The Flame of Life

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

With such an inheritance Ralph was at last able to show what kind of man he could be. As the owner of five hundred acres of the richest agricultural loam in Lincolnshire he soon became reconciled with his parents. He took their advice on how to buy and what to plant, and where to invest the lump sum he had acquired — though he had this checked by a Boston lawyer before finally acting.

He was rich enough, albeit within the dreams of avarice, to satisfy himself in all he modestly wanted. His house, Skeat Court, was bigger than he’d imagined in his fantasies while locked in the Handley Community, but it was comfortable enough not to give him any more ambitions, which meant that his madness was cured.

At thirty he was the father of three sons, and it was having children, as much as his good fortune, which helped to draw him closer to the elder Spilsbys. Mandy loathed them as much as ever, and did not hide it — at first. But Mabel Spilsby, her mother-in-law, grew gentler as the children came, and Mandy put up with her because whenever the mood took her she could dump the kids there and take off in Ralph’s large Royce to the motorway, in an effort to chase out the smouldering discontent till such time as she would know what to do with it.

Handley’s sons went to Oxford, but their revolutionary kndwledge did them little good. They discovered that those students, who were supposed to hate the medieval authority and deformed human ritual of the university, were appalled when they produced a foolproof blueprint for burning much of it down. So Adam and Richard studied all they could, got honours degrees, and departed for the United States to do more research.

Adam stayed there, but Richard came back for a while, then went to Israel where he spent many years in labour and study on a kibbutz. It was the closest in life he could get to a perfect form of democracy as far as he was concerned, as well as being an everyday existence which also had its dangers because it was close to the Syrian border. It was this peril in which the people lived that eventually enticed him into it for good. He married a girl there, learned Hebrew, and stayed.

Albert Handley’s sole purpose in life was to get letters and paint pictures. But he left Myra’s compound to have a house built on the site where he had once lived in Lincolnshire — which still belonged to him. Paul, Rachel and Toby stayed with Myra, a neat arrangement that did not disturb their schooling, and left Handley free to plan and build.

Scorched bricks under the tangled mound of bushes and thistles were finally cleared away. Rotting and burnt timbers were pulled clear, and the foundations of a bungalow laid. An adjacent studio with enormous glass windows was added later.

His wooden studio was dismantled and transported to his old garden, and he lived in it, with Eric Bloodaxe for company, the Rambler Estate car standing outside. He painted pictures and sent them to Greensleaves’ gallery, but many hours of each week were taken up with builders constructing his new house, moving among heaps of bricks and timber, dodging dumper trucks and concrete mixers, peering over drawings, and arguing about the finish of the work.

Ralph and Mandy came to the housewarming party, as well as Dawley and Myra and his three young children. Greensleaves travelled from town with Daphne Ritmeester.

The house was placed near the brow of a hill, its lights glowing for miles around. Local people who’d known him for over twenty years saw that the Handleys were back after an absence which now seemed like no time at all. The local tradesmen sent vans up the muddy green-arched track laden with food and drink. Except for absent faces it was like old times, and Handley, upright as ever, smoking his long Schimmelpenninck, led his guests from room to room showing off his house as if it were a new car. Finished canvasses, awaiting transport to London, decorated every wall.

‘It amazes me where you get your energy,’ Teddy said, sipping his champagne — and then putting it down on a box. It was so dry it scorched his tonsils.

Handley tapped himself on the groin. ‘I store it here!’

‘Oh you don’t,’ said Daphne Ritmeester. ‘I can’t believe it!’

‘A dynamo,’ Handley said. ‘I haven’t had a woman for three months. The last was a girl of eighteen from some art college. Got the shock of her life to find me living on a construction site. She thought I was the foreman and asked where Albert Handley was. I didn’t let on straight away. Said I thought he’d gone to Boston and would come back tomorrow — from his hotel to see how the house was progressing. I got on with her all right, even though she did think I was the foreman. After she’d slept two nights with me in my hut I sprang it on her gently. Then she stayed another two nights and left. A lovely young girl. We managed fine with my old dynamo.’

‘You don’t change,’ Daphne said. ‘That’s why I never lose faith in you.’

‘I’ll be sleeping in the hut tonight,’ he said, ‘because friends and family have taken over the bedrooms.’

‘I shall love to see it,’ Daphne said, holding his hand. ‘Does it smell of creosote?’

‘I gave it a new coat,’ he told her softly, ‘specially for you.’

He led a hermit-like existence — except for the dog, and occasional visitors — though Daphne came now and again to see him. He thought of Enid, and remembered the coffee she made in the early Lincolnshire mornings. He hadn’t had such a cup since she’d gone. He hadn’t noticed it was so spectacularly good at the time. Yet it was, and he knew it now that she was no longer here to make it and share it with him.

It wasn’t much to remember her by, yet everything else came with it. He had only to breathe the pure Lincolnshire air in the early morning to be reminded of her — and smell his own rotten coffee-brew coming through the window. We never value what we’ve got, he thought. If only man didn’t always want something better — which turned out to be no good when he got it.

He heard from Cuthbert and Maricarmen, that they had set themselves up as sculptors in a village in the Pyrenees, but used their house as a sort of transit camp for Spaniards who had to cross the border illegally out of Spain. Those who came through in the perilous snows of winter were glad to find some haven that would help them on their way. Handley sent money, to finance the work of which his brother John would have approved. He knew also that Cuthbert would help people to get into England if ever it were necessary.

Cuthbert told how he had gone with Maricarmen to Algeria and, after a ten-day search, found Shelley’s grave in a desert village between Aflou and Laghouat, guided there by directions which Dawley had written down for them. The people remembered when the group of guerrillas came, and how one of them who was sick had died that same afternoon. They led Maricarmen to his grave by the wall of their own small cemetery, still marked by the pyramid of stones that Dawley had built. Cuthbert observed her. She smiled, as if it were one desolation over and done with. Whatever was left in her would be for him, and it was more than enough. It had to be, though he felt it was more than he deserved. Life grew out of death. He saw it happening already. They paid a mason to build a permanent stone for Shelley. After photographing it, they got into their car and drove back to Oran.

Eric Bloodaxe, in the ripe fullness of age, its dream-world forever intact, guarded him day and night. The torment of losing Enid, which he put down more and more to callous neglect of her, stayed a while, and then the hardest bit of it eased after the new house was built on the ruins of the old. He worked hard at his painting, and though his reputation in the art world waned for a while, it then revived. He enjoyed his freedom for the first year in Lincolnshire, but was glad to send for his three children who, back in their old territory, made him feel more like himself again. It turned his agony on to remembering Enid, yet even that did not last. Unnecessary pain soon wears away.

Five years later a letter came from a town on the south coast, relayed from Myra’s address, and he recognised her writing crossed out on the envelope. After a long time wandering between the Mediterranean and India she and Dean had made enough money on smuggling (she didn’t say what, but he could guess) to buy a small hotel, where they had settled with their two children. He was welcome to have a free holiday any time he was down that way, she said.

He dropped the letter on to the fire, and went into the frost to cool off. He wouldn’t spend any more effort on her than that. He was happy that she was happy with Dean, but what was happiness? He didn’t know, and never would, though they were all entitled to it. Only the oblivion of work gave an illusion of it. He heard from her again, that her happiness palled and she couldn’t get rid of Dean. He wouldn’t leave her, she said — maybe wanting Handley to go down and sort things out, and perhaps ask her back to Lincolnshire.

But he didn’t want to return to all that piggery, though it did occur to him from time to time that one day he might get married again. After all, he didn’t want to live on Vinegar Hill for the rest of his life.