The Flame of Life

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.

She turned, to fire at his back. He zigzagged. He sweated and grunted wanting to run on all fours, but keeping upright, because the speed of it gave less chance of being hit.

Every line of the wall was clear though not so close, detailed like an engraving, rusty and grey in the same eyeful. A daddy-longlegs spider ran out of a crack. He was again bashing his lungs and senses at the limits of his experience. Only a bullet in his back would send him beyond it. There was no cover to lie down or crouch in. He was terrified. He was elated. He smelt soil and rain, pumice and grit, tea leaves and burning paper. He prayed that those by the garage would do something. Vomit was disturbed in his stomach like a cat. He felt too old to live.

In firing at him, she held her back to them. He ran round to the front of the house, and paused under the cover of its far corner, too set on saving himself to feel safe. There was shouting from the yard and garage. He staggered to a further angle of the house.

All was clear. He was alert and intent in case she should appear from any direction. The sky was empty. His hand slid along the smooth warm brick. While he dodged and ran, his wits stayed with him. If he remained still he would be helpless.

So as to get more room to manoeuvre he ran up and on to the lawn behind the house, then came back slowly towards the garage, having completed a circle of it. His thoughts had been pulverised and smashed — his brain rotten, but his body now working to its own good time. He went by the coal sheds and into the yard again, to approach from behind.

Handley, taking cover in the repair pit, saw his chance when Maricarmen turned her back to them.

It was out of the question to chase Dawley. She would not have missed if he hadn’t inexplicably dropped a split second before the first well-aimed shot. How had he known it was already travelling, that her finger at that moment pressed his life away? Then he ran, in that hilarious cowardly fashion, so that she couldn’t aim quickly enough to bring him down. It had seemed easy before she began. Unable and unwilling to move, she decided to stay where she was forever, the gun in her hand and pointing forward, waiting for him to reappear, or to shoot the first person who walked into her sights.

Adam was motioned to her left, by the house. Richard was nodded to the right, along the sheds, while Handley, taking off his shoes, rushed like a nimble and silent cat. He put a sudden steely grip around her so that the gun dropped. He’d not been a real worker since early youth, though his arms drew enough force from the shoulder-blades to hold the burden he had taken on. But the pressure needed to stop her struggling free and picking up the gun was almost more than he had, and he felt a cracking at the heart.

He pulled her to the cover of the caravans, so that no curious passer-by along the road might see. She moaned, and turned passive at this undignified end to her attempt at killing. It had seemed easy during the months she had thought about it, and now that it was over, and she had failed, it again seemed easy, and she even more of a fool at having bungled it. A sort of black fear took hold of her, that her defeat and helplessness would bring down a thousand indignities.

Adam emptied the gun. She had fired three shots. Maybe the others were echoes, or the normal multiplications of fear. Spent and live cases fell from the chambers, and he bent with trembling hands to pick them up.

‘Run to my studio,’ Handley called to Richard, ‘and in the drawer under the left-hand window you’ll find an old cigar tin full of bangers left over from last bonfire night. Bring ’em out, and set two or three off, so nobody’ll wonder what the noise was.’

Maybe the whole of the county constabularly was already converging from all points on to the house. The shots had certainly gone a dozen miles into his heart and soul, for he was shaking — like a bloody lily, he said afterwards — and asking Maricarmen in a gentle voice to get up and try to walk. The instinct of simple loyalty told him to make sure neither outsiders nor police poked their noses where they ought not to belong. Even though Maricarmen had gone all out for murder he still saw her as one of them. Luckily he and Dawley had enough of the soldier in them to handle it, otherwise it might have been difficult to keep one or two corpses under the doormat.

‘Get Enid or Myra to come out of their foxholes,’ he told Adam. ‘Even Mandy. Anybody. Get going. Quick.’ He caught the touch of panic edging into his voice, and told himself to check it.

Dawley, sitting on the steps above the garage, had a good view of the yard. The danger was over, and he lit a cigarette. He’d been in the middle of it. So had they all. Even while running from Maricarmen, he’d felt no panic. Death mattered and he was afraid, but he’d been reasonable all the same. He was undefeated, and cool, but he was close to weeping. If you acted wildly when facing it you let it master you. Not that he tried to be calm. If you had to try you weren’t calm, though that was often all you could do. Luckily he had kept cool without knowing it, which was what saved him — that, and knowing what to do.

He sat and smoked, as if after some hard work during the quietest of days. But his senses were fragmented, a feeling as if they were melting into each other. If he stood up he would fall down. Maricarmen had gone into the house with Enid, and Handley came over: ‘Let’s have a fag.’

He passed one.

‘You’re a cool bloody customer.’

‘Thanks for saving my life,’ Dawley said.

‘It was mine as well, when I was creeping up on her.’

‘Is she all right?’

‘She will be.’

‘She imagines I’m responsible for Shelley’s death.’

Handley sat by his side. ‘I feel sorry for her, at the moment.’

‘If I’d been killed in Algeria instead of him,’ Dawley said, ‘Myra could have made out it was his fault for organising the gun-running in the first place. That, too, would have been a lie.’

‘You’d better tell it to Maricarmen.’

‘I will. If I get the chance.’

Handley threw his cigarette away. ‘Tastes like shit. She’s got to be told the facts of life. Both you and Shelley knew what you were doing. We’ll have a meeting to sort everything out.’

‘I’ll read John’s last letter,’ said Dawley, ‘that he wrote in Gibraltar, and handed to me as I got on to the plane. I was to read it in six months, he said, or when I thought “circumstances demanded it”. That time seems to be about now, I should say.’

Handley agreed so firmly that he laughed. ‘Do you think it’ll hold us together, or blow us apart?’

‘I haven’t read it.’

‘I won’t be able to do another stroke of work till I know what’s in it.’

Richard set a handful of fireworks along the front wall. His first match was blown out, so he cupped the second carefully. ‘You won’t have long to wait,’ said Dawley.

The first banger wasn’t as loud as a pistol shot, but it brought a cry from Maricarmen who had been given a couple of valium pills and put to bed. Handley felt pity for her. The second and third banger went off, to the amusement of the butcher who was passing by, and paused to watch those mad Handleys playing with fireworks in midsummer.