The Flame of Life

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

They put their trunk and cases in the big rear space of the Rambler, and leaned close against each other in the back seat without saying a word the whole way to Welwyn.

No speech could touch the galaxy of devastation inside her. Dawley’s farewell grip of her hand, and his bereaved immobile face, were still there. She had not spilled his blood, but felt she had killed his revolutionary spirit nevertheless, and because of this could not remember what Shelley looked like any more. The only chance of retrieving something from the wreckage would be if Handley turned the car round and took her back to Dawley. But she was empty and icy, and could ask for nothing. The stiffness of pride and honour had taken over from the heart.

When she touched Cuthbert’s hand, it was not out of affection, but to feel skin which had living blood behind it. He sensed the depth of her loss. Its misery spilled over to him. So he responded to her touch, but with casual affection, reasoning that the poison of her recent disasters would slowly spill out — the further they got from the house. And if it came back at times he would be there to guide her through any psychic upset. He was calm and solicitous, and would wait for her to collapse, if she had to, so that he could mend her. By then she might grow to love him. If not he would be satisfied for the privilege of being near. He settled for such conditions because it seemed the only way she could begin to love. She was someone who needed life itself to break her down, and life itself to mend her.

Handley enjoyed driving on empty lanes. He liked handling a car, and he loved painting. He was fond of women, and he relished the countryside. In other words, he felt in a good mood, wearing his new brown suit with collarless shirt and button-up waistcoat, watch chain and ankle boots, cigar and aftershave. He’d even cut his nails the night before. A poor old coney was flat on the road, fur and blood spreadeagled. The machine age was mixed with his bucolic aspirations. His obsession with machines was entangled with a desire for people and slow-motion living, the beautiful raped by the abominable and all in the same body and soul. He fondled machines, angles, emotives forces that he could not see but which functioned under the slightest whim of his will. Maybe if I got this peace of mind I’m always hankering for I wouldn’t paint, he thought.

Adam and Richard would also be packing up soon. With four people pulling out he wondered if the community would keep going. Thinking of the future made him so nervous that, coming to the main road, a lorry almost ground him into the tarmac because it was too close and fast behind. A duel of hooters followed, till Handley’s powerful engine pulled him out of earshot. Fluent and flowered curses died in his gorge because Maricarmen sat in the back. It began to rain, and traffic was thick on the narrow winding trunk-lane. ‘You should have taken the motorway,’ Cuthbert suggested.

‘It’s too dull,’ he replied, vision beamed on a huge truck in front that spat black sludge over his windscreen. ‘I’ll get you there.’

‘I’m not worried.’

‘You trust your old Dad, eh?’ He pressed the brake pedal when the lorry suddenly pulled up. The car skidded slightly. He put the gear in neutral and drew the handbrake on, then reached into the glove box for a hip flask. ‘They tell you not to drink and drive, but I can’t drive in these conditions unless I have a drink.’ He took a swig and passed it back: ‘Have a good go. I filled it up last night.’

They drank, and Cuthbert sent it forward. Handley sipped again, just in time before the lorry moved and he slipped into gear to follow it. A police car waved them on. A car was upside down beyond a bend, and an articulated lorry lay on its flank. A wall had crumbled under the impact, and dozens of barrels were scattered among the trees of an orchard. Police were writing in little books, and marking maps, and several people were walking dazedly up and down, as if to get the chill out of their veins, though the day was warm and humid. One man lay in the grass with blood on his face.

He looked in the mirror to check traffic behind, and saw Maricarmen cross herself at the accident. ‘It’s a battlefield,’ he said, hearing a yelp of brakes some way in front. ‘You often wonder whether the next car you see’s got your name along its bumpers. I feel like an old soldier though where driving’s concerned: the longer you survive the more you learn how to.’

Traffic speeded up, and on a straight section Handley overtook the sludge-chucking lorry. ‘I hope you’ll be all right at home,’ Cuthbert said.

‘No danger of that.’

‘Take care of mother.’ The memory of her being loved-up by Dean chilled him — a picture he’d not forget in a hurry. He’d said nothing about it either to Handley or Enid because, after all, they were grown people who had to sort out their own problems. No doubt Dean would be sent on his way, and they’d settle into the old cat-and-dog routine once more. The only thing he was sure of was that his parents loved each other. It was good to have an eternal set-up you could fall back on at moments of insecurity.

‘I’ll guard her with my life,’ Handley told him. ‘Why else do you think I’m on earth? I’ll look after anybody if they need my help, but she’s number one.’

‘I’m sorry for the disturbance I caused,’ said Maricarmen.

‘It’s good to have a shake-up now and again,’ Handley smiled. ‘Anyway, there’s no hard feelings in our family — otherwise we wouldn’t have lasted five minutes.’

Sucked into the London rush hour, he kept his window shut to avoid lethal gusts of coagulating motor traffic, but then opened it for fresh air to avoid going to sleep, finally cursing the sharp metallised poison that came in and gave him a headache. At half past nine he drew into a parking bay near Covent Garden, convenient for his bank on the Strand. Cuthbert and Maricarmen waited, and when he returned he put an envelope into his son’s hand: ‘There’s fifty ten pound notes. Don’t spend it all at once.’

‘I feel I’m robbing you.’

Handley lit a vigar. ‘You’re my son, aren’t you?’

‘You’re generous, that’s all I can say.’

‘As long as you don’t hold it against me. Generosity don’t count with your own family.’ They walked through the market to a café, and sat down to sandwiches and tea. ‘A steamy day,’ he said, ‘like a cold jungle. Take care of yourselves. Don’t get shot, squashed, poisoned, or slung in clink. If you want to pay me back for the five hundred quid just live safely. That’ll satisfy me.’

Cuthbert sat opposite his father and Maricarmen, amazed at how one of a pair they seemed, Handley lean like a gypsy, and she a Spanish woman who was bound to thicken to his satisfaction in later years. Such similarities drew them together, all in the same family at last, no matter how farspread they’d be in a few days time. ‘We’ll stay in town tonight,’ he said, ‘somewhere around Victoria, and set out for France tomorrow. We’ll get off the train at Bayonne, near the Spanish frontier, and talk things over there.’

‘I have friends in San Sebastian,’ Maricarmen said, ‘and in Irun. They’ll tell us if there’s anything we can do,’

He remembered her crossing herself in the car. ‘Nothing violent, I hope?’

‘No,’ Cuthbert said.

She smiled. ‘We’ll be all right.’

‘You’d better be,’ Handley said, ‘or I’ll come and pull your arses out of it — wherever you are, Still, you’re grown up, just like I am — if that means anything — so you can look to your own safety. It’s a hell of a world, though, if you want to do something about it. All I ask is that you mull over John’s letter.’

Cuthbert finished his tea, and pushed his cup to the middle of the table, as if wanting to be on his way. ‘I typed a copy last night. I’ll always want it with me.’

‘Maybe I’ll get it printed,’ Handley said. ‘A hundred pamphlets. John might like that. Ay, but it’s terrible to lose a brother. It’s still eating me, and always will, otherwise I’d be dead. All he was suffering from was a regressive return — as they call it — the famous depression of incoming travellers back to this tight little island after a fair sojourn somewhere else. Or maybe he was the man who thinks there’s something beyond the womb but discovers there isn’t. John always felt like a rat in a trap while he was in England. No wonder he couldn’t come back. I hope you don’t get the same way when you feel like hiving in again.’

Cuthbert lifted a hand benignly. ‘There’s no chance of that.’

Handley drove them to a hotel on Ebury Street, and left them alone at last.