’ said Maricarmen, ‘it’s very normal in one way because all the women stay in the kitchen, while the men do their own work. It’s not what I’d call a liberal community — the men plotting revolution and equality, and the woman kept at their traditional labour.’

Myra laid pieces of cake on a platter, and cut bread for sandwiches. This girl was saying what went continually through her own mind. ‘There isn’t too much to do. It’s shared between Enid, myself, Mandy and the two au pair girls. It’s mechanised. Ralph and Cuthbert, as well as Albert now and again, take care of the garden and garage chores.’

‘It’s the principle of the system,’ Maricarmen went on.

Myra was interested to know how she would alter it.

‘I’m not sure.’

‘There you are, then.’

At that, she was stung to reply: ‘Everyone over eighteen, male or female, should do a day’s work in the kitchen. That would include Mr Handley, who may be an artist, but even an artist has to eat.’

Myra laughed. ‘Let’s talk to Enid, then we can put our new system forward at the next meeting. You’re living in the house, so you can vote, and that’ll make four of us. It’s a pity Nancy left, because she’d have been with us. But if Mandy can talk Ralph to our side that will be five. Cuthbert might back us for devilment if he sees his father’s against it. That’ll be six-four. We may do it.’ She was surprised at her optimism, and renewed energy at the thought of breaking the usual flaccid routine. Mark clattered his spoon against the highchair tray, and made a noise as if asking for cake — which was passed to him in a plastic dish.

‘It’ll be interesting to see if they really believe in equality,’ Maricarmen said. ‘But don’t say anything till the day of the meeting, then perhaps it’ll come as such a shock that no one will oppose it!’

Myra was dubious. ‘You’ve had experience at this sort of thing.’

‘Of what?’ Enid came in from the hall with a bowl of cooking apples, which she set on the table and began to peel for sauce. Myra went through the plan, elaborating each stage with Maricarmen, who began to help Enid.

‘I’ve been in it so long,’ Enid said, ‘that I’d die if I ever got out of it. But I’m only forty-odd so I can always start a new life. It’ll certainly be new for Albert if we pull it off.’

‘Pull what off?’ Handley demanded, coming in from the garden, trousers and jacket smeared with paint. Even his face was pocked with colour.

Enid stood to pour his tea. ‘Just one of those little domestic issues that bore you to death.’

He sat down, and held up both hands which were also caked with paint: ‘I’ve always been a dirty worker. It’s just that I forget myself. Splash, splash, splash.’ He stretched his legs towards the Aga. ‘Any biscuits? I get a ravenous appetite, being the breadwinner.’

‘You look as if you paint houses, not pictures,’ Myra said, mixing eggs for a custard.

‘Thank God it is pictures.’ Handley lifted his cup for more tea. ‘We’d be on bread and jam if it was houses.’

‘Some people are happy with bread and jam,’ said Enid.

Handley sneered — but good-naturedly. ‘They stick together longer.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘Too many flies on ’em.’ He laughed into his empty teacup. ‘I get thirsty.’

She filled it. ‘Choke.’

‘How are you enjoying life in the commune?’ he asked Maricarmen.

She put out her finger, and Mark gripped it. ‘It’s restful, but I’d better start work sometime.’

‘If you want to make yourself useful, it’s up to you.’

Enid put the finished apples into a cauldron and set them on the stove. ‘She is already.’

He reached for the cake platter. ‘That’s fair, then.’

‘We all work in this house,’ said Mandy, just coming in. ‘Except you. You just splash paint about.’

‘How’s my lovely nubile daughter?’ he asked, always able to forgive her taunts — unless they were a prelude to wanting money.

‘Your Dad’s an artist,’ Enid said sharply, whose ire rose whenever Handley went soft over his daughter. ‘So have a bit of bloody respect for his work.’

Mandy had no fear of her father, but went into sullen silence at any outburst from her mother — who was never above a stinging slap across the face.

‘I’m full of tea,’ Handley said, ‘and sweet things to eat, and my family is in its usual state of mutual antagonism, so I think I’ll get to my solitary studio and work till I drop. Goodbye all. Don’t heave on your plots and ploys while I’m away.’

There was no response when he went out.