A Tree on Fire (38 page)

‘I'm used to carrying weaklings on my back,' Handley said. ‘Let's get on with the booze, then the grub'll come quicker.'

‘That's not the point,' Adam said with persistence and courage.

‘What have you done?' Handley wanted to know.

With a great effort he said: ‘I joined the Young Conservatives last night.'

Mandy laughed, and Ralph cheered. Handley's cigar dropped. ‘It won't burn the floor,' he said, as Enid rushed to pick it up. ‘Is that all? O God our help in ages rotten past, with no hope for tomorrow. I could have understood it when we were poor, but not now that we're rich. What's the girl's name?'

‘Wendy Bonser.'

‘Bonser's daughter? Some girl. So one of my family is marrying into the landed gentry? Do you love her?'

‘Passionately, Father.'

‘That's a start, anyway. We send you off, and we welcome you back. Thank God I'm an artist, or you'd have broken my heart. I can stand anything. I even sent my eldest son to theological college, so you haven't really shocked me.'

‘Yes, you thought it was a good thing in those days,' said Richard.

‘Don't you start. Our Cuthbert was a brilliant Sunday-school student. He had that superior smile of asceticism ticking away on his clock ever since he was a kid. He'd have been Jesus Christ if he'd been born one thousand nine hundred and sixty years ago. If the vicar hadn't taken an interest in him he'd still have been here, poncing and sponging like the rest of you. Well, here's to Adam and Wendy, and a long life to everybody.'

At the head of the table, he uncorked a bottleforest of Bordeaux red and white. Mandy was on his left, and Myra to his right. At the opposite end sat Enid. Adam was subdued, felt snubbed by his father who had not created a row and thrown him out. He sat to the right of Enid, and Ralph was on her left. In the middle and facing each other were Richard and Uncle John. Soup vanished quickly, followed by braised herring, the pride of Dogger Bank. It was a great feast, though the mechanics of chewing did not so far permit any of them to say it aloud.

Waiting for the next course Handley stood up, a glittery restlessness in his eyes. Eight candles were lit down the middle of the table, a flare-line leading to Enid at the other end through a maze of wine-bottles, bread rolls and platters. He took off his jacket, tall and slim in his waistcoat, shirtsleeves fastened by a pair of gold cufflinks. The character of each face prospered in candle-shadow. All were beautiful, Myra thought, their talk more fluid now that the first hunger-pangs had gone. They'd all made concessions, given up some of their lives to be here. Mandy returned from the motorway, John pulled out of his ethereal solitude, Myra travelled from her own rooted house, Ralph dodged his parental curse, Adam left the charms of his newly-found heiress, Richard gave his pamphlets and maps a rest, Enid relaxed her chatelaine role of mother and manager, and Handley descended from his forest-bound swamp-coloured studio. His dark leanness glared at them. The established order of lunacy, family and idealism shook the length of its barbed rope and dragged them in smiling to eat and talk, the subtle uniting captivity of organised deadness. But no, he thought, not with us. We're different because it's cold and bare outside, being set on an island between the North Sea and the Atlantic, bashed at by waves from east and west. Just a little dinner-party for family and friends. Is this what I've starved for as an artist all my life? As long as I'm still working, I suppose it is.

He smiled, but not for happiness or because he was amused. A smile covered a multitude of sins, not one of them original. ‘Are all your glasses filled to the brim, even Mandy's? I'm wanting each of you to make a toast to the first thing that comes into your mind – anything, as long as it's revealing.'

‘It's a bad game,' Enid said, assembling the plates. ‘Either it doesn't work, or it causes trouble.'

He drank. ‘Don't stab me in the back. It isn't a game. It's a way of thinking and drinking at the same time. There's no significance attached to it. How could there be with simple passionate people like us?'

A chair scraped as John stood up. ‘Here's my toast, to the war, the great hundred years' war against imperialism and the established order, class war, civil war, dark and light war, the eternal conflict of them against us and us against them, whether it's taking place underground as at the moment (except in a few choice spots of the world) or whether it's breaking around us now in this twilit haven of peace. May such a war go on to the victory and hope of the bitter end.'

They cheered, and he stood, bald, erect, matching a stern face with subtle and gentle eyes. He wore a dark blue suit with the faintest of pin-stripes running down the cloth, a red tie at his shirt and a white rose in his buttonhole. He looked at them and spoke slowly, smiling as if knowing they would never take him seriously, long thin fingers of his left hand deliberately turning a glass, the other behind his back. Not all cheered, though the general noise was loud enough to spur him on. Myra and Ralph had kept silent, but Adam, in spite of his recent conversion, approved out of family loyalty and his special regard for Uncle John. ‘And I also propose,' he continued, ‘a toast to a long journey I'm shortly to embark on, and about which I hope to say more later.'

They drank, but stayed quiet, puzzled by his last sentence. Was he going to leave them to a world without Uncle John? He lit a cigarette, and sat down on seeing Maria and Catalina enter with the platter of roast beef, a great haunch carried between them as if it were a dead man on a shutter. They set it before Handley who was on his feet saying: ‘My toast is to art, to art, do you hear? And to the war that goes on till the bitter end. We'll leave the other toasts for later,' he added, picking up knife and steel to carve, and brushing aside their cheers as if they might infect the meat. There was silence during beef, fried marrow and boiled potatoes. Small flat salads of sliced Lincolnshire cucumbers sat between each two plates. Myra admired the cooking and organisation that had gone into the meal, qualities she had tried to instil into the village women of the WI in those far-off days when George was alive and she was a prominent talker at their meetings. She congratulated her, and everyone threw in their agreement. Handley leaned close, a darkening flush to his face. ‘Glad you came, love?'

She nodded, and he said: ‘Do you still love me?' Mandy listened, a smouldering cigarette between her fingers as she forked up the beef. Myra saw how irresponsible he was. ‘I didn't come to hear this,' she said, loud enough for Mandy though not for Enid. ‘I'm fond of you, and nothing else.'

But Enid saw what was happening, having taken a small portion, and finished already, breaking off knobs and beads of candle-wax from the nearest stick and putting them back in the flames. John rescued Myra by asking about Morocco. Had she been as far south as the Tafilalet, or gone through to Colomb-Bechar in Algeria? And if so, what was the landscape like? What months of the year had she been there? His questions implied so much more knowledge on his part than she had gleaned from her few months' stay that she wondered if he had been to the country while hoodwinking everyone for a month that he had stayed in his room.

Richard and Adam sat side by side with mutual expressions of misery and betrayal. ‘Why did you do it?' said Richard. ‘You must be on a secret mission for Uncle John, who wants you to join them and find out about their strength and organisation. What else could it be?' He didn't look at him, but spoke straight in front at the wavering candle-flame.

Handley stood with his glass high: ‘We'll have a toast from Mandy before she passes out.'

‘Get crocked,' she said. ‘I can swamp down as much as anybody.' She pushed away her plate of meatscraps and cigarette-ends, and lifted her empty glass for Handley to fill. Adam fetched in another armful of bottles and began to uncork them. ‘Here's my toast,' said Mandy, ‘to the racing-car my good sweet father is going to get me as soon as the Mini's worn out. Then I can go to Germany for a run on the autobahns. They're hundreds of miles long.' Her eyes moistened as she looked around, then slid back all her wine.

‘I have bad news for you,' he said thickly. ‘That Mini you twisted my arm for hasn't had a penny paid on it, apart from the deposit. They'll be here in a few weeks to pull it from under you.'

‘If I get a sports car in part-exchange, it won't cost all that much.'

‘You'd better enjoy that Mini while you can,' he said. Their two voices were joined in a deadly duel, as if the loser would be shot dead and vanquished, pushed unsung into the earth.

‘I'm going to sell it,' she said, ‘and put the money as down-payment on a sports.'

‘You'll end up in jail,' he said.

‘You will. You signed the guarantee.'

There was silence, while they stared at each other. Then Handley smiled and sat down, calling that those who wanted second helpings should push their plates along. While waiting for his to be filled Ralph made a toast, hands trembling and eyes averted, wanting to say: ‘A curse on this house.' But it would stamp him as melodramatic, and they would roll his sanity in the mud. He had been their football for too long, but would get his revenge when he married Mandy, when they'd think twice about sending a son-in-law to prison. He looked at Handley whose eyebeams blazed across waiting for him to speak. Or would they? They might see it as a neat way of unloading him and at the same time striking a blow at his parents, who had not answered his invitation so as to injure their own son. You couldn't jump off that spinning family roundabout without spilling your jelly brains in the dust. He held up his glass: ‘In all sincerity, I drink to Mandy.'

She was on her feet. ‘Oh no, you don't. Why do you want to show me up? Can't anybody leave me in peace?'

‘It's a perfectly acceptable toast,' said her father. ‘A bit wet, maybe. But here's to the happy couple, the gentleman-farmer and his lady wife, Ralph and Mandy. I know they're going to be very happy because they came into the world at the right time.'

Mandy resumed her chain-smoking. Even with a box of matches nearby she lit a fresh cigarette from the tiny end of the one just used. Handley swallowed and spoke: ‘I'd like to drink to this house, this Jerusalem-on-the-Wolds where I've spent twenty years. But I'm thinking of leaving it soon, packing us all off down south.'

‘That's the first I knew,' Enid said, flushed. ‘It's my house, anyway, and I've no intention of moving. You were born in Leicester, but I belong to Lincolnshire.'

He took a scrap of newspaper from his pocket. ‘How's this for a good buy? Listen: “Converted Thames dredger moored off Gravesend. A lovely home. Vast. On two floors. Seven bedrooms, three reception rooms, L-shaped bridge, cloaks, hall and two bathrooms” – not counting the rather large spare one outside! “Running water and gas central heating. Garden on shore. A snip at eight thousand pounds.” That's for me, captain of a boat that never sailed and never will. My beautiful family squatting in the bilges. Garbage disposal through the portholes. If life gets too hard you scuttle it and swim away like a rat.'

Enid fetched a huge cartwheel of cherry-dotted cake, carved out portions and sent them around the table. ‘So you're getting into that sort of mood are you? Wanderlust and family hate? Well, it won't do you much good tonight, because I'm not going to put up with it. I've a little announcement, but it can wait until I do a little toasting of my own.'

He poured liberal glasses of muscatel. Myra wondered when they would get up and murder each other, but considered they were too open and violent for that. Anything so quick and merciful would be against the rules. A warm white flash swept across the room, and Richard lowered his camera. ‘Yes,' Handley said, ‘it is a historic occasion. Pin us down forever so that we can look back on it as a great gathering. Make an album and call it
The Family.
It's bound to sell well.' He held Myra's hand and kissed it. A score of bottles had been emptied. ‘The cake's good,' he said. He took Mandy's hand also, but she dragged it away: ‘Not until I get my sports car.'

Pots of coffee were set out, sweets, brandy, cigars, bowls of fruit, cheese and more salad. The candles were burning low, flames shaking into cups of fat. John fetched fresh ones, walked along the table fixing them in.

‘What are you going to drink to?' Handley said.

Myra hadn't thought about it, but stood up. He filled her brandy glass. Should it be Mark first, and then Frank? Or because Frank was in danger maybe the toast would do him more good, for Mark was safely asleep in the caravan. ‘To Frank Dawley,' she said, ‘and to his son. To Albert's painting, Mandy's happiness, Enid's marvellous supper. To John's liberation, Richard's dedication, and Adam's vacillation. All one can do here is drink to everyone.' The camera drenched her in white phosphorous. All light blinded you, never showed the way. Only in the dark were you able to see, by keeping daylight as a far-off memory to guide you at the utmost pitch of blackness.

‘Put that camera away,' Albert said. She sat down, but could not see. The candles wouldn't emerge from the flashing shadows and refocus. She felt tired and dejected because she did not know what she was doing here. She felt part of them, a mute appendage of their mad society, yet as if she had no right to accept it. Yet her reason for being here was that in their noise and violence and madness they seemed nearer to Frank Dawley than she ever was, even though she'd lived with him and had his child. It helped in the sacred act of recollection, for it was hard to pull him back from the haze and fire of the desert, see his eyes and body in the specific action of walking, eating, drinking, talking to friends. This was difficult not through lack of imagination but because he was still alive. If he had died she would see him with greater clarity. George was complete in every nuance whenever he came to mind because he was no longer on this earth, while Frank was indistinct because he didn't so much want her to remember him as be with him.