A Tree on Fire (15 page)

‘They're very good by any standards,' he said, leaning uncomfortably, wanting to leave, but not able to while she was in this distraught attacking state.

‘Anyway, it's very distressing to receive a letter from a man like that. It came a few days ago, but I've not known whether or not to tell you about it.'

He pressed his hands onto her dressing-table to stop himself trembling or falling. ‘What did he want?'

She was agitated, and he could only feel sorry for anyone receiving a letter from a man who was, after all, the lowest form of brute in spite of his talent. ‘He wrote about you. Said you were to stop pestering his daughter, which I suppose means this Mandy creature.'

He smiled at hearing her name from his mother's lips, even in disapproval, for it brought the softening aura of her beauty right against him. ‘It does.'

‘I don't know why you smile. It was an ugly letter. He also called you a thief. Said you might try to break in and steal his paintings. He must be absolutely insane.'

‘I must go now, mother. I'm awfully tired.'

‘Yes,' she said, ‘I suppose you had better go and get some sleep,' – the word ‘sleep' contemptuously spoken, as if it were opium or marijuana that she'd never thought a child of hers would need. As he closed the door and went with a heavier step than usual to his room, she picked up her book hoping, in spite of everything set against it, that he might after all be changing his habits, and that his daily life would begin instead of end with the dawn.

He wasn't conscious of total victory until closed in his room, with drawn curtains and light switched on. The largest and best room of the house, it was an act of spoliation after his return from Cambridge in order to make him feel more welcome. While on his world tour it stayed empty to lure him back, and this constant pampering by his parents (who when he was them didn't seem to care whether he lived or died) drove him into a frantic melancholy. But at the moment he appreciated their kindness because, after moving table and chairs to the window enough space was left to flatten Handley's canvas on the floor. He stood a chair-leg at each corner, holding it down like an unrolled map of some complex world with one layer of earth peeled off. It frightened him, the enormity of what he'd done. He flicked off the light and ran up a blind. His window looked eastwards over flat and saturated fields. The dawn was like pale lead, a long red knife-edged streak slit across it from end to end as if someone from a land of blood beyond were trying to prise the sky in two. The day would pour in like a bursting dam, and when you gave in to the dawn you were marked like a wounded animal, to be hunted down by the sundogs of the day.

Shirt, trousers, underwear went onto the floor. One had to sleep, and what was wrong with the day? Hide by the day in sleep, and those who slept at night could never get you. He had nothing against Handley when he was safe in his own room, and he stood naked, morosely conning the reasons why he had acquired the picture considering that in many ways he liked him. He was buoyant and
bruto
and had a crude sort of wit. There was no denying that. But at the same time he'd been a hard-bitten old-fashioned patriarchal beast when he'd wanted to marry Mandy, had forced her into the nastiness of an abortion, which accounted for her wild behaviour so that county baggages like old Miss Bigwell broadcast her exaggerated sins all over the place. He took his old Scout knife from a drawer.

The cowman sloshed across the yard in his waders, and the main gate squeaked as if it trapped a demon when pulled open. A tractor coughed out the cockcrow and cattle moans. Ralph stepped around the painting, slowly between the anchoring chairs, a widdershins at its disordered colourful soul, his naked faint shadow shimmering the desk and divan bed, the long thorn of knife hovering around the heart of Handley's work. If I tear it, will it scream? Shall I cut it to shreds and drop it bit by bit down the lavatory during the next three months, or bury it under the barn floor at midnight with a storm-lamp glimmering on the rafters? Shall I wedge it in a trunk and send it by rail to a non-existent inhabitant of Thurso or Wick? I could burn it, but I don't go by cremation – or by creation as Mrs Axeby, a farm labourer's wife, put it: ‘When one of my relations died who had got on in Boston he asked to be created, not buried ordinary like the rest of us. What sort of a finish-off is that?' No, I certainly shan't ‘create' it.

He pulled pyjamas from under the pillow and got into them, slipped on his dressing-gown. What made life rich was the urges you did not give in to. He spent many a fertile hour brooding on them – brewing up even finer urges that he did give in to. The knife went back in its case. He sat at his desk and picked up a pen. ‘If you give me your daughter's hand in marriage I will send it back safe and sound. You know what I mean. But if you squeak about it to anyone beyond your family, I will cut it into little strips, and then into little squares, and mix it with my father's linseed cake that he feeds his cattle with. I am not a man to be trifled with, as you may so far have thought. If you do not hurry I shall be only too glad to give in to my atavistic rage – after which I will fly to the ends of the earth. Yet somehow I don't think that will be necessary, if we are sensible enough to open diplomatic negotiations immediately.'

He slept through the day as if it were night, intending to post the letter when he woke in the darkening balm of evening.

Chapter Thirteen

When he picked up the menu to order she noticed his damaged hand. He'd been pale and silent in the taxi, as if gritting his teeth for some reason, ‘Did you fight with that man?'

‘You know who it was?'

‘I thought he was a friend you were being particularly jovial with.'

‘It was Russell Jones. I've no secrets from you.'

She understood. ‘I meant to ask you whether it caused much of an upset. It was a pretty bad thing to write.'

‘There wasn't too much trouble. But I still had to have a word with him.'

‘You need something over it,' she said. ‘It might fester.'

‘If it does it'll teach me not to shoot my mouth off. Enid's right. It would have festered, though, if I had hit him.'

‘Didn't you?'

‘I hit the wall. Come on, what would you like to start with? I fancy a bit of salmon, myself. The sight of a swine like that makes me gluttonous. I was only hungry up to then. Gluttony's a good feeling now and again: it means you haven't lost your will to live. You can't let me down by ordering a grapefruit. Have some fish, then a steak, and we'll wash it down with champagne. I'll do the ordering, and you just sit quiet. You aren't living alone while you're out having a meal with me!'

She spread her napkin. ‘I'm used to it though, and it makes me afraid. I'm getting into a routine of coping with solitude, and I actually like it. It's the first time in my life I've lived alone, and when you invite me to Lincolnshire I become cautious of leaving. It's like a disease that you don't want to lose because it gives you a sense of self-importance, and that's a vital thing for me right now. In your own house nobody else's spirit competes for the psychic space you need to feed on. Sometimes I don't think I'll be able to live with anyone again. Don't be afraid,' she smiled, ‘It hasn't altered my love for Frank. It deepens it in a strange sort of way.'

The Scotch salmon lay like thin paper over their plates. ‘We'll drink to Frank Dawley,' he said.

‘I wonder whether he's drinking champagne right now?'

‘Don't wonder,' he said. ‘To Frank.'

She held her glass up.

Instead of squeezing his lemon on the fish he pressed it over his knuckles and rubbed them, replacing the dull ache by sharp antiseptic stabs. ‘There's plenty of time to be alone when you're in the grave,' he said. ‘You can't live alone while you're alive. I suppose the baby will change that even if Frank doesn't come back for a while.'

‘It's not so bad,' she said. ‘You're more aware of yourself. Maybe after a while your personality would dissolve into a sort of low-grade insanity, but for a time you feel in greater control of yourself than you ever have. I think an individual can only exist if she's living alone, though you're not really allowed to live alone, unless you make a great effort. As long as you still feel lonely. Those who live alone, and don't, have a dangerous kink in them, I suspect. When I stop feeling lonely, I'll stop living alone.'

‘It's twisty,' he said, ‘but still not convincing.'

‘Here's to the big painting you told me about.'

He lifted his glass and winked: ‘Cheers'.

‘Will you be able to drive back with your hand in that state?'

‘And paint with it,' he said. ‘I'm always damaging my hands so as to be aware I've got them. It shows I love my work, at least. I feel in good form tonight, which stopped me punching Russell Jones the way he deserved.'

She cut into her steak. ‘I suppose all journalists are pretty bad. That's just the way they are.'

‘Some have honour,' he said. ‘Some don't. It's been my luck to meet one who didn't.'

‘You know,' she said after a while, ‘I still feel rather guilty about Frank. I was so shattered when George died, even though I didn't love him in the least, so that I didn't give Frank what love I really had for him. If I had, he might not have gone into Algeria.'

His laugh shocked her. ‘I'd never deny anybody's guilt, or argue against it. It's a precious thing that stops you going mad, the most precious thing some people have, just as real hatred stops you getting cancer. Still, I don't think you knew Frank. Hundreds of years of suppressed idealism suddenly came up in him. He's like a savage who finds an engine and takes it to pieces, sees exactly how it works all on his own, nobody telling him. He's got the key to the universe. Or his universe, at any rate. Nobody could have stopped Frank. If he'd been an artist I'd say you should have argued him out of it, because no artist has the right to go and fight for the oppressed peoples, etc., unless he's seen the enemy rape his wife and burn his house, in which case he's got the same rights as any other man. But Frank was an ordinary man, must have felt before he went like I did years ago when I sensed some talent for painting. Nobody could have made me give it up, just as it would have been impossible for you or anybody else to make Frank forget his ideas. Love can't do everything, sweetheart! It's a good job it can't, or the world would become desperate and degenerate in a day.'

She listened, handicapped when it came to replying. My love, my love, a pendulum swinging between bitterness and terror, telling the time till he comes back, moving across fields of primroses, wood-anemones, lesser celandines, violets, red campions, moths and seasons pulling me down. ‘It's nothing,' she said, ‘to how long some people have had to wait. You hear about it and shake your head and say how sad, but never realise it's like this.'

He called for another bottle of champagne, became troubled and soddened, mellow and complex, the longer they stayed at the table. The intensity reminded him of endless nights sat with John when first back from Singapore. He forgot Myra in telling her about him. As a shellshock case John had always thought he would die at the end of the day. He'd go to bed, after suitable goodbyes to everyone, which made them raw and edgy, with a copy of the Bible, a tin of corned beef, a candle, writing-paper and envelopes. When they fixed him up with his radio equipment, he recovered a flimsy sort of sanity. They lured the corned beef away from him one night and made a stew next day.

‘You must meet him when you come and see us.'

‘They're waiting to close,' she said. ‘Are you trying to drown my sorrows in talk or drink?' She held his hand, and he wanted to draw it away, unable to bear the warmth and softness of it, knowing that her reasons for putting it there were not the same as his reasons for wanting to take it away.

‘Both,' he said, looking directly at her. She met his gaze and smiled, drew her hand away as if she'd not known his was there when she put it in that direction. He called the waiter. ‘I'll get a taxi and take you up to your sister's.'

‘Are you sure you want to bother? It's out of your way.'

‘I'll enjoy the ride,' he said.

Wearing the same formal suit as on the previous night he left the hotel early and walked across Berkeley Square, streets deserted but for the occasional delivery van. The underground garage was like an air-raid shelter. An attendant pointed to his washed and fuelled car, its nose set towards the exit. It disgusted him the way they lavished so many ‘sirs'. Such treatment turned him sour – which seemed to increase their deference. He once told one attendant not to call him sir, but from then on he ceased to be helpful, and actually disliked him for reminding him of his unconscious servility. If you have money people try to take away your self-respect, believing that no one has a right to both.

After a long breakfast with Teddy Greensleaves, haggling over conditions for a big autumn show, he filtered his car up Baker Street and steered north towards Hampstead. Traffic not too bad. Smaller fry shifted aside for his Mini-crusher. It was cloudy here, but maybe blue above patchwork fields and closed-in woods. He'd enjoy a sunny ride to the freshets of Wash and Humber with Myra, only hoping no great disaster had smitten his hearth and home. A myriad of little ones no doubt had locusted there to chew up his peace of mind for a few days, but that was to be expected. He was in the mood for work, to sing and fly over the off-white canvas world, and once settling Myra into the family bosom he would set to and hope for the whistling best. The black gloom of last night was blown away by the brisk wind of morning. He pulled to the kerb near Hampstead station to look up Myra's street in the
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