The Flame of Life

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Handley took the oars down from the rack, and stepped into the boat. ‘Don’t let’s lose any time.’

He held Mandy’s hand, and steadied her in. It wasn’t the first occasion he’d used the boat, having once found a way of opening the bolted door. He thought Gould might have seen him on the lake from the house, but it hadn’t been mentioned when they met. He rowed over the calm water. The fresh smell of it, as the oars dug deeply, so delighted him that he almost forgot why they had come. Mandy sat drowsily in front, trailing her fingers in.

A small sketching case lay on the plank, with a block of cartridge paper, charcoal and pencils inside. He often carried it on his rambles, since it still gave him pleasure to portray with architectural and topographical accuracy exactly what the eye could see. He’d ended the war as a sergeant instructor at gunnery school, elucidating the skills and mysteries of panorama-drawing to artillery recruits.

The large white house was a quarter of a mile away, the view of it more striking because only the glistening slate roofs, one of the gables at the eastern end, and the windows of the top rooms could be seen. He stowed the oars and opened his box, then set the board on his knees to begin sketching.

After the turmoil and danger of the day he revelled in such perfect exercise. His mind loved to work — a worthwhile activity that gave more tranquillity than anything else. Mandy looked about her — trees on one bank, reeds on the other — brushing away a cloud of gnats that annoyed her till she lit a cigarette and drove them off.

‘You’d better drop it in,’ Handley said, when they were at the middle of the lake. ‘But keep your back to the house.’

‘I’m not a baby,’ she smiled, taking John’s revolver and bullets out of her handbag. She held them a few inches underwater, and let them go so that Handley didn’t even hear a splash.

‘Let’s hope we never see it again,’ he murmured after a few minutes.

‘Back into the bosom of the lake,’ she said, ‘like in King Arthur and his screwy knights.’

He paused in his work to light a thin cigar, then went on with his drawing. ‘I shan’t be long.’

‘It’s all right,’ she said drowsily. ‘I’ve got enough fags to keep the gnats off.’ An amiable breeze drifted across the lake. ‘I like your drawings. Ever since I was a little girl.’

‘So you did,’ he smiled, holding it up for her. ‘I used to draw you pictures to laugh at — remember?’

‘I’ve still got ’em somewhere.’

‘I don’t know what an artist would do without his family,’ he said, getting back to work. ‘It’s nice when his children appreciate him.’ Certainly, he found it easier to talk with them than Enid, a depressing fact when he wanted tranquillity all round. Two people couldn’t be at peace, though, when they’d lived so long together. It wasn’t in the nature of things, unless their souls went dead. The miracle was that they were still under the same roof, though the continuing cat-and-dog price of it too often put him off his work.

He rowed back to shore, steering into the wooden hut. ‘We might still get tea if we hurry,’ he said, laying the oars on the rack.

‘My handbag’s not so heavy now,’ she said.

He walked, feeling like a young man, as if all his troubles might be over. He hoped they were, in his moment of light-heartedness, but knew they weren’t, and that they could never be. He wasn’t an artist for nothing, and an artist realised — or he had no right to call himself one — that trouble was not only the spice of life, but the ingredient that could also dull and ruin it.

Such confusion was part of his gaiety. Uncertainty and levity made him want to sing and dance in the fresh cool air at the end of the afternoon, when the breeze pushed at grass blades and birds flowered the treetops with their noise. No matter what was coming, he was glad to be alive, because Mandy held his arm like the affectionate daughter she was, and under the other arm was the sketch he had made while she’d slid gun and ammunition to the harmless lake-bottom.

The happier you felt the worse it was likely to be when the mood was destroyed, yet such knowledge only made him happier, and allowed him to appreciate it more, so he would at least have been happy to his utmost when the floor fell out of paradise. After the murderous turmoil of the house the day had ended well, so his happiness was not ill-gotten, and may not be held too much against him if a time of reckoning came.

The uncertainty that turned his head, the confusion that made him lighter than air, the relief of the grim day’s end, and the satisfaction of his modest drawing on Gould’s Lake that reminded him of the juvenile efforts of his early days, made him feel young again. And in real happiness, he thought, no matter how old you are, you always feel young. Not even the future could take that away, as long as you looked on it as a thing of the moment.