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

  ‘Maybe it’s finished us off already.’

  Ralph came close: ‘What did you do with the notebooks?’

  ‘That’s easy. When you had them neatly knotted up in the plastic bag I untied it and took them out. The bag you so gleefully confined to the flames contained another sort of old rubbish.’

  ‘You’re the worst of them all,’ Ralph said. ‘Number one maggot that leads the others in, and then works hardest to undermine any sign of life. You’ll end by eating yourself, not because there’s no one left, but because everyone will get wise to you.’

  Cuthbert grinned through his unhappiness: ‘There’s one born every minute. And the reason Heaven doesn’t fold up is that one dies every minute. Even a priest can have his jokes.’

  At the first pistol shot Ralph jumped as if the bullet had shattered him. He cried out, and put a hand to his face. No part of Cuthbert’s flesh moved. He was pallid, but still sure of himself. To accept his responsibility for it would make him seem naïve before all and sundry, especially Ralph, whom he had always despised. But Cuthbert, in the vital self-criticising space between gunshots, knew himself to be immature because he was afraid of appearing naïve. The only honest way to be unmoved was to admit that he was the cause of Maricarmen running amok.

  At the second explosion Ralph sat down by the table, as if the strength of his legs had gone. He once shot a hare with a two-two rifle and saw the hole in its head. There were tears at his eyes as he visualised those grey rings of pulverized human flesh. He lifted his agonised face: ‘I took the notebooks from Shelley’s trunk under her bed. But I didn’t mean this to happen.’ Cuthbert was unable to smile at his weakness.

  ‘What the hell did you imagine, then?’ he shouted as the third shot went off.

  ‘The future’s empty,’ Ralph said sadly, as if there had been a time, thought Cuthbert, when he’d expected it to be full. That was the difference between the old days and now. Ralph belonged to the time when a future was said to be possible for everyone. Cuthbert prided himself on knowing that he’d never believed in that sort of Utopian dream. The present day was always a rope around his neck by which he may be hanged before nightfall.

  ‘You mean it’s only full when there’s mischief in it?’ he demanded. ‘No one but God can take care of the future for us, and fill it or empty it however He likes. That’s my insipid though heartfelt conclusion.’

  Ralph’s eyes shone, a deep uncertainty struggling to assert itself in a threatening manner. He wondered whether he should kill him, and get it over with. But they were too evenly matched, and he had no more treachery left.

  ‘In a way you’re worse than this hotbed of constipated hornets plotting revolution,’ Cuthbert went on. ‘They’re at least trying to go in the right direction. But you’re a compost heap of smouldering English virtues just waiting to be touched off by a spark from the Devil. I’ve got enough of it in me to see it in you, and to know it’s the wrong way for anybody to be.’

  ‘I used to think you were different,’ Ralph said, drawing a coat sleeve across his eyes, ‘but you’re a Handley after all. I’m someone who won’t ever be tolerated as a human being in a family like this. It just confirms to me that things are like they’ve always been, and that they’ll never alter. All one can do is find a little protected area where nobody can come and spoil it.’

  Cuthbert saw him as the common denominator of fear, and he hoped God would protect him – though someone like Ralph would not protect God, except in so far as his own safety was threatened. He lived a life of waking fear, and so his humanity wasn’t to be trusted, because, trapped in that fear, the worst injustices could fester roundabout and he wouldn’t notice. ‘It’s not a God you want, but a nanny. The sort of nursery world you’re after doesn’t exist.’

  ‘It must, though,’ Ralph said, more tears falling. ‘I don’t know what I really want. I’m falling apart, that’s all I know.’ He leaned against the wall with his head bowed.

  At his terrible and disheartened cry Cuthbert became strong. He knew exactly what to do. He put a hand over his shoulder, and felt the sobs that seemed to be breaking Ralph from the inside – just as a black frost breaks up hard soil in the middle of winter. He held his hand. ‘Let God take your guilt, and then you’ll find peace.’

  Ralph nodded, wiping his eyes on one of Handley’s clean paint rags as he followed him to the door.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Dawley dropped. Having lived this moment before allowed him to act with a speed which saved his life – as he spun in his crouched position to face her.

  Handley screamed – it sounded like a scream, and no one had heard such a noise from him before – but Dawley’s brain was so filled up that he caught only a burst of lungs which disturbed him more than the second bullet. The first broke the mirror, and would have killed him if he hadn’t leapt forcefully down. Based on the sharpest instinct, it lead to the pause, which followed the strong and vivid sensation of having been through it already.

  He hadn’t. But the second shot missed. Glass of the mirror cut his face. It burned like ice. From the crouch he ran. Energy which he thought he had lost rammed itself into every fibre and muscle. He hated life because it humiliated him by making him run, and he felt ashamed. But the shame gave him more strength. He ran towards her, but in a wide zigzag, as in any situation when under fire. His skin felt pitted with fear.

  Her aim was out, because she didn’t know how to offset the sights to his quick movement. When he got close enough to run at her, he turned the offer down because it seemed still too dangerous. It was the sort of opportunity to close-in which often got you killed. He was exhilarated by his own cunning. On his last angular approach, which should have taken him straight at her, he ran by, into the driveway that led to the front of the house. He was alive. If he hadn’t been too busy trying to save himself he would have laughed.

  She turned, to fire at his back. He zigzagged. He sweated and grunted wanting to run on all fours, but keeping upright, because the speed of it gave less chance of being hit.

  Every line of the wall was clear though not so close, detailed like an engraving, rusty and grey in the same eyeful. A daddy-longlegs spider ran out of a crack. He was again bashing his lungs and senses at the limits of his experience. Only a bullet in his back would send him beyond it. There was no cover to lie down or crouch in. He was terrified. He was elated. He smelt soil and rain, pumice and grit, tea leaves and burning paper. He prayed that those by the garage would do something. Vomit was disturbed in his stomach like a cat. He felt too old to live.

  In firing at him, she held her back to them. He ran round to the front of the house, and paused under the cover of its far corner, too set on saving himself to feel safe. There was shouting from the yard and garage. He staggered to a further angle of the house.

  All was clear. He was alert and intent in case she should appear from any direction. The sky was empty. His hand slid along the smooth warm brick. While he dodged and ran, his wits stayed with him. If he remained still he would be helpless.

  So as to get more room to manoeuvre he ran up and on to the lawn behind the house, then came back slowly towards the garage, having completed a circle of it. His thoughts had been pulverised and smashed – his brain rotten, but his body now working to its own good time. He went by the coal sheds and into the yard again, to approach from behind.

  Handley, taking cover in the repair pit, saw his chance when Maricarmen turned her back to them.

  It was out of the question to chase Dawley. She would not have missed if he hadn’t inexplicably dropped a split second before the first well-aimed shot. How had he known it was already travelling, that her finger at that moment pressed his life away? Then he ran, in that hilarious cowardly fashion, so that she couldn’t aim quickly enough to bring him down. It had seemed easy before she began. Unable and unwilling to move, she decided to stay where she was forever, the gun in her hand and pointing forward, waiting for him to reappear, or to shoot the fir
st person who walked into her sights.

  Adam was motioned to her left, by the house. Richard was nodded to the right, along the sheds, while Handley, taking off his shoes, rushed like a nimble and silent cat. He put a sudden steely grip around her so that the gun dropped. He’d not been a real worker since early youth, though his arms drew enough force from the shoulder-blades to hold the burden he had taken on. But the pressure needed to stop her struggling free and picking up the gun was almost more than he had, and he felt a cracking at the heart.

  He pulled her to the cover of the caravans, so that no curious passer-by along the road might see. She moaned, and turned passive at this undignified end to her attempt at killing. It had seemed easy during the months she had thought about it, and now that it was over, and she had failed, it again seemed easy, and she even more of a fool at having bungled it. A sort of black fear took hold of her, that her defeat and helplessness would bring down a thousand indignities.

  Adam emptied the gun. She had fired three shots. Maybe the others were echoes, or the normal multiplications of fear. Spent and live cases fell from the chambers, and he bent with trembling hands to pick them up.

  ‘Run to my studio,’ Handley called to Richard, ‘and in the drawer under the left-hand window you’ll find an old cigar tin full of bangers left over from last bonfire night. Bring ’em out, and set two or three off, so nobody’ll wonder what the noise was.’

  Maybe the whole of the county constabularly was already converging from all points on to the house. The shots had certainly gone a dozen miles into his heart and soul, for he was shaking – like a bloody lily, he said afterwards – and asking Maricarmen in a gentle voice to get up and try to walk. The instinct of simple loyalty told him to make sure neither outsiders nor police poked their noses where they ought not to belong. Even though Maricarmen had gone all out for murder he still saw her as one of them. Luckily he and Dawley had enough of the soldier in them to handle it, otherwise it might have been difficult to keep one or two corpses under the doormat.

  ‘Get Enid or Myra to come out of their foxholes,’ he told Adam. ‘Even Mandy. Anybody. Get going. Quick.’ He caught the touch of panic edging into his voice, and told himself to check it.

  Dawley, sitting on the steps above the garage, had a good view of the yard. The danger was over, and he lit a cigarette. He’d been in the middle of it. So had they all. Even while running from Maricarmen, he’d felt no panic. Death mattered and he was afraid, but he’d been reasonable all the same. He was undefeated, and cool, but he was close to weeping. If you acted wildly when facing it you let it master you. Not that he tried to be calm. If you had to try you weren’t calm, though that was often all you could do. Luckily he had kept cool without knowing it, which was what saved him – that, and knowing what to do.

  He sat and smoked, as if after some hard work during the quietest of days. But his senses were fragmented, a feeling as if they were melting into each other. If he stood up he would fall down. Maricarmen had gone into the house with Enid, and Handley came over: ‘Let’s have a fag.’

  He passed one.

  ‘You’re a cool bloody customer.’

  ‘Thanks for saving my life,’ Dawley said.

  ‘It was mine as well, when I was creeping up on her.’

  ‘Is she all right?’

  ‘She will be.’

  ‘She imagines I’m responsible for Shelley’s death.’

  Handley sat by his side. ‘I feel sorry for her, at the moment.’

  ‘If I’d been killed in Algeria instead of him,’ Dawley said, ‘Myra could have made out it was his fault for organising the gun-running in the first place. That, too, would have been a lie.’

  ‘You’d better tell it to Maricarmen.’

  ‘I will. If I get the chance.’

  Handley threw his cigarette away. ‘Tastes like shit. She’s got to be told the facts of life. Both you and Shelley knew what you were doing. We’ll have a meeting to sort everything out.’

  ‘I’ll read John’s last letter,’ said Dawley, ‘that he wrote in Gibraltar, and handed to me as I got on to the plane. I was to read it in six months, he said, or when I thought “circumstances demanded it”. That time seems to be about now, I should say.’

  Handley agreed so firmly that he laughed. ‘Do you think it’ll hold us together, or blow us apart?’

  ‘I haven’t read it.’

  ‘I won’t be able to do another stroke of work till I know what’s in it.’

  Richard set a handful of fireworks along the front wall. His first match was blown out, so he cupped the second carefully. ‘You won’t have long to wait,’ said Dawley.

  The first banger wasn’t as loud as a pistol shot, but it brought a cry from Maricarmen who had been given a couple of valium pills and put to bed. Handley felt pity for her. The second and third banger went off, to the amusement of the butcher who was passing by, and paused to watch those mad Handleys playing with fireworks in midsummer.

  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.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  ‘This is where we should have started,’ he said when he closed the door, ‘instead of with Shelley’s pathetic bits of pornography.’