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

by Alan Sillitoe

  ‘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.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Handley stood up to open the session: ‘It seems to me – because I’m not blind – that certain power blocs are forming in this community, which between them will deaden the life of all future meetings. It’ll come down to the stupid brute strength of party politics, which are anathema in a true democracy. Innovation may be possible, but real human progress will be out of the question.’

  Thirteen people sat along both sides of the table, and a snap vote had already decided that no one could occupy the head or foot, so he moved next to Maria, the tallest of the au pair girls with blue-black hair and sultry eyes, who felt uneasy that he was so close, and wanted to move away.

  ‘There’s been an immovable power bloc at these meetings ever since they began,’ Enid said, ‘and that’s been you. Maybe we will end up with two sides, but that’ll be better than being manipulated like puppets.’

  ‘It’s been fair give and take,’ he said.

  Myra stood. ‘I’ll explain what we want. There are a few of us who believe it’s time that the domestic work was divided equally between the men and women.’

  Her slight pause enabled Handley to snap into argument: ‘And who’s going to give me a hand with my painting? Who’ll work with Frank on his book? There’ll be no lack of volunteers, I expect, to help Cuthbert to do damn-all, or to muck in with Dean and his pot-smoking.’

  ‘That’s not the point,’ Enid said. ‘This place is nothing but a holiday camp for those with a penis. Otherwise it’s shopping, or sewing, or washing, or cooking or cleaning. I’m not doing any more unless the men share – and as a duty, not a bit of skylarking when they want exercise or a change of scenery to make them feel good. So if you don’t help, we stop work altogether, and you can live off tinned food and wear paper shirts – or however you want it.’

  ‘This is the most uncivilised notion I ever heard of,’ said Handley. ‘Don’t you think so?’ he called to Dean, set between Enid and Maricarmen.

  ‘You’ll get no change out of sponger,’ Mandy laughed. ‘If he doesn’t vote with us he won’t get another crust.’

  ‘He’ll feel that bloody road under his feet if he does,’ said Handley.

  Dean knew he shouldn’t smile, but was unable to do anything else to save face. His narrow eyes had no smile in them, only a desire to explain to Handley the truth about his position. He disliked all of them except Enid, but couldn’t say so because the idea of pushing on to the Smoke didn’t seem so good compared to the lotus-ease of this slack mob. He cunningly kept silent, knowing she would stick up for him.

  ‘He votes how he likes,’ she said to Handley, ‘so stop badgering him. It’s wonderful how nasty you can get when you think somebody might be trying to take your power away.’

  ‘How will you arrange the work?’

  ‘I’ve planned it already,’ Myra said. ‘There are twelve of us, so three can be on duty every day. That means you work one day in four, which isn’t so bad. It should be feasible, with good will all round.’

  ‘There are thirteen of us,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Dean’s not part of the schedule,’ Enid told him, ‘being the general caretaker and errand-runner. He’ll have plenty to do, don’t worry.’

  ‘He’s stunned with drugs most of the time,’ Handley said. ‘All he’s fit for is sleeping in the car like a dog, on a bowwow trip to the bone factory. I’ve noticed Cuthbert’s not above a little pull at the old weed now and again. Nor is Mandy. Oh yes, I’ve seen you at it. I know you think I’m a tight-arsed reactionary, but your brains’ll get softer than they are already if you keep on with it. You should have more sense than to drag that crap into your lungs. I’ll tell you another thing: if anybody in the village gets a whiff of it you’ll have the bloody constabulary down on us like a pack of elephants. And if it spreads at the rate it’s going, this house will be belching it from the chimneys for everybody to flake out at.’

  ‘It relaxes you,’ said Mandy. ‘Why don’t you take some? There’d be more peace in the house.’

  There was a glint in Handley’s eyes. He had diverted them from the main issue – though this was serious enough. ‘I’m proposing,’ he said ‘that we put it to the vote: do we allow drugs on the premises, or not?’

  ‘It’s a matter of free will,’ Myra said. ‘If they want to smoke pot there’s no harm in it.’

  ‘If I’m honest with myself,’ Handley said, ‘I agree with you. But you’re the official householder on this compound, and if the coppers find grass and such stuff they’ll get you in court.’

  ‘He’s right,’ Dawley said.

  ‘I smoked it in Tangier,’ Myra told them, ‘though I didn’t let it get a grip. It’s a stupid law that says you can’t smoke it, and the general policy of the community is, as I’ve always understood it, that such rules aren’t to be taken notice of. The good laws of society might be necessary from time to time, but not those that try to tell us what we can and can’t do with our own minds and bodies.’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ said Richard.

  ‘I had a smoke the other night,’ Enid told them, ‘but it gave me stomach ache.’

  Ralph came in with the coffee.

  ‘I expect he has, as well,’ said Handley.

  He smiled. ‘Often. I smuggled it when I was on my world trip three years ago.’

  ‘Everybody smokes it now and again,’ said Adam.

  ‘You too?’ Handley demanded.

  ‘Not much. But I have. Haven’t we, Richard?’

  Richard reached for a cup of coffee. ‘We had a smoke-in with Maria and Catalina last night, in the Operations Room.’

  ‘That’s why they’re always so bloody dopey then,’ said Handley. ‘I expect you mix a bit with Eric Bloodaxe’s food. He has been a bit quiet lately.’

  ‘It’s an idea,’ said Cuthbert.

  ‘You keep off him,’ Handley shouted angrily. ‘That dog’s as innocent as driven snow.’

  ‘In Malaga,’ said Maricarmen, ‘there are vendors on every corner selling it. It comes from Morocco, just over the water. It’s the peoples’ opium though. I hate it.’

  Handley lit a cigar. His plan was broken. ‘Don’t think you shock me. But don’t go smoking it in the shop or pub. I don’t mind us being had up for poaching or any other honest to God escapade. We can handle that. But the bastards are red hot on this stuff.’

  ‘About this domestic issue,’ said Enid. ‘Who’s in favour of work being shared equally as a duty between men and women?’

  Handley stood. ‘Before we go through’ with this farce, let me say something else. With thirteen pair of hands there’ll be more people than there’s work for. So on the grounds of general economy I think we won’t be needing the help of Maria and Catalina’ – believing that if he could get them sacked before the vote was taken the women might not have a majority.

  ‘If they go,’ said Myra gently, ‘you’ll work one day in three instead of one in four, because we’ll still win by a small margin.’

  He sat down. ‘A bit of good old healthy ballot-rigging has been going on, has it?’

  Enid, Myra, Mandy, Ralph, Maricarmen, Dean, Maria and Catalina voted in favour. Handley, Cuthbert, Dawley, Adam and Richard cast against – a majority no one could gainsay.

  ‘This is the end of peace,’ said Handley, before walking out of the room. ‘I don’t expect I shall ever paint another picture!’

  Everyone was so excited about the new regime that Shelley’s notebooks were forgotten. Handley had remembered them, but thought they could stay where they were. Who knew what other bright ideas they might give Maricarmen?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Dean strolled across the yard and sat by Dawley in a friendly unassuming manner. He lit a cigarette, so that the sweet vegetable pungency of pot flowed from between hi
s lips in pale blue shades. He didn’t even smoke it properly, Frank saw, who had done so when he was wounded in Algeria, and it was the closest he could get to anaesthetic. If he inhaled to his toe-nails it would come out the colour of steel, but when he went on to do so Dawley saw that he wasn’t such a novice after all.

  Had William Posters ever been one? His children certainly were brought up on the art of survival. ‘You’ve found quite a resting-place here.’

  Dean’s eyes turned on him in the half darkness: ‘I like it. People help each other. That’s good.’

  ‘You smoke that a lot?’

  ‘While I’ve got it. I invested my post office dough in it before I kicked Nottingham. I gen Cuth some this morning, and he’s bin stoned all day. He’s a good bloke, Reverend Cuth is. Says it’s changed ’is life!’

  Dawley laughed. ‘He’s having you on. He’s not new to it. Smoked it at his college.’

  ‘You want a bit of the old straw?’

  ‘No thanks. I’m not bleeding to death. Why don’t you read a book or two? There’s plenty in the house.’

  ‘Girlie mags?’

  It might be a big change if young Bill Posters read a few things. ‘Good books. Go and look.’

  ‘I’m travelling,’ Dean said. ‘I learn a lot from that. My old man says he’s allus wanted to travel.’

  ‘He was too busy running away,’ Frank said. ‘You always get back to the same place.’

  Dean laughed, and took another long pull. A few minutes passed before he could answer. ‘Ask me in five years whether you do or not.’

  He liked his open, ignorant and generous nature. ‘I expect we’ll bump into each other somewhere in Nottingham.’

  ‘Not me,’ Dean said, dreamily confident, his words meandering out. ‘I’ll never see that Dracula-castle again.’

  ‘What makes you so sure?’

  ‘I’m moving.’ A minute went by. ‘Moving, I tell you.’