A Tree on Fire (37 page)

She noted how similar his voice was to Albert's, but without the demonic edge of assertion. ‘I came to stay a few days,' she said.

‘I know. I was to meet you at tea, but didn't. It's better this way.' They went through the wood, John in front to clear the way. Reaching another field they walked side by side. ‘So neither of us know the way,' she laughed. ‘But I don't suppose we'll get lost.'

‘I read your husband's book,' he said. ‘He must have been a profound and unhappy man. Those who write so lovingly and understandingly about the earth are really only happy when they become part of it. That may sound cruel, but it's an observation I couldn't help making as I read it. It must be a great success, because that sort of earthly love has an appeal for many people in this country.'

‘The critics approved,' she said, not wanting to talk about it. He sensed this, and they walked a few minutes in silence. He pulled up a handful of grass. ‘Albert and Enid saved my life.'

‘I know.'

‘I'm glad you do. They've had hard lives, but found the love to save mine and not boast of it. I'm beginning to wonder what I can do to make my resurrection and their sacrifice worth while. I can't continue to live at ease with myself and do nothing for the rest of my life.'

She waved away a cloud of thunderflies attracted by the sweat on her forehead. ‘I'd like to sit down for a moment.'

‘Of course. I don't suppose you have any news?'

‘Nothing.'

‘You must forgive me, but that question was only a clumsy way of getting on to the subject. I've thought a good deal about him.'

‘I didn't realise you knew Frank.'

‘Albert told me. Of all the people I've heard about and haven't met he fascinates me the most.' They walked two more fields and back in the direction of the house. Wheat was high in one, and the path through the middle was hidden by close high stalks, so they went by the hedge, bending when it arched towards the wheat. He walked with nimble assurrance for a man who hadn't been beyond the house and garden in so many years, stepping quickly on any small patch of earth to avoid bending dozens of delicate rods. ‘I'd like to meet him,' he added, ‘one day.'

‘I hope you do. I'm sure he'd like to meet you.' He opened a gate for her to pass. ‘There's only one way I can ever see him,' he said, if he isn't dead already, he thought. And neither of them talked any more before reaching the house.

Ralph was not unwelcome at The Gallery, which was the most one could say about his appearances there. Handley, being unable to obliterate him, had to forgive him for the desecration of his painting which, in its precision and black thought, had been almost German, which pained him since his forgiveness meant that Ralph would now be able to marry Mandy. He wanted no micrometered nightmares eating into his favourite daughter, yet what could you do if you didn't intend to marry her yourself, except give her away with a good smile?

The question had been: Where was Mandy? Ralph looked at Handley with worry and loathing and disbelief when he said she'd departed for the battlefields of the M1 with the single-mindedness of an eleven-year-old girl in France from a bourgeois family during the war who'd set out with homemade bombs to join the Resistance. Ralph suspected Handley of having sent her away, hidden her until his passion was iced over.

He called every day to see if she had returned, and now found her locked in the Rambler and refusing to come out, playing patience on one of the lunch trays.

‘Mandy,' he shouted, ‘please let's go for a walk. I haven't seen you for a month.'

‘That's no reason,' she said, letting down the window, ‘but I will soon. I can wait. I don't want to miss the big dinner, though. You seen the booze-chariots going up and down? Dad will get bombed-out, gutter-drunk. He's got his new bird up here. And Uncle John's gone over the fields. Things are a bit upsetting, so I'm sticking around for the fun. Are you invited?'

‘I think so; your father mumbled something before pushing me aside.'

‘You'll really see us in action.'

He'd heard this last phrase from his mother before leaving the house. ‘You're going
there
again! Have you ever seen such a family in action?' She was trying day by day to wear him down, but the guilt he felt after wrecking Handley's painting had given him so much strength that he'd be able to resist her for years if necessary. It set him up with great self-assurance, which made her give up the loony-bin as a last resort for the dark and twisting path he had chosen, deciding that since he seemed strong again, more normal means of persuasion would be necessary.

He leaned by the car, looking in and down on her. ‘I think I know you all well enough by now.'

‘You think our bark is worse than our bite?'

‘It may be. Come out and give me a kiss. You can't stay cooped up all the time.'

‘I feel safe in here. I've got the spare key in my pocket, and might take it into my head to light off, back to the motorway. With a powerful car like this I could show some of those rotten Minis where to get off, and leave a few wrecks smouldering on the hard shoulder! It weighs nearly two tons and does a hundred and twenty, the best thing Dad ever bought with his money. So don't keep on about me coming out. What have I got to come out for? I've got all I want in here. Yeh, if people keep chipping their tinny faces in at me like rabbits I'll slide off for another month's fun.'

He stood back, appalled by her recklessness. Yet it was exactly this tendency that attracted him, Mandy being the only girl he knew who could threaten to crack open his mother's skull with a starting-handle, which proved that she had more than a fair share for both of them. It was fortunate that she was a woman, and Mandy, and he felt that the sooner they were married the better. ‘It's getting dark,' he said.

‘When it does I'll switch on the light.'

Handley was wisely leaving her alone, and so would Ralph, if only his feet would carry his heart away. He saw Myra come in through the gate with Uncle John, and wondered who she was. They went into the house without a greeting.

‘Give me your hand,' Mandy said.

He rested it on the half-opened window, and she kissed the back of it, pressed her lips against the padded flesh, and spread his fingers wide. His face reddened, and a burning pleasure stirred him. ‘I love you,' he said. ‘Come for a walk and don't torment me so.'

‘I can't. My legs ache.'

‘After all that sitting down and driving?'

To keep insisting would annoy her, whereas to stay quiet would at least prolong this charming tenderness. ‘I love you, too,' she muttered, grinding her teeth into one of his fingers.

His yell of pain snapped at the whole house. ‘You bitch!'

Mark was startled by its savagery and began to cry. Helen stood at the caravan door, black hair spread and eyes indignant. ‘Can't you be quiet? There's a baby in here. Why don't you do your courting somewhere else?'

Ralph got into his Land-Rover and bumped down the lane, while Mandy indulged in a new game of patience. He couldn't take any more. It was impossible. Only Eric Bloodaxe was fond of him at that house, howled when he strode through the gate. Blood slid silently from his finger, went round the steering wheel and fell between his legs on to the floor covered with muddy sacks, not in actual fact a bad wound, but jumping so that it was hard to keep his grip. I'm not an old man, he thought, hanging around her for this sort of welcome which she must have nursed in her bloody little mind after three weeks on the road. He shot the junction beyond the village and almost caught the back fender of Miss Bigwell's A40. Another story for Mother. It's lucky I didn't have an accident. Maybe I wouldn't be so ready to go back to Mandy if I had. He turned the car, and stopped in the village to buy a newspaper as an excuse for having left The Gallery in such a hurry. Then he went back up the lane, licked and welcomed by the thick green leaves. He also wanted to see them in action at their banquet that night.

Chapter Twenty-six

Eight champagne-glasses had been stacked on the dining-room table, one base inside each bowl, making a tall slim tower that reached almost to the ceiling.

The long room was set between hall and kitchen, plainly whitewashed, with two large uncurtained windows on one side, and an empty wrought-iron fireplace on the other. The floor was bare planks, for Handley even in his affluence thought that carpets would somehow spoil it, liking to have at least one room where he could hear himself walk in bare feet. A ship's oak table, bought at a sale in Louth, ran down the middle. A huge eighteenth-century dresser lined the top wall, covered and hung with dinner and tea services. The only other furniture was eight chairs around the table, at which eight people sat.

‘It's the first real party I've had in this house,' said Handley, taking up a bottle, ‘and I've had money for over a year.' He was sprucely dressed in a charcoal-grey suit, and a white silk shirt with a light-blue rather broad clotted tie going into his waistcoat. ‘So I don't want to see any murders at the end of it.'

Enid stood a candle on a shelf so that he could blow it out with champagne-corks. ‘I channel my aggression,' he said, ‘onto unfeeling inanimate objects from now on, eh, Ralph?'

Ralph smiled, less formally knotted, an arm strongly around Mandy who looked demure and luscious in that state, her warm eyes fixed on the bottle gripped by her father. He slowly untwisted the wire and removed the cage from over the cork. Light was gloaming outside, softening the fields and wolds, dimming the room, until the row of tall candles were lit along the middle of the table.

Tradesman's vans had been rumbling all day through the slush laden with fish, meat and drink. They were eager to serve Handley in the vain hope of getting paid. The fact that he had money made him even worse at paying. If he had money he wanted to spend it, not shell it out on food that he'd already got on credit. So in order to make him pay they supplied more and more, fought for his custom because he spent so freely. But he did not pay, and it was difficult to dun him while still spending. If they dun, buy, for if you start to pay they become insolent. ‘It's a good thing I'm not living in a depressed area,' Handley said to Enid, ‘or they'd string me up from the nearest lamp-post. Luckily it's a good posh county with a long tradition of this sort of thing. I don't think I'll move, after all, at least not until they rumble me.'

Thumb pressed against the cork, the other hand turned the bottle in its palm. ‘We've a few things to celebrate tonight,' he said, ‘but I dare say we shan't know what till we come to them.' The smell of roasting meat floated from the kitchen. ‘We're welcoming Myra, for one thing. For another, we're celebrating Mandy's engagement. Ralph's parents should be here, but they didn't answer the invitation, though they might still come. Then of course there's Frank Dawley, lest we forget.' He levelled the bottleneck towards the candle-flame, the room quiet but for his own pattering voice. ‘And John is coming from his own world and back into ours, which might make a difference to somebody.'

The cork bulleted sharply out, left the candlewick smoking and flameless, but not waiting to see where it went Handley held the foaming bottlemouth over the topmost glass which was filled, overfilled, spilled into the one below, then overflowed and levelled up to the rim of the one underneath that, filling and spilling in the manner of a baroque fountain right down to the bottom glass. The second cork sent a sharp neat crack down the mirror above the mantle-shelf so that it seemed in danger of falling in two. ‘Seven years' bad luck,' Enid cried, taking plates of olives and anchovies from Maria and setting them along the edge of the table.

Handley laughed. ‘We've had them already.' Each took a glass from the fountain, so that it ceased to exist. A great thirst gripped them after the heavy and troubled day. Six bottles went in the hour before dinner. Handley laced the first draught with Courvoisier and lit a cigar so that he could draw breath between each mouthful. ‘Don't you feel guilty at such luxury?' Adam said mischievously, ‘when where's so much shortage in the world?' Handley's forceful laugh startled Richard and Myra from their quiet conversation by the window. John poured another glass for Mandy, who was anxious to wet her lips again because the dry wine seemed incapable of salving her thirst as it should. She grew light at heart and kissed her lover, which doused all his desire for more drink. Handley looked at them, a momentary glare, not knowing whether to envy Mandy's freedom or his future son-in-law's luck. He turned to Adam: ‘In some countries cigars are fourpence each, and champagne half-a-crown a bottle. It's a luxury to us because the country needs bombs and napalm to rain down on the Frank Dawley's of the world – or his equivalent in all sorts of countries. Every glass of this stuff means a bullet for them. Every packet of fags a workman smokes means the same. We're all guilty if you like, but pour me some more, then it stops being guilt and becomes blame, and I can drown both with booze till it's not too bad to bear.'

‘I just wanted to know how you felt,' said Adam, a sudden disturbing note in his voice. He looked faunlike in the in the candle-shadows, curly hair and straight short nose, small teeth showing when he spoke and faced his father.

‘Do you want a private talk?' Handley said, pouring more drink.

Adam put the rim of his glass under the same bottle: ‘I want to say it now.'

‘Go on, then.' There was silence, as everyone waited for him to get up courage. Mandy giggled, and Handley snapped at her to shut up.

‘I'm tired of feeling guilty,' Adam said. ‘The weight's become too much for me these last few months. Every time I eat cornflakes or smoke a cigarette I'm tortured by doubt and guilt. I'm not so strong as you, or John, or Richard.'