A Tree on Fire (16 page)

Someone tapped the window, drawing his eyes from complicated street angles. ‘You can't park here.'

Handley waved the ill-printed map, and without winding down the window shaped out an obscene word before drifting calmly off. One might momentarily think that, with his cap, he was driving the car for his employer, yet his sharp face of authority and ownership was immediately confounding. Prejudices went to pieces against the barbs of Handley's classlessness, which disconcerted most of the English he bumped into. He was so remotely old-fashioned, and at the same time so in advance of most other people that he had few friends. Living without the topo-marks of convention gave a strength and a naivety hard to penetrate, an unbreakable wall of social will that was necessary for life in England.

Myra was waiting in the hall, Mark in his carrycot on the kitchen table. ‘Would you like some coffee before we go?'

‘We can have a jug on the road,' he said, picking up her case.

He did a calm unhurried ton on the outside lane of the M1. They seemed reluctant to talk after the openness of last night's supper, almost as if we'd been to bed together, he thought, and to say as much to himself was showing the black side of his nature swelling up from the sewer depths with vindictive suddenness. In his civilised mind he'd never think such words, but sometimes they caught him unawares, and weren't to be ignored, for their springs often hid some secret truth he'd otherwise never have known among the shallow verbiage of normal daydreams.

Mrs Harrod was tidying the bedrooms, but left her vacuum-cleaner to look at the baby, the downcurved mouth of her round face reshaped by a smile: ‘He'll soon be sitting up,' she said, holding a finger to him, a wonder in her voice as if such a development was the first time it had miraculously happened. Mark looked at her, full of love it seemed to Albert, who sat in the kitchen while Myra made coffee.

Leaving Mark with Mrs Harrod, she showed him the house, feeling pleased that it belonged to her. He was the first person to see it since George died, and it was only now, after a promenade through the living-room where George's books still lined the walls, then to his study bordered by shelves and files of maps, around the garden whose lawns and plots had merged under the unifying heaps of the months, and up into the untouched uninhabited flat over the garage in which George's mother had died, that she realised the value of what was totally hers. ‘It may be wrong to own property, but I'm glad to have this house. I can shut myself off, and feel free, and it's a good place to wait in.'

They stood on the lawn, by the garage door. ‘There's nothing wrong in owning your own place,' he said, ‘as long as you don't exploit people by letting rooms and living off the rent. I'd always wanted to stop shelling out to a landlord, and the first thing I did on getting money was to buy the house we live in.'

When Mrs Harrod left, she insisted on making lunch, though he needed little prompting to accept. ‘I'm not expected till midnight,' he said, ‘and if you read the map we'll get across the country in no time.'

There was steak in the refrigerator, lettuce and potatoes in a box under the sink, and Albert went to the car for the bottle of champagne he'd been taking to Enid. He could give her the headscarf intended for Mandy, and give Mandy the necklace meant for Freda, and give Freda the Charlie Parker LP bought for the
au pair
girls, and the
au pair
girls would have to wait for their loot till he made another trip south or into Boston. Though creased by such manifold responsibilities he blessed them now as he set champagne on the table and saw the pleasure on Myra's face at such delicate foresight. ‘I didn't know when we'd need it,' he said, ‘but I saw us parked in some desolate lay-by while you fed the baby. Since we're drinking it here I can sling the paper cups, or use them some time to make sketches on if I'm stuck for paper!'

She went upstairs to feed Mark and change her clothes, came down wearing a white cotton blouse and dark skirt. While they were eating, the champagne dry enough to make a pleasurable meal, the air darkened and large pieces of rain flaked against the window. He frowned at it: ‘I was hoping for a sunny ride.'

‘Perhaps it's only local,' she said, ‘or it won't last long.'

‘We'll have a smoke after coffee, then go. I'll switch on the heater and play soft music. If I could I'd draw the curtains and drive blind – radar-driving, switch on and go to sleep, with a bell to wake me after a hundred and umpteen miles. There was an article in that magazine
Jerry-car.
A good bit of steak, this.'

‘We've done nothing but eat since we met yesterday.'

‘Never mind,' he said, ‘we'll go long walks over the wolds with Enid. We often set out for the day, sometimes walking as far as the coast and taking a taxi back.'

The pitch and splash of rain increased, till he thought the outside world might be an aquarium, and fish would appear at the window, opening their hobgobble mouths, and waiting for the glass to break. Myra switched on the lights. There would be a storm whose force would press her to stay in the house, unable to leave unless the sky was blue and empty. Wet leaves brushed and slopped in the wind in a way they hadn't when George was here because the trees were regularly pruned. Her neglect had changed the character of the house. Surrounding noises differed as well as interior settings of furniture. It took on her own temperament. Never in love with George, it needed a long time to forget his thick presence. Life was long and grief short, but in this case it didn't seem so because, having met Frank just before George died, a low-grade grief for the six-year habit of George was enduring at the same time as her wait for Frank that might turn out to be a greater and more terrifying grief if he never came back. To end George's nagging unnecessary memory maybe she should sell the house and go elsewhere, though now when the blue light bumped at the French windows she couldn't bear to leave it, remembering so much while there that she was torn between wanting to lock all doors and windows on herself, and going out of it never to comeback.

Thunder bullied and brawled, and she thought how comfortable a place it was in a storm, with such proportions and furnishing that she hoped the never-ending furore would become part of normal life, because its spreading calmness subjected all memories to the nullifying elements of the present. To become so purely herself, memory gone, future unimportant, was a rare and luxurious rest.

Handley noticed her mood, and didn't speak. The controlled calm of last night that struck glamour in her face had gone, replaced by excitement which he put down to the heavy atmosphere that the storm was trying to break up. He disliked such storms, felt they cut open parts of himself that he wanted to keep hidden. They tormented him, and he walked around the room while Myra went to the kitchen for coffee. He wished they hadn't stopped for lunch, had gone speeding along roads where thunder and lightning would hardly have been noticed, and not turned out to be so clearly responsible for something that he would only blame himself for.

When she set the coffeepot on the table he put his arms around her. She gave herself with such an open passion that he knew there could be no love in it for him, which vivid truth caused a black sadness that drove his embraces wild. She received it gladly, as telling herself also that this affair of the moment had no love that could ever prove embarrassing to them both.

Her body had been waiting for someone to hold and meet her kisses, and the lessening psychic force generated by the storm had enabled it to take place. He wanted to break away, but his body caught him in a trap that he'd made and hoped for since meeting her from the ship three months ago. Now that she was forcing him to it he could only accept it under some vague conditions of love that he'd never ceased to believe in. But he kissed her closed eyes softly, a hand on her face, tenderly because her gentle need had turned its privilege on him.

‘Come up to the bedroom,' she said. He stood alone for a few minutes, smoking a cigarette, boyishly agitated. It was impossible. I'm falling in love with her, but she's in love with somebody else, and always will be. He wasn't capable of walking away. Too abrupt and brutal. Even his lust had vanished. God knows, I shouldn't have brought in that champagne that's launching a bloody strange ship. He heard the toilet go upstairs, water in the cistern drowning the noise of outside rain. He poured more coffee, slewed it down half-cold. Here am I, full of admiration for my friend Dawley, and while he in the prime of his guts gets on with his life's slaughtering work I'm making love to Myra. Maybe the kickback will show me what my ideals are really worth, though to know might strip off my illusions, and nobody deserves a fate like that. A door clicked and, shedding his boots he walked up. Lying in bed, she turned to him. The room was dark, blue air beyond, rain locked out but trying to wear through the glass, its noise drumming away all words inside him.

They were startled later by a loud knock at the door. She smiled at his alarm: ‘It's the grocery order. He'll leave it in the garage.'

He sat up nevertheless. ‘We'd better go. It's four, and there are a few miles to flatten before Lincolnshire.'

The sheets covered her. ‘Get dressed, then I'll come down and heat some more coffee.' He put on his underwear, kept his back to her, though knew she wasn't looking at him. She wanted to get dressed with him out of the room, and this touch of modesty drove him to make love again, which she accepted with the same quick passion as before.

She came into the living-room as if nothing had happened, almost as if she hadn't seen him for a few days. He didn't even have the heart to grin, knowing exactly where he stood and hoping that some time he would be able to go on from there, yet not wanting to because she loved a person whom he respected too much to betray. They drank hot coffee in silence, until he said: ‘Shall we start?' In Lincolnshire for a few days, he would at least be able to see her. ‘The storm's letting up now.'

‘Do you think we can?'

‘Why not?' He lit a cigar. ‘We can stick to our arrangement.'

‘We'd better not. I want to be alone. I hope you don't mind.'

‘Of course I do. But do as you want.' At least it meant so much that she couldn't now go with him. He moved to kiss her at the door, and she offered him her cheek, which he touched with his hand, and walked to his car parked on the road.

On the long drive he reproached himself for what he didn't do and say that might have persuaded her to come with him. Even at forty, one made the same mistakes as a youth in love for the first time. One could go through it a hundred times and learn nothing. Only a nonentity could believe otherwise. But as hours stretched into darkness and headlights flooded the road he was glad it had ended like this, when there'd been no real wish for it to begin. Full of regret and turmoil till he saw her again, he nevertheless couldn't really doubt that this was the end, whether he wanted it to be or not. The soft flush of engine-noise carried him to his studio and the large new picture, which took his mind back to colours and shapes and images flooding him for another piece of work that would keep him civilised and abstracted, as far as the family would be concerned, for the next fortnight.

He drew up to a pub beyond Sleaford for a pint of mild and a meat pie, his first stop, as if fleeing before Frank Dawley's wrath, who'd magically known of his afternoon's work though clambed and parched in some wild region of Algeria. He wished Frank had not vanished with such idealistic thoroughness, wanted to see him now, take him to the house and show the new big picture which he knew would interest him. I'll dedicate it to him, dead or alive. Both he and Myra will like it, because its range and breadth fit him perfectly. The meat pie was so foul it deranged his hunger. He called the woman because he needed more cigars, having to bellow it into her ear to swamp a television speaker racketing above his head. Some radio maniac had fixed them through the pub, even installed a speaker in the lavatory.

‘I can hear you,' she said. ‘You needn't shout.'

‘Do you always have it on that loud, you vile old Lincolnshire hot-slot?'

‘What?'

‘I said have you got a match?'

‘Are you blind? They're over there. I don't know.' She came down a ladder, all varicose veins and stocking-tops, a lovable Lincolnshire lollipop a long way past it, he surmised, but still full of salt. She shoved two boxes at him: ‘Do you want one for seven-and-six, or one at one-and-four?'

He passed two florins. ‘Give me four bob's worth of the small ones. I'm rich, but not a millionaire.'

‘I don't want to know about your private life. I've got enough trouble of my own. Some people are the end, the absolute bloody rhubarb-end. They buy a pint of beer and expect five years psycho-analysis thrown in. I'm fed up with it, I am. Feeding chickens all day and drudging around here at opening times.' She passed him four cigars. He slid one back, trying to wring at least one bit of honesty out of the day. ‘Four bob's worth is only three.'

She pondered this. ‘So it is. Are you trying to be funny?' He lit a cigar and finished his drink, shouting ‘Good night, missis!' – so loud that even the man reading the news seemed to lift an eyebrow as he walked out.

Lincolnshire was the county of silence and peace, especially when it was dark, of sandy coast and rolling wolds, and lowlands so waterlogged that he had secret plans in his drawer for a prefabricated fifty-foot fibreglass skull-hulled ark that could be put together in half an hour if the sky looked threatening. Which was why he'd chosen high land to live on. From three miles every light blazed, not a window thriftily blocked, no door closed or spotlight doused, a flared-up nomad camp in a land where all other houses had only twenty-watt bulbs, barely sufficient to stop those who lived in them bumping into the wainscot or treading on a mouse. He liked to see a living house with every eye wide open, lost sight of it entering the village and turning the narrow lane, less bumpy under the wheels at his speed, bushes on either side scratching the windows. Now that Myra wasn't with him his entrance to the yard seemed so tame that he felt unfocused and irritable, his mind scratching over all that could have gone wrong during the two days he'd been away.