The Flame of Life: A Novel (The William Posters Trilogy Book 3)

by Alan Sillitoe

  ‘You look as if you paint houses, not pictures,’ Myra said, mixing eggs for a custard.

  ‘Thank God it is pictures.’ Handley lifted his cup for more tea. ‘We’d be on bread and jam if it was houses.’

  ‘Some people are happy with bread and jam,’ said Enid.

  Handley sneered – but good-naturedly. ‘They stick together longer.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Too many flies on ’em.’ He laughed into his empty teacup. ‘I get thirsty.’

  She filled it. ‘Choke.’

  ‘How are you enjoying life in the commune?’ he asked Maricarmen.

  She put out her finger, and Mark gripped it. ‘It’s restful, but I’d better start work sometime.’

  ‘If you want to make yourself useful, it’s up to you.’

  Enid put the finished apples into a cauldron and set them on the stove. ‘She is already.’

  He reached for the cake platter. ‘That’s fair, then.’

  ‘We all work in this house,’ said Mandy, just coming in. ‘Except you. You just splash paint about.’

  ‘How’s my lovely nubile daughter?’ he asked, always able to forgive her taunts – unless they were a prelude to wanting money.

  ‘Your Dad’s an artist,’ Enid said sharply, whose ire rose whenever Handley went soft over his daughter. ‘So have a bit of bloody respect for his work.’

  Mandy had no fear of her father, but went into sullen silence at any outburst from her mother – who was never above a stinging slap across the face.

  ‘I’m full of tea,’ Handley said, ‘and sweet things to eat, and my family is in its usual state of mutual antagonism, so I think I’ll get to my solitary studio and work till I drop. Goodbye all. Don’t heave on your plots and ploys while I’m away.’

  There was no response when he went out.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Ralph sheltered in the garage till the rain stopped, then went back to the paddock with another huge plastic bag of waste for burning. He disliked the flames consuming what he tipped from these sacks. What fire took, it never gave back. And so much squandering frightened him. He hated it, almost as if it were a direct threat to himself. He had two wishes in life – one was to be fabulously rich, and the other was to exist on as little as possible, using the barest amount of the world’s goods to keep himself breathing. In that way he would be secure. He smiled at the living mass of contradictions that seethed in him – so much useful rubbish that he would not throw away and burn.

  Out of the bag came unused drawing paper, efficient boxes, half-finished exercise books, plastic bottles and containers, decorative tins, useful bits of pencil, broken gadgets and toys of all sorts that ought to be fixed – though there was no one to spend time and talent repairing them, and he wasn’t able to do it himself. It was indeed an extravagant house, he thought, tipping a further bag into the embers.

  He strolled across the paddock. The air was warm and heavy – sweetened milk to him after the utilitarian rain. Brambles proliferated, and doubled the thickness of the hedge. Across the angle of the far corner was a slit-trench ten feet long and several deep, a parapet thrown in front from excavated soil. Dawley had dug it for the children to play Viet Cong in, and Ralph recalled him a couple of months ago in Wellingtons, wielding spade and pick, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up. It was a neat trench, revetted with boards, a few inches of muddy water in the bottom from recent rains adding to its realism. The children had enjoyed it at first, firing two-two air-rifles at a line of target tins stuck in the ground thirty yards away, but recently they had lost interest.

  Coming back at another angle towards the still burning fire Ralph saw a small grey-brown object lying between clumps of grass. It was a baby hedgehog, and he picked it up. A few feet away were pieces of prickle-covered skin, the remains of the mother.

  His mind only acted with speed when a sentimental issue was involved. The catastrophe to the hedgehog family unrolled with heart-rending immediacy. A few nights ago, with Mandy curled beside him in their narrow bed, and the rest of the house in equally dark pits of sleep, he was roused by a high-pitched shriek, as if a fox had caught hold of a cat and were tearing it to shreds. The noise went on and on, and the sweat of terror poured from his arms and legs, soaking his pyjamas. He wanted to go down for the shotgun, but sleepiness and inanition prevented him.

  Holding the small frightened hedgehog in the palm of his hand, he knew now what the noise had been. A fox had got into the garden, found the hedgehogs and prised them open. The screams came from the mother who tried to protect her young, before she also was killed and eaten. He knew that hedgehogs, even when rolled into a ball, were not well defended against foxes. The small one in his hand had escaped the massacre.

  He hated the savagery of foxes. There were tears in his eyes when, putting the hedgehog back on to the ground, it made its way cautiously towards the piece of skin that had belonged to the mother. Hedgehogs were gentle and harmless, the gardener’s friend who ate noxious insects and slugs. It was too young even to know how to roll itself into a ball. He walked back towards the fire, cursing fox-like animals who preyed on helpless and innocent creatures. The thought of such cruelty in the world put him into agonising despair. Then he was cheered by the fact that one hedgehog of the family had survived.

  He couldn’t leave it alone, and after raking the fire went back to where he had put it down. A huge bottle-green blowfly had settled on to its ear, and two more flew away when he picked it up. Its spikes pricked his hand, and it made as round a ball as possible, but the cool dark skin of its feet and head were nevertheless visible.

  By the kitchen door he set down a saucer of custard. To his delight it unfolded and pulled itself to the rim with its short legs. It began to suck, and enjoyed it so much that it climbed completely into the saucer, sat in the custard, and lapped till it was gone.

  Ralph told himself that hedgehogs died in captivity – if for example he made a nest in the garage – so he took it back to the middle of the paddock where he had found it. It burrowed into a clump of grass, as if glad to be home.

  On his way to the garden he saw Maricarmen and Dawley walk through the gate and on to the road. It was difficult to know who was talking, but he assumed it to be Dawley because Maricarmen’s head was lowered, as if intent on listening. Perhaps she had asked a question that needed a lot of explaining.

  Smoke from the paddock fire drifted in, and Frank wondered why Ralph burned rubbish only on days when wind was blowing back to the house and yard. He closed the window – and his sweat dropping on the top map distorted mountain contours north-west of Laghouat. Standing away, he sharpened a pencil. There was a hesitant knock, and even before opening the door, he knew who it was, and called for her to come in.

  She looked at the maps. ‘Are you still thinking about Algeria?’

  ‘I must get it out of my system.’

  Her dark hair was wet, but she’d tied it lankly behind with a piece of ribbon. ‘It sounds clean and clinical. Isn’t it too important to get rid of so easily?’

  ‘It turned my hair grey,’ he smiled. And tore up my confidence, he added to himself.

  Her brown eyes looked, and he couldn’t meet them. He wanted to spit. They were cow-like eyes – but they burned nevertheless. ‘What was so unusual about your adventure?’

  She was questioning him for some deep reason, and he sensed that she hadn’t intended him to see this. There was a warmth inside her that would not let her be casual. He decided to be on his guard. ‘I died, but somehow got my strength back.’

  ‘But you didn’t die.’

  He couldn’t mistake her tone of wishing that he had. ‘There were enough bombs flying, but my name wasn’t on them. It isn’t easy to tell what happened.’

  ‘Are you writing a book?’

  ‘It’ll fill one, certainly.’

  He lit cigarettes for them both. She was surprised by it, and accepted. He found it hard to meet such knowing eyes, such s
oftly arrogant eyes that finally knew no right or wrong. But he was glad she had no fear of him, that she appraised him and talked on a level of fair equality. He hadn’t often met it in Englishwomen.

  She was weighing him up, too, wondering how much cunning there was behind those grey eyes. Cunning was the diplomacy of the powerless – or was it the unintelligent? So was it weariness or sloth? She stood by the door, as tall as he was and looking at him with a friendly smile – which he didn’t trust. Lack of trust made him feel middle-aged, but it occurred to him that for some people to be middle-aged is to be grown up at last.

  He was pale, his face was thin, his spirit plain. She told herself there wasn’t so much mental substance inside him that everyone supposed. Maybe Algeria had sucked out his spark of life, but if so he could never have been strong.

  ‘When you’ve finished what you’re writing I’d like to read it.’

  He leaned against the table. ‘I’m doing it in the community’s time, so it’ll belong to all of us. I don’t know what there’ll be of value in it. What’s anyone’s life worth?’

  ‘Who can say, till they’re dead?’

  ‘True’ – thinking that his life wouldn’t cost much at the moment.

  ‘Are you glad you came out of Algeria alive?’

  ‘When I was there I never thought about it.’

  ‘That made you indestructible.’

  ‘Did it?’

  ‘I wonder what was in Shelley’s mind?’

  He reached for an ash-tray they could both use. ‘I never wondered about dying. It’s not part of my nature. But Shelley always assumed he would get out alive. He was confident.’

  ‘And you weren’t?’

  ‘I told you, I didn’t think much about it.’

  ‘And now you’re safe and sound?’

  He grimaced, not liking the talk. ‘I suppose you think it would have rounded things off very well if I’d caught a mortar shell and got blown to bits. I didn’t, and for my sins I’m still alive and kicking. Look,’ he said before she could say something else, for it was plain she had plenty on her mind, ‘I’ve been cooped up all day. Let’s walk down the road.’

  She nodded, and Ralph saw them go through the yard.

  ‘We need some wind and sun to dry the fields’ – knowing that one day he would have to think about dying. He noticed her loose breasts, and found them attractive. She was a beautiful woman, and he wanted her to take his arm as they walked. Her nearness told him how pleasant it would be to make love to her, as if it would give back some of the life-blood he needed. He wanted to go to bed with every young woman he saw these days, and wondered how much closer you could get to lack of back-bone than that.

  ‘I think you must have been a good factory worker,’ she said, when they were passing the village shop. ‘Nobody should stop doing what they are good at.’

  ‘I can’t return to that.’ He thought that as soon as he found a woman who didn’t want to get him back into a factory he’d marry her.

  He was straightforward in his answers, and she pitied him for his honesty. An honest person took too long getting to know themselves. Shelley said as much, and she could see how right he’d been. Maybe it was this doggedness in Dawley that had snared Shelley into Algeria. Such people were dangerous, and it had been Shelley’s bad luck to fall in with him. She was momentarily alarmed at wondering whether she wasn’t being trapped by it. ‘What will you do, then?’

  ‘Drift for the rest of my life. Once you begin, it’s hard to stop.’ But he didn’t know why he was living in the community, either. Nancy had jacked it in, and so ought he. He should never have left Nottingham in the first place. Surely it was better to stay where you were born, to go from womb to grave in the same town, with one woman, and work that never altered, so that life could be empty, really empty, and go by in a flash, get itself and you over with. He didn’t believe it, but had to say so to convince himself that he didn’t. Birth was a prison and death was a prison, but life needn’t be.

  She stepped from him to avoid a pool of water. ‘So going to Algeria was just one phase of your drifiting?’

  He wanted to dodge her sharp questions, but he could only give straight answers. He’d never been much of a liar. ‘There were political motives, and the only person who could prove it is Shelley.’

  He felt her stiffen, and wished he hadn’t spoken so brutally. Shelley’s death would be raw in her forever.

  ‘I wonder what he’d say if he were alive?’

  ‘That you can’t live on memories,’ he said sharply, beginning to see that something was wrong.

  ‘He’d like being here. It’s a pity the three of us were never together.’

  ‘And John,’ he said, ‘with Handley and Adam and Richard. Even Ralph and Cuthbert. The eight of us might have had a lot to tell each other!’

  Her smile, more than words, put him in his place. ‘You don’t think much of wmen.’

  They passed the school and watercress beds, leaving the houses. He led her along a footpath and into the Gould Estate, a route ascending between two dark patches of wood. The air was so heavy she could hardly breathe.

  ‘Depends who they are’ – glad to get her away from unhealthy recollections about Shelley.

  ‘The three you left out of your list are all intelligent enough to understand politics. I thought Spanish society was dominated by the male, but it’s as bad in England.’

  He had no defence. She had caught him squarely. ‘You’re right. But they never talk to me.’

  ‘How many of them have you been to bed with?’

  A minute went before he was able to answer. ‘Mandy, once. Then I lived with Myra nearly a year.’

  ‘Don’t you live with her now?’

  ‘In a way. When there’s something in the air that we can’t stand we fly to each other. Maybe that’s love.’

  ‘Is that why your wife left?’

  ‘One of the reasons. It’d be useless going into all that.’

  ‘I suppose that’s why Nancy left, then, because you wouldn’t go into anything.’

  ‘I think you may be right,’ he said.

  She was curious and persistent. ‘Have you ever been to bed with Enid?’

  He didn’t like her asking questions about his sex life as if she were a mate of his in the army. ‘No,’ he told her.

  ‘Isn’t she attractive enough for you?’

  ‘She’s gorgeous, really, but she doesn’t like me. Maybe she thinks I want to disrupt things. In any case, Handley wouldn’t want it.’

  She folded her arms across her chest. ‘You mean she’s his property?’

  ‘She belongs to herself.’ They were silent for a few paces. ‘I wouldn’t make love to my friend’s wife.’

  ‘Don’t you believe in free love?’

  They turned on to a sunken lane, and a sheep with full udders wanted to get out of their way by crossing the ruts, but they were so deep it got trapped in the mud. Dawley went to it slowly, its blue and vacant eyes nailed helplessly as his grip tightened. She watched him. He straightened his legs and lifted it with much more strength than she thought he had, walking through the mud and setting it down in the open field. It stood, then walked along the hedge, following them for a while. ‘I don’t believe in free love,’ he said, still out of breath.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’ve never seen anybody else who does. Let’s talk politics – it’s more interesting.’

  ‘This is politics.’

  ‘Do you believe in free love?’

  ‘Yes. But I’m careful about it. I don’t like to hurt people.’

  They stopped by a stile, and he touched her arm. ‘It’s going to rain again. We’d better turn back.’ He couldn’t take his hand away, and gripped her flesh, hoping she would come towards him.

  ‘How did you persuade Shelley to go into Algeria?’

  He held her close, but not to kiss, not feeling love, but glad of her ample warmth spreading over his body. He whispered, afraid of the wo
rds: ‘I pointed a gun at him.’

  She drew away. ‘Entonces?’

  ‘He accepted it. As fate, I suppose. I didn’t frighten him with the gun. He wasn’t afraid of me. He just used me and the gun in my hand to make up his mind for him.’

  ‘You liar.’

  ‘I don’t lie. The fact that he died is eating me away. I’m guilty of his death. I’m dying because of it. I loved Shelley. I’ve told nobody. You’re the one I shouldn’t tell because you’re in love with him still.’

  She walked back across the field, and he followed. ‘I made him stop playing politics and act,’ he said. ‘But I was the one who was acting. I’d have given my life to save him, but I couldn’t. It’s never like that. I was wounded later, but I didn’t die. I wanted to, but I couldn’t.’

  ‘He never played politics,’ she said. ‘He did a lot in Spain, at great risk.’

  Tears were on his cheeks like acid. His lungs were contused and burning. ‘It’s a nightmare with me. It goes on day and night. It gets worse.’ He wanted to crawl into the middle of a wood, and rot painlessly to death.

  She walked quickly. ‘Stop it.’

  ‘I hadn’t started to live until that happened,’ he shouted. He caught her up and pulled her close. ‘I don’t expect to be forgiven.’

  ‘You won’t be.’ She regretted her words in case her hatred gave him comfort, only wishing she had a gun to kill him now.

  ‘We talked about you. You might have done the same thing. He told me you both believed in revolution to the point of being willing to go to war for it.’

  She was silent.

  Shelley had only hinted as much, but he felt the need to defend himself, not being utterly craven with guilt. They walked without talking, and when he took her warm hand she did not draw it away. But she could see no hope for him.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The hedgehog made its way from the paddock, through the garden, and up to the back door, where Ralph found it two days later lying in the saucer from which it had eaten the custard. He had been looking for it.