The Flame of Life Read online

  Ralph was placed between Adam and Myra, a small transistor in his coat pocket, from which a thin cord went up to his left ear like a deaf-aid connection. It filled his brain with pop music, and even when his eyes weren’t closed there was a far-off look about him. He put a hand in his pocket to change stations when a news broadcast threatened to bring him half-way back to reality.

  By such means he fobbed off the horror of living with the Handleys and escaped the malignant tremors passing around the table at meeting times. Personalities festered at cross purposes, and he was sensitised to all their different wavelengths at the same time – hence the teat-plug jammed into his ear in an effort to deflect them. He stayed sane by this appliance but, as Handley often observed, only at the cost of becoming barmy, which someone as congenitally crackers as Ralph wouldn’t in any case notice.

  He was so involved in changing stations that he forgot to move his foot from the vote-meter, and a segment of the clock dial stayed lit up. Handley was pleased to see he’d voted for him, though knew Ralph always said yes to everybody so as to be left in peace.

  Music spread like an occupying army to all points of the brain, bringing it under swift and complete submission. Yet despite this totality of control there was a separate and conscious part of Ralph that kept clear of music, a sharply defined zone of his otherwise reeling and flooded intelligence which told him that if he went on hating Handley (though without ever saying so) Handley would sooner or later do something to get rid of him. In fact he may right now be preparing to do just that. Why ever did I pick an artist for a father-in-law? Any man in an ordinary occupation would be far too tired at night, or bent on pleasure at the weekend, to give me such threatening attention, he erroneously thought – since Handley radiated more energy when he wasn’t working than when he was.

  The community idea was fine because it created an area wherein Ralph could exist. He did what duties were set for him, mealtimes turned up regularly, and there was always warmth and fodder in the kitchen. He had all the benefits of a great mother without having one to nag at him whenever he put his face inside the door. When there was no work to do for the community, his solitary well-built figure stooped as he walked across the fields, as if going through the undergrowth of a dense forest.

  Everything was on hand to make life perfect, and the community would have been splendid had it not been for the unsuitability of most people in it. But that was no fault of his, and when Handley’s spite against him for having married his daughter had been calmed by the passing of time, maybe he would suggest new people for the community, both to stop it dying, and to outvote the present members whom he would be glad to see walking away from it.

  What Handley took as Ralph’s vacant stare, caused by too much deadbeat drum-and-tonic pounding in, was really the pleasant conflict of clear thinking against the opposition of the music. But he didn’t know this, and was angered by Ralph being cut off from what was about to be discussed.

  He swallowed more coffee to take the waves of blue cigar smoke into his stomach. Between one painting and the next he pondered on ways to get rid of Ralph, which seemed vital if he weren’t to eat his own liver for the rest of his life.

  In the idealism that set the community going (in fact it had come together by accident) it was decided that there should be no constitution – or set of rules. Handley came to see this as an absolutely hare-brained state of affairs, even though to an outsider the community seemed harmonious enough. But that hypothetical swine of an outsider, Handley argued with himself in his studio the night before, has not, and never will have, anything to do with the community. He felt the need of a constitution because it was impossible to expel any member without one. To try and get them voted out on his sole recommendation was too risky, and might split the whole system. Also, Ralph was married to his favourite daughter Mandy, and if he were to be expelled it would have to be by her connivance, which at the present rate of progress would be a long time coming.

  Meanwhile, to give Ralph no inkling of his possible fate, Handley would push his quarrel with Cuthbert to the limits of civilised decency. He grinned at how the phrase fitted in with the sophisticated terms of the community. While he appeared to be savagely involved with Cuthbert he could sort out his moves to get Ralph either on to the psychiatrist’s scrap-heap or back at his mother’s tit.

  But nothing was simple and straightforward, not even violence and change, because to force his fiery unpredictable daughter and her husband into the wilderness would be to destroy the community. Handley was enough of a socialist to believe in the power of the family, as well as enough of an artist to get on his knees before it now and again.

  They were still drinking coffee, as if wanting to be even more awake for this particular meeting. The sky was clear outside, and Cuthbert felt drawn to lie on his back in some field and look into that flay-mouthed pit of widening mild blue. Meetings bored him – apart from the novelty of the first few minutes, after which he dwelt on how to turn his favourite obsession into a long-term policy, and pursue it to a favourable but acrimonious end.

  He saw Dawley as the central pillar of the establishment, and realised that if he could get rid of him then he, Cuthbert Handley, would take control with firm but flamboyant ease. In order to deceive Dawley as to his true purpose he would engage in a deadly duel with his father, and while everyone watched this mummers’ bitter fight for the seasons of the world, Cuthbert would do what he could to destroy Dawley. Everything must be done thus, as far as Cuthbert was concerned: chased into coal and cornfield, through street or tunnel, forest of mud-swamp even if it took as long as death to get there, otherwise how could you ever reach what you wanted?

  He caught Dawley looking at him, and smiled. Dawley lifted his hand to signal that he had seen. There was something about him that mystified Cuthbert, which may have been why he was so dead set on getting rid of him. Cuthbert wanted to dispense with mystery, because his soul had been poisoned by it. It had been pumped into him for years, scorching the most vulnerable part of his youth.

  He had seen through it, however, and undergone all forms of repudiation, but now sensed phenomena in Dawley which disturbed him just as much. There was a depth of purpose in Dawley’s face, which recalled his original antagonism at the idea of being threatened by a mystery which had been artificially created in order to oppress and enslave the spirit of the people. Whatever troubled you in youth never vanished. It recurred, as he now found. Mystery was a threat, whether political or religious and would not let you live, nor ever allow you to consider what riches of the world were at your disposal. He knew that Dawley had to be taken seriously. Mysteries had to be thrust behind him like Satan. They took you out of yourself and so could not be ignored, otherwise their power multiplied.

  Cuthbert felt some affinity with Dawley, but believed he could match him for power. He had spent years training to be a priest, while Dawley got his supposed authority from his time in the desert, which was said to have given him experience and wisdom. But this was yet to be proved, and Dawley had no pull over him, except that which forced him into the irritating position of having to think about him at all.

  Dawley’s hand fell, and Cuthbert’s smile drifted. They felt friendly enough at that moment, as two people often do who are together in similar areas of thought, and imagine themselves to be alone in it.

  Richard had detected their animosity, and hoped it was nothing serious. At these meetings he would find out whether any half-concealed trouble was likely to threaten the existence of the commune. Even in Lincolnshire, when the family had reigned, he had done the same, and the community didn’t feel as staid and safe as the family had in those days. The change of den meant that his father was no longer in proper control. He didn’t own the house or pay rent for it, and so felt insecure in his position – though he put in a generous amount towards running the community.

  The family, as it were, had almost doubled in number, and was called a community. Its lack of organisation was
attractive, yet any believer in guerrilla warfare and revolution must know – as his brother Adam said yesterday – that organisation and intelligence lie at the bedrock of any society. The easygoing almost chaotic everyday flowing along of the community denied the clear and founding principles on which they worked. They were left alone to indulge themselves in a sort of controlled disorder for as long as they liked each day, and this was its great advantage. Yet Richard was uneasy, for even in the days of Uncle John there had been enough rigidity of life to make them feel that their work and the way they lived were fundamentally connected.

  But Adam also told him (they shared a room, and talked late into the night), that they must learn to look on the community as a test of adaptability – as befitted theoreticians of guerrilla warfare and addicts of the Handley way of life. They must recognise the needs of their father, who was an artist. If frequent changes of place and creed were called for by his internal motor, then they must put up with it. The artist always came before family, or community, or state – even the best of states.

  Handley suffered enough: Adam and Richard acknowledged it. They had only to observe some of the pictures he occasionally let them see. Hadn’t their mother accepted this policy when she said that she liked the community because it gave Handley something to do when he wasn’t painting? They wouldn’t be so plain about this patriarchal attitude, but saw that to be more subtle might be unjust to Handley as a breadwinning artist.

  Uncle John had said that they who believed in altering the social and productive forces of the earth must also honour their father and their mother. Adam tried to explain this heart-exploding paradox by seeing that John had made it because he never wanted them to go to extremes in their behaviour if ever it came to guerrilla warfare. In England, the foco of guerrilla warfare was to be the family.

  Apart from military history, small-arms manuals, and strategical texts, Adam’s favourite reading was the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Because he had never been able to explain this, nor indeed wanted to, it seemed perfectly natural to him, one being a counterweight to the other. There were times, of course, when the undercurrents common to both the House of Usher and that of Handley appeared to be working in the same direction, and this he sensed, and tried to steer clear of while feeling helpless against it.

  John’s Biblical exhortation to honour thy father and thy mother gave assistance in the right direction while lending an equal weight to John’s fervent lit-eyed Christ-like advocation of class warfare. Adam had always seen John as noble simply because he did not know any other word for it. He once asked him why he told them to respect their parents, and John answered: ‘Because they suffer. If a person does not suffer, he does not exist. Without suffering you lack imagination, intellect, endurance, and that persistent kindness to others which might eventually turn you into a civilised person.’

  To go deeply into the maxims of Uncle John made Adam uneasy. Now and again he went up to gaze at the priceless relics of his life. He had once met Cuthbert coming down from the room, and they had passed in silence. Adam thought that perhaps he had something in common with his elder brother Cuthbert after all, which opened new feelings in him while at the same time making him wary. He also wondered why Handley had stopped them visiting John’s room, and sensed it might be because he wanted – after all – to diminish the effect of his teaching on them. The idea was so appalling that he couldn’t believe it.

  Handley looked at him. Adam folded his thoughts away and smiled. Handley was about to start the meeting. They were ready to listen, and join in.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘The only thing that’s absolutely necessary, and therefore compulsory, in this community,’ Handley began, ‘is that everybody above the age of eighteen attend these meetings.’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ said Adam.

  ‘I don’t think that’s too much to ask,’ he went on, ‘considering the advantages it gives. Of course, there are one or two dead-heads who would prefer not to, though I don’t know where else they’d like to be. Probably nowhere, since if they don’t have any interest in this set-up, maybe they’d rather be off the world altogether.’

  ‘Anyhow, it’s only once a month,’ he continued, ‘and if whoever I’m referring to – and they know who it is – can sit still on their arses for long enough, they might not find it so boring. But if, on the other hand, this disillusionment with the ideals of the community becomes more general, then we’ll release them from their misery, meaning that we’ll restrict these meetings to half a dozen people whose hearts are in it. The project might lose some of its pristine democratic qualities, but no one can blame me for that. At least I wouldn’t have the discouraging job of talking to vacant faces.’

  They listened. Nothing was what it seemed. No words were what they were spelled out to be. Words did not come out of the grave of a dictionary but were a voluble extension of the flesh in this organisation, a reality of mystification, not a means to an end but a way to a means to deceive anyone regarding what the end might finally be.

  Even Cuthbert and Ralph, who took such jibes as aimed at themselves, listened carefully, which made Handley feel better. The sound of Paul playing with the lawnmower, and the lazy good-natured growl of Eric Bloodaxe pawing his breakfast bones around the kennel, came from outside.

  ‘And if it does happen’ – Handley spoke slowly so as to make his words cadenced and telling – ‘that some of you are no longer compelled to come to these gatherings, that does not mean that you’ll stop being members of the community.’

  Cuthbert stood, and looked squarely down the table: ‘Of course it damn well does.’

  Myra touched his arms, foreseeing a session of futile bickering which would only delay business and set them against each other even more. ‘Anything like that would have to be unanimous.’

  He smiled. ‘Naturally. That’s why I got the vote-meter installed.’

  ‘If our views coincided we wouldn’t need that medieval trick,’ Cuthbert snapped. ‘Nobody’s ever got the better of that tombola of human souls except yourself.’

  ‘How do you know it’d be unanimous?’ Handley grinned. ‘You might even win.’

  ‘He stays,’ Enid called, ‘so get that daft idea out of your head.’

  Just as Handley assumed all statements to be to his benefit, so he sided immediately with anything that went against him directly. He both agreed with everything, and disagreed with everything, but only so that he could go on towards getting his own way without anyone trying to stop him – a tactic they had long grown to recognise, however, so that by now it was almost ineffective, though Handley wasn’t aware of it. ‘Who said anything about him going? He’s got nothing better to do except think I’m getting at him. A bit of work would solve his problem. Which brings me to this month’s creative occupations. He can get some of his mystical and muscular talent to bear on the garden.’

  If he disagreed, a vote would be called, and Cuthbert could think of no way to avoid defeat, so Handley had his first effective win of the day. ‘And you, Brother Ralph, can snap that transistorised turd out of your left tab-hole and do a bit of poaching instead of just poaching on everybody’s good nature and eating us out of house and home. Don’t bring the same old milk-does, but see if you can’t rustle something tasty from the Gould Estate. Round up a few dozen pheasants’ eggs. A couple of them peacocks strutting around. Use your imagination a bit. Adam can go with you. That way you won’t end up in a farmer’s parlour drinking malt whisky and bewailing your fascist landowning family that chucked you out last year.’

  ‘You don’t need to be insulting about it,’ Ralph glowered.

  ‘I do it,’ Handley said, ‘because it’s the only thing that brings you back to life. The trouble is he’s suffering from a permanent overdose of prime bloody beef.’

  A huge cliff of white chalk crumbled over Ralph, and his mouth, full of foul dust, moved into the shape of all letters of the alphabet, as if he were going to weep but didn’t know how to begin. He co
ntrolled these convulsive movements and prevented himself falling into a bottomless pit.

  Mandy noticed his pale face, and the sweat on his chin. ‘Leave him alone,’ she called to her father. ‘He’s done nothing to you.’ She felt her husband’s hand, and with the other he turned the music up as high as he could without disturbing them.

  ‘All able-bodied children,’ Handley rolled on, ‘will wash the cars and caravans, while Myra, Nancy, Mandy, and my own fair Enid will carry on running the house.’

  Myra made a wry face. The fate of provider and top worker in the establishment swamped her natural tendency to think. Wondering about the future was out of the question, for looking after so many people deadened the mind. Such fervent dedication held the real problems down like a lid on a vat of steam. But as an intelligent person she felt a growing pressure to deal with the basic course of her life. She could not say clearly what her problems were, but hoped that when they made themselves plain they would produce their own solutions. It seemed that the community had been formed so as to draw out problems that might otherwise have lain dormant all her life, but would help her to know herself more when they were opened out. At the moment she did not want to feel so influenced by something which she had not totally conceived herself.

  Enid scowled at Handley’s directive, changing to a smile when she saw Myra notice it. She did not – Enid said to herself – intend waiting hand and foot on a pack of bone-idle men for the rest of her life. At times the community seemed no more than a trick to bring the Court of Baghdad to England’s green and pleasant land.

  Handley had picked up her thoughts: ‘Nobody can moan about the breadwinning side of things. We pull in a few dozen rabbits and plunder the odd field, so we’re fattening up nicely, especially Cuthbert. He had a haircut last week, and we were surprised to see how fat he’d got at the back of the neck. Once upon a time he was so thin he only farted twice a day. Now you have to be careful not to get too close.’