‘None,’ said John. ‘I’m pondering.’
‘Am I disturbing you?’
He sat up. ‘Not at all. I’ve been thinking for some weeks, Albert, that my world is too small. I’ve outlived this room, and am wondering what to do, what for example would be the right course to take compatible with the way I’ve spent my time here. It must be something in tune with it, because the fifteen years ought to be given some meaning.’
‘I can see that,’ Albert said, ‘but it should come right from your heart, if it comes at all.’
John sat at his table, stacking the scattered logbooks into some sort of order. ‘You’re right, Albert. It’s good to have a brother who understands me so well. I’ll never forget what you’ve done for me. You gave me back my life.’
Albert gripped his hand. ‘Don’t overestimate it, John. You suffered, and I understood. It went right into my own bones. I wondered if you’d like tea downstairs today. Myra’s come to stay a few days with us. I mentioned her once, the woman of Frank Dawley who went off to Algeria last January and hasn’t been heard of since. Her life depends on him, but I’m beginning to think she’s given up hope, which is a pity. She’s the sort of person whose spirit withers without hope. She’s got his baby, too. It’d be easier I suppose if she had a telegram to say he’d been killed, but she never will, not from a guerrilla war. You either come back, or you disappear. He chose that sort of war, though no woman chooses to get left behind.’
‘If he went into the country through Morocco,’ John said, ‘and if he’s not dead yet, he must be somewhere in the Kabylie mountains. Last time we talked about him I looked at the map. He’d go to where there was most fighting, naturally, though the distance is so great that it would be a feat even in peacetime to reach the Grande Kabylie from southern Morocco on foot. There’s too much desert and wilderness.’
‘How much?’ Handley asked.
‘Could be over eight hundred miles. You can’t go a straight line over open country. Too dangerous. And zigzags could double it.’
‘Sixteen hundred?’
‘In the summer. A hundred and forty in the sun. No water. Nothing to eat. Hunted. She may be right.’ He looked sad, as if he’d spent days wearing himself out over it.
‘I’ve never thought about it in this realistic way,’ Handley said. ‘She has, obviously.’
‘You swim in the ocean of your paintings,’ said John. ‘It doesn’t excuse you, but it exonerates you.’
‘I don’t think it does,’ Handley said, his eyes glittering.
He switched on the radio, its panel lighting up. ‘I can hear anything on this, messages never sent, morse that forces my hands to write words that stick like hot needles in my guts. If you want to stay alive and see trouble, stick close to the devil, and maybe Dawley is all right after all. And if you get killed you’re still the winner, because you know nothing any more about the trouble you were in. When the devil betrays you there’s no pain attached to it. Limbo is worse torment than hell, because there’s always a hope that hell will be destroyed, shocked and shaken from within, broken down on all sides by the forces of torment and despair. What is the message I was waiting for, but never came? Well, it was written down in block capitals, and said: AN INSURRECTION BEGAN IN HELL THIS MORNING. GOD AND THE DEVIL WERE TAKEN OUT HAND-IN-HAND AND SHOT. THEY WERE SOBBING AND COMMISERATING LIKE TWO PANSIES. ALL SUFFERING HAS BEEN STOPPED BY DECREE. THOSE WHO CONTINUE SUFFERING UNNECESSARILY WILL BE SENTENCED AS COUNTERREVOLUTIONARIES.’
‘Stopped by decree until further notice,’ Handley said.
‘Forever,’ John said firmly. ‘Otherwise why should one wait so long. Isn’t fifteen years a long time to hope for such a telegram?’
‘What about heaven? Did the revolution strike there as well?’
‘Heaven does not exist. Never did, except perhaps as an abandoned suburb. God may have a villa there but he commutes every day to hell. Men were led to believe that heaven existed after death in order that they wouldn’t be moved to seek it on earth, and so destroy the flimsy social order in which they lived. In the twentieth century they’ve started, quite rightly, to seek it. When hell is destroyed, build heaven in its place, until neither exist. There is no room for them. People were persuaded that hell existed after death so that they would not try to create it on earth. But that never stopped them, so all we need is to build the most perfect earth possible without the help of such concepts and balances. Most people exist in ways that would qualify them for a certificate saying that they live in hell — men, women and children who are all innocent, but who in their sublime naïveté and sense of justice get hold of guns and join the rebellion. Your friend Frank Dawley is fighting in Algeria from the sickness of false pride, and in one way is as guilty as the French he is fighting against — though if he is still alive he probably qualifies for innocence because of his experience in suffering.’
‘Frank’s no idealist,’ Handley said, ‘but a workman who saw the futility of his life and used his energy to try and lift others out of their suffering. He’s on the right side, in spite of his using the revolution as a spiritual quest, like most of us. Revolution is the only remaining road of spiritual advance. I’m not on it, but I know it is. I don’t mean the revolution of those middle-class English marxists who live in Hampstead or the juiciest of Home Counties, because at the first sniff of civil strife they’d join the government militia or run to hide in the nearest police station. Frank Dawley isn’t one of these and never could be. What I’m talking about is the common quest for spiritual energy that you get from the idea of revolution.’
John went down for tea, and Myra had gone upstairs to sleep off her tiredness and headache. She lay down, her case not yet unpacked, wondering why she had come to this house. Though feeling some affinity to the more tender aspects of Handley and his art, she seemed nervous and raw among his family, while hoping she did not show it. But it was right that she had come, for there had been nothing else to do.
Her glasses lay off and open on the bedside table staring at the window, while she stared at the opposite wall. Her unaided eyes saw things more clearly than they used to, and she would either get a less powerful pair or perhaps go without them altogether. Yet they made her alert in the morning if she still felt sleepy, increased her range of hearing, and helped her to judge people better with her glasses on — in general more able to deal with the world. When among people you liked but did not know why, and could not ask the cool question as to why you were there, a higher reason obviously existed for your presence with them, that you could not understand at the moment, but that would be illumined later during the greater confusion of being alone.
She drifted into pleasant oblivion, but got up after an hour and washed her face. Mark was being fed in the infants’ caravan, and was glad to see her when she came in. But he soon clamoured once more for Helen, so she went outside. It was cooler and quieter along the lane she had ascended in the car that morning with Mandy sobbing beside her. The mud had not yet dried in the wind, and well-patterned car-treads were printed on it by a delivery-van coming up in response to a panic-call for more drink and food. She looked directly up at the sky through thick leaves that turned black against the broken glass of the blue, then climbed the steep bank, pulling herself up by stumps and branches, blue blouse and skirt merging into them. A wide field of stubble fell through the slit of sky, a well-marked footpath only a few inches wide cutting it diagonally across and spearing a small wood at its far-off tip.
Heavy clouds piled above the trees. It was an unnatural feeling, being so alone, without the baby, without Frank, and out of her own house, so far away from narrow ties and preoccupations of normal base-life. She felt better than at home. In the wood a man was plucking leaves from a bush and putting them to his lips. She had entered by a broken fence, so self-absorbed that her footsteps made no noise in the thick grass.