The Flame of Life

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.