Ralph leaned over for an approving light at the same candle. ‘Nobody loves it more than me,’ Handley said, ‘but I don’t like it very much.’
‘We’d all of us do the place more good,’ Adam retorted, ‘if we at least liked it. Any love for England in this room is destructive sentimentality. All love is destruction, that I’ll allow, but I like this country as well.’
Uncle John stood, cigarette still smoking, and sipped at his glass of muscatel. Brandy and cigars he’d never taken to. He spoke quietly, so that they had to listen. ‘In talking about love, and like, and England, you are losing a sense of proportion, Adam. We are no longer living in England, but in the world. It may be difficult to accept. In fact it took me fifteen years in a cell padded by my own thick thoughts to disentangle the tentacles of octopus England and discover that I belonged to the world. I’m forty-five years of age, not twenty. Many young people nowadays know it instinctively, are born with it, though I’m afraid that most do not. The world is one country, topographically speaking, divided by a system of seas and rivers and mountains. Those who say they love England are only in love with their childhood and youth, and those who stay in love with it go immature into the grave. Love of country is a fatal infatuation, especially to those whom you make your enemies.’ His eyes glittered, and the aura of gentleness shifted to one side. ‘It may take an act of cosmic violence to unite the world. We hope not. But it will certainly need innumerable civil wars and revolutions before the world can agree to become united. We are at the beginning of the hundred years’ war, a series of sporadic conflicts under which the world as we know it will disintegrate. At one of these, in Algeria, we have a mutual friend who set out to take part in it. Some of you know him, all of you except Ralph have met him in one way or another. He came to this house once, and left marks on various people. I drove him from my den and solitude at the point of a gun, because in those days my sanity turned to insanity when it was disturbed. My senses have now recovered their power and sense of proportion. Nine months ago Frank Dawley went to Algeria and hasn’t been heard of since. Anyone who takes on that task is helping in some unrewarded, idealistic, mystical way to bring about the unification of the world. In the future they may become the new yet unacknowledged saints, men who went into the desert, fasted by necessity, fought by conviction, and died by faith. A man who values his life at nothing, and whose belief in something good becomes everything to him, is a religious man. All great changes towards materialism and socialism are brought about by religious men. For a truly religious man the light can never fail, and if universalism becomes a religion and socialism is the way we have chosen to bring it about then even the mistakes and tragedies of socialism have to become acceptable. That fact alone is a severe test on a man’s faith, on his sense of spiritual quest, but the greater the test on his faith the greater his faith becomes. I imagine it is unfashionable to confuse religion with politics, but such a steel-like mixture is necessary if we are to fight not only our opponents but also sometimes the system we are using. To make religion politics, and politics religion, is the only way we can use our faith, and at the same time keep it, and not be dragged down by a defeat of the spirit. Religious faith sharpens the bayonets of a political system. The desert wind blows hot and cold, is covered by light and darkness, yet always exists around your feet. It has taken me fifteen years to get back a sound mind and formulate my faith, and now that it is accomplished, I’m going to leave the love and protection of my brother and this house and go on a journey. I don’t know how long I shall be away, or even if I shall ever come back, but I think it is fitting that someone from this family should make it his mission to go to Algeria, find Frank Dawley and help him, or bring him back if he is no longer fit for the fight. That will be my task, so my final toast is that we should drink to that journey, and to Frank Dawley who has already made it. After I’ve prepared myself and worked out the details I shall set off. You cannot sit thinking in a room all your life. Sooner or later you have to step outside and act.’
Handley did not drink with him. ‘You can’t do it, John.’
‘Is my brother going to fail me?’ he smiled.
‘It’s not a matter of failing. I’ll never do that. But you’ve made your life good and whole again. You can’t throw it away. It’d be a fool’s errand.’ He stopped, had a sense of betraying Myra who might, he thought with horror as he sat down, think he did not want John to go to Algeria and bring back Frank because he was too selfishly in love with her.
‘I shall go to Algiers,’ John said, ‘get into the Kabylie mountains, and some way or other join up with the FLN. Richard can print my papers on his press. I shall be a foreign but sympathetic journalist, and I shall find Frank Dawley, because I don’t imagine many Englishmen are involved in their fight. Do you want me to go, Myra?’
The question seemed unreal, buoyed up on the hot air of shimmering candles, cigar-smoke and wine smells. So did her answer: ‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Why not?’ Adam stood in such a hurry he upset his glass. ‘John’s going on a personal quest to help Myra by finding Dawley with whom she is in love. It’s no revolutionary idealistic project he’s indulging in, but an old-fashioned romantic search.’
‘There’s a bit in it for everybody,’ Handley observed. It was strange, the first toast that meant anything left them embarrassed and antagonistic. No tree burned in a swamp of indifference, for the miasma around it could not catch fire, and water would suck out the flames. John would be taking the soul out of the house. ‘You belong with us. Think it over for a few months.’
‘I belong where I want to go,’ he said. ‘It’s decided, so why don’t we bless it, the whole family, by drinking to it?’
‘You’re going over the bloody precipice,’ Handley said, ‘so be careful. We’re all part of you, and don’t want you to take us with you. Most of all, I don’t want to lose a brother. Dawley’s a young man: he’ll survive.’
‘It’s not a question of survival. Such a word is unworthy of you, Albert. Which of us here will survive?’
Myra stood up and walked outside, through the hall and into the garden. Their shouts could not bring her back. Had they no consideration for her feelings? Frank would laugh at such a party, such sentiments. It was indelicate of John to connect her with his breaking away from the house. He was noble in his intentions, but being noble left its scattering of hurt people. He could have talked about it rationally to her alone, or to Albert, but this set-piece drama before everyone made it trivial and embarrassing. Yet why should the contemplation of a noble deed be dragged into the mud? She should fall on her knees and thank him, wish him godspeed and all success in wanting to find her lover at the war. Sickness was smeared across her heart. A noise of shouting and smashing glass came from the house.
She went in immediately, and they were crowded around John, laughing and happy. Enid was setting more candles along the table. John was embracing them, shaking them all by the hand. Myra did not lie at his feet, but she kissed him, and said she would stay at the house until he left on his mission.