A Tree on Fire (33 page)

‘What's he talking about?' Handley said.

‘I don't know,' Mandy wept, her red Mini vanishing. ‘What did you do it for? How stupid can you get? What's the point of it?'

He was stunned by sudden regret, wary at the sight of Handley who didn't seem as upset as he ought to be.

‘You want my daughter's hand in marriage, do you? Is that it? And you want a new Mini, do you? Well, you can have her for your wife with a bullet-hole right through her. And you can have a new car with a grenade-hole through it. Get out of my sight, both of you. Don't let me see you again.'

Ralph unlocked the door and went down the stairs.

‘I'm not budging,' Mandy cried, ‘unless I get that car.'

‘Aren't you? Do you want to go flying out of that skylight window like batman there?'

‘I got the painting back. Now I want that car.'

He took out his wallet, and wrote a cheque for three hundred pounds.

‘It costs six hundred,' she grumbled.

‘You think I'm buying it cash?' he said. ‘Get it on the never-never, then we'll never pay for it. Now get out.'

She kissed him. He called her back. ‘Tell your mam I've got the painting, and that it's all right. And be careful on the roads.'

The sun went and came in again between pale blue water clouds. Fresh air hit him from an open window that he couldn't yet lock after Ralph's little job. He'd get Mandy to hem the painting round the hole. Maybe a patch would be possible. The green man of the tree shook its leaves and rustled. He couldn't imagine leaving Lincolnshire, but lack of imagination was the state in which he committed his most decisive actions. The new record caught his eye, and he put it on the gramophone thinking it might relax him before going down for dinner.

Elgar's Nimrod music was so sweet that he loathed it, yet listened to its long mellow pre-womb Edwardian English dirge as if playing before an impassable wall that the spirit of the music was too gutless to climb and cross, weaving out the soothing sounds of glorious resignation, the peculiar self-satisfied English pipe-smoking resignation that engenders viciousness and sadism if it goes on too long. It showed him the corrupt rotten soul of the English played out of a burning stillborn heart. He understood its suffering: such music lacked the messianic human love of great work, locked as it was on an island where no armies have moved or revolutions swayed for hundreds of years and where liberty has no meaning any more. Elgar had his hands in its entrails all right, writing music while his country rotted – not the
Enigma Variations
, but the
Enema Variations
, more like it.

He lifted the needle and slid the record back into its case, thinking he might give it to Ralph as a wedding-present. He reset the painting against the wall, flush on the biggest easel. Cancer is the sum of their unrealised ideals, the festering nation that hasn't got rid of its king or queen recently. He stood back and surveyed the hole, the eye, the magic eye, the third eye and only eye, not my left or my right but my middle and best, straight from Tibet by P & O packet-boat. I'll hem it round and paint it blue, and leave it like that, Albert Handley's third eye looking out on this world of yours, with no one looking in on mine.

Chapter Twenty-three

She pulled up tufts of grass that grew from the borders of the path, and where she had worked already was clearly defined, but beyond, where she had not, only a thin uneven trail led between two apple-trees to the back fence. It was slow work, without purpose if there were more important things to do – which there were not. What had frightened her into sending Handley away? Was it fear of being deflected from her course of waiting for Frank to come back? From that sort of war she might wait ten years, then discover he'd died at the beginning. Or she might know nothing at all. Nevertheless, she could wait. She was fond of Handley, and to say she had sent him off out of fear was merely a way of gratuitously attacking her resolution, so she changed her reason to one of self-preservation in order to be more truthful and feel better.

After lunch she put Mark in his carrycot and wedged it in the back of the car. He was a fat pale baby, anything but placid, and objected to the movement and noise. Her father, seventy-five years old, was ill with a stomach-ache that wouldn't leave him, and on warm days he lay in the garden on a special bedchair reading the
Jewish Chronicle
and shouting in rich Yiddish at the black torn from next door who stalked across his lawn after the birds.

Mark roared, but she couldn't turn to him, being on the outside lane of the motorway and overtaking a line of cars at seventy miles an hour. The right-hand blinker flashed as she raced along in her new MG. A car from the middle lane suddenly set itself to swing out in front of her. She pressed the horn, and braked sharply. A ripple went through all lanes of traffic, and the ash of panic filled her mouth as she thought of Mark behind. She skidded, but stayed in control, and the car that had tried to join her lane slid back, allowing her to accelerate and roar by. Mark was no longer crying, mollified by the common danger. The only answer to English traffic, she thought, was to get a bigger car, which was safer because it tended to frighten the souped-up souls in their fast sardine-tins. The driver had been a young girl in a red Mini, now on the outer lane but a quarter of a mile behind.

Her mother came to the car and picked up Mark even before saying hello to her daughter. Myra smiled. Anyone over twelve was valueless to her mother, had to be looked after and deferred to perhaps, but lacked that spark of life in their eyes to say that they were still growing. ‘How's father?' Myra asked, struggling to get out the empty cot.

‘He's asleep right now,' she said. ‘What a lovely baby. He's like you, you know. I suppose he gets his blue eyes from your grandfather, because George's eyes were brown, weren't they?'

She took off her coat in the hall, and Mark was already in the kitchen and propped in a high chair kept specially for him. The house smelled of the same floor-polish and mothballs, carpet-cleaner and paint, and places where dust wanted to settle but had never been allowed, as when she was a young girl rushing in from school to get out of the hat and uniform she loathed before going to meet friends.

The baby, whatever her own feelings, loved his grandmother, and never came so much alive as when he was at her house. To her, he was George's child, and she only knew of Frank Dawley through vague stories from Pam, much of it speculation because Pam didn't know much either, Myra thought, pleased at how secretive she'd been. Mrs Zimmerman made a bowl of cereal and mashed a banana in it. ‘He won't be hungry,' Myra said. ‘It isn't his feeding time yet.'

‘Of course he's hungry. Look how fat and beautiful he is. They're always hungry at his age. Don't think I don't know. I've had three of my own, so I should. And I looked after Pam's four when Harry left her and she went to get him back.'

‘That was rather shameless of her,' said Myra. ‘I always thought she'd had more pride.'

‘He came back, didn't he?'

‘And look how ecstatically happy they are.'

‘That's not the point. The children are better for it. Your father and I were wondering the other day when you are going to get married again. It would make us very happy, you know, especially if you found someone who understood you a bit better. I know you weren't very happy with George, but we never said anything.'

‘That's true, you didn't, though I don't know what you could have said that wouldn't have made it worse. But I've no intention of rearranging my life just yet.'

‘I know you went to Morocco with another man just after George died, but since you parted from each other perhaps you ought to get someone else, if only for the baby's sake.'

‘
Get
someone?' she smiled, hardly covering her irritation. ‘We don't live in a slave supermarket.' Yet it was no use being angry. Their two worlds simply could not meet. Mark, with wide smiles and an arm waving, devoured each spoon of food before him. He was happy, relaxed and lively here, whereas it had the opposite effect on her. If she fed him at this time he could have rejected it, but here, with the inane cuckooing ministrations of her mother, he puffed and blowed and gulped endearingly. ‘Thank goodness you have such a good child,' she said. ‘And such fair hair. Go on, darling, eat, eat! You melt the ice in your grandmother's heart. None of Pam's were like him. He's so knowing. He knows me, don't you? And what about grandfather, then? You see, he's looking for him. He is. You see it? Only seven months old. Eat. Go on, eat! Of course he'll eat it all up, won't you? No, he's certainly not like any of Pam's. They were never like this at his age.' A baby in front of her, no matter what its faults, was better in every way than any other far-off baby no matter what its virtues. ‘And to think you waited so long before having one. You should get married again and have a few more. You can't think how much pleasure that would give, and not only to me and your father. You make such a good mother. Look how marvellous he is!'

She was beginning to stifle. It was midsummer, and the central heating seemed to be full on. She didn't feel she made such an ideal mother. Practical, conscientious, loving perhaps, but did that make you a real parent? There was no need to shape a career out of it, though she often felt that Mark might benefit by having a man around, and only time and her own passions could take care of that.

‘Do you have any news of George's book?' her mother asked, taking a huge cake out of the cupboard, a sight that sent a stab of indigestion to Myra's heart, though she would enjoy eating it when offered a piece.

‘It's being reprinted. I forgot to tell you in my letter. I got two hundred pounds in the post this morning.'

‘Poor George,' said her mother, ‘that he can't spend it.'

‘It's over a year now,' Myra said. ‘Such a stupid accident. It was unforgivable to do a thing like that. Mark was never George's baby, you know. It came from the man he tried to kill, Frank Dawley. We were going away together.'

‘It never said that in the papers,' she said sadly, sitting down.

‘I didn't exactly tell lies, but I kept everything as simple as possible. No one saw the accident.'

‘Dreadful,' she said. ‘It's a wonder you weren't killed. And look at him, beautiful Mark, he didn't suffer from it, thank goodness. None of you did, really.'

Her father came in, a frail old man with white hair and luminous eyes. He looked older every time she saw him, more brittle and fragile. His hair, always clipped close to his skull, had in the last few months been allowed to grow long, and instead of the sharp expression that had made him successful in business, his face had softened and become more noble. She had always loved him because he'd never posed the same threat as her mother, whom Myra dreaded turning into as she got older. He'd understood her rebellion, in the light of his own which he had generously and good-humouredly suppressed, realising that no matter how far she strayed from them, the cord of affection would never snap if he permitted her to do more or less as she liked. He had been wise and accurate, always too grown up to fall back on the heavy father-culture that had been perpetrated against him as a young man. He'd recently taken to ordering Yiddish novels from New York, and reading Hebrew again, and this made his wife glad, for it brought him closer to her, but it also made her weep, because it seemed as if he were preparing for the end of his life.

There was an air of doom about the house, which Myra remembered as a young girl. And yet it was cheerful enough. Surely the subtle spiritual organism of a baby would be able to detect it if it really existed, and here he was, laughing happily. Maybe it was in her rather than the house. Her father laughed too: ‘He is a little devil. I'll have a piece of that cake, Gladys.'

They drank lemon-tea amid self-generating chatter, levity that would have embarrassed her if she hadn't been fond of them. When you get old, life becomes less serious, she thought. Having thrown off their worries they made it seem like the prime of life. One had to think up something like that in order not to feel sorry for them.

Her father promised to come out to the country soon. ‘I'll dig your garden when my aches have gone.' He piled so much sugar on to the slice of lemon that it capsized and sank, then floated up to the surface for more.

‘One breath of a sparrow would blow you over,' his wife said.

His eyes glittered, then sparked out, like a rocket on its highest curve. He opened them. ‘This pain gets sharp at times. Maybe some cake will settle it. If your stomach plays up, give it some food to work on.'

Myra stopped him giving a slab to Mark. ‘He's still too young, father.'

Mark rattled his spoon and mug in a fine din, as if to say it wasn't true, and he'd eat all the cake they gave him. ‘You can see that mouth shaping up already,' he joked. ‘He'll be a difficult man to live with. I don't like the way that downward curve settles in when he's not smiling.'

‘Don't give him a bad character before he's actually got one,' she said. He bent over his tea, scooped out a spoonful and blew it cool, then put it towards Mark's lips, who jumped up and down at the suspense of its slow approach.

‘Make sure it's not too hot, dear.'

‘Don't be a fool,' he snapped, ‘by thinking I'm one.'

‘Forgive me for speaking,' she said.

Myra smiled. Mark was waiting for it like a cat for an unsuspecting bird to come close before leaping. His large blue eyes were settled, as if they threw extra light onto the spoon. He took it, and an expression of uncertainty creased his cheeks.

‘He doesn't like it.'

‘Be quiet!'

He did. He waved for more.

‘What a boy!' he cried. ‘A real Russian, the way he takes to his tea.' There was colour in the old man's cheeks, and he stood without thinking of his stick. Myra knew that nothing could bother him at such a time. She saw there'd be somewhere safe to leave Mark if she wanted to go away, or be on her own for a while. It was comforting to know. She'd always cut herself from her parents' orbit, and now realised how hard it had made her life. To stick in the same district, like Pam, had great advantages, for you and your parents alike, and she felt the dangerous lure of giving in and living close by, the life of a widow with one child who would maybe marry again into a state of eternal satisfaction from where you could laugh at things that happen to other people and feel superior because they don't bother you. If you are part of a married couple living off each other's spiritual fat and too busy ever to need anything from others, you turned narrow and blind to the rest of the world. It was a blessed and innocent state of self-induced death, protection and lethargy more than love, yet always an attraction to someone who rebelled against it so strongly. Fortunately, she thought, I am not the sort who could ever consider it. But the draw was so strong and real that the desire she felt to give into it almost frightened her with its sexual intensity. She had only to come home, however, to kill such an idea. The temptation she needed, but not the fulfilment.