The Flame of Life

CHAPTER FORTY

‘This is where we should have started,’ he said when he closed the door, ‘instead of with Shelley’s pathetic bits of pornography.’

‘We weren’t to know,’ said Ralph, taking drawing-pins from the map corners.

‘All trace of John must be eliminated, except for the family and personal photographs that can be framed and put on a sideboard, or carried in a wallet till they drop to pieces. Nobody’s been to Dover since John died, to cut the grass and put new flowers on his grave, because they’ve been so obsessed with this potty little inappropriate shrine.’

‘I think Handley has been there,’ Ralph said justly, crushing the first map into a ball of wastepaper.

‘That was only an excuse to get to London and see his mistress,’ Cuthbert told him, unplugging aerials and power-points to the transceiver.

To rip all meaningful gear from the four-walled psyche of John’s holy room was so grandiose an idea that Ralph was saddened at never having thought of it himself. He could not have done it alone, though, for the power of the individual had its limits, which led him to see, as they went on with their vandalising labours, that maybe there was some virtue in co-operation after all.

Cuthbert was at the door, propping the heavy communications receiver on his knee to open it. ‘Just follow me with the transmitter,’ he said sternly.

While the others were busy in the kitchen and dining-room talking of the day’s events, and about food for the coming supper, they stepped downstairs and went out of the rarely used front door, avoiding the yard and the predatory sentinel growls of Eric Bloodaxe.

They walked unseen to the far corner of the paddock, where a suitable grave awaited their burdens, a deep place already dug by Dawley as a slit trench for the children to play in, so long neglected that grass grew from the sides and almost obscured it. Cuthbert pulled back an armful, showing a foot of muddy water in the bottom. He heaved the receiver in, a deep thumping splash as it found its final resting-place in the drek.

He was glad now that no one had been killed because of their folly. It needed more to destroy the community than attempted murder. He believed that God would look after them, and stop them veering from the true path — the truest path being where no path existed at all, which was where he wanted to go. Maybe Dawley had discovered this magic and decisive region, and Uncle John was there already. He shivered, and checked himself. There was much to do yet before the community crumbled. Setbacks only seemed to make it stronger.

The transmitter had been set on the grass, and Cuthbert pushed it with his foot so that it hit the receiver already there, and bounced against the soft soil. Part of the lower trench fell in.

Ralph walked across the paddock, as if the dreadful noise burned him, glad to get out of earshot before anyone caught them at their game. Cuthbert followed, back to the house, for the conversion of John’s den must be done by the time Handley returned from Gould’s Lake.

They worked hurriedly, Ralph’s twinges of conscience entirely gone. The rest of the maps came down. All logs and notebooks were crammed into baskets. The desk was cleared, racks dusted and posters destroyed in Cuthbert’s excess of self-imposed evangelical uprooting. But he knew he was right, saw himself as the appointed discarder of the playthings of a community that was spiritually at the end of its tether. The false gods must be thrust out if righteous and proper life was to resume its course.

It looked like the sort of bare plain room one let to students or put aside for guests. He gave it a final glance, as if he would never see it again. Then they descended with their last loads and went unobserved to the paddock, to fill in the trench, and burn all incriminating paper, this time with no mistake.

Smoke rose from the declining fire in the paddock, mingling with the damp afternoon air as Handley went in by the kitchen door. Tea was still being served, and Myra was at the stove making Mark’s feed. ‘Where’s Cuthbert?’ Handley wanted to know.

‘He went upstairs to comfort Maricarmen.’

He poured tea. ‘I’m as thirsty as a centipede. She’ll need a bit of calming down, I expect. I’m glad he has the necessary human feelings about him, though.’

‘That walk took you long enough,’ Enid said, coming in from the dining-room.

‘I did a sketch while I was about it. Can’t have people wondering what I was doing on Gould’s Lake. They’re a suspicious lot around here.’

‘You think of everything.’

He wondered why there was such irony in her voice.

‘Nearly everything. I’m sure I wasn’t missed.’

‘You weren’t,’ she answered scornfully. It didn’t take much, he saw, for a good mood to melt. She went out, and he heard her talk in the dining-room to Dean — whom he couldn’t abide these days. He was only waiting for him to go, though there seemed little hope of it unless he was booted out bodily. If he didn’t take himself off soon he’d discuss with Cuthbert how it might be done. Everybody was too tolerant of him, especially Enid, who’d gone soft in a rather motherly way. But Handley told himself magnanimously that he was too proud to be vindictive, and went off to the peace of his studio for an hour before dinner.

Her straight dark hair spread to one side, except for a few strands that lay on her pale forehead. She looked at the plain white ceiling, preferring emptiness to the humiliation of seeing other people’s faces. There were the marks of tears on her cheeks. She hardly breathed: using as little air as possible would keep out her shame.

Cuthbert sat in a chair by the bed. ‘Feeling better?’

It was a meaningless question. ‘I’m leaving tomorrow.’

He waited. She was rational again. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Back to Spain. That direction.’ But she spoke in a dead voice, which wrung his heart because he knew there was so much life in her. ‘I shan’t be taking Shelley’s trunk. Myra told me what was in it.’

‘Any idea what you’ll do?’

‘No.’

‘One needs to have plans.’ His words were irrelevant. To those in distress you only listened.

‘It’s no good thinking what to do. I’ll pack, and go in the morning.’

He bent close and pressed her hand, feeling a response, Any comfort was better than none at a time like this, she told herself, when she had no right to any.

‘I’ll be going with you,’ he said.

‘I don’t love you.’

He winced, but only inwardly. ‘I don’t want love. I give it. How can I expect it? Giving it means everything.’

‘Don’t leave me,’ she said.

Not like Shelley, he thought, or the Dawleys of the world. ‘Come down to supper.’

‘I can’t.’

‘They want you to. They love you. The community’s successful in that respect. They’ve worked out a way of living that takes in everybody. You’ve been forgiven for this afternoon. All you have to do is turn up at supper, so that we can make our goodbyes.’

‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘Who does?’ he wondered.

‘I think you do,’ she said with a sad, half departed smile. ‘I must get up and wash my face.’

Once more he had escaped, though bleached by God’s wrath. Mad man, mad woman, mad dog — the many manifestations of one’s defective self — year after year they came at him with fang and claw, bullet and fire, rain and snow. What could he do to hold them at bay?

He went to the stove, hardly able to keep on his feet from so much whisky and close air.

Maybe he might after all stay alive and see his son grow up. The coffee-smell freshened him. It wasn’t much to want, though in that blinding minute of conflict with Maricarmen he had asked and been given it by something which did not have a name and never could have. He was alive, and wondered why he should feel worse now than at the moment of peril. But the blood ran in such a way, the spirit worked peculiarly, and if the warning came afterwards instead of at the actual time, then perhaps the reason was that he must double his precautions against any such danger ever coming back.

The bulb filament glowed with a piercing question mark and lit the table brilliantly, showing up the half-drunk bottle of whisky. He took John’s letter from under the typescript. It was a poor exchange: a wad of paper for a man. John had died when he should have lived. Dawley didn’t think suicide was sinful, but would never do it himself because it was even more than a sin. There was no name for it. A man who killed himself had never finished being born. His mental sufferings were those of birth that as a grown man he was still by accident going through. The process overwhelmed him, for which he was to be pitied.

The whisky deadened him, but the coffee cleared away some of the deadness. His thoughts perished. He stood at the door of the caravan and breathed fresh air. It was still light, but dimming at the ruins of the sky which was blue and heavy. He was tired, but as if he would never sleep again, a feeling he’d often known in Algeria after real exhaustion. The evening smelled good, a trace of smoke from the paddock fire. Eric Bloodaxe growled at nothing, his chain scraping along the coconut matting of his kennel. Dawley put John’s letter into his trouser pocket and strode across to the house, to kiss Mark goodnight before supper. Nothing perished for ever.