The Flame of Life

CHAPTER NINE

‘The only thing that’s absolutely necessary, and therefore compulsory, in this community,’ Handley began, ‘is that everybody above the age of eighteen attend these meetings.’

‘Hear, hear,’ said Adam.

‘I don’t think that’s too much to ask,’ he went on, ‘considering the advantages it gives. Of course, there are one or two dead-heads who would prefer not to, though I don’t know where else they’d like to be. Probably nowhere, since if they don’t have any interest in this set-up, maybe they’d rather be off the world altogether.’

‘Anyhow, it’s only once a month,’ he continued, ‘and if whoever I’m referring to — and they know who it is — can sit still on their arses for long enough, they might not find it so boring. But if, on the other hand, this disillusionment with the ideals of the community becomes more general, then we’ll release them from their misery, meaning that we’ll restrict these meetings to half a dozen people whose hearts are in it. The project might lose some of its pristine democratic qualities, but no one can blame me for that. At least I wouldn’t have the discouraging job of talking to vacant faces.’

They listened. Nothing was what it seemed. No words were what they were spelled out to be. Words did not come out of the grave of a dictionary but were a voluble extension of the flesh in this organisation, a reality of mystification, not a means to an end but a way to a means to deceive anyone regarding what the end might finally be.

Even Cuthbert and Ralph, who took such jibes as aimed at themselves, listened carefully, which made Handley feel better. The sound of Paul playing with the lawnmower, and the lazy good-natured growl of Eric Bloodaxe pawing his breakfast bones around the kennel, came from outside.

‘And if it does happen’ — Handley spoke slowly so as to make his words cadenced and telling — ‘that some of you are no longer compelled to come to these gatherings, that does not mean that you’ll stop being members of the community.’

Cuthbert stood, and looked squarely down the table: ‘Of course it damn well does.’

Myra touched his arms, foreseeing a session of futile bickering which would only delay business and set them against each other even more. ‘Anything like that would have to be unanimous.’

He smiled. ‘Naturally. That’s why I got the vote-meter installed.’

‘If our views coincided we wouldn’t need that medieval trick,’ Cuthbert snapped. ‘Nobody’s ever got the better of that tombola of human souls except yourself.’

‘How do you know it’d be unanimous?’ Handley grinned. ‘You might even win.’

‘He stays,’ Enid called, ‘so get that daft idea out of your head.’

Just as Handley assumed all statements to be to his benefit, so he sided immediately with anything that went against him directly. He both agreed with everything, and disagreed with everything, but only so that he could go on towards getting his own way without anyone trying to stop him — a tactic they had long grown to recognise, however, so that by now it was almost ineffective, though Handley wasn’t aware of it. ‘Who said anything about him going? He’s got nothing better to do except think I’m getting at him. A bit of work would solve his problem. Which brings me to this month’s creative occupations. He can get some of his mystical and muscular talent to bear on the garden.’

If he disagreed, a vote would be called, and Cuthbert could think of no way to avoid defeat, so Handley had his first effective win of the day. ‘And you, Brother Ralph, can snap that transistorised turd out of your left tab-hole and do a bit of poaching instead of just poaching on everybody’s good nature and eating us out of house and home. Don’t bring the same old milk-does, but see if you can’t rustle something tasty from the Gould Estate. Round up a few dozen pheasants’ eggs. A couple of them peacocks strutting around. Use your imagination a bit. Adam can go with you. That way you won’t end up in a farmer’s parlour drinking malt whisky and bewailing your fascist landowning family that chucked you out last year.’

‘You don’t need to be insulting about it,’ Ralph glowered.

‘I do it,’ Handley said, ‘because it’s the only thing that brings you back to life. The trouble is he’s suffering from a permanent overdose of prime bloody beef.’

A huge cliff of white chalk crumbled over Ralph, and his mouth, full of foul dust, moved into the shape of all letters of the alphabet, as if he were going to weep but didn’t know how to begin. He controlled these convulsive movements and prevented himself falling into a bottomless pit.

Mandy noticed his pale face, and the sweat on his chin. ‘Leave him alone,’ she called to her father. ‘He’s done nothing to you.’ She felt her husband’s hand, and with the other he turned the music up as high as he could without disturbing them.

‘All able-bodied children,’ Handley rolled on, ‘will wash the cars and caravans, while Myra, Nancy, Mandy, and my own fair Enid will carry on running the house.’

Myra made a wry face. The fate of provider and top worker in the establishment swamped her natural tendency to think. Wondering about the future was out of the question, for looking after so many people deadened the mind. Such fervent dedication held the real problems down like a lid on a vat of steam. But as an intelligent person she felt a growing pressure to deal with the basic course of her life. She could not say clearly what her problems were, but hoped that when they made themselves plain they would produce their own solutions. It seemed that the community had been formed so as to draw out problems that might otherwise have lain dormant all her life, but would help her to know herself more when they were opened out. At the moment she did not want to feel so influenced by something which she had not totally conceived herself.

Enid scowled at Handley’s directive, changing to a smile when she saw Myra notice it. She did not — Enid said to herself — intend waiting hand and foot on a pack of bone-idle men for the rest of her life. At times the community seemed no more than a trick to bring the Court of Baghdad to England’s green and pleasant land.

Handley had picked up her thoughts: ‘Nobody can moan about the breadwinning side of things. We pull in a few dozen rabbits and plunder the odd field, so we’re fattening up nicely, especially Cuthbert. He had a haircut last week, and we were surprised to see how fat he’d got at the back of the neck. Once upon a time he was so thin he only farted twice a day. Now you have to be careful not to get too close.’

‘If you’re trying to drive me away,’ Cuthbert sneered, ‘you won’t succeed. You won’t ever break my calmness with that sort of boorish talk.’

‘You’ve got such presence of mind,’ said Handley, ‘that you’re dead from the chin up and the neck down. I’ve seen icy people like you before, but I never thought I’d have the bad luck or foul judgment to breed one.’

‘I bred it into myself,’ said Cuthbert, ‘so as not to be ground down by you.’

‘I’m glad you’re coming out of your sock,’ Handley said. ‘Most of the time you’re not with us. You’re over the hills and far away.’

‘I’m communing with my precious and immortal psyche, if you want to know,’ he mocked.

The ash fell from his father’s cigar. ‘You haven’t got a psyche. It’s just one big powder-burn.’

‘You’re becoming grotesque and ludicrous by the cancer of conceit that’s destroying you.’

‘Leave each other alone,’ Enid said, while Dawley stared and the others sighed. ‘Both of you make me sick.’

‘If I stay here much longer,’ Handley said with relish, ‘I’ll strangle that preacher. I’ll get ulcers. I’m more relaxed in a London traffic jam than in this place. How can any artist exist in such a death trap?’

Cuthbert regretted having set his father off. A few years must rush by before he’d win any clash of words with him, but he had a good try: ‘It’s a pity you aren’t thirty years older, then maybe you could find a nice cosy railway station to die in!’

Handley fixed him: ‘And it’s a pity you’re not thirty years younger, then you might never have been born!’

‘What about the meeting?’ Enid spoke softly and slowly. ‘Or shall we let somebody else have a say?’

Such a threatening mood in her could not be ignored, but he was amiable at having got the last word with Cuthbert. ‘Well then, Adam, Richard and Frank can pursue their tactical studies in subversion. Use the 2½-inch map and put groups of ten men in every wood and coppice in the county. Given the normal number of police, and troops in barracks, devise an insurrectionary exercise for taking control of all communications and public buildings. And don’t forget the power stations, like you did last time. Have a mortar for each five sections — 120 millimetre. They’ve got the range. Any gunnery snags, come to me.’

Richard made notes. ‘I’ve a 6-inch plan of the town, to work out the urban stuff. That’s always the tricky bit. We’re still writing that manual of “The Complete Street Fighter”. Adam put in a couple of days last week in the British Museum, getting quotes for us to look over.’

‘I’ve got two copies of the latest Manual on Infantry Tactics,’ Handley said. ‘Only just published. John’s army contacts are still working for us. The red-hot bits are on fighting in built-up areas. We’ll make a special pamphlet of that. The rest ain’t much cop — except the parts on radio communications.’

‘These Army manuals are written for idiots,’ Dawley said. ‘Two hundred pages can be packed into a dozen.’

‘I thought of sending one copy to the Soviet Embassy,’ Handley put in, ‘in case the “Infantry in Nuclear War” stuff will be useful. It’d be breaking the official secrets act, but I’d do anything to foul up the idea of the nation-state. Pity nobody in Russia sends out any Red Army crap. Disloyalty to the state is the highest form of respect for the individual. If everybody thought so we might get somewhere.’

Dawley stood up, and interrupted him. ‘I heard an interesting thing the other day from the Military Academy in Jerusalem. They were trying to find out who’d make the best jungle guerrilla fighter. All known data was shaken into a computer, such as character studies from various armies, place of birth, historical details, physical endurance, localities, etc. It turned out that the best bloke would be a young nineteen-year-old brought up in London, or any industrial sprawl — though not a coastal city. His quick thinking, sense of direction, cunning, guts, and artful dodgery against the forces of law and order (or counter-insurgency force) stick that label on him.’

‘No surprise to me,’ Handley said. ‘I knew we were on the right track. It’s part of the struggle that’s been neglected. What do you think about that stuff from the Police College on crowd control I got for you?’

‘Worth a bob or two,’ Dawley said.

‘In the meantime,’ Handley continued, ‘I want to talk about the subject of a constitution. There’s bin plenty of argument to say we don’t need one. Some of the best came from me, I admit, but the way I look at it now is that a constitution will give more freedom to the community. How can one be free unless there are rules? A community without a constitution is like a bird without wings. It can’t even get off the ground.’

What would take a normal being like Cuthbert a day to figure out came in a complete plan to Handley between one brush stroke and the next, and that was what made him so dangerous to the community. Maybe there was no place in it for an artist. ‘We’ve done very well without a constitution so far, but I suppose you’re getting bored and want something to chew on. The community would slip from benevolent anarchism to a state of absolute despotism in two flat weeks.’

Handley was disingenuous and amicable. ‘I won’t force anything. It would be voted in — or not, as the case may be.’

A long set-to between father and son could only end in one of them leaving, and that would be the time, Dawley thought, for going into action and getting more say over what happened in the community. Meanwhile, he could sit back and watch.

‘I’m not sure whether that sort of proposal can be put forward at all,’ Myra said. ‘And it’s far too serious to be over and done with in one session.’

‘I don’t agree with it,’ said Ralph, who saw change as a menace wherever it came from. Such a feeling had tormented him from the beginning. Face to face with the whole Handley clan he’d never been able to let out any part of the true personality which he felt shifting around somewhere below his consciousness. The fact that he was trying to get to his personality proved to him that he actually had one, which was enough as far as he was concerned, though to others it was an issue still in the balance. At twenty-six, he assumed some fulfilment was about due, and saw tranquillity of mind as the way in which it would come about. And now, having only just learned to manage his meat and sleep in a community without rules, Handley was threatening an innovation which would turn his protective devices upside down, so that he’d have to learn how to survive all over again.

Handley, tired of a smooth-running community, missed the excitement of earlier days. Order was a threat to him, and only chaos brought security. By his craving for peace at any price Ralph could deduce this — while not really understanding it. He was young enough to believe that a quiet life was the one thing of value, while Handley, having lived most of his years in strife and penury, was too glad to throw it off now that he was threatened with the mediocrity of it. Even during the worst periods of anarchy and deprivation Handley had never wanted peace. It had been a vague dream whose realisation was viewed as an atrophy of the spirit. In any case what peace was ever peace? There was only a void filled by the violent hugger-mugger of everyday life, in which his own black dog would never leave him be.

His desire to put the shadowy basis of a constitution firmly on paper leapt up because it seemed necesary to keep Cuthbert in his place. Noble Anarchy was too easy: he needed the simmering violence of order. Most of the others were against a constitution being slipped edgeways into the system, so today he’d merely circulate the idea, hoping that next time it might not be looked on so unfavourably. ‘There’s one final thing,’ he said. ‘A fortnight from now we shall have Maricarmen Frontera-Mayol with us.’

Cuthbert marvelled at his quick change of topic:

‘Who’s she?’

‘A Spanish woman,’ said Dawley, ‘an anarchist not long out of prison.’

‘What’s she coming for?’

‘If you’d bothered to attend the last meeting you’d know,’ said Handley tartly. ‘We must have a constitution, otherwise the whole bloody ship’ll be on the rocks in another six months.’

Dawley broke in, before Handley got going on his son: ‘Maricarmen was Shelley Jones’ girlfriend. He was with me running guns into Algeria, and he died there. I promised him I’d contact her, so the community is inviting her to stay for a while.’

‘She’ll bring Shelley’s trunk,’ Richard said, ‘full of notebooks which he kept for the years. They should contain interesting revolutionary writings.’

‘A grim notion,’ said Cuthbert.

‘I’ve yet to see an idea that appeals to you,’ said his father. ‘Anyway, I want you to go to Dover and meet her. Look after her as if she’s a queen. Make sure the immigration police, who do their vile work in the name of every good citizen of this island, don’t treat her like the low-down weasels they are themselves.’

‘I can’t schlep all that way,’ said Cuthbert, not wanting to let his father know that he did in fact enjoy travelling. ‘It’ll take a whole day.’

‘You’ll go,’ said Handley, menacingly.

‘If you insist.’

‘Or you’ll be out on your bloody neck.’

‘It’s the easiest thing in the world to set you off,’ Enid said.

‘Contention is meat and drink to him,’ said Cuthbert. ‘He doesn’t care about anybody but himself.’

‘That’s not true,’ Handley said, his voice dispirited but calm. ‘There are some accusations I resent so much I can’t even get angry. I don’t like the way you go on about me. It’s not that I can’t take it, but I sometimes think you forget all the good things I’ve done, and the help I’ve given you out of the goodness of my heart. I don’t mind admitting: it makes me sad. You were like a miracle to me when you were born. I loved you more than you’ll ever know. You loved me, as well. We went everywhere together. You sat in my studio for hours, and painted to your heart’s content. I’ve always done the best for you, and I want you to know it, and I want everybody else to know it. I don’t have anything against you, and in spite of this bickering that goes on most of the time I have every regard for you both as a person and as my eldest son. I just want you to know that.’

Handley was sincere. Their judgements told them that no man could be more so, and they were not easy to deceive in that respect. Cuthbert, while listening to his reasoned voice, had turned white with apprehension. He was filled with a sense of dread, yet he too, somewhere, had been glad of his father’s words. But he didn’t trust any phrase of them, though he knew he would be the loser if he didn’t.

‘All right. I’ll go to Dover and fetch her.’

‘Good lad,’ Handley smiled. ‘I just wanted you to know I cared.’

Or do I? he wondered. I thought I’d got a community on my hands, and find it’s a monster. I feed it a bit of my flesh and blood every day, but it still threatens to eat us up.

The sky was brightening outside, and he felt like a walk. ‘Let’s get back to work,’ he said, ‘if there’s nothing more to say.’

And there wasn’t, for the moment.