The Flame of Life

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

After each meal Handley went to his studio, and everyone thought he was working. They got on with their chores and duties, and grumbled while the days and hours passed, but thought it worthwhile because it allowed the great man to do his immortal painting.

These attitudes sifted through. He brooded too much on the forces that kept him going. It was good that he worked well for a time, but when it went on as if the peace would last forever he felt empty and irritable. If he laboured well, everyone concerned about him with such calm efficiency that he didn’t notice it, he felt that nobody cared whether he lived or died.

In his sketchbook he drew a clock, with hands over its eyes, and a huge mouth from which blood ran. The community worked by the clock: every piece of machinery was in place and doing its job, and the only result was that time passed and nothing happened. The peace was killing, but he realised that when he thought this, something violent and heart-wrenching was on its way. Yet even this couldn’t be guaranteed. You were in the hands of fate. What you expected was what you hoped for, a wish never to be granted except in such a back-handed fashion that it knocked you flat.

He paced up and down, from easel to door, from the bookcase to a small table in the corner with an electric kettle and cups on it, and paused at a shaving mirror nailed on the wall. His face looked more tormented than usual, and he could find no response except to fart and stroll across to the door and lift his cap from a hook, put it on, and resume walking up and down.

It was months since he’d seen Daphne Ritmeester, but feeling empty he had no desire to visit anybody. He wasn’t in love with her. He muttered that he didn’t even fall in love any more, and whatever he told himself, true or not, he believed at the time the words went uncontrollably through his head. I have a full life of work to get done, he hoped, plugging in the kettle for the sake of something to do. Love is a form of self-destruction, a kind of slow suicide, a full-time occupation that pulls you away from your central self — though I wouldn’t mind a bit of it right now, because it can be useful in hauling you clear when your middle starts to eat you up. Still, it’s a bitter sort of get-out, expensive and time-consuming.

He pondered how refreshing it would be to pack a tent and hide himself in some impenetrable wood or other. You can’t run away. Or can you? He felt in the grip of fluxes, fevers and frenzies, and to calm himself began composing a begging letter, maybe practising for when he was on his uppers again. The good thing about life was that nothing was certain, which was a thought to keep him going.

He threw his dip-pen at the door, then screwed up the paper and ate it. His heart wasn’t in it. Maybe he never would have to write such things again. The kettle boiled and he filled the pot, thinking to drink himself into a colander.

After the first cup, supped vacantly while looking at a couple of squabbling rooks by the window, he went to his sketch-pad and roughed out notes for a large new picture.

It was Enid’s turn to do the washing, and sheets from the machine had been hung up to air on a line from garage to back door. She’d thought it would stay fine, but at the moment it didn’t look good. A thunderstorm might clear the air.

It had been hard work most of the day, which reminded her how difficult things had become compared to life at their burned-down house in Lincolnshire. She had taken to the community like a duck to water, as far as Albert could see — which was not far. She’d nevertheless found it interesting to live in such a way, and useful in that it opened doors wide to her discontent. Maybe it would have come anyway — with age.

She was discontented, though not unhappy — a state which made her feel light-headed and confused so that she didn’t, as it were, know which way to turn. She used to expect all the days of her life to be the same, but now the end of a day was like the end of an era, so that tomorrow was bound to be different. Nothing was settled any more.

She looked on Handley as a cancer-producing agent, having decided that in some unreasonable underhand way he had ruined her life, while at the same time she’d made certain that he had, so as one day to blame him for it and ruin him back. Such marriages must surely be made in heaven.

Handley sensed it, too, for they touched on it in their arguments. ‘We’ll go down together when we go,’ he’d said, the white devil of mockery in him. ‘A handsome though ageing couple, you going left into a door marked HERS, and me going right through a slot labelled MINE — to have our shock treatment. The hallmark of a successful marriage is how many volts it can take before it’s blasted apart, how much current to make the common united cinder fit to be exhibited in any church or townhall as the apotheosis of holy moonstruck matrimony. Raise the voltage, sling in the amps and slap down the ohms, and sooner or later the equilibrium will split at its strongest point while the weaknesses remain uncharred to become the strengths of another day,’

Love with a capital L she thought, watching him spit. We loved each other so well at the beginning it was bound to come to this. If a man can’t let you blame him for ruining your life he just doesn’t love you. And the fact that he doesn’t love you proves that he ruined your life, and will go on ruining it for as long as you try to put it back together again.

She knelt by a herbaceous border and tried to calm herself by pulling up weeds, but they snapped half-way because she could never get at the roots. In any case they were weak except at the roots. When I was young I was naïve, she thought, full of love and hope, and help for others but mostly for him, and now after seven kids I’m middle-aged and he doesn’t want me any more. So how can he deny he’s ruined my life? But he goes on denying it only so that he can ruin it more, because though he’s an artist he’s the most callow man alive. He knows nothing about me in particular or women in general, or human beings at all. Even if he wasn’t an artist it would be the same, because the Handley in him goes deeper than the painter he’s turned into.

When we were young and had no money and lots of kids to feed we’d get depressed and hold hands and shed tears at our common troubles, console each other at our plight and he’d kiss and make love and promise to try and sell a painting and write another dozen begging letters to bring some money in.

But now he thinks he’s rich, and there’s not a bit of tenderness left for me. He doesn’t even see me anymore. His tears dried up long ago if ever they were there in the first place, which I doubt because I think he only shed them so as to get deeper into my spirit and start to destroy it by the hatred he has for everybody — not only me.

There wasn’t much work to do, and maybe that was the trouble. There were more willing hands than necessary, as well as dishwashers, vacuum-cleaners, washing-machines: a fully automated house run by as many people as if there were no gadgets at all. It was Handley’s little plaything of a community, the modern doll’s house of the selfish man complete with furniture and more people to play around with. The only sensible member of it was Dawley’s wife Nancy, who’d left as soon as she saw what was going on.

She went in and took off her apron, then came out again. Dean was inside the Rambler, lying along the back seat reading a comic. He lifted an idle hand as she went by, and blew her a kiss. Not much had been said about him staying on. Some were for it, others not, so he glued himself to the place as a sort of watchman-gatekeeper till a proper decision was made. He was already firm friends with Maria and Catalina, who were said, among other things, to be teaching him Spanish.

She opened Handley’s door without knocking, stepped inside and closed it. He sensed her presence, but he went on mixing colours, and attentively applying paint to the large canvas pinned before him. She wondered how long he’d go on ignoring her.

He turned, jacket off and shirt open, a piece of rope holding up his paint-smeared trousers. ‘I love you,’ he said, but staying where he was. ‘I love you, Enid, more than I’ve ever loved anybody or anything. You’re the one great fabulous love of my life. I always loved you, and I always will. You’re handsome, beautiful, passionate, and violent. In other words: marvellous — all I could ever wish for. But don’t disturb me, sweetheart, because I’ve got a fantastic painting to do, and I’ve just begun it, the best thing I’ve ever started. So I’ll see you later, if you don’t mind.’

She was latched to the floor with anger at the cool machine-like injustice of his ploy. By the look on her face Handley realised that he’d wasted his breath. There were times when she wanted to make love but was too clogged with frustration to start it, and so a quarrel was the only way to get through to them both. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes he was too soured to move when it came to the point, but when it did the trick they were calm and loving afterwards as if they were seventeen again. He felt like going to bed with her, in fact, being often most randy when working well, but he was determined to get to the bones of his painting first.

‘Are you too dead-ignorant to say anything?’

He looked surprised at her opening move of attack, as if only half knowing what she meant.

‘We live together,’ she said, coming close to the table, ‘but we don’t ever get five minutes to talk. That suits you, doesn’t it, because as long as you can be at your paints, you’re happy. But I’m just one of the domestics in this setup. I exist like a robot, and if I didn’t say anything you’d never speak a civilised word to me again.’

He was uneasy because he sensed some truth in what she said, so he levelled his voice skilfully to appear reasonable. Such hypocrisy cut into her sharply, for she knew how he wallowed in his deceptions. ‘We often talk,’ he said. ‘And there’s Myra and Maricarmen. The place is full of people to talk to.’

‘I hate you.’

His control snapped at the venom in her, as she had known it would. ‘You hate me, do you? Did you hear that?’ he said, as if everyone were listening at the window. ‘She hates me! If only you’d said so when we first met. I’d have known then that you loved me. Fancy telling me now, after so long. I didn’t know you cared!’

‘I hate you.’

‘Oh God,’ he groaned. ‘You say it every month. Tell me something new.’

‘You don’t know me,’ she cried. ‘We’ve never met. You won’t meet me. Your shell’s too hard. You’re stuck fast in your own concrete shelter.’

‘I do love you,’ he answered. ‘I’ve said it till my stomach’s full of holes. I know you’d like it if we spent all the time looking babies in one another’s eyes, but all I want just now is to get on with this painting.’

‘Do it then,’ she screamed.

‘I can’t.’

‘Well, don’t blame me. You blame anybody but yourself.’

He wiped the paint off his hands with a turps rag, a gesture he knew would annoy her because it meant he didn’t expect to paint any more that day, and that it was her fault. ‘We’ve got seven kids,’ he said. ‘The eldest is twenty-five, yet we go on shouting like thirty year olds! Can’t we calm down a bit?’

‘You want old age? I’m still a young woman, as far as I’m concerned. You’ve got money but you hardly ever take me to London. Oh no, you go on your own, and God knows what you get up to.’

‘What the hell do you think?’

‘I’ve heard tales. There’s more than one poison-pen letter writer in this village. They go down to shop in the West End, and spot you up to your antics. They can’t wait to report back.’

‘I’ll kill the bastards!’ he said. ‘I’m absolutely innocent. You know how hard I work. I slave at it too much to take time off having affairs.’

‘You expect me to believe that? What would you do if I bloody well carried on?’

‘You want to know?’ he raved. ‘I’d kill him. And if he got away I’d search him out from the seven corners of the earth with a double-barrelled blunderbuss and blow his bollocks off one by one.’

‘If ever a man walked in the spitten-image of injustice, that man’s you.’

He relaxed, as if they’d reached the end of round one.

At night when they slept together they seemed to eat each other up in their dreams. The peaceful life of the community had failed to wean them from the attractions of a rough and tumble life. What they said they wanted was absolute order and calm, but they wouldn’t admit that what the consciousness craves is often what the subconscious doesn’t allow it to have. To get what they wanted meant settling the hash of their subconscious — and what self-respecting subconscious would ever allow that done to it?

‘Sit down,’ he said, approaching her. ‘I’ll make some more tea, just for the two of us, and put a good drop of Irish whiskey in.’

She sat. ‘Don’t touch me.’

‘I want you to be happy,’ he said tenderly.

‘You haven’t acted like it this last couple of years.’

He plugged in the hotplate, and reached for the bottle. ‘I thought you were happy here. I tried to create a paradise but it’s turned into a medieval slum. Apart from the house there’s two caravans, the garage, tool-sheds, coal-stores, three cars, a greenhouse, a wendy hut, two spare lavatories, and a leaking sauna-cabin. Talk about the back-to-backs of the affluent society. I sometimes think I’d be happier in a remote cottage with a bog outside and oil lamps hanging from the ceiling, with a plain wood stove that fills the kitchen with smoke every time you want a warm.’

‘It sounds marvellous,’ she said. ‘We’d have a garden though, and there’d be a wood where we’d go for kindling and bluebells and blackberries.’

‘You’re right,’ he said regretfully. ‘This community can’t work. Not for me, anyway. The trouble is I’ve got my family mixed up in it. If I was on my own I’d have more of a chance. But I’m too bound up with you and the kids to be on my own. And if I’ve got to choose between the family and the community I suppose I’d pick the family. You can’t beat it for the homely and profitable suffering it keeps you stuffed up with!’

While she reflected on this he washed two mugs at the sink, then poured a good flow of whiskey in each, and strong tea after it.

‘You’ve always wanted to be free of the family,’ she said. ‘You never stop hoping you’ll come back from Town one day and find we’ve been the victims of some madman with a machine-gun.’

‘I’m only human,’ he said calmly, putting the mugs down. ‘Of course I’ve often thought that. I’m honest: I admit it. But twice as many times I’ve told myself how much I love you. God knows, if anything happened to you or the kids I’d die of misery in a fortnight.’

‘You don’t know me,’ she jeered, ‘If you did you’d control yourself, and not say such things about wishing me and the kids dead. I’m not the hard woman you think I am. I may look it because you’ve made me that way, but I’m not. I can’t stand the way you’re always trying to kick me down.’

Of her many accusations, the one that he didn’t know her galled him most. It filled his brain with razor-blades. It brought out the worst in him, so that both of them were soon lost in the mists of spite — further from each other than ever.

‘When I want comfort,’ she said, walking around his table, a movement which made him nervous, ‘you don’t give it to me.’

‘How can I,’ he shouted, ‘while you’re ripping my guts out? You’re a shark. You want to bite people.’ He took a gulp of fortified tea and wallowed in false, lying counter-accusation, knowing it to be so but swinging out joyfully like an ape over the trees: ‘You want to eat people. So you’re worse than a shark because you’re a shark out of choice and not just because you’ve got to survive. You’re a killer shark, and I can’t live near it anymore.’

I must stop, he thought, at the sight of her face poised for retaliation. It seemed thinner in the midst of battle, but at the same time less lined and tired. I mustn’t give in to spite, he told himself, his heart suspended while the mechanics of self-preservation worked out a suitable reply in her breast. I must never give in to spite. I’ve got too much of it, like everything else. But leave spite out of it. I don’t want her to turn into a bitter cabbage with mad eyes and a slit mouth.

She spoke in a quiet voice. ‘You’d stand there forever, wouldn’t you? You’d leave me to rot and die before wondering how I was feeling.’

‘Drink your tea, love.’

‘You’re paralytic,’ she said, ‘paralysed by your own weakness.’

‘Old spirit-breaker.’ He laughed drily, sweating under his emptiness, picking up his brush and making a great letter X across the painting he’d so far done. ‘Does that make you happy? I’ll sacrifice that to you, because I know that’s what you want, old spirit-breaker!’

‘If that’s so,’ she smiled calmly, placated slightly by his Handley-like gesture of love, ‘your spirit isn’t up to much. But then, it never has been.’

‘Well,’ he went on, ‘you can break it there’s no denying. I’m human, even though I am an artist. But you can only do it as far as you are concerned. You can’t smash it so finally that no one can come up and pulverise it again in their particular way. That’s love, though. Your spirit can be knocked up a hundred times without it being forever. And if you do smash it, it would only mean I’d be shut of you. But maybe you’re only trying to get rid of me. Nobody can blame you for that. I’d be free of you as well, don’t forget!’

She listened to him going on. He was vile, and neglected her for his so-called art, but now and again if she prodded him hard enough in the right places she got him to talk, even if it was the worst sort of wordy flow that cut her in all the wrong places — though more truth came out than when they were sitting politely around the table with the others.

‘I’m a painter,’ he was saying, while she drank her tea. ‘How do you think I became a painter?’

‘To get away from me.’

‘To express all those pains I suffered and got no sympathy for. I hoped that the world would get the sympathy and understanding that I didn’t get.’

She laughed. ‘It’s these woolly epigrams I can’t stand. You look so pompous, like a parson who’s had to chop his pulpit up for firewood.’

‘You’re a frigid castrating bitch,’ he said, before he could bite his tongue off.

Both of them thought this was a lie, which was something that united them, but Enid, in the fury of quarrelling, chose to believe that he was serious in what he said. So she had to reply in kind: ‘That’s because you’re impotent. Everybody thinks that because we’ve got seven kids you strut around with a permanent hard-on. What a mistake they make! And you wouldn’t tell ’em otherwise.’

‘I didn’t mean it in that way,’ he said, ‘though it’s interesting to hear what you think, you one-track-minded bitch. We’ve always fucked well, and you know it.’

‘You say so. Oh yes, I know, sometimes we have, but with you, you just about get me going when you’ve finished. I have my orgasm and you think that’s that.’

How did I get this far in? ‘If you don’t like it,’ he said, pouring more tea, ‘if you suffer so much, why don’t you go? Take the kids if you like, but go. You’re free. Go on, take all the money to live on if you like. Take everything. I’m generous. Leave me a tent, that’s all. I’ll survive. I don’t want to go on ruining your life any longer. It’s a crime against civilisation. I never wanted to ruin anybody’s life.’

‘You’re so selfish,’ she cried, her voice packed hard and ready to break, ‘that you don’t know when you’re making somebody suffer. And as soon as I let you know it, because I love you, after all, you tell me to get out. You want to chuck me and the kids in so that you can look for a young girl to marry and start a new life with.’

‘No!’ He wailed — his eyes wild, as if about to go into an epileptic fit. He grabbed his head, pressing to squeeze his whole vision out of existence. He closed his eyes because he couldn’t bear to look at anything. The space he stood in was blocked off from him even though he opened his eyes, and the whole room of the hut was locked in the wide spaces of his own head. He could not get out of it.

‘Now you want to frighten me,’ she called. ‘You’ll try any rotten trick.’

He’d scared himself more, and was ashamed that he should be so goaded by her taunts. He stood, breathless and pale, looking across at the table. It’s a war of attrition. The flower of one’s manhood perishes in it. Why do we do it? How did we get locked into it? He wanted to weep, but couldn’t. Not even when she’d gone would he be able to weep. There’s no victory, only an occasional armistice to allow us to renew our strength, a pulling back of the battle lines for a bit of re-construction. The losses are too great for us to get much from such blood-letting. There’s no hope of being buoyed up to the skies by victory in this sixty-year war. ‘I’m worn to the bone,’ he admitted.

Soothe his wounded heart, patch up his deepest gashes, get his arm in a sling, a shade on his eye. Put a cape on his head at an even cockier angle than before, and send him back into the matrimonial barrage.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, holding her in his arms. It was too soon to try and kiss her, though he managed one on her forehead. She remained stiff against him, but he was roused by the closeness of her body. ‘I know you’ve had a hard life, though God knows, you look young enough for it.’

‘You’ve done your best to pull me down,’ she said, her hot breath against him, ‘and keep me in my place.’

‘We’ve lived,’ he said. ‘What else do you want? And what’s more, we’re still living. Very well, too.’

‘As long as I eat three times a day you don’t care.’

He felt the quarrel priming up for another take-off, but all his energy was sapped, his body a hollow tube, his mouth dry, his eyes tinderous. ‘I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t mean what I say. I don’t own any of it. As Job said: “God destroyeth the perfect and the wicked.” Which am I? You tell me. I can’t.’

‘It’s a pity you can’t,’ she said. ‘You’re like a volcano. You spew for the sake of spewing. Why do you say such things, if you don’t mean them?’

‘Because I don’t want to burst. I’ve got to say something. How can I mean what I say when it comes out like that?’

‘If you lie at such a time I don’t see when you can ever tell the truth.’ But she gave his hand a friendly squeeze.

‘Don’t you? I do. Let me tell you why, and get it straight. I mean what I say when I say something in a tender and loving voice. That’s the only time. All else is wind and piss, hot air and jelly-bile. I’m sorry about it then.’

She pulled her hand free, and walked towards the window: ‘What a child you are!’

He could see her smile, though her back was to him: ‘Why don’t you cut your wrists and stop bothering me?’ he shouted. ‘I take you into my heart and it means nothing to you. A child, eh? Is that how you’ve seen me all these years while we’ve been struggling through the mud of this matrimonial Passchendaele? As for you, I suppose you’re still looking for a daddy — a great big cuddly daddy for his little baby girl!’

She swung round, and rushed at him. ‘You vicious lousy rotten gett!’

Her white bare arm swept the table like an iron bar, and what she missed because it was too near the middle she reached over for and picked up piece by piece to throw at him with all her strength. The cup with the dregs of tea bounced from his mutilated canvas, a steel ruler spun like a scythe, a stone he’d found in his younger days on some isolated beach flew by his head and smashed the window neatly. A jotting pad winged his face, and a jam jar full of nails and thumb tacks travelled over like a shrapnel bomb.

He watched her with a sardonic smile, and dodged as best he could, feeling the beating rhythm of his heart slowing down. ‘Go on,’ he said when she paused. ‘Smash everything. If I had the strength I’d help you.’

‘Stop laughing.’

‘Oh, I know, you’re serious.’

She reached a large bottle of spirits and hurled it as a final effort. It turned many times in flight, and smashed against the glowing hotplate accidentally left on from tea making. It exploded like a Molotov Cocktail. Flames crept gleefully along the floor, and Handley side-stepped calmly when they threatened his shoes. They edged up the wall.

‘You’d better save yourself,’ he said. ‘You’d think I belonged to a family of arsonists. I’m staying here because I’ve had enough.’ He folded his arms on his chest and stood still.

‘Albert,’ she said, ‘let’s put it out.’

‘Let my forty paintings burn,’ he said magnanimously. ‘And me with them.’

‘You’re still trying to torment me,’ she screamed. ‘When will you stop? What have I done to be treated so vilely by you? If only you’d treat me like a human being at least.’

‘I’ll die,’ he said. ‘A one-man holocaust.’

‘Please!’

He reached for the fire extinguisher, knocked the top, and sprayed the flame with powder till it subsided. Scorch marks showed on the wall. It smouldered, and they coughed as they talked. ‘Does that satisfy you?’ he said, kissing her on the lips.

Her hot tongue was in his mouth. Her legs opened and curled around him. ‘Only one thing satisfies me.’

It was already rampant, and he pushed it against her. ‘You know how I love you,’ he said, his hand over her breasts and pressing them hard in the way she liked.

‘You only say you love me,’ she said, ‘when you want to have me.’

He wanted to strangle her, but the impulse went when he realised the cost of resuming their quarrel. But he was afraid that murder would brew up one day between them. He unbuttoned her blouse, while she let down her skirt. Half-way to the cot-bed in the corner of the hut she began pulling at his trousers. They hadn’t made love for days, so the pot had had time to boil. He loathed her. He loved her — so sublimely that the loathing didn’t matter. He could drown it any day.